I received an email today of a Beta release of a great new service called, CalendarHub. CalendarHub is a web calendar that uses AJAX and has a great listing of features. My first impression, wow… this is pretty nice! We have been seeing quiet a bit of calendars on the web lately, but honestly, none really touched my interest that much. This one is different. It has some great features like giving you the ability to share your calendar with others, RSS Feeds, a way to subscribe to a list of calendars (awesome), tagging, and an easy Drag-And-Drop interface.

Above is a screenshot of CalendarHub open in its Monthly view with a window open that allows you to add an event to any day. The interface is very nice and uses a good implementation of AJAX that makes the calendar easier and faster to use. The window that pops up when adding an event is a draggable window that has three tabs: Event, Reminders, and Location. In the Event tab, you include basic information about the event, such as name, description, time, the duration the event lasts, etc.. You can also add tags to make organizing and finding your events a breeze. Below the actual calendar is where you will see a listing of tags that you have used for that specific time frame. Maybe I have an event that is only for work. I can add the tag, work to all the work related events and then simply pull them all up by clicking on that tag.

You also have the Reminders and Location tabs in the Add Event window. The location tab is just a spot for you to add basic information for an event, such as City, State, Zip, Address, etc.. The reminders tab is very helpful. The reminders tab allows you to have it send you an email when it reaches a specific time frame that you specify (default 1 minute before the event). You can have it set to minutes, hours, or even days before the event actually happens. What else is cool is that I believe they are working on adding functionality for it to send you a text message to your cell phone. It has the field in the account settings area and says you can receive reminds on your phone. That would be really great. I did not see it implemented yet, but I could have missed it.

What you see above is me in the act of dragging an event over to a different day using the systems easy Drag-And-Drop interface. If you look at an event, you can see a little strip on the side of the title. That is where you can click to drag the event. When you choose a location, simple drop it on the day and it will automatically update. Simple.

This is a unique feature. It is actually an application (that you see above) that you can download onto your system that they call the “Widget Client.” The widget allows you to add and manage your events for any calendar that you have. You also get an overview of past, future, and current day events when first opening the widget. This is great if you don’t want to always use the web based calendar but rather the application.

One last thing I want to touch up on is the sharing. You can see that sharing plays a big part in CalendarHub once you start to use it. You can make calendars private, public, or even share with a group only. When you publish your calendar, you can chage the color of it and then allow everyone can see it. When the calendar is a group, you can have CalendarHub send an email to a list of people that will then receive a special signup for just for your calendar. This way, they are members of it and can contribute and keep up with the calendar. Want more sharing features? You also have RSS Sharing. Make your calendar public and anyone can subscribe to your RSS Feed so they can keep up to date with events on your calendar. There is more. You can even search through public calendars. I clicked on the search button and was presented with calendars for the Indy Racing League, Football leagues, and I am also subscribed to the CalendarHub’s Calendar. Also note that subscriptions stick with whatever calendar you are currently in when subscribing. So, if are in your work calendar, you can subscribe to calendars in relation to work so everyone in the group can see them as well. Great idea there.

With CalendarHub, you can also use a bookmarklet to easily add events when you are browsing around. I am happy with CalendarHub. It has an easy to use system, great sharing features, subscriptions, group sharing, and even an application. Great job CalendarHub team! That about sums it up!

The service is not yet available to everyone, but that does not mean you can’t request a Beta account on their website! That’s what I did!

Also, just for your information… the support is great. I emailed concerning questions about reviewing the service and they quickly made a reply and provided me with the information I needed to know. Thanks, Scott!

View CalendarHub Web Calendars.