orkut Birthdays in Google Calendar

orkut, Google's social network, lets you keep track of the birthdays of your friends. There's a birthday reminders section that can be enabled in the settings and you can add a gadget to Google's personalized homepage.

orkut's blog announced that there's another way to view the birthdays: in Google Calendar. "Now, in conjunction with Google Calendar, you can see all of your orkut friend's birthdays for the whole year. If you've already used Google Calendar before, you will shortly see a link (right below the "upcoming birthdays" section) where you can add your orkut friends' birthdays to your Google calendar."

If you don't see the promotional link, use this URL to subscribe to the calendar. Google uses a special kind of calendar that requires authentication and doesn't support notifications. That means you won't be able to receive email or SMS notifications that remind you of the birthdays.


{ via orkut blog and ToThePC. }

Offline Google Calendar, Available for Everyone

After being tested in Google Apps, the offline version of Google Calendar is now available for all Google accounts. To enable it, you should click on "Offline (beta)" in Google Calendar's header, install Gears if you don't already have it, allow Google Gears to store information on your computer and then wait until the data is downloaded.


In the Offline Settings page, you can select the calendars that are available offline (by default, only the main calendar is enabled). "You'll be able to view events scheduled on these calendars the next time you access Calendar offline. Please note that calendars containing web-content events will not display correctly while offline," explains the help page.

Unlike the offline version for Gmail, the offline Google Calendar has many limitations: you need to manually go offline/online, you can't add events, edit the existing events, search your events or change the settings. Another limitation is that Google doesn't download all the events - I noticed a warning: "Your offline calendar only contains events from Feb 4, 2009 to Jun 4, 2009".





The read-only offline version of Google Calendar is only useful to quickly check your agenda when you don't have an Internet connection. For more features, you should check Mozilla Sunbird, a cross-platform tool that can synchronize with Google Calendar using CalDav. Make sure to enable caching if you want to view the events from Google Calendar when you are offline (you still can't edit the events or create new ones).

Google Sync, Available for iPhone and Windows Mobile

If you have an iPhone or a Windows Mobile, you can now synchronize Google Calendar events and Gmail events using Google Sync. "Once you set up Sync on your phone, it will automatically begin synchronizing your address book and calendar in the background, over-the-air, so you can attend to other tasks. Sync uses push technology so any changes or additions to your calendar or contacts are reflected on your device in minutes," explains Google Mobile Blog.

Google Sync already works on BlackBerry. For the rest of the mobile phones, you can only synchronize contacts if there's support for SyncML. Contact synchronization should work on some Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, for example Nokia N-Series and Sony Ericsson W-Series.



Before synchronizing data, read the known limitations of the initial release and follow the instructions from Google's site.

Google mentions that the service available for iPhone and Windows Mobile uses the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol. "When setting up a new Exchange ActiveSync account on your phone, all existing Contacts and Calendar events may be removed. Please make sure to back up any important data before you set up Google Sync."

Attach Files to Google Calendar Events

Brandon Kraft spotted a new feature in the Google Apps version of Google Calendar: attaching files from Google Docs and photos from Picasa Web Albums to an event. Sometimes you can provide all the details of an event in the description box and you may need to attach photos, presentations and other useful documents.


What I don't understand is why there's no rich-text editor in Google Calendar, where you could drag and drop content from web pages and even images. Hopefully, when GDrive finally launches, you'll be able to access the files stored in Google's Web Drive from any other Google service.

{ Image licensed as Creative Commons Noncommercial Share-Alike. }

Offline Google Calendar for Google Apps

Some Google Apps users noticed a new option in Google Calendar: read-only offline access to the calendars using Google Gears. Mark Mathson has screenshots for the new feature, but it's surprising to see that Google Apps users, who usually received the updates later than Google Accounts users, get the offline Calendar earlier.


Google's help page mentions that users can decide which calendars are available offline. "Calendar keeps you on time, even when you're not online. Offline Calendar allows you to access your events through your browser without requiring Internet access. It's perfect for flaky connections or for when you're in between meetings and have no idea where you're supposed to be next. Note that while offline, Calendar will be read-only - it will not be possible to create, edit, or delete events."

It's interesting that the version briefly available in October 2007 allowed you to "view and edit the next 3 months of your Google Calendar when you're not connected to the Internet". Google decided that it's important to synchronize all the events and that editing the events is too difficult to implement reliably.

{ Thanks, Mark Mathson and Tom Rodman. }

More Flexible Notifications in Google Calendar

Last week, I received a message from Guy: "I LOVE Google Calendar! But... I wish I could set a reminder for a month in advance, instead of a measly 2 weeks. That is the only thing holding Calendar back from being truly awesome!"

