Facebook now supports hCalendar microformat

Last month Facebook added support for the hCalendar microformat to all events created inside Facebook. This will help calendar interoperability and sharing between the Facebook world and the rest of the world, so I'm awarding +1 SwampDrain point to Facebook...but remember to check those privacy settings!

Old Sidekick calendars to hit sharing brick wall May 31

On May 31, the troubled T-Mobile Sidekick phones based on the Danger platform will no longer be able to share calendars with the cloud or anything else. Vague plans exist to offer upgrades to new Android-based Sidekicks, but that may be cold comfort to those of you Calendar Swamp readers fond of your original Sidekicks. SwampDrain points to T-Mobile: -2.

Podcast #11: Calamander

Calamander is the first innovation in calendar synchronization I've seen in a long time. Listen to Calendar Swamp podcast #11 (34:15, 64MB) with Calamander co-founders Scott Sikora and Derek Robbecke. And check out the Calamander beta. (Unless you have an iPad. The Calamander beta currently requires Flash, which the iPad doesn't support.)

My conversation with Scott and Derek arose out of my previous post here, which concerned Dipity, as Calamander implements its own innovative and welcome timeline view of multiple schedules.

After a long drought of no progress on calendar sharing, a flood may be coming. On Friday I attended the intriguing Inbox Love conference, where calendaring came up several times, most notably during a presentation on AwayFind.

Also, this week rumor has it that Apple will announce a refresh of MobileMe. When I talked with Scott and Derek on February 10, little was known of this so we were mostly bemoaning the continuing lack of a MobileMe API. Perhaps that is about to change.

Dipity makes me want timeline views in calendars

While the winter of my calendar-sharing discontent continues, I am inspired by a service called Dipity, which lets anyone create timelines on a Web page. It suggests to me that all calendars might benefit from adding a timeline view. So when sharing becomes as easy as we want it to be, there will be cooler ways to view our shared calendars than simply replicating daily/weekly/monthly views on paper. For now, Dipity also offers an interesting way to scan developments in the Middle East.

Apple sharing problems again

At CES I acquired the sinking feeling that my problems sharing data between my PCs and River's Mac can be attributed to poor standards support by the Apple AirPort that links the Mac to the rest of my network. I haven't proven it yet, but here's a story that lends fuel to the fire, at least by implication.

Funambol offers free syncing for life

mobile Funambol's mobile calendar sync service is now free for life. I don't use Funambol, but if you do, check this out.

Share everything -- except schedules? -- at CES

I walked around the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) halls today and found many, many booths talking about how much families can share using consumer electronics. Photos, videos, music, documents...the list goes on and on. And then it stops. It never includes schedules.

Here's Samsung's "Allshare" display:

Here's Microsoft's booth:

I could also post similar big banners found at the TV and mobile phone manufacturers' booths, but you get the idea.

Only Casio talked about sharing schedules, but basically it was vaporware to help promote a low-energy reboot of Bluetooth radio technology (including the return of the smart watch!):

To further epitomize the pathetic progress being made on calendar sharing, the Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on the CES show, added its own calendar to the FollowMe MyCES iPhone app, but if you want to sync anything you selected or scheduled in that iPhone to your iPhone's own calendar, you had to individually select each event one at a time rather than having a way to sync all selected events at once. Arrgh!

Once again, the consumer electronics industry ignores calendar sharing, and arguably, with the withdrawal of Microsoft's Home Server last year, has taken a step backward. Perhaps only a massive data breach of Google, exposing the personal appointments of millions of people, could wake people up.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft Windows 7 booth focuses on this "gallery" of form factors rather than focusing on helping people simplify their schedules or anything less abstract:

(Standard disclaimer: Yes, go ahead and use Google Calendar, Microsoft Live or Apple MobileMe to share schedules. If others who you want to share schedules with don't have problems with that. A lot of people do.)

(Second standard disclaimer: Yes, home consumer electronics represent a single point of failure. But there are ways to back up critical data securely to the cloud without resorting to Google, or even to just securely back up data to some of your other devices.)

