iPhone calendar sync woes

Paul Thurott: "It's clear that, on Windows at least (Apple's biggest market), iPhone sync is horribly broken. Regardless of the supported Windows or Office version you use, the iPhone will only sync with the single default local calendar in Outlook, and not with any other calendars, be they local or Internet-based. This is a problem for a number of reasons, but the most damning is that calendar sync with multiple calendars (local, Internet, whatever) actually works fine with a normal iPod." I don't own an iPhone (River does) but the fact that I don't have a Mac (and she does) was a factor in my decision. As for what Paul considers superior performance on the iPod, remember that you can't update the calendar on an iPod. I'm not surprised that Apple's one-way sync works better or is more capable. Two-way sync is hard (though necessary).

Another Outlook/Google Calendar horror story

I'm sure Microsoft Outlook works fine for lots of folks, but stories like this keep me looking for alternatives.

Vista Calendar/Windows Mobile: Microsoft's Web site is no help

Did Microsoft drop the ball on providing sync between Vista Calendar and Windows Mobile 6?

From the current Windows Mobile Device Center page:

"Microsoft® Outlook® XP, Microsoft® Outlook® 2003, and Microsoft® Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration clients are required for synchronization of e-mail, contacts, tasks and notes to a Personal Computer."

The Vista Calendar page still makes no mention of syncing with any version of Windows Mobile.

Since Outlook still doesn't sync with Vista Calendar, does this leave those who own both Windows Mobile devices and Vista Calendar up a creek without a paddle?

Windows Mobile 6: How does it stack up?

In my never-ending quest to sync my Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC calendar to anything other than Outlook, I came across LapLink Software's PDASync, which works with a variety of PC-based calendars, including Notes, Groupwise, Lotus Organizer, and ACT! 2000. For me, none of those are viable alternatives to Outlook. But what about Vista Calendar, I wondered? Would PDASync support Vista Calendar? I dropped a note to LapLink Software and received this reply from Aarti Vaid:

"Unfortunately, Laplink is not currently looking to build a version of PDAsync that works between Windows Mobile 5.x and Vista's Calendar. However, I will forward this enquiry to the developers for consideration. Thank you for writing in. If there's anything else I can help with, please let me know."

I notice some Windows Mobile 6 devices are already shipping. Does anyone reading this have one? Which calendars does it work with on the PC side?

iPhone day: Calendar interop picture to brighten soon?

Steve Jobs, quoted by John Markoff: "There’s already corporations who have been running pilots hooking up to Exchange servers and other kinds of mail servers, and they have gone very well." Exchange is also a calendar server. I would love to see a way to wire up one's own calendar server to talk to the iPhone calendar over the air. I will even buy a copy of Leopard if I can do this with the CalDAV server built into Leopard. Then, I would be the master of my own families' calendar sharing, because (hopefully) starting today, that will include at least one iPhone.

The Windows Mobile problem persists

While a new generation of Windows Mobile devices heads for release, the current generation is mired in the calendar swamp.

That is, if you don't want to sync to other calendars via Outlook, which I don't.

Oh, and if your Windows Mobile device is just a PDA, better trade it for a Windows SmartPhone, an iPhone or something else. Otherwise, you're going to have one disappointment after another. Plaxo Mobile Plus is just the latest. (what do you mean, you don't have a carrier associated with your Windows Mobile device?)

No new negative SwampDrain points here for Plaxo. It's just a well-worn path of disappointment.

Meanwhile, River is ready for her iPhone! Like so many others.

iPhone, Google Gears a match made in heaven?

Graeme Mathison: "Here’s my prediction (which isn’t exactly too far fetched, I don’t think): the iPhone and Google Gears are a match made in heaven. The iPhone will ship with Google Gears built in."

No way Apple would ship something now that Google still admits is early, buggy code. But even when Gears goes 1.0, I doubt that all iPhone users will abandon the iPhone's iCal interface for a reduced, AJAX-style user interface. Some will, many won't.

iPhone + AJAX good, Spanning Sync would be better

With Apple announcing that the iPhone will run AJAX apps, it seems clear that Apple expects a number of iPhone users to rely on Web calendaring, rather than the built-in iCal. The next step would be up to the folks at Spanning Sync, if only they had a true iPhone API.

Simple Sharing Extensions update

Remember Simple Sharing Extensions, Microsoft's proposed technology that, among other things, would let us easily cut and paste events between different Web calendars? After months of silence, Sam Ruby found the latest scoop.

Remember the Milk becomes first free Web calendar to go offline

Jumping on the Google Gears announcement on May 31, Ajaxian reports that online calendar site Remember the Milk has become the first such free site to provide offline calendar access. Gears is still early code, so your results may vary. More details at the Remember the Milk blog.

Messaging News puts calendar interop on its cover

Kudos to Messaging News for making calendar interoperability the cover story of its May/June 2007 issue. Recommended reading. And to those of you who found Calendar Swamp through this story, welcome. We have several hundred FeedBurner subscribers, and the number is growing. I also like the Messaging News headline -- Calendaring: Why Isn't It Just Like Email?

Shared tags are a good idea, how do we agree on them?

Earlier this month Brad Templeton posted an interesting list of possible tags that could add rich meaning to the events entered in one's calendar:

Here are some levels I think one might set on tagging an external event (or even a personal one) into your day.

• I will not attend this event (usually means it will not be shown.)
• I will not attend but need to keep track of this event.
• The event is canceled.
• I have not made any decision (default behaviour.)
• There is some chance I will attend (perhaps a percentage can be applied.)
• I want to attend, but something may change my mind.
• I plan to attend. (A typical default.)
• I am central to this event (speaking, leading meeting etc.)

