30 Boxes, an upcoming, "Web 2.0" calendaring service has been receiving a lot of attention on the web this week. Thomas Hawk has a detailed preview, including a few screenshots, of what he calls the "best calendar ever."

I can see how an online calendar with good social networking capabilities could be really useful for some people, but looking at my own calendar in Outlook 2003, I realize that almost all of the data in there is private - deadlines, exam dates, and other events and appointments that probably really wouldn't be of any use to anyone else I know. So I'm not quite sure I need a social calendar just yet.

I've also found that even with the advent of many fancy new "Web 2.0" apps, I generally tend to prefer rich-client, desktop applications for most purposes (feed aggregation probably being the only exception). Now don't get me wrong - I think many of the new web-apps are really cool and definitely have their advantages. But if you ask me to choose between Word and Writely, for example, I'll take Word, please. Outlook or webmail? Outlook, no question.

Even then, I'm quite curious to try 30 Boxes when it launches this Sunday. I might even consider using it as a backup store if it can somehow sync with Outlook, just like I forward copies of all my email to my Gmail account. And if everyone's raving about it, there must be something special about it. Should be interesting. :)