Hacker News Reader

Comment by djim | Hacker News Reader

this is a feature. it's actually pretty awesome for setting up quick meetings. It's a function of the "Quick add" feature that carries over into the title of the event: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/36604?hl=en

Edit: I am very familiar with Google's products, having helped many businesses move to Google Apps through the years. "Features" like this often surprise users and it is not unusual to get negative reactions. Normally, once you show someone how it works and explain that it isn't likely to change, they adapt.

View on HN

Ugh, I understand that it can be useful for some people, but I find natural language parsing of calendar events intrusive and annoying.

99% of the time it ends up parsing a field incorrectly, and if I wanted to set a field it's on the form anyway, so why bother? In this case, why parse out an email address and send them an invite when there's an "invite" text box on the same page?

If the only way to set the time, date and invite list was to have the subject line get parsed, it would be obvious that this sort of thing will occur.

Honestly, to me this is a solution in search of a problem.

but you can create an event from the calendar interface prior to going into the event interface. from the calendar interface, it only gives you the option of creating a title. so i can put meet with name@email.com and create the event. that's it.

Google Calendar should TOTALLY notify you you are adding someone to the event and ask if you want to send an invite. Also, if you are in the events interface and add someone's email to the title, it should add that person to the guest list on the fly. It should do these things, but it doesn't. I think that is the root of the complaint, not the feature itself.

> Normally, once you show someone how it works and explain that it isn't likely to change, they adapt.

Soon we'll read reports of pipes bursting and apartments flooding because a Nest switched off the heating during winter after a Google calendar user added an event named "Feature freeze on home delivery project". Of course people will adapt and simply stop using temperature related keywords in their event titles?

My point being: Users shouldn't need to adapt to unexpected features. If such features exist, they are implemented badly or shouldn't exist in the first place. That's Interaction Design 101.

My vote goes to 'feature' too. However, I didn't know about this behaviour, so perhaps Google should have a tooltip explaining what it parses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com