30 Boxes VS Spongecell

I have played around with the 30 Boxes interface, and although I like
the idea of tagging events. It seems all the naysayers may be right on
this one. Sites like planzo, airnet, and (my favorite) spongecell have a
better overall interface. I like spongecell because of the myriad ways
to get info onto your calendar, reminders, a direct URL to view my
calendar, ical subscription support, RSI, and a really slick interface.
I find that, after all, a calendar has to be good at being a calendar
before it is good at being revolutionary.

This is what the public interface for sponges looks like:

The most interesting feature is the "sponge" function. You tell sponges what email address you might use, and give it your mobile number. Then when you send it an email or text message (in natural language - meeting in new York tomorrow at 8am through thursday at 6) it dissects it, interprets it and adds the events to your calendar. Then you can setup reminders for email or SMS (or both). Beyond this excellent interface (or lack thereof) i really like the web interface. it allows dragging across multiple days and multiple nested events.

The only real lacking here, is the same thing it seems every online calendar is lacking. An interface between todo list and calendar, where an update to one updates the other. sites like Voo2Do, and rememberthemilk are great and elegant todo sites with terrible calendars. And all these calendar sites i have mentioned do not even have to do lists (with the function i mentioned).

Ok, Back to 30boxes. My only real opinion here is two-fold. 1) I do not see anything new here. As I said, you have to be good at what you do before you can be revolutionary and I do not see a good online calendars here. I see another "social blah-blahing" band wagoneer and an average product with a few unique ideas. 2) For the first time in ages I feel like i am actually using beta software. It seems these days that beta means, beta for the mass market to see if everyone likes this product and if there is a business model here. The 30boxes beta interface just feels, well, beta-ish.

More to come after I play some more.
-c