GigaOM

[...] I am happy that our demo was able win praise from Om. We have done some other well-received previews as well. [...]

[...] 30 Boxes is a yet-to-be-released-sign-up-for-the-mailing-list-now online calendar application. It’s also, what Om Malik calls the GMail of web calendars. From one of the developer’s blog: First, we think (apologies Redmond) that Outlook is bloated and lame. We are also not fans of porting the Outlook paradigm to AJAX. In setting out to design this product, we wanted to recreate (as best we could) the action of writing down an event on a monthly calendar stuck to the refrigerator. [...]

[...] Big claim from Om Malik reviewing 83 Degree’s upcoming web-based calendar project, 30 Boxes. Not in a Public Beta yet, but when it is, I will be looking at it. The obvious comparison I can make is to the Project Management web app, Basecamp. Lots ofAjax/Web2.0 goodiness, much emphasis placed on the UI and useful underneath it all. Thomas Hawk wrote: Central to 30 Boxes is the concept of buddies. Basically in order to add someone as a buddy on 30 Boxes all you need to do is enter in their email address (talk about genius viral marketing). They then are sent an email inviting them to 30 Boxes and if you choose you can allow them to see your calendar, see only events tagged a certain way in your calendar (cool, tagging in a calendar app), or see none of your calendar. While certainly there may be people that you want to see all of your calendar (spouse, partner, assistant, etc.), there will be others that you only want to see items tagged, for instance, techmeet, or concert, or whatever other tags you choose to use. [...]

[...] The hot company in the web space this week is 30 Boxes, a web calendaring application based on an AJAX framework with integrated social networking attributes. Om Malik has already written that “30 Boxes will be to calendars what GMail was to e-mail.” Others are also trumpeting this as the best calendar ever. [...]

[...] 83 Degrees previews 30 Folders for Bay Area digerati. (GigaOM Review!) [...]

[...] A lot of excitement around about 30 Boxes right now. Om says its the GMail of calendars. Thomas Hawk says Best Calendar Ever! [...]

[...] Link: 30boxes La recensione di Neowin Alcune recensioni con screenshot [link] [link] [link] // Used for showing and hiding user information in the comment form function ShowUtils() { document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “”; } function HideUtils() { document.getElementById(”authorinfo”).style.display = “none”; document.getElementById(”showinfo”).style.display = “”; document.getElementById(”hideinfo”).style.display = “none”; } [...]

[...] Om Malik says: …it is safe to say 30 Boxes will be to calendars what GMail was to Email [...]

[...] 30 boxes seems awesome. While I was skeptical before trying it, an analogy I read here was right: “30 Boxes will be to calendars what GMail was to Email”. (Further digging shows that the quote actually came from here first.) [...]

[...] 30 Boxes is a next-generation web-based calendar that’ll be hitting beta later this week. I’m not very excitable when it comes to web-based calendards, even the new breed of AJAXy ones, but blogger Thomas Hawk got in on an early demo (along with a few other Web 2.0 notables like Matt Mullenweg and Andy Baio) and declared: “Best… Calendar… EVER!” In his long review, Hawk calls 30 Boxes “one of the most exciting social network tools I’ve seen in a long time and reiterates Om Malik’s sentiment that it “will be to calendars what GMail was to email.” It sounds like 30 Boxes has hit all the right buttons, and I must say after reading Hawk’s review I’m pretty sold, though there’s no word yet on whether it’s going to be a free service or require a subscription. [...]

[...] Blogger guru Om says 30 Boxes “will be to calendars what GMail was to Email.” While it is undoubtedly a very cool app, it still has a long way to go. [...]

[...] Here are a few other overviews of this tool that I suggest you read:  Tom Hawk & Om Malik [...]

30Boxes as an identity-based aggregator ?

Narendra Rocherolle was good enough to brief me a couple of weeks ago on the upcoming beta release of 30Boxes (as in – the UI has 30 boxes/dates), the calendaring application developed by 83Degrees – the new startup of the founders of Webshots. Tho…

[...] Perusing Matt’s website, I ran across mention of 30boxes, which is a nice web based calendaring application. There are two reviews linked off his site (Tom Hawk and Om Malik). I have created myself an account and added some dates. So far, so good. My Backpack and my Blackberry have helped me get pretty organized this year, but I’ve been missing a great calendaring application. The calendar on the Blackberry is really just for my corporate events and I don’t like having my personal calendar synchronizing wirelessly with my work calendar. I signed up with Planzo and Airset, but I think I’ll be using this instead. For more information, check out the 30boxes blog. [...]

