1. 1calendar

1calendar is an amazing Google Calendar alternative that allows you to combine private activities, along with other personal and public tasks.

One of the best things about 1calendar is the fact that you can integrate it with Facebook, which imports all the events and birthdays. 1calendar is also an amazing tool for school going kids who can update their school timetable in real-time with push notifications.

A mobile app for 1calendar makes it one of the best easy-to-use, and portable alternative for Google Calendar. The mobile app has offline access so you can use it anywhere you want.

1calendar

2. Coolendar

Coolendar is not only a calendar. It takes things to a completely new level by combining your schedule and a lot more things together to make it the most effective.

You can use alerts to notify you of different events. The alerts can be sent directly to your e-mail, messenger, and web, desktop, mobile and even twitter.

One of the best things about Coolendar is the vast availability of the app. It is found not only for iPhone or for Android, but is also available for the Web, Amazon Kindle, Email and even Twitter.

Coolendar

3. Tungle

If you are a person who is constantly on the move, then you might want to check Tungle out.

You cannot only synchronize your Tungle Calendar with Hotmail, Google or Yahoo! Calendars but you may also wish to schedule events letting other people know when you are free or letting other people send you an invite!

The simple, user-friendly interface of Tungle makes it an amazing alternative to Google Calendar. A mobile app is available for Blackberry and iPhone.

Tungle

4. Scheduly

If you have an established business, just list down the services your business offers and whenever you require – direct your clients towards the page.

The client can then choose the best time for using your services by grabbing their desired time out of your available time slots.

You can even “Manage” your client pool to allow only authorized clients schedule your services.

Scheduly

5. Whichtime

Whichtime is a Google Calendar alternative that requires absolutely no app or program to be downloaded in order to be used.

Just use the online form to create point-and-click events and make your very own timetable in a few easy steps. Once done, you can either download the calendar or just access it from the web whenever you need it.

Whichtime

6. Timeshout

Timeshout is a place that not only lets you schedule events, but also allows you to promote them and share it with the world.

Create and post your events to show them off, you can even create bookable events and let people buy tickets and pay for them online.

The service is FREE to use and even has mobile access available for easy access.

Timeshout

Conclusion

There you have it – 6 of the finest or some of the best Google Calendar alternatives available on the Internet. There are a lot more, but all of these are FREE and effective at the same time. If you know about any other tool which can serve a handy scheduling web app, please share with us.

Image Credit: J_Moses

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Think of all the clutter you will eliminate by inputting events such as the due dates of your bills, prescription refills or even monthly meetings.

How Romulist works

Firstly, it is in beta. You can get a quick invite if you tweet their message to your flock of Twitter followers.

When you get the invite, you just click on the link they DM you. You will be taken to a page to login.

On the login page, you can either use an email address to create your account,

or you can login with your Google account or your Google Apps account.

Once you are in, you may need to fill in some basic info. It may be already correct. The 3 main things you will need to look at are your time zone, that emails are enabled and set your contact time. Just give it a once over and move on if everything is all good.

Now is the part where you start adding in your reoccurring appointments. The layout is pretty self explanatory. Give the event a name, select the day it is on and how far in advance you want to know about the event. You can see an example of an event if you really need to.

As you add events, you can see them in a list. You will also start to see the dates on the calendar fill in with color. All of this can be viewed on your dashboard.

You can also see just the events under the events tab.

Event reminders

After you have all of your events added into your Romulist, you can sit back and wait for your first email. You will get an email reminder in the morning around the time you set. If you are unsure of what time you set, the default is 8AM. You can check for yourself in the settings tab. I know I am usually out the door before 8AM on days I am at the office so a 6 or 7AM email would be better for my schedule.

Ideas for using Romulist

There are a lot of uses for a service like Romulist. Here are a few examples.

• Write your monthly email newsletter.
• Schedule a lunch meeting with a friend.
• Refill a prescription.
• Pay rent.
• Pay other bills
• Bill a client.
• Backup your computer.
• Any reoccurring bank deposits into your account.
• Dates for any reoccurring bank transfers.

Conclusion

I think a service like Romulist is great for the people who do not use a digital calendar or for those who do, but hate to clutter it with reoccurring monthly events. The key to a web app like this is you need to be a person who pays attention to their emails. If you don’t, then it is just wasted time and effort.

How would you use a service like Romulist help you manage your monthly to-do list?

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Setup Calendar in Thunderbird

Out of the many calendar add-ons in Thunderbird, Lightning is the best. It adds a full feature calendar system to Thunderbird and it integrates so well that you don’t even see the differences.

1. Open Thunderbird. Go to “Tool -> Add-ons”. Search for Lightning.

2. Install Lightning. Restart your Thunderbird.

3. You should see a new “Events and Tasks” option in the menu bar. Go to “Events and Tasks -> Calendar” and the calendar will show up in a new tab. You can start adding events and tasks to your Thunderbird.

Integrating Google Calendar to Thunderbird

Now that you have set up Calendar in Thunderbird, the next step is to integrate Google Calendar to Lightning. Provider for Google Calendar is one good add-on that can get the job done.

1. In Thunderbird, go to “Tool -> Add-ons” and search for “google calendar”. Scroll through the list to find “Provider for Google Calendar” and install it. Restart Thunderbird.