This is a neat list. Is anyone working anywhere to standardize such a set of tags, so they may have shared meaning between people?

Musings on Palm and Google

The Palm Foleo, announced today, and Google Gears, being announced tomorrow, both have impacts on the calendar landscape. The Foleo offers a "large screen" cell phone experience, but the initial product doesn't bring cell phones' calendars to the large screen unless they're Web-based. Google Gears will, in time, make Google Calendar truly an "always-on" app by allowing easy offline access.

Palm missed an opportunity to lure back some customers lost to other calendars, or even paper, since using a calendar on a typical cell phone is cumbersome at best, and adoption of Web-based calendars over cell phones is just beginning.

Google still has yet to address growing privacy concerns. For instance, when will Google Calendar users be able to store encrypted calendars? Simply storing them with a secure HTTP connection (https) would be an improvement, wouldn't it?

Google missed an opportunity to address this, but since taking Web applications offline represents such a large step from the state of the art, the world will forgive Google for now.

None of which has much to do with improving calendar interoperability. Generally, I avoid commenting on calendar tech in itself here. But I've been thinking of tweaking the mission of Calendar Swamp from plain "interoperability" to "security and interoperability." Let me know if you support the idea, or if you consider it mission creep.

Whoomp! There it is

Turns out Google Calendar for Mobile Phones was announced a couple of days ago. Thanks to my commenters for quickly pointing this out. I'll have to try it out.

The pressure will be on Google now to provide some kind of true sync to certain phones, particularly the iPhone.

Google Calendar for mobile devices?

Maybe this sync-with-my-native-calendar stuff is a blind alley. Maybe the best way forward is to put Google Calendar everywhere and just finish figuring out how to sync everything else to it. (That is, if you don't mind Google knowing where you are going to be from hour to hour.)

However, listen to Dave Taylor, writing back in January: "Google Calendar, however, is completely incompatible with the [Blackberry] Pearl and any other mobile device."

Gmail has worked fine on my Pocket PC for a while now. I wonder when we'll see Google Calendar on mobile devices?

Any DeskNow users out there?

DeskNow has calendar-sharing server software for Mac, Windows and Linux. It requires Java and MySQL, and before I install all this as well as the trial version, I would be interested in feedback from anyone out there who has tried DeskNow. Better yet, if you've successfully integrated Apple iCal with a Windows Mobile calendar using DeskNow, let me know. Its ability to share calendars behind a firewall is what caught my attention.

Java mobile reboot: Where's the calendar?

I'm not at JavaOne -- too much else to do -- but on first blush, Sun's reboot of mobile Java doesn't talk about calendaring on Java mobile devices, other than an vague reference to "PIM and phone apps." I was hoping there would be a more coherent calendaring (and calendar sharing) story coming out of JavaOne.

Mylo on trial: $349 and no offline calendar?

I'm curious what folks out there think of Sony's new Mylo, a "personal communicator" that draws much of its usefulness through Skype and the Web. Why would anyone pay $349 for a device that doesn't contain an offline calendar? Even the cheapest iPod Nano, at $149, includes an offline calendar. (Okay, yeah, so it's read-only. But that's good enough for now.)

The evening after

So much for the great Daylight Savings Time brouhaha. Now, back to improving calendar interoperability. Too bad the latter didn't get any kind of boost from the former.

Extended DST on Windows? No worries, mate

Just the thing to liven up a Saturday night after the wife and kid are in bed: running the Extended Daylight Savings Time update on my Windows XP and Windows Mobile 5.0 computers. Boy that was fun...not! And according to this Microsoft page, some Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC users weren't able to download the update until February 26. ("We apologize for the inconvenience" says Microsoft.)

Anyway, my update's all done. Now if only it works without a hitch one week from tonight. Good thing I don't demand proof ahead of time. Also a good thing I don't mind changing my time zone twice at the end to make the update "stick" on my Pocket PC, updating my Mobile software, updating my copy of Outlook, updating my Windows XP, and creating a System Restore Point at the very start, because after all the fix messes with my Windows Registry. Sheesh!

Microsoft gets daylight savings act together

There's now a central Web page at Microsoft with detailed instructions on updating Microsoft operating systems to deal with Extended Daylight Savings Time, which begins March 11. About time, so to speak.

USB cables = primitive synch

Dave Winer: "USB cables are very primitive channels for synchronization. Way too limiting." Amen.

Windows Mobile patch for Daylight Savings Time change

Network World has a story this week about the newly-early arrival of Daylight Savings Time on March 11. Over on the microsoft.public.pocketpc news group, they're talking about Microsoft's fix for Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. According to Bill Dougherty, the Microsoft registry fix was intended to be pushed out by carriers: "Most of the carriers, in their infinite wisdom, have neglected to do so. If you rely on your Windows smartphone, you need this fix. Microsoft published the registry fix here. This fix requires you to build a CAB file and then install it. To save you the trouble, I have bundled the CAB file for you." If, like me, you have a Windows Mobile PDA not provided by a carrier, this fix may be your only bet.

Sign the Calendar Swamp Frappr map

I've created a Frappr Map for Calendar Swamp. Sign in and give us a shout-out. Be sure to pick from the appropriate map pin, so we can see what you use for your primary calendar.

Microsoft.com is being hammered

I tried to get more information tonight about Windows Vista Calendar, but Microsoft.com is being hammered, so instead of reaching the Vista Productivity page, the Web site told me: "We’re sorry, but we were unable to service your request."

