Internet based shared calendar, ideally on Google, like a public folde

[scottylans]

Anyone know how I can recreate something like this but on an internet calendar service (google is highly preferable)
http://i.imgur.com/AV8Xy.jpg
Likely to be switching to Google Apps (free, not paid) soon as IMAP appears to be sufficient for this small business needs.
However users would lose access to the Exchange based Calendar which is shared for multiple users.
I see that within the Google / Gmail calendar interface http://calendar.google.com/ it allows you to access other users calendars on the same domain, however this is google / web based and not inside their Outlook client. I could make a generic mailbox called "Public Calendar" ([email protected]) I'm fine with that but I do not know how to manually open that from within Outlook 2010.


Has anyone dealt with something similar to this before? It seems to me that Outlook 2010 appears to only support ICAL based public calendars, is this the only / best solutions?
Thoughts from the experts would be appreciated. Want this for about 35 users world wide in the long run.


Thank you.

 

[Irene]

I am not sure if this might be of any use:
Looking for Windows Calendar?

or perhaps this:
Hotmail Calendar

 

[Imperfect1]

Check out the new Yahoo Calendar. It's free and really fabulous and very similar to what you want --- including all those different color options. In fact you can have multiple users and/or multiple different kinds of memos/reminders or whatever in the calendar --- each with it's own color to differentiate it from the others.

 

[scottylans]

I have PARTIALLY replicated the functionality I want (see here) http://i.imgur.com/VSYgH.jpg by creating a user on the Google Apps domain called "Public Calendar" my issue is the terrible user interface on the Google Calendar for editing OTHER peoples calendars! I can easily view, add the public calendar as any user, the problem is when I go to create a calendar entry, despite unticking my own, personal calendar at the top and ONLY ticking the public one, it still adds entries to mine. I really need this seamless for users.
What I haven't made clear is the functionality I'm after isn't just a shared calendar - or rather, the terminology should be same as a shared calendar on a Public Folder (same as how Exchange does it)
That screenshot I've posted really should nail home what I'm after here (I just want multiple users to have access ot this thing) - I really would prefer Outlook to do it but if they HAVE to log in to a web page so be it. That being said I'd also rather they could log in as themselves and edit it and not have to all have the password for the 'special Public.Calendar@domain" account - it just seeems a bit backwards. I'm sure there's a solution to this prolbem and I simply don't know how to find it.


Thanks for your time by the way, appreciated.