Arranging meetings via the Web, without online registration

Earlier today, Doug Kaye tweeted: "Is there a good online service for scheduling multi-person meetings and calls that doesn't require everyone to register?" Later on that day, he tweeted about two good possibilities: When is Good and Meet-O-Matic.

Elevate America? The missing agenda item

For Microsoft to claim that our economy can be turned around by teaching "computer fundamentals," and then listing word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, Web design, and database as those fundamentals...hey, what about calendaring and scheduling? Once again it gets the bum's rush on the short list (just like the way phone companies & phone makers ignore and neglect the calendaring apps they ship) . Too bad, because as I've said, managing our time is a key to economic turnaround.

Sunbird development halts

Mozilla is halting work on further enhancements to Sunbird. I saw that one coming. The question is, which modular open source calendar will carry on? Or will we have to settle for an integrated calendar/email client, such as Lightning or Mulberry?

Clouding up iPhone sync

From the SpanningSync blog: the new GoogleSync for iPhone makes your iPhone stop syncing contacts and calendars with your Mac.

I bet it also disables iPhone sync with Windows-based calendars via iTunes.

Bug or feature?

Towards valid iCalendar feeds

Bravo to all concerned on the start of a project to create tests to make sure that iCalendar feeds are validated, the same way that RSS feeds are validated. Valid RSS led to much greater adoption of RSS. The same can happen for iCal.

Read-only offline Google Calendar

TechCrunch: "The new offline [Google] calendar application doesn’t allow you to create, edit or delete events."

Harumph. Beta software!

Doc knocks Apple iCal, MobileMe

I don't want to turn this blog into an Apple-bashing service, but when someone as respected as Doc Searls says this, you know that Apple has work to do:

"iCal has been improved minimally since its introduction years ago, and screws up coordinating with the iPhone (for example, by failing to associate the colors of calendars in iCal with the same calendars on the phone, and in fact randomly changing them on the phone with every sync — and failing to use the phone to tell the computer which time zone the user is in, which would be handy)."

UPDATE: Cringely took a timely swipe at Microsoft that made me think of this post.

FuseCal acquires iFreeBusy

Public Display, providers of FuseCal, a calendar syncing service I wrote about last year, has acquired ifreebusy.com and will continue to run the service, which had been set to shut down last year.

This is great news. Calendar interoperability needs stable and inexpensive (even free) free/busy services upon which to innovate. It's great that this can happen building upon Neil Jensen's pioneering ifreebusy service.

iPhone calendar sync without iTunes, or a Mac

Some time ago Calendar Swamp reader Jeff Widman asked if I had heard of Nuevasync. I hadn't, but I subscribed to the Nuevasync blog and began educating myself about this free service for syncing iPhone info, including the calendar, with Google Calendar and Google Contacts/Gmail. Now Widman has written a positive review of Nuevasync at TechCrunch IT, and I've started recommending it for those cases where someone has an iPhone but is running iTunes for Windows. I run iTunes for Windows, but only for music; I've always found its sync abilities lacking compared to iTunes for Mac and many other solutions. And this morning David Strom contacted me for a New York Times story he's writing on calendar interop for small businesses. For you iPhone-with-Windows folks out there, this is the deal.

For you Mac folks, I'd certainly recommend Nuevasync over MobileMe -- I can't believe Apple's still charging for it! Meanwhile, Nuevasync appears to have the jump on Spanning Sync and BusySync, because only Nuevasync takes the desktop Mac out of the equation in getting from the iPhone to Google and possibly other places in the future. +1 SwampDrain point for NuevaSync.

New year, new agenda

This year is already 20 days old, but since its start I've had a new agenda for this blog. The problems of calendars not working together are now well-documented, here and elsewhere. New calendars continue to appear and continue not to interoperate with other calendars. Interoperability continues to mean different things to different people:

• Can I read my calendar without being at my computer?*
• Can I read your calendar without being at your computer?
• Can I receive updates easily from other calendars, public and private?
  
