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Monday, July 5, 2010

Why Don't More Businesses Share Their Calendars?

Ok, so it's 2010 and very few websites are using a common calendaring format for their events.  And it seems when I talk to friends and family about calendaring that very few people even know what it is or how to use it.  If we could all list and share events that had the ability to easily import and export events into whatever electronic calendar we use life would be so much easier!

First of all, what calendars do people use?  There are so many, but here are some of the main ones:

Paper Calendars:  Frankly, I don't think these make much sense.  The main benefit is that you can look at them on your wall (in your kitchen, or wherever).  You can't share events, import or export, and they aren't portable.  I will print out my events from my other calendars, but as they change or are updated I'll just recycle the old one and put up the new one with some thumbtacks. This is practical, especially at work, when I'll print out and arrange several months together to keep track of my tasks and projects. Those pretty laminated calendars are better for just knowing what the date is and maybe adding a bit of art to your house or office.

Desktop Applications include:  Microsoft's Outlook, Apple's iCal, Mozilla Sunbird (for Mac, Linux, or PC), Evolution (Linux only), or Oracle's Native Desktop Client (Linux or PC).

Web Based Calendars:  These are for sure the most practical (and essential) in my opinion.  You can access them from anywhere, they're easy to share, and they'll sync with your desktop or handheld calendars.  I use Google Calendar, but there are many others - Oracle has a web based calendar system that's used where I work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  I think Yahoo and Microsoft have their own versions.  Apple has one.  I'm not going to go into all of them because they're essentially the same and you just have to find one that you like.  I think that Google Calendar is by far the best, and it's free.  Sharing your calendar is easy, as well as importing and exporting events.  Syncing has become much easier, with Google rolling out its own mobile syncing software within the last year or so (I'll talk about that later).

Handheld Devices include:  Probably too many to mention here but the ones I'm most familiar with Palm PDA Calendar and Symbian (Nokia) Smartphone Calendar.  To get these to sync with a desktop client or web calendar you have to either do a USB sync or OTA (over the air) sync.  The bad this about doing USB syncs is that it's not 'real-time' and for that reason I far prefer using OTA syncing.  This requires either wifi or data plan signal with your phone.  Wifi is especially nice because it's fast and doesn't involve any data charges that sometimes come with cell phone plans.

Once you've decided on the calendar system you're going to use, you should make sure that your syncing options are cheap or free, and easy.

Syncing:  I've used paid services before, namely Synthesis' SyncML and GooSync, to share my events from a web calendar with my smartphone and PC.  These were very useful, and not too expensive (around $30 a year).  In addition to syncing events, they also handled contacts, and tasks.  Recently, as I mentioned above, Google has come out with their own syncing service for mobile phones, and I've let my other services lapse and no longer use them.  I use this in combination with something called Microsoft Mail for Exchange.  This is just basically the same as push email, and different phones have different versions.  It's main drawback from me is that it doesn't handle tasks, but on the plus side it does work with my email accounts very well.   Wikipedia has a list of all the other phone clients' compatible syncing software here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_e-mail.  If you buy a new iPhone or Android phone today there's actually very little you need to worry about because calendaring, contacts, tasks, and syncing will be pretty much built in.  I would just try to stick with Google or a service that will let you manage and own your own content as much as possible.

Once you're set up with a good web based calendar and have it synced up with your portable devices, you're ready to share sharing, importing, and exporting other calendars.  I'm simply amazed that most websites that I visit do not have a common calendar format that I can use.  They usually have the event name, date, time, and place, which I am forced to cut and paste into my calendar.  Why don't they have a simply button that would allow me to immediately import it?  This requires me to explain a little bit about calendar formats.  They do exist, if not used as widely as they should be.

Calendar Formats:  The most common format that I know of is the .ics or iCalendar format.  This is not only for Apple, as the name might imply.    I've made a test .ics file that you can download and try to open with your calendar here.   It is for an event at 12:15 p.m. Central Standard Time on July 5th.   Since I'm using a Mac right now, when I open that link the iCalendar program opens the event link and gives me a chance to view it before saving it.   Importing an .ics file to a web calendar varies by the service you're using, whether it is Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo!  In Google Calendar you have the ability to add a single event (.ics file) as well as an entire calendar (such as by exporting your Outlook calendar in .csv format to your desktop).   More info about importing external calendars to Google Calendar can be found here:  http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=83126.  One last thing about the .ics format is that it needs improvement.  There are certain non-western calendars that are not supported by it, and there's currently an international consortium working on a truly common calendar format for all of humanity to enjoy.  I should also mention that I really like RSS and XML feeds.  Here's a good example of a calendar that provides both:  http://www.today.wisc.edu/  These in particular are very nice because each event has its own iCalendar link for easy importing into your other calendars.

So now what?  Why don't businesses and people start sharing their calendars more?  Those are two very separate questions.  People don't and shouldn't share calendars for privacy and security reasons.  They should, and do share events that they're attending or promoting.  A lot of this is being done via Facebook - but the main drawback of this is that Facebook is a closed system and not everyone is on it or wants to be on it.  And even though they do allow you to import and export events, they do not allow the sharing of a business's (for example) event schedule.

Businesses should share their calendars.  It's common sense.  Why don't they?  Here's a link to the High Noon Saloon, a club I really like, and their online calendar:  http://high-noon.com/index.php?page=calendar  Notice there's no way to add any of their events to my calendar.  I have to cut and paste, which is tedious (especially when almost all websites are like this).   Here's a nice example from Mozilla of .ics calendars that you can download and use.  You can also cut and paste the link, and import them into your Google Calendar.   Honestly there aren't very many directories of good calendars either.  I would love to be able to download a calendar or schedule for a local radio station, theater,  or TV channel.   I think it would be absolutely the main part of my web presence if I had a business.

How to do it:  I think it's easy.  Many Content Management Systems will have an .ics plugin such as this one for Wordpress:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-ics-importer/.  Businesses can also start a Google Calendar and share it.  I do this at my job actually.  We've embedded the whole thing right on a webpage - which is really cool, check it out....  http://stemmidwest.org/default.asp?contentID=479.
This is really easy to do, so don't worry... pretty much anyone who knows how to put together a website can do this.

You can also just create one-off events and publish them to the web like I did (see my earlier example - here's the link again:  http://mywebspace.wisc.edu/dnordstrom/web/Test.ics.  My event doesn't have a lot of detail, but it totally could, including location and notes...

A final thought is to get your calendar listed in a calendar directory like this one:  http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/  Google Calendar used to have a public directory, but for some reason they took it down.  Now you have to search a little bit more to find them.

I think that if businesses don't support open and common calendaring, they are really missing the boat on providing a very accessible and convenient way for their fans and patrons to keep up with their schedules and events.  Relying on a closed system like Facebook excludes people who aren't members of the service, and blocks development of more open formats.  Apple too tries to tie in their calendars and events a bit too much in my opinion, but at least they use the .ics format which is compatible with web based and desktop calendars alike.