Thankfully for Guy, Google Calendar's event reminders are even more customizable: now you can choose any period of time between 5 minutes and 4 weeks. This works not only for the default notifications settings, but also for individual events. As usually, you can choose to receive notifications by SMS, email and as Google Calendar pop-ups.

The default notifications are via email (10 minutes before each event) and pop-ups (5 minutes before each event), but you may need more time.


Tip: to change the notifications settings for a calendar, click on the small arrow next to the calendar's name and select "Notifications".

{ via Gmail Blog }

Google Calendar Agenda in Gmail

GmailAgenda is a Greasemonkey script that shows your Google Calendar agenda as a sidebar in Gmail. The script uses Google Calendar's embedded view and it includes an option to add events to the main calendar. The sidebar can't be minimized, so it remains visible even when you don't need it.


An alternative way to keep an eye on the Google Calendar agenda is to add the iGoogle gadget in the sidebar, as explained in this post. The advantages are that you don't need the Greasemonkey extension, the sidebar is visible even when you don't visit Gmail and it can be closed.

Google Calendar Adds CalDAV Support

After many months of testing, Google Calendar finally adds CalDAV support. "CalDAV is an open protocol that allows calendar access via WebDAV. CalDAV models calendar events as HTTP resources in iCalendar format, and models calendars containing events as WebDAV collections. This allows you to publish and subscribe to calendars, share them collaboratively, sync between multiple users and sync between multiple devices."

For now, the only application supported by Google Calendar is Apple's iCal. "With CalDAV support in Google Calendar, you'll be able to view and edit your Google Calendar events directly in iCal. Any changes you make in iCal will automatically appear in Google Calendar the next time you sign in (and vice versa). If you use iCal while offline, changes you make will be saved and updated in Google Calendar when you get back online."

Rick Vugteveen tested the new feature and found that the 2 way synchronization works well, but there are some problems. "The largest issue that I had is that I needed to create a new CalDav server account for every calendar in Google Calendar. Not only did this make further setup cumbersome, it degraded the iCal UI as a 1-1 relationship between each folder (server) and calendar is created. Normal re-ordering and organization of calendars does not work with this setup so be careful with the order you enter your calendars. This multiple server setup also removed the ability to move events between different calendars within iCal."

This page provides instructions for adding your calendars in iCal and you should also read the known issues.


Google Calendar also provides basic applications for synchronizing data with Blackberry devices and Outlook, but there are many third-party applications that use Google's API to add more advanced functionality: Spanning Sync (iCal - $25/year), BusySync (iCal - $25), Calgoo (iCal/Outlook - free), SyncMyCal (Outlook - $25), gSyncit (Outlook - $10), GCALDaemon (cross-platform/open source), Plaxo (cross-platform/free), GCalSync (Java mobile app - open source), GooSync (SyncML service/mobile app - £20/year), GMobileSync (Windows Mobile - open source), OggSync (Windows Mobile/Outlook - $30/year).

Google Calendar Buttons

I don't know if there are many useful buttons for Google Toolbar, but there's a Google Calendar button that offers a lot of features for its size.

1. You can use it as a shortcut for Google Calendar. Just click on the button, instead of trying to find Google Calendar in the list of bookmark or typing the first letters of its URL in the address bar.

2. Click on the small arrow next to Google Calendar's logo to see a list of upcoming events from your main calendar. If you select an event, you'll be able to read the description and make some changes.


3. Add events to your main calendar by typing the text in Google Toolbar's search box and then clicking on the calendar button. Unfortunately, Google doesn't add the event to your calendar, it only prefills a form with information from your request.

4. You can also add events by selecting some text from a web page and clicking on the calendar button (alternatively, right-click and select Send to > Google Calendar). Google Calendar to parse a lot of complicated text, including the one illustrated below:


For a visual representation of your calendars, you can add the Google Calendar gadget to the toolbar. The gadgets shows events from any number of your calendars and doesn't open a web page when you add an event.

Export Your Google Calendars

If you created many calendars in Google Calendar and you want to download them so you can view them in a desktop client, there's a simple way to export all the calendars. Just open https://www.google.com/calendar/exporticalzip and you'll get an archive that contains your calendar data.

"In the resulting compressed folder, you'll see an ICS file for each of the calendars to which you have permission to make changes and manage sharing. Note that this method will not export calendars in your Other Calendars list (e.g. public calendars you've added to your list, shared calendars with view access only, etc.)," explains Google.

If you use iGoogle to view your calendars, it's good to know that there's a new version of the Google Calendar Gadget that uses infinite scrolling for the agenda and it shows event descriptions without opening a new page. Like in the previous version of the gadget, you can select multiple calendars to view them on your personalized Google homepage.