Publishing free/busy info in Outlook 2007 (or iCloud for that matter)

As I ramp up my Outlook 2007 mad skillz (hah), I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong when trying to publish my free/busy information to a personal Web server. I've been relying on a Microsoft Knowledge Base article to do it step-by-step. But step 3 refers to a "Look In" box that I'm not seeing in the Windows 7 version of Outlook 2007. I thought maybe I needed to map an FTP drive in Windows 7, and was able to do that, but it didn't give me access to any "Look In" box or provide any other path forward.

If you are an Outlook ninja and can tell me what I'm doing wrong, please send me a message or comment here. Now I'll go back to grumbling privately about the lack of free/busy publishing in iCloud.

How do I get Outlook to subscribe to an iCloud calendar?

I've turned the paradigm on its head. Usually people want iCloud to subscribe to (or more usually, sync with) their Outlook calendar. I, instead, wish to have Outlook subscribe to an iCloud calendar. Does anyone out there know how to do this easily? I would have thought it was easy, but Google searches continue to turn up answers involving sync, which I am not trying to do. No, I'm merely trying to subscribe. Any ideas out there? Seems like a simple enough question. (And the PC in question running Outlook does not have any Apple software on it, so I'm syncing my iPad and iPhone to a different PC, not running Outlook).

iCloud embraced. But it's still a silo

A commenter to Calendar Swamp notes great success with iCloud, and so, after a rough start, do I. First, the comment on my earlier post, from Lady K:

"I am cross platform (windows 7, iPhone, iPad) and I must say I am thrilled with iCloud. I run 3 businesses, go to school and manage a household schedule using it. The key to being successful with iCloud is to understand how each device interacts with it. The idevices (fortunately) won't let you do things you shouldn't be able to do. Windows, however, doesn't "check for duplicates" the same way so if you create a subgroup (in your contacts folder for example) you can't just drag and drop contacts to add them to other subgroups or they will get deleted. I log into the iCloud webapp directly if I have to manage anything like that. The only other thing to note is that iCloud manages reminders completely separately from the tasks or calendar items. If you need to be reminded of something, you set it up under reminders, which in Outlook comes up under tasks. Other than that I have had resounding success with all of my iCloud products including calendars (a total of 5), contacts (managed using 3 subgroups), tasks (which even set off reminders properly), reminders and even online backups."

I agree with these comments, although I'm not using Outlook currently (more on that in a minute). I now believe my initial problem with iCloud had to do with events my wife had created in iCal prior to iCloud's release and our subsequent installation of it. For some reason (possibly related to the fact that she had created those pre-iCloud events on a Mac running Snow Leopard, not Lion) those older events never showed up on iCloud. But, as time passed, those events rolled from the future into the past, and newer events (created on the Mac calendar post-iCloud install) appeared just fine on my iCloud as well as hers.

This development is particularly timely, as next Monday I begin a full-time gig with HealthLeaders Media as their senior technology editor. Leaving the freelance medical writing/journalism ranks for a high-profile full-time gig will tax my calendar in ways it hasn't been taxed since I was last working full time nearly a decade ago. Also, HealthLeaders employs Outlook, so like Lady K, I will have events on that calendar that I hope can be shared with my personal iCloud. How that will work may be the topic of my next post.

But anyway, iCloud is redeemed in my mind. I would still like to see it support every device out there, not just  iPods, iPhones and iPads, and until it does, iCloud is its own kind of calendar silo. But at least the industry has something to shoot for if and when it finally creates...wait for it...iCloud for the rest of us.

EFF adds muscle to fight against time zone database lawsuit

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) adds its voice -- and legal resources -- to those opposing a copyright infringement lawsuit against a must-relied-upon database of time zones.

Google Calendar's Mac sync woes

Via the Spanning Sync blog, I learned that deleting an event on the Mac OS X calendar no longer can automatically delete a synced event on Google Calendar -- unless you have Spanning Sync's software. Another giant step backward for calendar sharing on the Mac!

iCloud: Not worth any more of my time

I'm simply going to ignore iCloud as another inadequate calendar-sharing solution for now -- even between iPhones. My results have been inconsistent and frustrating. If any iCloud fans out there wish to defend it, contact me directly or comment here. For now, I don't recommend it. And I'm not alone.

Lighting 1.0 arrives -- is it in time?

Lightning, a Mozilla calendar now incorporated into its email program, is now shipping. We'll have to see if it's adopted in sufficient numbers to help tip the scales back to open (and truly private) calendar sharing.