Simplifying Outlook calendar export

Good news from CNET's Worker's Edge blog: Free Outlook add-in simplifies data export. Including Outlook calendars.

Calendar-sharing Webcast set for Dec. 7

Jon Udell's upcoming Harvard talk on calendar sharing will be Webcast on December 7 at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Linux-based calendars

TechNewsWorld recently reviewed some Linux-based calendars. No info on interoperability here, but those readers who run Linux might find this of interest.

Calendar interop obscured by cloud

Calendar interoperability sometimes is a casualty of moving calendars around from one cloud service to another. Jon Udell tells a sad tale of calendar subscriptions disappearing at a small nonprofit near him in New Hampshire.

Any readers using a Mac Mini as a calendar server?

At some point the Mac Mini might be an cost-effective option for my desired in-house calendar server. Is anyone out there using it? Post any experiences you've had here.

CalConnect publishes introduction to Internet calendaring

CalConnect, the consortium promoting Internet calendar standards, has published an introduction to Internet calendaring.

Why not Apple iCal for Windows?

I'd welcome a version of Apple iCal for Windows. So would Zack Whittaker at ZDNet.

Calendar of the Future

While we struggle in the swamp of today's incomplete calendar interoperability, others daydream about -- what? Rip-and-replace what we carry around with something new? Not gonna happen any time soon. And with cloud-calendar leader Google turning more evil by the moment, who will safeguard the privacy and integrity of our calendars in the cloud, some of the most precious information we carry around?

Maybe my recent appearance on Cranky Geeks rubbed off on me a little bit. Okay, back to the quest for better interoperability!

Hallelujah! Bump now lets iPhones share events

It's a joyous day here at the Swamp. Bump for the iPhone now allows direct sharing of events with other iPhones. Stay tuned for some followup analysis of just how much of my own swamp has been newly drained. (Quite a lot, I suspect.)

Rain in the clouds

From the Spanning Sync blog:

"Data loss and corruption is a serious problem for Google Apps users. Browse through the Google Apps help forums and you'll find hundreds of posts from users who have lost their data and need help."

Of course, Spanning Sync has a new product designed to help you keep your data safe, so take this pitch with a grain of salt. But the myth of your data being safer in the cloud than in the device you're carrying is looking a bit shopworn. Those of us who want our calendar data always available ignore this news at our peril.

The Scheduled Web, and more on thin CalDAV servers

It's been a quiet month but two things caught my attention ... within minutes of each other:

• Nova Spivack's blog post from May 6: The Birth of the Scheduled Web.
• Lincoln's comment (and the previous 7 comments) on my October 2008 post, Quest for a Thin CalDAV Server.

I'm also still contemplating what can be accomplished with the new CalDAV support in my iPhone 4.0 software. Is anyone out there doing any interesting and new calendar sharing with it? Or just untethering more from PC-and-Mac-based iTunes?

Sharing calendars via Facebook? Tighten your settings

If you use Facebook to share calendar info with others, you must read my first column for Windows Secrets, all about how to tighten your Facebook privacy settings.

Sorry Nexus One phone owners: No .ics support in calendar

Calendar Review reports that Android-based calendars on the Google can't handle meeting invites sent by .ics file -- a standard way people have been inviting people to meetings and activities for many years.

The workaround for Nexus One users, of course, is to deal with the invites from a Google Web calendar...but, what a pain!

After last week's news that Android has no calendar API, it's time for me to award -2 SwampDrain points to Google and Android collectively.

I wonder if Google is simply hoping everyone adopts hCalendar. Good luck with that! Better to support the old and the new and urge people to modernize, rather than try to force the change.

I wonder if other Android-based calendars are similarly unable to read .ics files. One commenter in my post on the Droid calendar search problem noted that Android-based phone provider HTC provides its own calendar instead of the standard Android one, so maybe HTC's calendar not only provides in-calendar search, but .ics file support as well. Does anyone reading this know?