Got an email today that Comcast is now offering (in its never-ending but doomed-to-failure bid to make Comcast Internet subscribers consider the whole Comcast portal to be their "home") free access to Plaxo's premium services ("a $50 value at no extra charge!").
Plaxo is a social site that I've actually played with before -- you tag folks as "friends" or "business associates," etc. You can set up feeds for their blogs, too.
I've also noticed it previously because it was one of the services mentioned for synchronizing Outlook/Exchange and Google Calendar (among others). If that actually worked, that would be awfully nice. I've been continuing to monitor the Google Calendar support forum, and while "Becky" there clearly realized they've released a very squirrelly product, there's no sign of an update since the initial 3/5 release.
(I tried reactivating it. and, as it had eventually started doing, it once again crashed Outlook.)
So I downloaded the Plaxo agents for syncing things -- and basically it's a matter of syncing various things to the Plaxo calendar, i.e., it serves as a middle-man. But I thought I'd take another look at the capabilities before I installed, because I've had a lot of concerns over bad calendar syncing -- and, to be honest, I really don't want to frell up my work calendar.
Alas, it's the Same Old Story:
The complaints have to do with duplication of appointments, inability to handle recurrent appointments, inability to handle exceptions to recurrent appointments, etc. Nothing as dire as the complaints about Google Sync, but enough to make me shy away.
The real problem is, this isn't critical, just a serious convenience. I already have my Outlook calendar at all times, courtesy of my Blackberry. What I want is to be able to see it overlaid on my Google Calendars, so that when a question comes up of whether I can do X in time slot Y, I can see if the work stuff interferes, too.
So ... still in a holding pattern. Alas.
Filed under :: My Computer