Hey Vista Calendar users! Are you able to sync with Windows Mobile?

There's enough Windows Vista out there now for me to ask if Vista Calendar syncs with Windows Mobile calendars. Tonight I published an anonymous comment from a Vista user who couldn't figure out how to do it.

Calendar Swamp in Dreaming in Code

Scott Rosenberg's new book, Dreaming in Code, gives Calendar Swamp a mention on 335. Since I started this blog in June 2005, interest in calendar interoperability has been on a steady growth path. Thanks to all you who are commenting, emailing suggestions, and passing the word about Calendar Swamp. I couldn't do it without you. Meanwhile, check out my new Opening Move conversation with Scott Rosenberg, and buy his book via the Amazon link there, which helps support my podcast.

SyncMyCal works better than GooSync

This morning I have a new favorite: SyncMyCal. Thanks to whoever commented here and clued me in.

SyncMyCal does everything GooSync does and more. It lets me not sync private events. Instead they show up as "busy" on my Google Calendar. This is a good step forward. SyncMyCal is awarded +2 SwampDrain points of their own.

The only reason you'd want to still use GooSync is if you don't like to sync Outlook to Google Calendar; GooSync (and OggSync) sync directly from Windows Mobile to Google. A Windows Mobile version of SyncMyCal is in development.

Will the iPhone kill Internet sync, or will lack of Internet sync kill the iPhone?

Ed Bott: "The biggest missing piece in the iPhone is its ability to sync calendars and e-mail effortlessly."

I also liked Bott's additional comment in the voluminous comments to his post: "That cool phone is not so cool when you miss an urgent notification of a change in a meeting because you weren't able to sync up your calendar or get an e-mail message pushed to your phone. That's how business works in 2007."

Let the drumbeats of discontent grow. You can bet calendar sync over Cingular's network was something Cingular would love to have provided, because it would have consumed so many uber-profitable data minutes. Certainly Cingular has other phones it would like to sell you if you need that essential feature. Maybe it's just a way to get more customers in the store?

(Note: Apple's "push" email through Yahoo! indicates the email situation may not be as bad as the calendaring. Thus Apple's guilty of the general crime of not treating calendaring as seriously as email, which is why so many of us still arrange our calendars via grossly inefficient email.)

Jewish calendar home automation

Time It Right, home automation for the Jewish home:

Never set another Shabbos clock! Time It Right™- the ultimate in home automation for the Shomer Shabbos family. Time It Right™ is the only home automation system with a built in Jewish calendar. Time It Right™ is custom scheduled around YOUR Zemanim and lifestyle, controlling your home according to your specific needs . Unlike other home automation systems, Time It Right™ adjusts your schedule for Shabbos and Yom Tov week by week, with no action from you, making it the ideal system for the Jewish home, Shul, or institution.

I don't see any way to exchange info with other calendars however.

Want to sync your Apple iPhone? Looks like you'll need to own Outlook or a Mac as well

Gizmodo reports that "there won't be any WiFi or cellular data syncing, only sync-via-docking" for the iPhone. That will put the Apple iPhone behind the surge of Windows Mobile sync-with-Google Calendar solutions out there that cut Outlook out of the picture entirely. Yep, that's right, to sync to other calendars, you'll either need to own Outlook or a Mac running iCal.

Gizmodo's Brian Lam holds out hope that there will be iPhone syncing outside of iTunes, but now that I understand how iTunes is the software that syncs calendars to the iPod today, I hold out 0% hope that there will be another way to do it with the Apple iPhone.

I'll give the Apple iPhone a SwampDrain score of -1 for that boneheaded move.

iPhone calendar-sharing questions

My original wish on this blog was for a handheld, updatable calendar that could sync with my wife's iCal calendar. The Apple iPhone will deliver on that wish, provided I'm willing to shell out the $ for an iPhone.

But there are still questions. I don't own a Mac, and am not planning to buy one. Will iPhone users be able to plug directly into .Mac? Then I could publish my iPhone calendars to .Mac. Even then, I'm not sure I want to pay for a .Mac account. Does it really make sense to pay for .Mac if you're using so little of that service? How about an a-la-carte .Mac calendar sharing service for less money?

Another option for existing iCal users to share calendar info is to set up a private WebDAV server to share. I've previously checked with my ISP, who says he doesn't provide private WebDAV servers. Maybe I could set up one on my own home network, but it sounds like a lot of work, and could I update that WebDAV server from the road, and most importantly, from the iPhone instead of a Mac running iCal?

Questions and more questions.

OggSync works, too

OggSync also gets a SwampDrain score of +2 for doing what GooSync can do, plus apparently it can also sync one Google Calendar to another. I haven't tried this particular feature, but it's not something I'm likely to use. However, just today "jonboy" was looking for this particular feature, so there you go.

GooSync works

I'm pleased to report my first successful PocketPC-to-Google Calendar sync experience. I'm giving GooSync a SwampDrain score of +2. I'm also finding that when my wife generates an iCal invite I read via Gmail, Gmail provide a simple way to RSVP back to my wife's iCal. I simply click "yes" within the Gmail, and the confirmation somehow finds its way into both my Google Calendar and my desktop Outlook (and then into Pocket Outlook via regular sync), and sends my wife an email she can click on to tell her Mac iCal calendar that I've confirmed. (My Gmail, though, doesn't seem to keep a record of the email message it's sending to her. Is there a way to configure Gmail to show that record?)

Now I'm looking for a service that will sync only a few categories of events from Pocket Outlook to Google Calendar. Not sure if GooSync or its competitors can do this, or if the limitation is in Pocket Outlook itself.

