Google product cancellations for December 2012

This quick-tip is about Google's winter 2012 product cancellations, which
appear to have less impact on most Blogger users than their recent seasonal purges.

Today, Google have announced their next round of discontinued products - they used to call it "spring cleaning", but this time around have at least acknowledged that it's winter for half the world, and summer for the other half!


Some Google Calendar features are to be discontinued, specifically:

• Creating new reservable times on a Calendar using Appointments Smart Rescheduler
• Add gadget by URL.
• Check your calendar via SMS/text message
• Create event via SMS/text message (GVENT).

My guess is that this may affect some Blogger users, who have integrated a calendar with a blog. It's a fairly specialist area, so likely to be a small number.

There are a few other discontinued features, but I suspect they won't affect bloggers to much extent:

• Google Sync a tool giving access to Google Mail, Calendar and Contacts via Microsoft Exchange's ActiveSync protocol - discontinued, except for Google Apps for Business, Government and Education.
• Google Calendar Sync
• Google Sync for Nokia S60
• SyncML, a contacts sync service used by some older mobile devices.

• Issue Tracker Data API: a tool that lets client applications view and update issues on Project Hosting on Google Code via API feeds.

• Punchd an app that keeps loyalty cards on smartphones