Google Now! How to add Google Calender Entry

Do you use Google Now? Thanks to the folks at XDA they have compiled a very helpful list of the cards and their respective commands to trigger them. There might be some you may not have known so check it out and give them a try. Deep inside, we all know that it’s fun to talk to a machine and hearing a synthetic voice in response.

Now (pun intended!), it seems that Google might have missed out on adding calendar entries to the list of Google Now functions. Blasphemy! It can tell you what time to leave for your next appointment but it ain’t smart enough to add one to your calendar.  Would this have stopped the folks at XDA? Clearly not, as they have came up with a simple workaround to get it to work by sending an SMS to Google servers and it’s very accurately detailed in Post #3. However, this method is not available to the rest of us that live outside the United States.

Well, there is an alternative workaround that involves …IFTTT or If This Then That which has many great features , something that all geeks should check out. You can use my IFTTT recipe. You would need an unused gmail address (let’s called in google#1) and set it as your recipient address. Add your personal calendar(google#2) that you want to receive updates from to IFTTT. I am assuming your calendar is the same as the default email (google#2) setup on your phone. The recipe works as follows: when email(google#1) receives an email(google#2), the email content would then be used to populate your personal calendar(google#2) entry.

Hope you are still following! Next, on my phone I added a new contact with an email address (google #1). You can imagine this to be your new assistant like Siri. I call mine Bruce Wayne. So when I wish to add a new entry on Google Now, I just need to say send email to Bruce, lunch tomorrow with Joe at 1pm and that’s it. I would imagine Mr Wayne going off to update my little calendar. He takes awhile, approx 15 minutes. As you can see, Google Calendar parses the entry quite well and recognises dates as well as time. Just keep it simple in the following format “Title of Entry” on (date/day) at (time). Default entries last for 1 hour.

In all honesty, I think this might be too much hassle to add a single calendar entry especially when Google has difficulty understanding my Singlish (Singaporean English) accent. My success rate at annoying my wife with me repeatedly saying Send Email Bruce is quite high. She used to find it amusing but after marriage, I guess not any more. I am also quite sure that Google would add this feature to Google Now pretty soon. But hey, this is a proof of concept to show that it works. On top of that, You get introduced to IFTTT which is really amazing and there’s going to be more recipes coming from us here at GadgetReactor. 2) You get to choose your own kick ass assistant (mine’s the BAT).