But it's the most progress here at the Swamp in some time!

Calimanjaro to the rescue?

Well this is a positive development. A new iCal-friendly Windows calendar called Calimanjaro. Now if they can get some kind of sync going with Windows Mobile, I can just use Calimanjaro instead of Outlook. Can we hope?

By the way, you probably won't read about this at the usual Web 2.0 sites, since it's a new Windows app. Fancy that -- a new Windows app. And it's only $19.95. Not $19.95 a month. Just $19.95.

Multi-household family calendars

OurFamilyWizard.com provides resolution of duties in a multi-household family, one affected by separation, divorce or remarriage. Thing is, all family-oriented calendars (heck, all calendars) should have these same features. It would help preserve single-household families. And yes, OurFamilyWizard needs to integrate with calendars other than its own.

More calendar chaos coming

Rob Weir: "So the new OOXML standard now contradicts 400 years of civil calendar practice, encodes nonexistent dates and returns the incorrect value for WEEKDAY()? And this is the mandated normative behavior? Is this some sort of joke?"

I'll be talking to the folks at Novell about this on Wednesday for an Opening Move podcast about OpenXML and Open Document Format interoperability.

(Cross posted to IMJ.)

Google Calendar terms of service

I love the questions and facts I get from Calendar Swamp readers. One such reader alerted me that the Google Calendar terms of service limit use of Google Calendar to "personal or internal business use only." The reader is looking for an alternative that could be used to publish a Web calendar for business use. The catch is it has to be free like Google Calendar. I'm stumped. But I'm also thinking there are lots of public Google Calendars which are being published for business purposes. Do you know of any? Or of any that Google has asked to have taken down?

Why standards matter

From the Spanning Sync blog: "Google Calendar is currently experiencing some technical problems. Internally we often refer to building an application on top of Google Calendar (which is itself still in beta) as 'building a house during an earthquake.'"

This makes me think of standards as seismic safety for software. With a standard, one can have a standard server running independent of the Internet that one can test against. When the server platform is a service and not a standard, if the service goes down, anything you're trying to build on top of it slams to a halt as well.

Insane syncing

Ian Forrester: "Welcome to my insane syncing setup for calendars, contacts and tasks."

Trumba retrenches

Trumba had offered a free service that synchronized some offline calendars, but the company's had to retrench to find revenue. So, farewell this week to the Trumba calendar sync option.

Trumba will probably do just fine as a site for creating Web calendars and feeds. The company originally started out with a $39/year price, and is now in the process of bumping that up to $99.95 a month. Customers who already had a Trumba account prior to this week can pay $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year until 2008. A few nonprofits may feel burned after originally signing up for the free service (my church was one of them) but according to an email I've seen from Trumba support. the possibility exists of a non-profit pricing scheme in 2008. I hope Trumba does well and can offer that service as a way of keeping some nonprofits out of the Google Calendar tractor beam.

CalDAV is now a Proposed Standard

Congratulations to all those working on the CalDAV standard, which the IETF has now adopted as a Proposed Standard. SwampDrain factor: +1.

Goo Sync launches

It's turning into quite a week. Yesterday a new sync service for Google Calendar launched. Check out Goo Sync. I'll be looking into it.

No guru, no method, no teacher

Dana Gardner just posted a podcast we recorded last week, before I stumbled upon CalendarWorld. I'm no calendar interop guru, just a guy trying to find solutions. But I appreciate Dana's continuing efforts to raise the issue.

Dana also posted a transcript, if you don't have time to listen to the show.

Looking for info about .ifb files

ScheduleWorld generates .ifb files. I had never heard of .ifb files before. It looks like they are iCalendar free/busy files. But Apple's iCal couldn't open them. Does anyone out there know more about .ifb files? A Google search isn't any help.

ScheduleWorld Outlook 2003 sync worked! Woo hoo!

So far, so good. After figuring out what info to enter into the Funambol plug-in, I was able to sync my Outlook 2003 calendar (and contacts!) with ScheduleWorld. Tomorrow, I figure out how to publish my free/busy info. I think ScheduleWorld has some SwampDrain points headed its way real soon.

Help me, ScheduleWorld. You're my only hope

As I face The Decision (whether to upgrade to Outlook 2007 or not) I'm grasping at any available alternative straws. ScheduleWorld may be my last hope, but so far I've not been able to initiate its Funambol-fueled sync between Outlook 2003 and the Web. Maybe it'll work for me tomorrow.

CalDAV moves forward

Although there aren't many CalDAV-compatible calendars yet, they're coming. Recently I talked with Dave Thewlis of CalConnect about Apple's recent moves. (Apple's hosting the next CalConnect meeting later this month in Cupertino. It's open to members only.)

State of Linux calendaring 2006

I spent some time at LinuxWorld yesterday talking with Kevin Carmony, president and CEO of Linspire, makers of a more customer-friendly version of desktop Linux. He had just announced Freespire 1.0, a free version of the Linspire OS, and I observed that Freespire didn't include a calendar out of the box. Carmony pointed me to the Linspire Calendar, which comes bundled with Linspire, but is really just Mozilla Calendar, available as such from Mozilla.org.

But there's more to the Linspire calendaring story. Carmony and his vice president of business development, Randy Linnell, are both veterans of Franklin Covey Co. Carmony was vice president of technology there, after Franklin Covey bought Carmony's company, NewQuest Technologies, which made a personal information manager, Ascend, that I vaguely recall before the acquisition. Before the acquisition, Franklin Covey really didn't have a digital calendar. Linnell was with Franklin Covey for 11 years with titles such as director of customer service and director of technology.

