My next 2 weeks are looking insane but ever so good!
Publicspaces conference and Mozilla Festival 2021. Both are online and tickets are available for all. Pay what you think its worth.
Tag: calendar
Facebook removed iCal feeds quietly
The other day a good friend mentioned a birthday invite to me. I was confused, I knew it was their birthday but it wasn’t clear what they were talking about as I asked what they were going to do in UK lockdown number 3.
I looked into what happened and realised the new Facebook redesign removed ical feeds. This was further backed up by google support and Reddit. Worst still the facebook help page doesn’t actually exist any more.
The key seems to be getting access to the old facebook page, which I have tried and tried to get access to, but can not get anymore.
This means all my friends who invited me to events and all my volleyball events will no longer appear on my calendar, unless I see it then export it as a ical. I always thought of Facebook as a massive walled garden but this is getting stupid.
The reasons to be on Facebook just got a lot closer to zero!
Rethink work: less professionalism will get you ahead
Most of the time, I think quite a lot about how the workplace is massively changing. I got into a conversation recently about my calendaring and why I wasn’t using the company calendaring system.
Although its a bit of a pain for colleague, the opposite is hell for myself. Diving myself into work and personal is something which doesn’t work in my head. I know it works for many people but the lack of flexibility is problematic.
Some would say its unprofessional but like the video points at, the future of work isn’t about people repeating the same task again and again.
As my tag line goes… Sometimes I forget my world is not mainstream (yet)
No more Google SMS notifications for events
Important: SMS notifications not available after June 27th
Starting on June 27th, 2015, SMS notifications from Google Calendar will no longer be sent. SMS notifications launched before smartphones were available. Now, in a world with smartphones and notifications, you can get richer, more reliable experiences on your mobile device, even offline.
Shame because I got use to text messages 30mins ahead of a event as a sign I should go. However they are right, notifications especially since I have the Pebble smartwatch are good enough now.
Visual Calendar for Tablets
I have been looking for a way to combine calendaring, tasks and mindmaps. It just happened that I was searching around and found visual calendar for tablets.
Visually link the things you plan to do, creating logical chains. Think Mind Map for your project turned into actual tasks and dates, or events and appointments from your organizer presented in an intuitive, task-oriented way.
You can easily see all your events arranged in time, prioritized with color and categorized with icons, linked together.
Events created in Visual Calendar appear instantly in your Google Calendar. If you already have something planned in Google Calendar, Visual Calendar will import that in on first launch.
Its £3.99 but the feedback isn’t too hot. And I’ve not even considered the lock-in and portability issues
I can only assume because its a new concept and the app isn’t too mature. But I was wondering if it would be possible to take Mindmup and combine it with Google Calendar or something else?
Calendar Zero?
https://twitter.com/slavin_fpo/status/532935827379482624
Kevin’s right. Oversubscribed calendars are the new overflowing inbox. Remember my email inbox after coming back from my brush with death.
You should have seen my Calendar during September and October. I would share but I would need to blur so much of it, it wasn’t worth sharing, but I did get from Google Dashboard this figure – over the past 28 days I attended 115 events, 146 hours total, It wasn’t even funny. Thank goodness for ical subscribe, but this did mean if it wasn’t in my calendar, it didn’t happen. (not exactly ideal for somethings)
I’m not stranger to calendaring hell of course.
Wall mounted Calendar/Picture Frame
I like Google Calendar a lot, specially because all my calendars are now inside of Google Calendar. Even my work calendar is inside of Google Calendar because I can’t stand to have multiple calendars again. So it would be great to have access to Google Calendar when I’m wondering around the flat without having to switching on a device and load up the calendar app.
The closes I’ve gotten to this to date is my Archos 70 tablet which sits on my coffee table as a XBMC remote. I’ve loaded a couple more things on to it including a Transmission remote, Yaste, Audio monitor, Plex, XBMC remote and Calender. Because its running Android 2.2 (Froyo) theres no Google now or Daydream support which is a shame because this is where I would use it.
So a wall mounted Google Calendar certainly rings bells, however with the price of Tablets now a day, I just don’t see the point. They all pretty much come with a Wide-SVGA or higher resolution and Wifi/Bluetooth. It would be easy to turn one of these into a wall mounted calendar with the right software (Any Cal?).
The massive price drop of tablets has also prompted me to reconsider the wireless picture frame. A tablet running the right software and a well setup daydream mode would make a great self updating picture frame. Specially if the Plex UPnP thing works as it should. Heck because your using a tablet, you could use RSS feeds with enclosures to get pictures on to the device. Or some other type solution.
What ever, now is a great time buy those cheap tablets… I’m certainly keeping eye out for the sub £50 ones in the New Years sales.
Offline support in most of Google Apps
I just noticed Google Calendar added support for offline viewing and editing.
In the past I relied on Evolution’s iCal calendar support to save a copy of the webcal offline, so I could check my calendar when on a different network. Leaving Google Calendar open in Chrome would allow you to flick forward and backwards about 8 weeks, but you certainly couldn’t read the detail of an appointment or doing any editing. Now with offline support it seems to allow much more control. At some point I may not need Evolution at all!
Being so impressed with the offline support, I thought I’d check to see what other google apps support offline. I already knew about Gmail and to be honest I don’t need the rest so much.
Calendaring sharing joy with Outlook 2007, Amazon S3 and Jungledisk
Its finally working… Calendaring sharing with Sarah now works. I got fed up trying to do it with my own WebDav and CalDav servers, and downloaded Jungle Disk. Jungle disk is simply a local server which interfaces with Amazon's S3 storage and provides a webdav wrapper. So when Outlook 2007 asks for a Webdav server, me and Sarah just point it at localhost and Jungledisk takes care of syncing with Amazon S3.
Yep its not free but its certainly worth the bandwidth and storage space for a tiny calendar file, if it means I can see Sarahs Calendar and she can see mine.
The upload of Calendar failed. There was a problem with the request
The title is the error I get when trying to upload my calendar to a webdav server
I just don't bloody get it! Everything is in place, Outlook 2007 and a Webdav server. But try as I might, Outlook just will not upload my calendar to a webdav or caldav server. It should be easy as pie according to the tutorial. But it just does not work.
I've tried multiple Webdav and even a Caldav,
- Apache with Webdav enabled
- Schedule World
- Resin with Webdav enabled
- Cocoon with Webdav setup
- Cosmo standalone
- Davenport standalone
Outlook didn't work with any of them, although I could connect and copy files back and forth using Windows Explorer. How can this be? Honestly I don't care where the Webdav server is, even if I have to pay a small fee to use it. The ability to share calendars with Sarah will make a huge difference. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas?