There are 4 main options:

• Google Calendar
• Cozi
• Outlook (from work)
• Live

Summary: Cozi is the best option for our family. Although Google Calendar had similar functionality and probably a better security model (Cozi uses a shared password...doh!), the ease of use and the clear focus on managing a family's calendar made it more appealing, particularly to my wife. Because you can do anything with Google Calendar (manage a family, manage a space shuttle launch), it is up to you to configure everything from access permissions to shared views. Cozi comes with the assumption that you have two parents and some kids. This makes setup very easy. It integrates with Outlook in a pretty clever way, synching into Outlook all of the events designated for the specified individual (e.g., any event I am on in Cozi is imported into my Outlook calendar) and any outside of working hours event is imported from my Outlook calendar to Cozi. The recurring events were simple enough to understand, though they lack the flexibility of either Outlook recurring events and Google Calendar recurring events. For example, you cannot specify an event to occur every X weeks, unless X is 1 (I wanted to be able to write down that I was cooking tuna casserole every 6 weeks...yum!). But, I think this is all part of the simplicity trend, so I cannot fault Cozi too much for that. Perhaps coming up with a rotating family meal schedule would address another problem that 90% of families want, and then you would not even need the greater flexibility.

The shared password was the one limitation I found annoying. After we had everything set up, including synching, I realized that there was a shared password. I did not want to share the password I had selected (snakePitz4) with our nanny, because that would have clued her into a password that may be relevant on other sites (yes...I am working on getting a more secure web password plan in place, but that is the story of another review). After changing the password, the synch with Outlook would just die because the password that the Outlook synch component had was the old one, and it would not ask us for a new password.

The real test is whether we keep using it. I have heard that the biggest problem for calendars is that people get them set up, and then abandon them after a couple of months. At this point, I think we have found our online calendar home.

Matt