Point being, these guys know calendaring. Carmony is totally sympathetic with our quest to drain the swamp. We both agree Mozilla hasn't done enough work on interop. The Linspire folks looked at Chandler, but it's aiming a bit high for the average customer, and it's been further delayed by server issues. (At OSCON, the Chandler team revealed that they've been forced to abandon efforts to build its Cosmo server on top of Apache Jackrabbit.)

Many desktop Linux distributions, such as Novell's OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora, include the Ximian Evolution calendar. Evolution now supports CalDAV, a swamp-draining move that gets it part of the way toward interop nirvana. To get true nirvana and sync with most mobile devices, you still have to inject something like the Novell Groupwise Mobile Server, which is free--provided you've already bought a bunch of other Novell server software.

Do you think Mozilla Calendar is good enough? (I don't.) Are you willing to wait for Chandler? (I'm not.) Is the Ximian solution good enough? (Only if you're provided your calendar through an Enterprise with a capital "E".)

Maybe the Linux community should rally around someone like Carmony, who knows calendaring, and build something else?

Once Desktop Linux has a widespread, popular calendar, could its popularity help drain the swamp faster? (I think so.)

Apple iCal server is under the Apache open source license

Ted Leung points to Apple's clarification that yes, indeed, the Apple CalDAV-compliant iCal server is being provided under the Apache 2.0 open source license. This is a good thing for CalDAV and for calendar interoperability. SwampDrain Factor: +1.

Apple announces iCal server, mainstream press misses the story

Apple press release: "For the first time, Mac OS X Server will include a calendar server for users and groups to coordinate events, schedule meetings, reserve resources and use time more effectively. iCal Server uses the open CalDAV standard for integration with leading calendar programs, including iCal 3 in Leopard, Mozilla’s Sunbird, OSAF’s Chandler and Microsoft Outlook."

The mainstream tech media promptly ignored this aspect of Apple's Leopard announcements today. This speaks volumes about the work remaining to raise the profile of interoperable calendar technology in the popular press. Even if more and more users are clamoring for it.

Check out this diagram, and Plaxo's role in it

Ian Forrester diagrams calendar interoperability that works for him. It's the first time I've heard that Plaxo has a Web-based calendar service.

Imagining calendar interop nirvana on Inside the Net

I was delighted to be the featured guest on today's Inside the Net podcast, speaking with Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte about the latest goings-on in swamp draining. Leo got me to describe calendar interop nirvana, and I talked a bit more about this week's news from Calconnect.

Interoperable free/busy info demoed by Calconnect

Thanks to Dave Thewlis, executive director of Calconnect, for letting me know today that the organization this week demonstrated interoperable free/busy info flowing between different types of calendar software. The press release is here and there's also a PDF-based presentation online describing the demo in detail.

The demo exchanged free/busy info between seven different calendaring systems: Bedework, Google Calendar, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, Oracle Calendar, TimeBridge and OSAF's Chandler. CalDAV was a big technological component of making it work.

It will be a while before the fruits of this interoperability work boil down to average calendar users like me, but it's good to see this progress being made at the enterprise level.

Gimme that one-time religion

Okay, okay, I get it. Calendar interoperability is either impossible, too tough to define, it's going to cost me $$ every month, I'll have to look at a bunch of ads all the time, or all my privacy belongs to my service provider (gotta love Software-As-A-Service).

Can't someone on this planet create a piece of packaged software, so I can pay One Price and achieve synchronization/free busy sharing between a Pocket PC and Apple's iCal? Do I really have to buy Office 2007 to pay one time only?

CompanionLink for Google Calendar

Blog post from The Personal Productivity Show:

"CompanionLink for Google Calendar™ is a two-way synchronization solution for people that want to extend their Google Calendar onto their desktop calendar systems or mobile devices. It can synchronize Google Calendar with all the latest Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Palm, and BlackBerry devices in addition to Outlook, Lotus Notes, Palm Desktop, and Groupwise applications."

The blog poster goes on to say:

I’ve installed the 14-day trial of CompanionLink but I’m having trouble getting it to connect to Google Calendar. It keeps telling me my email address or password is wrong, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t. So I’ll keep trying.

Yahoo! Calendar to iCal converter

I just discovered Manas Tungare's Yahoo! Calendar to iCal converter. Swampdrain rating: +1.

The difference between import/export and sync

Yahoo! has a succinct description of the difference between import/export and sync.

Firefox calendar lives! With some confusion

I was pleased to discover today that there is an updated calendar plug-in for Firefox 1.5. But Mozilla needs to get the word out better. In fact, my copy of Firefox 1.5 was still telling me the old calendar plug-in wasn't working -- it continued to tell me this when it was receiving updates from Mozilla. It also wasn't able to find the new plug-in. You can find it here.

getCals lets iPods grab Google Calendars

Johnny Gizmo has a script called getCals that lets iPods (those with calendars) grab Google Calendars.

Google Calendar API

Google Calendar has an API. Thanks to Wired writer Lucas Graves, who brought this to my attention.

Office 12 beta likes Google Calendar

With the help of a product developer within Microsoft, I've been able to open iCal invitations, generated by a beta release of Office 12, within Google Calendar. But our similar attempts to open these invitations within Apple's iCal have been unsuccessful. The ball may end up in Apple's court. This isn't the first time I've heard that Apple's implementation of iCal is a bit odd. But it is the first time I've ever heard of Apple iCal not opening an .ics file. It brings to mind the old adage, "Be conversative in what you write, and liberal in what you read." Recently I read of a Microsoft official stressing the importance of bilaterial interoperability agreements as being at least as important than supporting standards. If the Office 12 problems persist, such an agreement between Apple and Microsoft may be in order.

