One of the neat things about 30 Boxes is how easily it lets you share your calendar with your family and friends. You can create a "buddy" by typing in someone's e-mail address and then, in just a few mouse clicks, give that person the ability to view your calendar. (You can limit visibility to entries that have not been designated as private or only those with specific tags, such as "work" or "personal.")
You also can request access to the calendars of other 30 Boxes users. The sharing feature's main catch is in order to view your calendar, your buddies need to log in to 30 Boxes, and in order to log in, they must have their own 30 Boxes account (signing up, in beta release at least, is free but does require a valid e-mail address).
Whenever you create a calendar item, you can issue an event invitation to another person via e-mail by providing his or her e-mail address. The person's response to the invitation will then be displayed as part of the detailed calendar entry. (You can easily generate invitations via the One Box by prefacing e-mail addresses with a plus sign.)
30 Boxes offers several other ways to share calendar data, including the creation of links to some or all of the calendar events as a public Web page. There are also options to view your calendar through an RSS feed, or to publish it to a blog.
Customization
There isn't a ton you can do to customize the appearance of your 30 Boxes calendar, but you can currently choose from among three themes that toggle the background color between a muted blue, grey and white, and you can also change the color of some text. Font type and size are fixed, although you can display the event text in one of about a dozen colors by including the name of the color as a tag when you create the event.
In addition to your calendar, your 30 Boxes account can play host to other types of Web-based personal information like a blog or Flickr account. (When you include links to these sources and share your calendar, these items are shared as well.)
Conclusion
The biggest complaint about 30 Boxes is that at this point it doesn't offer any way to import existing data from Microsoft Outlook or other calendar programs, which means you'll need to spend some time retyping your appointments. It also lacks other PIM features like an address book or contact list.
Overall, while it can't compete on a feature-for-feature basis with Outlook or similar programs at this early stage, the ease of use, ease of sharing, and the ability to access it from almost anywhere make 30 Boxes an immensely useful program.
