A good calendar can help keep activities on schedule, make the most of your time and keep you from worrying about missing an important meeting, children’s events or dinner with friends.

The easy-to-use, free Google Calender (www.google.com/calendar) is a terrific help in keeping you and your family on track for all your activities. With this calendar you can add single events, such as a Little League game, doctor appointment or meeting, or use the recurrent events feature to remind you of birthdays, anniversaries and other dates that occur every year, month or week. Google’s Event Flair Lab lets you decorate your calendar with an appropriate icon, such as a birthday cake for a birthday date, a soccer ball for a soccer game . . . you get the idea.

You can keep business, personal and organization calendars all together, and each can be identified by a different color. Or set up custom calendars if needed for specific groups of people in your family, business or organization. Display any calendar separately or all calendars together, by day, week or month. Your calendar will be saved in Google’s cloud servers, ready to use at any time. If you are out of Internet touch, you can still view a read-only version on your computer no matter where you are.

You can share your calendar with family, business associates or organization members, sync your calendars with your desktop calendar or access it on the go with your smart phone. Need a hard copy? No problem–-just print it in color or black and white. Oh, did we tell you the calendar is available in 40 languages and will track appointments across time zones, displaying the appropriate time for the specific location?

For organizations or businesses that need to set up meetings between members, your Google Calendar can help. You’ll need to share your calendar--not your whole calendar, just the one set up for that business, organization or group--and pick a date and time for the meeting. Google Calendar will overlay each member’s calendars, check to see if that time and date are clear, and, if so, add the event to each person’s calendar. If no date/time works, Google Calendar will suggest alternate "clear" times for everyone. This feature alone can save you time on the phone or writing and answering emails. You can even mark which member’s attendance is required and which is optional.

Planning a family or school reunion or other special event? These same features are ideal for those types of events and make it easy to stay in touch with everyone involved.