As for myself, I'm still eager to route around Outlook. How will Windows Mobile support Windows Vista Calendar? And, more importantly, will Windows Vista Calendar run on Windows XP, like so many other pieces of Vista?

View all calendar mashups

The Web 2.0 Mashup Matrix includes info on available mashups between the major Web 2.0 calendar programs and other Web 2.0 services. Not exactly calendar interoperability nirvana, but another intriguing step forward. SwampDrain Factor: +1.

SpaceShare takes calendar sharing to the highways

SpaceShare is cool. It's a way to offer or find a carpool ride to an event. The impetus is on the event organizer to sign on. Judging from the current list of events, you won't find any rides to monster-truck pulls, but if you're into the San Francisco Mime Troupe, check it out.

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.

TimeBridge: Worth watching

I've always believed the calendar swamp will be drained first and best by service providers. We've seen some already targeted at families. TimeBridge, now under development, is focused on the thorny meeting-scheduling problem for organizations and businesses. I'm especially curious to see what it will cost for small businesses.

Apache Calendar?

Greg Stein, chairman of the Apache Foundation, speaking this morning at EclipseCon 2006: "Will there be an Apache calendaring system? Don't know. We're following the developers."

Apache Calendar. That has a nice ring...

No special interoperability sauce here

If any new twist on calendar interoperability comes out of this, it looks like it'll be because it creates its own standard based on sheer publicity. It's one thing not to fully embrace iCal when Apple is its most famous supporter. It's another thing entirely to do the same to Google.

Reinventing cut-and-paste

This is worth a SwampDrain factor of +1. I've got another point or two waiting when Microsoft wires it up to Outlook, or whichever calendar can sync with Windows Mobile devices.

(Not) waiting for Outlook 12

I'm not a beta tester. Unlike the days when the InfoWorld Test Center paid my salary, my current workload just doesn't allow time for it. But my rants against Microsoft Outlook finally attracted a response from Microsoft, and it's all centered around Outlook 12.

The email came from Cameron Stillion, and with his permission, I hereby reprint it in its entirety:

Scott,

I was recently forwarded a link to your blog. Overall, I'd say you're spot-on, with a slightly sharp edge toward Redmond... but that's not a huge surprise. You do seem to have some up-to-date information on Windows plans, especially Vista - but I'm surprised that you aren't more tuned into the Outlook support for iCal that is already in Beta as we speak. Are you on the Office 12 beta? Huge improvements in iCal parsing, support for subscriptions via webcal://, and even publishing using iCalendar. I'm only saying this because I'm the dev lead over these features and built many of them with my own hands. Call it personal pride in one's workmanship. :)

As for Vista and their plans? You'd like to think we're all one big happy family up here - but the fact of the matter is that it is just as difficult to get different vendors to behave nicely together as it is to get disparate product groups to agree on market focus, interoperability, and a cohesive grand unified user story.

A little good news, a little bad news. Isn't that life in a nutshell?

Cameron Stillion
Microsoft Office
Outlook Development

Thanks, Cameron, for responding to my interoperability concerns on behalf of the Outlook team, at long last. Again, I've no intention of trying Outlook 12 beta for the reasons I gave above. The solution to this problem cannot merely be to get everyone to upgrade to Outlook 12. I would, of course, welcome reports from independent readers of Calendar Swamp. Does the Outlook 12 beta solve your Outlook calendar interoperability problems?

My hunch is that Outlook is getting pretty good at subscribing to iCal-based calendars, but probably still has trouble when those calendars try to subscribe to it. It sounds like some progress is happening even here, however.

As for Cameron's comments about the Vista team and the Outlook team not being on the same page, I think that speaks for itself.

I encourage Cameron, or other members of the Outlook team, to start blogging so Outlook customers can have a broader dialog with the company about calendar interoperability. I also hope that dialog includes the interoperability needs of gazillions of Outlook users who don't plan on upgrading to Outlook 12 for a long time to come, for a variety of reasons, including the cost and complexity of upgrading.

Eventful at Etech

Heads up, calendar fans: Brian Dear of Eventful will "unveil and demo a major new feature" at Etech on March 8 in San Diego. More interoperability, I hope?

The OSAF perspective

Lisa Dusseault of OSAF -- which some believe are building the biggest calendar interoperability solution of them all -- dampens and revives expectations in this IT Conversations podcast I recorded in December, just released.

'Remote Calendars' drains more swamp

From the 30 Boxes blog: "Mike has found a great piece of software that lets you subscribe to your 30 Boxes iCal feed (in My Settings > Syndication) in Microsoft Outlook!" It's called Remote Calendars and it indeed does what 30 Boxes says it does. Give it a SwampDrain factor of +3. It implements what Microsoft demoed last year at Gnomedex, only in open source. Hooray!

Unfortunately, it still requires you to publish your calendar to the Web on a page, and worse yet, without any access control available for that page.

Wireless data still = $

A few days ago I posted something here about a mobile phone service provider lowering prices on its unlimited wireless data plan. Unfortunately, I got the price wrong. So I deleted the post. I'm sure it'll be around forever due to various RSS scraping services and aggregators. But this is my way of utterly disavowing that post.

MS Outlook Calendar hacks

Probably begin here.

Microsoft creating new calendar swamp in Windows Vista?

