Matt chooses Groupcal; limits of Plaxo

Matthew Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, has also been looking for calendar interoperability. He settled on Groupcal. Groupcal won't do it for me because it requires an Exchange server. I want Exchange-free synching between Outlook and iCal. Plaxo got mentioned too in his comments. But Plaxo apparently only syncs Outlook client to Outlook client. While that may eliminate the need to have Exchange to share Outlook calendars, I didn't like Plaxo's privacy policies when I looked at them a while back; I recall getting spammed by Plaxo when I responded to someone's request to update my contact info in their Plaxo account.

Hula calendar server 1.0 due by September

Hula, Novell's open source calendar and mail server, is due for its 1.0 release in late August or early September. For details about Hula, check out the recent LUG Radio podcast interview with Dave Camp. Novell welcomes help as any open source committer would; I still wonder if interoperability with Outlook and iCal are on the radar for 1.0 or future releases.

Bluetooth sync; Office 2003 XML thoughts

Over at IMJ, I've been talking this morning about Bluetooth. I've now reached a stage of interest to the Swamp. The Bluetooth Configuration Wizard is something one runs on a PC to prepare it to share data with devices such as phones and PDAs running Bluetooth. The juiciest service is called "PIM Item Transfer," described thusly:

Allow remote Bluetooth devices to exchange business cards with this computer. Accept Personal Information Manager (PIM) items such as calendar items, contacts, notes and messages from remote Bluetooth devices.

The wizard can save Calendar items off Bluetooth either as Outlook calendar items, or as files in the Bluetooth Exchange Folder. Oh if only these items were stored in XML, that could be easily transformed into iCal or Mozilla calendar items! Synchronization support is limited to Outlook only.

Which reminds me, on a recent Gillmor Gang podcast, Jon Udell pointed out that Microsoft Office 2003 can store much of its data in XML format. I wonder if that facilitates XML-powered calendar interoperability, or if anybody has tried to build some further integration from Office 2003 to the iCal world.

Kerio MailServer 6.1 adds iCal support

Products like Kerio Mailserver probably wouldn't have much of a chance of prospering if Outlook calendars just synched with iCal. But they don't, so this makes the announcement of new iCal synchronization support in Kerio worth a Swampdrain factor of +1.

Open Exchange certified for Red Hat

Open Exchange, an open source collaboration server that integrates iCal with Outlook and several other calendaring systems, is now certified for use on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Swampdrain factor: +1.

Rearden Commerce: Another interesting puzzle piece

Rearden Commerce is the first service provider to act as a front end to various services, and to automatically populate desktop calendars with a variety of appointments customers can schedule with those services. Think everything from airline reservations to haircuts.

After a presentation this morning at Burton Group's Catalyst conference, I asked Rearden CEO Patrick Grady if the services he's built could be used to sync calendars between endpoints (two customers) without an intermediary.

Grady's answer was, not really, unless one of the two customers was a Rearden customer (in other words, a service provider) whose calendar was stored on a server such as Exchange or Notes.

Oh well. It's another interesting puzzle piece. At least I got to put the issue of calendar interoperability in front of a room full of very smart IT managers. I give Rearden Commerce a Swampfactor of +1. (+5-good, -5-not good)

Calendar Swamp podcast #5, 7/9/05

Lowering the boom on Outlook Web Access; extending iCal to manage tasks; Ta-Da and other list management sites; whether to expand calendar interoperability to include tasks; Microsoft's RSS demo at Gnomedex featuring Outlook displaying iCal calendars; Bluetooth mice; how custom PC orders shorten warranties and endanger rebates. Anime review: Paranoia Agent. Listen.

MindManager demo

I'm revising Swampdrain Factor to use 0 as a neutral score, 5 as a good score and -5 as a bad score. Yesterday's score of 6 for the Microsoft RSS calendar demo is hereby revised to a score of +1.

