Our team has been pretty excited about a certain movie premiering today. After yet another discussion of starships, phasers, and warp drives, we decided to put our enthusiasm to work and give Calendar a little boost.

The result was the creation of a new calendar, pre-loaded with stardates to help you keep track of time in this universe and beyond. If you, like us, want to boldly go where no one has gone before, you'll automatically see the Stardates calendar in your calendar list on the left (the stardates will appear as All Day events). You can also manually add the calendar by entering [ stardate: ] in the "Add a friend's calendar" field in the calendar list.

If you're perfectly satisfied with Earth dates, you can always unsubscribe from the Stardates calendar or hide it from your list.

We had fun creating this calendar and we hope you enjoy it too. As for what's on our calendar today (Stardate: [-28] 01210.00)? Beam us up, we're off to the movies...


(More information on how we computed the stardates can be found here.)

For those of you on Twitter, add @googlecalendar to get product updates, learn more about Calendar, and hear about cool ways that people are using their calendars!

Check us out at: www.twitter.com/googlecalendar

If you're experiencing an issue or have any questions, we still recommend coming here to the Calendar Help Forum -- though 140 characters is perfect for quick notes, it often takes more to get to the heart of an issue :)

Looking forward to seeing you guys in the Twitterverse!

In our effort to focus on the features that are most important to our users, we've made the decision to discontinue discussion comments for events. After taking a closer look at the numbers, we found that less than 0.5% of Calendar events had discussion comments and users rarely (if at all) accessed comments from past events. As we continue to develop Calendar, we want to make sure it stays streamlined and focused on features that will make the biggest impact for you.

Keep in mind that this change doesn't affect guest comments when responding to events. You'll still be able to leave comments when submitting your response status for an event invitation. So go ahead, let your friends know what dish you're bringing to the potluck when you RSVP. To keep the conversation alive, use the "Email Guests" feature in the event details to discuss the event with other guests via email.

On a flight, and need to get the hotel name? Local coffee shop's Wi-Fi a little shaky and you don't remember what time your date is? Well, now you're in luck! Today, I'm happy to announce the release of Offline Calendar! Starting today, you'll be able to access a read-only version of your Google Calendar events when you're without an internet connection.

Offline Calendar uses Google Gears, an open source browser extension that adds functionality directly to the browser. To learn more about Offline Calendar and to enable it, check out this page in our Help Center:
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=141742

As always, we appreciate any feedback you guys have, so please let us know if you come across any issues or have suggestions.

For those keeping score at home, now there are a variety of ways to see your calendar when you're away from your desk -- in addition to Offline Calendar, we offer two-way sync for iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices, as well as sync with Apple's iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, and Microsoft Outlook. Now wherever you go, you'll have your Calendar with you -- no internet necessary :)

Cheers,
Charlie

Ever wanted to directly sync your Google Calendar with your iPhone or Windows Mobile phone? Today, you can! The Google Mobile Team announced a beta version of Google Sync for both platforms -- check out the full post from their blog here.

If you want to jump right in, go here -- just make sure to follow the instructions and back up your data before syncing. Also, if you have any questions that you can't find information for on the Sync page above, please check out the Google Mobile Help Forum -- the community there is great and can often help figure out mobile-related issues.



Enjoy!

Cheers,
Charlie

There are a few new things in Google Calendar today...check them out below:

• We're removing public calendar search and the public calendar gallery. For details, please click here. 
  
• A new collapsible All Day event section! If you have multiple All Day events on the same day, you can use the triangle on the left of the grid to collapse the section and create more space. Take a look at this article for more information on All Day events.
  
• We redesigned the calendar management page ("Settings" > "Calendars") to eliminate any confusion when unsubscribing from and deleting calendars. Find out how to delete and unsubscribe from calendars in our Help Center.
  

We're aware of a problem affecting a small subset of users. The affected users are receiving repeated SMS messages from their mobile carrier regarding Calendar events. We will provide an update by 7:45 Pacific Time detailing when we expect the problem will be resolved. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.