• Can I update any such calendar remotely?
• Can I "sync" two calendars such that all changes made on one calendar are made on the other calendar, and that conflicts are resolved in a straightforward manner?
• Can I easily combine two calendars into one, or separate one calendar into two, and route them accordingly?
• If the calendar is maintained in the "cloud," do I have trust in that image of my calendar, such that the security and privacy of that information is assured?
  

This year, in 2009, I am dedicated to a systematic exploration of these questions. It's more than giving out SwampDrain points for jobs well or poorly done, though that may still happen from time to time.

Lastly, how can these questions be made part of a national dialogue about the productivity of America? It's all well and good to expand the use of broadband Internet communications to more parts of the country, but I remain convinced that providing a solid, interoperable calendaring infrastructure could raise our productivity more than any mere DSL, cable or WiMax hookup. Is anyone from the Obama administration listening?

* - "Computer" is any device where you enter your calendar info. That could be a phone, an iPod Touch, or some other calendar-enabled appliance.

BusyBlog bashes CalDAV...or somebody

The controversy about supposed shortcomings of CalDAV takes another twisty turn with this post from BusyBlog. Cmon Swampers...someone explain this to me. Is this read-only iPhone problem the fault of CalDAV, or Google, or Apple? Seems like using a solution like BusySync gets around the problem altogether. Does this suggest the need for a standard beyond CalDAV? Maybe it exists already, and I'm not paying enough attention?

Google Calendar adds CalDAV support

Google updated Google Calendar, adding CalDAV support. +1 SwampDrain point for Google.

I'm looking forward to the day when everyone who should supports CalDAV.

UPDATE: The Spanning Sync blog claims that calendars synced with CalDAV become read-only on the iPhone. Yikes!! I hope the problem is just the way Google Calendar implements CalDAV...and not a problem with CalDAV itself.

TimeDriver, HourTown: Any experiences out there?

Found on the Web: TimeTrade, which bills itself as "the world leader in customer self-service appointment scheduling" offers TimeDriver, which has been in public beta since August. It supports the usual calendar formats -- Outlook and Google Calendar -- but I haven't heard any unusual buzz about it. I think it competes with HourTown.

Has anyone reading this blog been on the receiving end of any appointments scheduled by either of these services?

Let a thousand Windows iCal-based calendars bloom

Here's another one: Desktop iCalendar Lite. Has anyone tried it?

CalConnect is coming to Redmond

I just noticed with interest that the next meeting of CalConnect will occur, for the first time, at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, February 2-6, 2009. I hope this means that all calendar-software engineers at Microsoft will be in attendance, taking notes and contributing to greater calendar interoperability.

Any Windows Live Hotmail stories out there?

Windows Live Hotmail now sports "a revamped calendar that makes it easier to share calendars with others, subscribe to multiple calendars and use your calendar with Microsoft Outlook."

Anyone out there using it? I'm curious to know if it goes beyond publish-and-subscribe and offers new sync services with other Microsoft calendars.

The customer service problem with calendaring

All the calendaring tech in the world won't make your life simpler if the company trying to communicate event or reservation changes to you doesn't have its act together.

More than Microsoft

Steve Ballmer (rhetorically) asks his customers:

"Why can't we create calendars that automatically merge our schedules at work and home?"

Steve, please make sure the answer isn't an all-Microsoft solution.

BidCal: Calendaring/eBay mashup

BidCal lets you monitor upcoming eBay auctions from within your calendar. It's from the makers of Calgoo.

I hope this isn't stressing Calgoo's calendar-sync server too much. Last night was the first time in months of use that we found it was down, at least for a few minutes.

eWeek puts calendar icon on cover, ignores calendaring

An ambitious eWeek October 13 cover story, "UC on the cheap," all about Unified Communications (a buzzword mainly at Microsoft), is the first trade pub in a while to feature a calendar icon on the cover. Unfortunately, the story itself focuses on VoIP and instant messaging, not calendaring. Bad enough calendar interoperability gets ignored by mobile phone vendors (the new Google Phone doesn't pretend to talk anything but Google Calendar); now an IT publication uses calendaring as part of sloganeering in an incomplete article.