MindManager, demoed this morning at Gnomedex, may be a cool way to design projects visually, but it introduces Yet Another Calendar that doesn't seem to interoperate with any other calendars. It shares tasks with Outlook, but it doesn't appear to share meetings? I hope this isn't true. But if it is, I give MindManager a Swampfactor of -5. (+5-good, -5-not good)

Microsoft RSS calendar demo

With this post I'll introduce a new rating system: The Swampdrain Factor. A Swampdrain Factor of +5 means the particular development means the Swamp is being drained a bit through some innovation or best practice. A Swampdrain Factor of 0 means the Swamp is staying about the same level. And a Swamp Factor of -5 means the Swamp is rising through FUD or some innovation that doesn't lend itself to interoperability.

The Microsoft RSS calendar demo at Gnomedex has a Swampdrain Factor of +1. It opens interoperability a crack, provided Microsoft makes freely available the 200 lines of C# code they just showed that let Outlook users view an .ics calendar file, delivered as an RSS enclosure, side by side with an Outlook 2003 calendar. If this code doesn't become freely available, I'll lower the rating to a 0 until someone provides it in open-source form. (Microsoft releasing some of its RSS extension work under a Creative Commons license is a promising move.)

How would a technology get a Swampdrain Factor of 5? It would have to provide a true sync between two or more heterogenous calendars, automatically adding, moving, and changing appointments in a single calendar, presenting users with conflicts for resolutions, and all users to subscribe to these adds, moves and changes...using RSS or another syndication service.

OPML editor + RSS = Interoperable calendars?

At Gnomedex, Dave Winer says RSS could be used to build interoperable calendars, and that OPML could do it a bit more richly. Looking at his demo of The OPML Editor this morning, I had the thought: Hmm, calendars are lists of appointments and people. Maybe it wouldn't be that hard to get any calendar into a outline or even a simple list. Of course, once you have people and appointments, you quickly get into relational database development, so maybe it's not that simple. Still, it's amazing what's been done with the simplest tools, such as HTML.

Now Up-To-Date 5.0 for Macintosh released

June 21 press release: "Now Software today introduced Now Up-to-Date & Contact 5 for Macintosh, a major update to its cross platform calendar and contact management solutions." The Windows version is still at version 4.5.2.

Instant Calendar Swamp podcasts

If you're listening to the first four Calendar Swamp podcasts, just posted here, and wonder why they're titled The Gray Box, that's because I originally published all four podcasts under that name. Going forward, it's all about the Calendar Swamp. But the anime reviews and other tech digressions will continue on future podcasts.

Calendar Swamp podcast #4, 6/6/05

The calendars proliferate on River's iCal; searching for the Windows iCal client; trying to synch up the two; Now Up-To-Date; Meeting Maker; Plucker changes name to Sunrise, drops Mac version. Anime reviews: Haibane-Renmei, Read or Die, and R.O.D. the TV Series. Listen.

Calendar swamp podcast #3, 5/27/05

Synchronizing contacts on a Motorola V180 mobile phone with the Macintosh address book; the small set of USB connectors that made it possible; why not to do calendaring on the V180; exporting iCal calendars to the iPod when synching doesn't work; success with using the Plucker offline Web page reader/RSS aggregator with a Macintosh; who's really making money from podcasting. Scott grumbles about Norton Internet Security shutting off access from a new PC to the rest of his home network's workgroup. Listen.

Calendar Swamp podcast #2, 5/20/05

Ditching Safari for Firefox on the Macintosh. In search of a nice, small Bluetooth trackball. The Logitech cordless trackball that wasn't entirely cordless. The mystery of the new HP Pavilion that stopped recognizing Scott's Windows workgroup. Listen.

Calendar swamp podcast #1, 5/18/05

Interoperability headaches with iCal, the iPod, Palm Desktop OS for the Mac, and the Sony Clie. Anime review: Haibane-Renmei. Listen.

Calendar swamp is born

When you're up to your necks in appointment alligators, it's hard to remember the original job was to drain the calendar swamp.