48368 is the magic number

Ok, I always knew Google had some really cool applications, maps, spreadsheets, mail but have you discovered the Calendar?

Today I hit a new level of geekness. I know what you're thinking, hardly possible for me to get any higher. First the overview for those not "on the bus". Now take 5 minutes and go set it up, I will wait here. Tick Tock, Tick Tock

See what did I tell you, cool huh? Next you can share your personal calendar with other people you designate by making it public and they will see your events on their personal calendars. For example, you really want to go to Happy Hour but you can't remember when your hot neighbor needed you to watch her fish. No problem, just have her share her calendar, well if you could remember her name you could.

Now for the really cool stuff. Careful you might actually pee your pants a little, not that I did or anything. Let's pretend for a moment that I am a MN Twins fan, I know it's a scary thought for anyone, but just humor me and play along. At the bottom left of the calendar you will see a little box where you can search for other public calendars. So because of the wonderful Al Gore invention other people and companies have calendars they label as public and viola you can immediately have specific schedules tied into your calendar.
Here are some examples to try.
DVD releases
Movie Releases
MN Twins
Google II Softball Season
Comic Book and Toy Event Calendar

It will even assign a different color for each calendar, which you can later modify.

Now, if you still aren't impressed it gets better. So why is 48368 the magic number? Well if you have a cell phone with a calendar believe it or not you can sync it together with your Google calendar. Not only that but after a few quick steps you can actually send a text message from your phone and it will automatically add it to your calendar.

Here are the steps.

1. Sign on to Google Calendar
2. Click on Settings on the right hand side, next to "sign out"
3. Click on Notifications on the top menu
Incidentally, this is also a quick way to have Google calendar entries email you reminders or you can have reminders sent to your cell phone, which is also pretty cool
4. At the bottom enter your cell phone number and choose your carrier
5. Click on Send Verification Code, this will send a special message to your phone
6. When the message arrives type the numeric code into the verification code box
7. Click Finish setup

Now, I saved the best for last. Because of some Google Magic Voodoo
You can simply send a SMS normal Text Message to "48368" and Google will add the event to your personal calendar. Not only that, but you can type the message in a normal sentence.

For example, I typed "Dentist tomorrow 3pm" and hit send and before I could spell ABC-DEF-GHI the event showed up in my calendar under the correct date and time.

For Real! I'm not kidding. So then I tried, "Next Tuesday Jury Duty". YUP, it knew what to do with "next Tuesday".

Ok, for those reading this that are hard to impress, here is a link to more tips and tricks.