I had questions, Microsoft's Steve Makofsky has some answers (scroll down to the 11th comment) regarding Windows Calendar in Vista:

"'Outlook Sync': To be honest, we're not sure that most users will be running *both* Windows Calendar and Outlook. Windows Calendar is designed for personal calendaring, while Outlook 2007 has more advanced calendaring features, especially for groups running Exchange. You'll be able to import Windows Calendar calendars into Outlook by simply opening these files from within Outlook. However, beyond this import scenario, full interop between the two clients (such as the ability for both of them to edit the same data set simultaneously) is not planned for the Vista/Office 2007 release."

Steve doesn't mentioning importing Outlook calendars into Windows Calendar, so I'm going to speculate that doing this won't be very pretty. We'll wait to hear more from Steve, or, perhaps Robert Scoble will get the answers on Channel 9, which has yet to do a segment on Windows Calendar.

For the overall calendar interoperability picture, Steve's revelations mean more confusion, not less, at least in the short term. Consider this. Millions of people have mobile phones that know how to synchronize with Outlook. None of them synchronize yet with Windows Calendar, though some might sync with some iCal-based services (raising all my privacy concerns again).

So the question may become, how soon will mobile phones appear that support synchronizing with Windows Calendar, and how long will it take to get those phones into peoples' hands?

Steve's comment isn't encouraging:

"Pocket Outlook currently doesn’t have a built in ActiveSync provider to convert/sync ICS [iCal] data at this time. I’m not sure what their plan is for Vista."

It's still mighty swampy, and maybe getting swampier, if you run Windows.

Technorati tags: Windows Calendar, Outlook 2007

iCal vs. iCalendar

Wikipedia: "iCalendar is a standard (RFC 2445) for calendar data exchange. The standard is also known as 'iCal'."

I'm adding "iCalendar" to my Google, Feedster and Technorati searches which already cover "iCal."

I'm sure we'll be living with both terms in perpetuity. The Microsoft Windows Vista folks prefer "iCalendar," probably because Apple named a product "iCal." Outside of the IETF, I hardly ever heard "iCalendar" until Microsoft started using the name.

AirSet + Verizon phones via wireless: the cost

Synchonizing the AirSet calendar service wirelessly to a Verizon phone? AirSet's Web site currently says: "AirSet Mobile is a subscription service, available through Verizon at a price of $6.49 per month. Airtime charges are incurred only while synchronizing, which typically takes 30 seconds or so, resulting in 1 minute of airtime utilization." You can also sync to AirSet via your phone's cradle and avoid those charges.

Finally...Microsoft embraces iCal. Oh wait, there's a catch

After months of harping on this whole Microsoft/iCal thing...after watching my daily Google search on "iCal" for months...after trolling around at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference last September, vainly seeking enlightenment from Outlook product managers and others...after enduring Microsoft lip service in December audio from When 2.0...they're finally getting it, and better yet, I've managed to attract Redmond's attention.

Steve Makofsky, a software design engineer at Microsoft, sent me a comment: "Windows Calendar, which is in Vista, natively runs iCalendar format."

So there's your answer. It's in Windows Vista. So why am I not jumping for joy?

1. Considering all the other hype around Vista, the iCal support in Vista's Windows Calendar has been very poorly publicized or recognized. It wasn't mentioned during any of the PDC keynotes. Windows Calendar appeared in October in Build 5231 of Vista, and didn't cause any ripples outside the Vista beta testing world.

2. Right now, the final version of Vista has an installed base of zero. It's in beta testing and will be for months to come. A Vista solution offers nothing to the existing installed base of Windows users. Sure, lots of folks will just get Vista when they buy new PCs. That's nice, but we want widespread calendar interoperability now, not whenever.

3. How the heck does Outlook work together with Windows Calendar in Vista? Having two Microsoft calendars in Windows sounds like a recipe for confusion to me. They better be totally interoperable from day one, or what's the point?

When I have the answers to these questions, maybe then Vista will be worth a SwampDrain rating.

Software as a fishing service for law enforcement

To me the $64 question is how many people would feel comfortable with any of the new calendar services if they knew:

1. For regulatory reasons, service providers aren't throwing away any data collected by their Web sites. (Pat Helland, now of Amazon.com, said this in a keynote yesterday at the Software Archictecture Summit.)

2. The U.S. government and other governments increasingly subpoena all sorts of information from service providers. Heck, sometimes they don't even need a traditional subpoena.

"But I was just trying to synchronize my calendars because the software wasn't doing it for me...and calendar sync service X was free..."

But as they say, sometimes, when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember you were originally trying to drain the swamp.

IBM Workplace now supports iCal

IBM gets a SwampDrain factor of +3 this morning by announcing yesterday that they've added "iCal support for calendar interoperability with IBM Lotus Notes" within a product now shipping called Workplace Collaboration Services 2.6. This move isolates Microsoft as the last major provider of calendar software not to support iCal directly.

Boo to the technology trade press for ignoring this announcement! Wake up over there.

Technorati tag: Workplace

Why I prefer ifreebusy.com to AirSet

Over the past two weeks, I've praised ifreebusy.com on several occasions, but I haven't mentioned another free calendar synchronization service, AirSet. I know I've criticized AirSet in the past, so why didn't I level the same criticism at ifreebusy.com?

The simple answer is, ifreebusy.com only stores free/busy information. AirSet stores all of my calendar information. If I have to use a Web service to synchronize calendars, I'd like to store as little personal information as possible. Ideally, I wouldn't have to use a service at all. (I call this "peer to peer" calendar synchronization.)

And yes, I do use other free Web services such as Gmail, despite my privacy concerns. No other email user has to use the same email provider as I do. and if enough people objected, I might move off Gmail as well. By keeping my calendar off the Web, I'm reducing the "attack surface" for bad things to happen to my family's personal data.

