The curious case of Remember the Milk

Lots of folks -- myself included -- mistakenly described Remember the Milk as another online calendar. In fact, it only manages tasks. For calendaring, it syncs with Google Calendar. There's no conventional way in Remember the Milk to express events with start and end time. It's possible to express tasks of a certain duration that are due at a certain time. But it's not clear at all how you would do something as conventional as inviting someone else to the same "task" (event) unless, perhaps, that event originated in Gcal. Maybe I just need to play with it some more. And now I have a reason to do it. Remember the Milk just announced the ability to sync with Windows Mobile, for $25 a year. It's another tantalizing quarter-step forward for those of us who want to sync and publish our calendars sans Outlook or Google Calendar. (And Remember the Milk already works offline, so there's another thing in its favor.)

Oy vey: SyncML is now OMA DS

Never mind that synchronization has never been more popular, or more marketable to businesses. The fine folks at the Open Mobile Alliance renamed SyncML (Synchronization Markup Language) to this unmemorable alphabet soup: OMA DS (Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization). As if we don't have enough standards, we have to deal with old and new names! I will spell out the "DS" or no one will know what I'm talking about!

iPod Touch: Update contacts, not calendar?

I was surprised to learn (via Bill Palmer) that iPod Touch owners can add contacts, even though they can't add calendar entries. Why does Apple allow contacts updates but not calendar updates?

Everybody Has a Share

Calendar Swamp readers may find my new project worth following. Everybody Has a Share: Myth, Madness and Momentum in the Digital Decade is my book in progress about the historic impact of open source, open standards, security, and privacy on all of us. And yes, calendar sharing will be highlighted as a textbook example of the myth, madness and momentum. Join me there for the fun, starting today; but stay tuned for more reports from the swamp here.

Chandler hits preview release

News from Chandler, the open-source calendar software effort:

"The Chandler project has hit our Preview milestone! We now have public-beta quality releases of our products; we believe them to be full featured enough and stable enough for daily use."

Congratulations to the Chandler team. It's been a long time coming.

The Apple iPod Touch: Opportunity lost

Apple continues to treat its iCal calendar poorly. The new iPod Touch calendar is read-only, even though the iPod Touch would seem like a great way to update your calendar. Apple wants to sell more iPhones instead.