http://google.com/intl/en/googlecalendar/overview.html

Apart from accessing email remotely on a day to day or hour to hour basis through our internet service providers, the next most frequently accessed website for me would have to be the recently available Google Calendar, albeit still in 'E&OE' draft beta format.

My search for a good online scheduler/calendar started two years ago after I began having annoying PDA (personal digital assistants) problems - mislaid devices, tired system batteries, failed backup batteries, synchronisation problems, etc. The idea of keeping the diary somewhat more indelibly out in cyberspace on some well-maintained server which, in contrast to the PDAs, did not need batteries, appealed to me.

There were a few no-cost calendars which I got to check out but nothing really inspired me until I stumbled across the beta version of the new Google Calendar.

It is difficult to work out what drives the Google empire to diversify in such ways. On the surface, at least, there seemed to be no clear revenue advantage in having a free calendar add-on to their suite of on line free software services, but Google will clearly have its rationale. Its online search engine has been staggeringly successful and "Googling" is well on its way to becoming another new word in the English dictionary.

The relative merits of an "on belt" versus an "on-line" scheduler/diary/calendar will vary for individuals. My sessional locum/assistant might prefer an accessible PDA given the number of phone calls from prospective clients at odd hours and perhaps occasionally in odd places - often nowhere near an internet enabled PC.

On the contrary, most regular GPs will be reasonably close to a PC either at home or at work for most of their 10-hour day and, as with a range of these sorts of tools, the most difficult thing about using a new tool like this tends to be simply remembering the log-in and/or password.

The reason Google Calendar is becoming so popular is probably multifactorial. It has the capacity for a wide range of separately colour-coded calendar functions which is fantastic.

Calendar topics can be optionally shared with other Google Calendar users - just as you can nominate which folders from your network PC you might want to have with the rest of the practice.

You can, in fact, share an entire calendar and where one might be managing a children's soccer team a whole calendar could be dedicated to that function.

The idea of the Saturday morning phone around for cancellations would become a thing of the past! The other real benefit which has been pointed out is the ability to share such changeable things as shared childcare arrangements - an increasingly important part of our changing society and no less so in medical families.

And, for those very important people such as movie stars and pop-music idols you can "unmask" and share your calendar with the whole globe! They would certainly need to make sure they did not get their private calendar mixed up, or the paparazzi would have a field day.

It is also possible to have multiple separate calendars under one email-based user account. On the other hand, there is a large range of calendar topic entries which are all uniquely colour coded for allocation once an entry has been made into the appropriate date.

Calendar subsections or topics might include kids, birthdays, recreation, work, CME, resthomes, bank transactions, personal, holidays and so forth (and of course how could I forget online auction transactions).

And, it is a simple challenge to filter a whole year's calendar for a particular entry. If I want to see when I last paid the housekeeper, I can filter out just the housekeeping entries.

Under the "manage calendars" option, Google Calendar also allows us to call up the New Zealand holiday calendar and perhaps in time also, the school holiday calendar.

Remarkably, my techno 15-year-old pointed out a month or two back the entire range of Louis Vuitton races could be added to the calendar as a call-up option. Admittedly, some of the race times did not fit in with our 12-hour time difference. However; this is what beta versions are for after all.

The best option for new users is to take a Google Calendar tour online.

The title website link for this review is an overview, which can lead the reader directly to the tour option and is probably a good place to start. The tour is worth taking mainly as I have yet to check everything the site has to offer and, being a beta version, new options are being added regularly.

Google Calendar has some form of built-in intelligence and can analyse whole phrases like "brunch with Mum at Java Café at 11am on Saturday", without needing to actually put the entry on that specific date. Scary stuff. We can also import events from other calendar program-mes such as Yahoo Calendar and MS Outlook.

For the highly socially mobile you can invite people to functions by nominating their email addresses on the particular event. A useful function, which I have not yet used, is the reminder service where emails can be sent to your address about an upcoming event - especially when not able to easily check the calendar.

Also, it is said to be able to forward short message services (SMS) text reminders, but whether that is a New Zealand-accessible function in the beta version is unclear.

For those in the profession who feel less comfortable with English as a second language, the interface is also currently available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Chinese-simplified, Chinese-traditional, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Polish.

It is supported on main browsers - both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, and also Safari. JavaScript and cookies must be enabled on all browsers to have the calendar functioning properly.

Google Calendar is, if nothing else, worth having a play around with. And, I would have to confess this simple free tool has made a very significant difference to the previous organisational semi-chaos of my own life and reduced my stress levels considerably. Indeed, when my ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) went down at home this weekend, I had to come to work not only to do this article but also to remind myself what I was supposed to be doing yesterday.

Scary stuff indeed, but now I cannot live without it.