Also, check out Neil Jensen's next set of plans for ifreebusy.com, triggered in part by our conversation.

Dana Gardner and I talk about calendaring

Dana Gardner of invited me to talk with him about calendaring on his Briefings Direct podcast. Listen to the podcast here and read Dana's further thoughts here. It's a newsy chat: I discuss the longstanding bug in Apple's iPod calendar synchronization, as well as the Firefox 1.5 problem (upgrading to 1.5 makes Mozilla Calendar go away!). Dana also got me to speculate on Google's future calendaring moves.

(Apologies to Steve Gillmor for putting words into his brother Dan's mouth on the Gillmor Gang. Steve's the Gillmor I meant to name on this podcast. It must be because I saw both of them in different places on the same day last week!)

Adobe wants to help drain the swamp a bit

I just stumbled across Adobe's demo of a Flash-powered Web page that a hypothetical travel site could offer in the future, allowing visitors to view free/busy information from their personal calendars, along with possible flight times, in a single calendar. Cool stuff. A description of the demo, given at the Macromedia MAX 2005 conference last fall, is on this page. I found video of the demo here, on Day One, starting at around the 1:05:00 mark. (Grumble: I couldn't download the video, but had to view it as a Flash presentation.)

MightyPhone guesstimate

Ever wonder how much data you'd be transferring when synchronizing your mobile phone calendar with a PC? Sync service provider MightyPhone has this to say:

"Depending on the amount of data you plan to actively manage, the required level of data service subscription varies. For business users that synchronize business contacts and office calendar frequently, we recommend a data plan of up to 2MB to avoid additional data charges. For those using MightyPhone to manage their phone book only, a data plan with up to 1MB should be sufficient. Both examples assume an average address book of less 500 contact entries and a calendar with 4 scheduled appointments per business day."

BlackBerry draining its Mac swamp

Information Week: "BlackBerry maker Research in Motion said Thursday that it will give away free synchronization software to Mac owners so that they can square personal assistants with Mac applications, including Microsoft's Entourage e-mail client."

If you already own a BlackBerry and a Macintosh, this is great news. SwampDrain factor: +2.

(At least BlackBerry users are already acclimated to data usage fees, unlike the rest of us.)

Yahoo Go! -- for a price

It's great that Yahoo! is going to sync its calendar with mobile phones, but oy! Watch out for those data charges!

Calendar Swamp podcast #6, 1/6/06

The free/busy show. What are free/busy calendars? How can they be shared? Evaluating (and improving) ifreebusy.com, which allows free/busy calendars from Microsoft Outlook 2003 and iCal-based software to be shared and viewed together on a single Web page. Privacy controls needed. The curious case of the discontinued Microsoft Free/Busy service. Imagining smarter free/busy calendars. Listen. (16:25)

Technorati tag: iFreeBusy

iPod iCal education curve

Comment spotted on The Unofficial Apple Weblog: "My iPod keeps spitting out the wrong times for my iCal reminders...can anyone tell me how to turn off iCal on the iPod?" UPDATE: I don't sync my iPod hardly at all, but River tells me it's simple to turn off calendar sync between a Mac and an iPod while the iPod is connected to the Mac. I posted an appropriate tip at TUOW. Could there be a learning curve for iCal on iPod? With millions of iPods already out there, Either the iPod calendar isn't that tough to figure out, or almost nobody's using it. (As for me, I won't use it as long as it's read-only.)

CalDAV standard approaches release

Lisa Dusseault: "We're getting very, very close with CalDAV."

I recorded an episode of Opening Move with Lisa earlier this month at ApacheCon. Look for it in January.

Technorati tag: CalDAV

A public ping server for events

Brian Dear is calling on all event Web sites to publish to a common public ping server for events. I second the notion. Anyone who can successfully take this forward might see a nice little payday down the road, if the recent sale of the weblogs.com ping server for blogs is a good precedent, and I think it is.

The benefits of creating such a common public ping server for general calendar interoperability could be a big win for calendar publishers and subscribers.

MacFixIt says some iCal calendars are disappearing

From MacFixIt:

"A growing number of users are reporting an issue where calendars disappear from iCal -- though individual meetings may still be viewable. It appears that many users experiencing this problem are using Mark/Space's Missing Sync software, which will synchronize some natively unsupported Palm devices with iCal."

There's no comment from Mark/Space in this report, nor any mention of the report on Mark/Space's Web site.

Whether there's a serious problem here or not, it points out the continuing need for simpler calendar synchronization solutions, with fewer moving parts.

Technorati tag: Missing Sync

Outlook 2003 to iCal: It works!

Well, today for the first time I've successfully sent calendar invitations from Outlook to iCal. I'm still not happy with the general state of things, but I'll explain more during the next Calendar Swamp podcast, which I'll record soon.

UPDATE: By the way, iCal to Outlook 2003 is still broken on my PC.

Calendars as a general case? Not so fast

Dan Farber: "As is generally the case with software, calendars are tethered to specific platforms, which makes it difficult to ensure interoperability."

Not so fast. Look at these data types in software which are already generally interoperable:

• Email
• Rich text files
• Comma-delimited data
• Tab-delimited data
• MP3 audio files
• RSS feeds & aggregators
• CAD formats
• PDF files
• HTML
• AVI video files

While more can be done in all the above areas, and in compound document interoperability, I object to sweeping generalizations that perpetuate the very acute interoperability problems that have vexed computer-based calendars ever since IBM's mainframe-based PROFS ceased to be the de facto standard.