The Office 2007 iCal challenge

It's time to start trying to settle this Office 2007 iCal question, but I refuse to install the beta software myself. I still don't need that level of grief.

When I was at InfoWorld in 1989, a test I was able to run on a beta of dBase IV made headline news, thanks to the cooperation of a beta-tester who was never named.

It's time for another test. If you are running a beta release of Office 2007, please create an event on your Outlook 2007 calendar for test purposes. Then, please invite me to this event by creating and sending an iCal invitation to this event to calendarswamp@gmail.com. I'll try to open each of them in one or more iCal clients and report the results here. If possible, I'll also reply to your invitation and will be interested in knowing if the reply gets through to you.

I'll even accept invites from Microsoft employees, but I'll also disclose that these invites were sent by someone at Microsoft. Otherwise, I won't identify anyone who participates, just in case you're worried about violating a Microsoft non-disclosure agreement. (I've got 25 years of experience with protecting sources, with no complaints yet.)

Linux-based Nokia tablet comes with Outlook calendar sync -- for a monthly fee

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, which Amazon currently sells for less than $400, can be used with an offline calendar to be synched to Outlook, but there's a small monthly fee. Darla Mack has the details.

Will Crossbow support iCal directly?

Well, Microsoft once again opts for an aggressive product code name: Crossbow, for the next version of Windows Mobile ("Hailstorm" was fun too, but Crossbow is more, shall we say, visceral). This InfoWorld story speaks of Crossbow having "strong links" with Office 2007, but no mention of Windows Calendar and/or iCal. If Crossbow does support the latter two, I can delete Outlook from my hard drive and simplify my calendar sharing, provided I can swallow the Windows Vista hairball.

Technorati tag: Crossbow

Event Share Framework site goes dark

Missing, presumed dead: The Web site http://www.esfstandard.org, which had tracked the RSS-based calendar-sharing extension called Event Share Framework (ESF). ESF itself looks dead. Possible killer: Microsoft's SSE. No reward posted yet for the whereabouts of ESF, but more proof that just because something says RSS doesn't mean it solves calendar interoperability problems.

Google Calendar saves to private .ics file

Okay, so Google Calendars can be saved to a private .ics file, and this permits a level of calendar sharing. Now, where's that "save to Outlook" option?

Google Calendar: Events enter, don't easily come out

Google Calendar looks good enough. But there isn't a straightfoward way to export its calendar data to mobile devices. (RSS subscriptions still aren't straightforward data pipelines.) "Web 2.0" hasn't replaced computer-to-computer synching yet, and may never. No SwampDrain points to award at this time. One direction (import) isn't good enough for that. Maybe because it's Google, a flurry of "mash-up" plug-ins will solve the problem. We'll see.

Calendar standards history is ugly, Oracle's planned support is not

Phil Durbin pointed me to this extensive history of calendar standards, published last month, and sorry reading it is. But progress continues, however slow. I was pleased to read there that Oracle intends to support CalDAV in its Oracle Calendar.