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.

Microsoft busts a move toward calendar sharing

While Microsoft's products continue to be the biggest calendar-sharing problem, solutions are coming in the form of SSE. I can't wait!

Technorati tag: SSE

Apple needs to do more too

How delightful to read John Welch's critique of Apple's calendaring effort, which could be better:

"While things like iCal, and Web client-only systems may work for a select few, in a modern enterprise it's not going to play. Things like delegation, public folders, real handheld support, instant messaging integration and the rest are not 'highfalutin' options anymore."

Missing Sync 5.0 marries Palm OS, Mac OS X Tiger

It's good to see the new Missing Sync for Palm 5.0, which should smoooth calendar synchronization between Palm OS devices and Macintosh OS X Tiger.

When 2.0: Let the mergers begin!

Too many Web 2.0 calendar services already? Let the mergers begin, at When 2.0, December 6, at Stanford University.

Technorati tag: When 2.0

Waiting for Google Calendar

Someone named Chris launched a blog devoted to the still-unannounced Google Calendar. The most interesting thing revealed so far is the fact that http://calendar.google.com is already a valid URL (with, so far, nothing else interesting about it). Google Base rumors indicate Chris has good timing.

Technorati tag: Google Calendar

Discovering SchoolBell

SchoolTool is a project to develop a common global school administration infrastructure that is freely available under an Open Source licence. Today I discovered that one component of SchoolTool is SchoolBell, a free, open source web application to allow groups and organizations to coordinate the sharing of calendars, including iCal support. I found out about SchoolBell by listening to this IT Conversations podcast.