Jon Udell tackles the multiple calendar problem

Jon Udell wrote some fabulous columns for BYTE magazine in its heyday [1]. He always looked harder and farther than anyone else. So I'm delighted to see he feels the multi-calendar pain, and he's writing about it ...

Calendar cross-publishing concepts � Jon Udell

... The private URL [Google Calendar] is what we’re looking for. And in particular, the iCal flavor of the private URL. That’s what other calendar programs, including Outlook, can latch onto to subscribe to this calendar. The URL that Google produces starts with http:// and, when you plug it into Outlook 2007, bingo, there’s the family calendar nicely merged in with the work calendar...

Huh!? Outlook 2007 will integrate an iCal source with the work calendar? Maybe Office 2007 isn't all bad after all.

This does mean that family events go into the work world, which I dislike. I'd much rather have the work events to to a secured family calendar, but of course my employer doesn't care for that. Jon says Outlook 2007 will publish to a WebDav server:

... When you publish your Outlook calendar to WebDAV and then try to subscribe from Google Calendar, you’ll fail if the calendar is secured with HTTP basic authentication. (However, Apple iCal will succeed in this case.) If you instead allow anonymous access to the WebDAV-hosted calendar it’ll work in Google Calendar, but only if you alter the sharing URL produced by Outlook, changing webcal:// to http://...

Hmm. If I sign up for .Mac I get a WebDAV server and a family Calendar sync. If I can also integrate my work calendar ...

The multi-calendar problem is driving me bonkers. I remember the blessed days when I could sort-of-get Outlook to selectively sync certain categories with my Palm. Back then, I had a full calendar view on my Palm and at home, and a work only view at Work. Alas, an immense number of bugs and design flaws made me give up on that solution; I've had two cursed calendars ever since. The problem is all the more painful given that there was once a pretty decent solution ...

[1] There's nothing like BYTE in the world today. I'm convinced its demise set back progress in personal computing by several years. I'd always felt Microsoft's relative enmity (PC Magazine wrote whatever they wanted, so they got the goodies) was partly responsible for BYTE's demise, so it's a bit ironic that Jon now works for the Empire.