Is 30 Boxes any good?…

30 Boxes is the latest cool calendar web app. It’s got features to enable you to share things with other users, and I believe you can bring in your feeds from other sites like Upcoming.org.
Om Malik says:
…it is safe to say 30 Boxes will be…

Is 30 Boxes any good?…

30 Boxes is the latest cool calendar web app. It’s got features to enable you to share things with other users, and I believe you can bring in your feeds from other sites like Upcoming.org.
Om Malik says:
…it is safe to say 30 Boxes will be…

[...] planning tool, 30Boxes, is one year old. Happy birthday and congratulations to the 83 Degrees team. Here is my first review. They have come a long way. Lazy bums don’t even have a blog post up yet. Sphere Topic: [...]

Will there be a beta any time soon? Or will they first go through the route of closed beta with the invitation-based system?

I’m kinda tired of all these new products that are using random invitation system to register to their service(s)… Geez…

i am sure they will have a beta soon, but nothing as of now. you can sign-up, and be informed!

Om - the space is most certainly heating up. I met Narendra at When 2.0 and he was a pleasure to be around.

There are also a few apps being built to help you plan the events before they make their way into your calendar. We’re working on one such app. :)

I’d love to give you a demo and see what you think. Let me know if you’re interested…

Noam,

thanks for the message… would love to get together and take a look at your app. i am sure it will be impressive.

Great. I can’t seem to find your email. Would you mind sending me a note so we could arrange a time?

Noam, you can pop me an email from the contact form. fairly easy. i will be able to then email you back

What’s with the name? 83 Degreess is “37 Signal”ish and 30 Boxes is “43Folders”ish.

Om, let’s join together and declare a moratorium on all startups with numbers in their name. Back in the 1990s, there was a plethora of startups with colors and nouns — RedCart, Red Gorilla, PurpleTie, et cetera. I called them colornouns. These new startups are just a bunch of numberthings as far as I’m concerned!

Whoops, I meant “43things”ish.

Wow. Another calendar. Someone help me hold back my enthusiasm.

Hey i agree, enough with the digit start-ups, but still, guys this one is something worth enthusing about, given that these guys did not raise a mountain of VC cash, and did all this the old fashioned way.

Owen,

I thought we would win praise for differentiation from what I call the pokemoncorps: zimbra, trumba, renkoo, skobee, bloomba, airena, seraja. And these are just in the calendar/event space! :-)

I explain how we arrived at the corp and product names in the trackback above.

OK, I gotta ask; what is your favourite curry joint in San Francisco?

it is panjab kebab house on the corner of mason and eddy. good food, good people

So, let’s see, 30 boxes…does that mean I can’t book any meetings on the 31st of a month? And, I guess February is going to be a real toughie.

Very cool name. I wish I had thought of that. Good effort!

Do people really use calendars? I hardly ever use the one in my Lotus Notes. In fact, I use the one in my mobile more often.

it is safe to say 30 Boxes will be to calendars what GMail was to Email

I am assuming you mean the coolness factor GMail started out with. Numbers-wise, though, I hope 30boxes will be what Yahoo! Mail is to free web-based mail.

Very interesting posting, Om, and I’m curious to learn more about the event-planning apps that you’re planning.

As far as the GMail of calendars is concerned, you may not have to wait for 30 Boxes. Did you already try CalendarHub? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Full disclosure: I’m an angel investor at the company.

Best regards

Christoph

I’m curious to see it but like all the companies in this space I hope they understand that to monetize this stuff it has to scale and have zero downtime/zero chance of data loss. That’s because people’s calendars, like email, manage their lives. Lose that data and the wrath of the users will be horrendous…

Great discussion. As one of founders of a pokemon corp :-) — Airena the developers of airset — referenced above. I couldn’t resist chiming in. I think calendars are a very individual thing and there is no “one ring” to rule them all solution. Guess what, lots of people love the Outlook Calendar or even if they don’t love it they are forced to use it because their company is standardized on it. We spend a lot of time supporting sync to Outlook - not because we want to - but because lots of our users have demanded it. Our product is designed for people who lead hectic lives with lots of different groups (or sets of people) demanding their time and attention (work, family, sports teams, church groups, etc.). We are trying to help our users manage all of the different groups in their lives in one place and then get the contact and calendar data from all of those groups down into their mobile phone. If you fall into this category of user, you know that the different groups in your life have their own unique calendaring solutions, we’re not arrogant enough to think we can get all of those groups to switch over to AirSet for group management so we support sync to Outlook and Palm and subscribing to iCal compatible calendars so that our users can pull the different group calendars they might be using into one place and finally be able to see their full schedule.

If you don’t have this multiple group management problem, you don’t need our service. I am sure lots of people just want a simple online calendar solution and 30 boxes might perfectly fit the need. I wish the 30 boxes folks all the best, I am sure they will find their niche. I just hope they support iCal so that if one of our users needs to see the schedule of one of their users or vice-a-versa we’ll play nice together.

I have to agree with (the other) Brian’s post above. I also think there are lots of different groups with different demands, and it will be quite challenging to try and meet them all in one app. In our case (MyHomePoint.com) we recognized early on that there would be many players trying to dominate the groupware sharing/publishing/etc. space (30boxes apparently, AirSet, Trumba, ahem–Microsoft, etc.) so we chose the family unit as our primary focus. We believe that there will be many moms and dads whose primary social network (for scheduling purposes) is their family, plain and simple, and we strive to make it trivially easy to connect within that circle. (And we have lots of stuff outside of just calendar…) It won’t satisfy everyone, but we’re not really attempting to. Yes, we are also working on being buzzword-compliant (RSS, iCal, tagging, blah, blah) but really, that stuff is not what we think our audience most cares about.

Again echoing Brian’s sentiment, if you have your social calendar in Upcoming, your tags in Delicious, your photos in Flickr, and you (for some reason) want them all in one place, then 30boxes sounds pretty cool. If you have a bunch of wired groups and want everything on your phone, then AirSet sounds pretty cool. If you are a non-geeked-out family who just wants a shared calendar without all the fuss, then we might sound pretty cool. It all depends on what you want — hopefully there’s room for different solutions to meet different demands. Good luck to all!

Going along with Brian from (link) above, I prefer Airset as it allows me to create multiple calendars that I can see all at once, separately, or in various combinations. My family shares one account with a calendar each for mom at work, dad at work, mom at home, son at home/school, and “fyi/maybe.” I have it set up so I can see all the “at home” calendars at once and when I’m at work, I can view my work calendar and my personal calendar only. (But I can also view any calendar or even ALL calendars by clicking on different tabs.) The possibilities are endless. PLUS, Airset offers a blog, contacts, tasks lists for each calendar. (Another Airset-using mom has her son’s homework assignments emailed to his cell phone while he’s on the bus going home from school.) Furthermore, I can send reminders or share any calendar even with people who are not Airset users.

I joined the beta today and was stunned by its simplicity.. simply type the details and it takes care of the rest. the neat interface is also adorable. tags, marking as star, adding notes, sharing with buddies, live content from flickr and others.. i couldn’t have asked for more..

too much hype for this

I like this calendar application but couldn’t find anything more interesting to stick to it. May be I’m missing something. But, to other user, I have some advise:

To be very frank, 30 boxes login mechanism is very primitive. They send the username and password in clear text. This may work well in home environment. But in office env., anyone with good sniffer software can get your password. It’s not about getting your password and accessing critical information, it’s about guessing your password too. They can guess pattern of your password.

There are so many easy way to hash password and then send it.

Personally, I don’t like any service which send the password in clear text. You can lavel me password paranoid but in new internet world, we should atleast get password protection.

Just my 2 Cents!!

• Saket

i think I am going to launch a Chai Bar with Speaiclity Chai (nopt Tea) called 40 Spices!

neat stuff, 30boxes, though…I use something similar on my spymac free webhosting account

I’ve just written-up 30 Boxes…come take a look.
“Is 30 Boxes any good?”
It’s awesome!

SyncMyCal (www.syncmycal.com) provides full two-way sync between 30Boxes and Outlook.