When I was young, life was good. There was school, college, homework, friends, lunch and dinner. No meetings, no power lunches, and certainly no World Wide Web. Then, life in the fast lane happened, and with it came meetings, parties, public relations and the Internet. With hindsight, it’s a good thing the latter came along with the other three, because without it organising my life and time would have been next to impossible.

From reminding you about your wedding anniversary to summoning colleagues for a virtual meeting in your virtual office, online schedulers and planners can now do it all with consummate ease and no charge at all, thank you! Secretaries are still far from redundant, but these sites can help make life on the information superhighway a lot easier to handle. I decided to log in and get a few lessons on time management along the way.

What’s more obvious a place to start than Online Scheduler (http://www.online-scheduler.net). It promises to help those who log in create the ‘best looking, most interactive community, group or personal calendars on the internet.’ That’s good enough for me, so I continue, and find HTML calendars, online schedulers and calendar software, all in sixteen view types, with a rich event database, search facility and online calendar administration as well.

Additional features -- yes, they are available -- include sharing of scheduling data and the functionality to allow visitors to add, edit or delete their events and create and manage their own calendars. There is a To Do list software, and a facility to print static web pages.

Sounds complicated? Then try Easy Diary, (http://www.easydiary.com/) launched by an Indian company, Ruksun Software Technologies, based in Pune. Easy it definitely is, managing time and letting users stay connected with those who matter. It also synchronises desktop data, schedules appointments and meetings, sets reminders, has a scribble pad, and updates address books. Additional features include time zone settings, a power search and instant e-mail alerts.

Says Mr Ashok Dongre, CEO, EasyDiary: "We entered the online scheduling market about two years ago and have, since, seen this market grow consistently. Online schedulers offer the best means of interactive scheduling. Not only do they fulfil the basic need to manage time and people anytime, anywhere but, more importantly, they link time management to dynamic content (information). For instance, a scheduler integrates real time information related to events, cinema, ticket bookings, event driven e-commerce, as well as information related to free-busy slots of people, thus making time management convenient and realistic."

A similar line of thought propelled a group of three young guys to launch Meranet (http://www.meranet.com/), a site which aims to let people have a more meaningful interaction in both the real and virtual worlds. Users get an online address book, updated contact information, and people finder, to name a few of its features. "We thought of this contact management site because we felt it would be a handy tool for effective communication," say the team members. "With Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phones set to flood markets across the globe in a couple of years, ours will be a unique and effective site for reaching all contacts, anytime, anywhere through your phone. We are taking a futuristic approach as the concept is just seeping in. An address book, as we call it, is just the first feather in our cap. We intend to build a strong and effective communication network. Our site is the first of its kind in the country, and we think we have a very good solution for communication in the fast lane."

Special features include the MeraNet Travel Planner, MeraNet Calendar, and MeraNet Meeting Maker. The Travel Planner helps one find out who one can meet during a trip. Simply enter your trip details and MeraNet automatically finds out which of your contacts will be in those cities during those periods of time. You can also send your contacts mail automatically, informing them of your travel plans.

The Calendar lets users store important dates, meetings and appointments, and access them anywhere. As for the Meeting Maker, it is an efficient way of scheduling meetings involving more than one person. Simply indicate meeting details, like time and venue, and the invitees will automatically receive an email informing them of the same. Invitees can either respond, or modify details, and the responses become available on the Meranet site.

While Indian companies have woken up to contact management a bit late in the day, a number of sites abound on the Net. Like Easy Online Calendar (http://www.html-calendar.com/calendars/s_oncer.html). It’s an interactive calendar server with over 25 interesting features that include To Do lists, customisable event and date display, email notifications, user group support, dynamic include files, and event icons. If you’re the kind who likes a peek before actual downloading, try the working demos and sample calendars put up at the home page.

Getting down to something a little more techno-savvy, AnyDay (http://www.anyday.com) is a free online Day Planner that, apart from the other basic stuff, also offers full printing capabilities and PIM and PDA synchronisation. ScheduleOnline (http://www.ScheduleOnline.com) sends automatic e-mail invitations and reminders, and even sets up your own Virtual Office. Jump (http://www.Jump.com) lets you look up stock prices, examine a TV guide, and check today's weather -- all at the same time, using different view screens.

Online Schedule Book (http://www.schedulebook.com) is designed specifically for the scheduling of shared assets. How does it work? Simply click a date to get the schedule for that day. The Schedule Book also has settings to accommodate both jointly-owned assets like aircraft and boats, and publicly available assets like football grounds and parks.

The number of sites offering online schedulers, organisers and calendars is tremendous, so you really need to know exactly what you want before picking out the site best suited to you. Visto Briefcase (http://www.visto.com) offers more than just 15 MB online storage, like its streamlined interface minus any extraneous bitmaps, and password protected downloading of files from other users' sites. Need an on-screen calendar that goes back from Year 1 to 10000 A.D? 10,000-Year Calendar (http://calendarhome.com/tyc) is your answer, created from a perpetual calendar chart capable of displaying the history of any date you click on.

But are people really using these services? "We are thrilled by the response. In fact, we have crossed the one million mark (of people using the service) already," says Mr Dongre. "Online schedulers are increasingly being used to set reminders for special occasions and other important events, to schedule meeting and appointments and, most of all, to maintain online contact information. We have also been providing this technology to portals, vortals, ISPs and trade fair organisers, who have found this an extremely sticky application. Major trade fair organisers in Europe and South East Asia use Easy Diary for their scheduling needs at trade shows." In fact, Easy Diary was adjudged ‘the Killer Application of the Year’ at Internet World, Singapore this year.

The people at Meranet seem to agree. "We have had over 80,000 subscribers so far, and think that this concept is slowly seeping into peoples’ minds and lives. A low penetration level does not last forever, and will zoom in a few years. After all, effective communication is the key to everything." Adds Dongre, "The fact that almost every major portal offers an online scheduler is a clear reflection that the market acceptability of online schedulers is on the up. Online schedulers offer opportunities for event-driven e-commerce and group bookings linked to group events. And since buying decisions are closely related to personal schedules, events and occasions the use of online schedulers is clearly set to rise at this juncture where e-commerce is the buzzword."