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.
The calendars can be pulled out in iCalendar format or RSS. I can't imagine it would be terribly hard to write a little "glue" program that can pull from Google via one of these and push it to a PocketPC, Palm or BlackBerry. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that within the month of April we'll have tools that allow 2 way synching between a pda and Google Calendar.
ReplyDeleteYou can get either an XML feed or ICAL feed from your calendars. Click on the down arrow next to a calendar in the "Calendars" section and select "Calendar settings". There are two buttons there that let you select either of the two data formats. This is better than exporting a file, since you can use it as a live feed to any other calendar that supports ICAL feeds.And if you really want, curl -O "http://google.com/calendar/..." will download it to a file.
ReplyDeleteHi Scott. While Google Calendar's export capabilities might be a bit limited at the moment, the ability to subscribe to live ICS feeds is what we believe to be a core requirement of smart calendars.
ReplyDeleteWe describe how published Trumba calendars and smart Google Calendars work together on our blog here:
http://blog.trumba.com/2006/04/trumba_and_goog.html
Thanks,
Tom (Trumba)