2. Next, open your browser and login to your Google Calendar account. Go to “Calendar Settings”.

3. Click on the Calendar tab, follow by the calendar that you want to integrate to Thunderbird.

4. Scroll down till you see the “Calendar Address” field. You should see three icons beside it, with the label XML, iCal, HTML respectively. Right-click at the XML icon and select “Copy Link Location”.

5. Go back to your Thunderbird. Go to “File -> New -> Calender”. On the popup window, select “On the network” and click Next.

6. In the next window, select “Google Calendar” and paste in the link that you have copied earlier.

7. Give your new calendar a name and set the color.

8. Enter your Google username and password. You might want to check the box “save password in Password manager” so it won’t prompt you for password in the future.

9. Lastly, once you see the “Your Calendar has been created” message. You are done integrating your Google calendar to Thunderbird.

Repeat the same steps for each and every Google Calendar that you want to add to Thunderbird. The “Provider for Google Calendar” supports a two-way sync, so you can add/edit events and tasks in Thunderbird and have them synced back to the Google server.

That’s it. What other ways do you use to integrate Google Calendar to Thunderbird?

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Here’s how you do so:

We will be using the gnome-shell-google-calendar script to fetch events from your Google Calendar.

1. Go to Gnome Shell Google Calendar github page and download the tar file.

2. Extract the file to your home folder. Rename the folder to gnome-shell-google-calendar.

3. Install the dependencies. Open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install python-gtk2 python-dbus python-gdata python-iso8601 python-gnomekeyring

4. Lastly, run the gnome-shell-google-calendar script.

cd gnome-shell-google-calendar
./gnome-shell-google-calendar.py

It will prompt you to enter your Gmail address and password:

Once authenticated, it will import in your events/appointments/tasks from Google Calendar and display in the Gnome Shell time/date applet.

Note:

1. The script does not save your Google Calendar events locally. It merely grab the events and display it on your system. You will have to run the script everytime (you log in to your computer) to view the events. To set it to run everytime, go to Startup Application and add a new entry:

2. The script only allows you to view your Google Calendar events. It does not allows you to sync locally created events back to Google Calendar.

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Obtaining Private URL

First, head over to Facebook and find your “Events” section. On your Facebook homepage, this is usually one of the items on the left-hand column.

On the “Events” page, you should see all your events listed. On this page, you should also see an “Export” link.

If you click on “Export”, a popup will open with a webcal URL.

This URL exports all your events on Facebook as and when they are added by you. The URL by itself is sufficient to view all your Facebook events on any other external calendar (e.g. Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, and Google Calendar). Even if the event is changed or updated on Facebook, those changes and updates will be reflected on your external calendar automatically. So, for example, if you accept an invitation to a friend’s birthday party, your external calendar will automatically become populated with the new event and subsequent changes will be reflected on your external calendar.

Although this URL is sufficient to view your Facebook events, there is a bug in Google Calendar that hides events marked as “private”. So, if a friend invites a select group of people to a birthday party and makes the event “private”, this event will be marked “private” by Google Calendar. Unfortunately, all events marked “private” in Google Calendar are displayed as “busy”.

This is an odd bug as you should be allowed to view your own events. Fortunately, an enterprising user has developed a workaround for this bug.

I have tested this workaround and it works. However it does involve sending your private webcal URL to a third-party and it entails you using the third-party’s auto-generated link. If you are comfortable doing this, then continue reading this guide.

Converting Private URL to Display Events

Once you have obtained the webcal URL from Facebook, head over to http://eventbusyfix.info/ and paste the URL into the available box.

Hit the “Generate your new event url” button. This will generate a custom URL for you to use in Google Calendar.

Inputting Link into Google Calendar

Once you have created the custom URL, add it to your Google Calendar.

Head over to Google Calendar and select the “Add” menu which appears under the “Other calendars” list. This will reveal a drop-down menu with a number of options. Select “Add by URL”.

Then simply paste in the custom URL you obtained from the eventbusyfix website.

That’s it! All the Facebook events you are attending will now show up in your Google Calendar!

Image credit: Joe Lanman

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A common digital calendar is the Google Calendar. Many companies, ISPs, municipalities and the general public are using Google Calendar. I love it because of how it synced with my Blackberry and now is integrated with my Android phone. Your Google Calendar is a great place to start getting your life in order.

Here’s how you can get the best out of Google Calendar and start to become organized.

Labs

Like all of the other Google apps, Google Calendar has features that are not quite ready to be released, but have a lot of value. Google calls these Labs. Here are some Labs for your calendar to help you get the most of it.

1. Gentle reminders

For those of you who get distracted easily (like me) and don’t want a window popping up to tell you about your meeting in an hour. Instead you will get a notice at the bottom of your screen to tell you.

2. Event attachments

If you invite people to a meeting, you may also want them to have the agenda. With this Labs add-on, you can attach a copy of the meeting agenda to the event.

3. Smart rescheduler

The smart rescheduler is what the name implies. If you need to move a meeting, you can use this Labs feature to find the next best meeting time for the participants. Single click on the appointment you want to reschedule and it will ask you to find a new time in the smart rescheduler box on the right side of your calendar. It can scan both calendars to find the best time for the reschedule.

4. Who’s my one-on-one with?

If you have a lot going on, you may not always remember who you are meeting. When you activate this function, you will see a name next to the appointment name telling you who the invite was from.

Ways to organize your calendars

If you are a busy person, you may have more than one calendar to deal with. A lot of the single parents I know have work, kids, family and personal time to manage. Here are some ways you can manage multiple calendars in one spot.

1. Share calendars with work or family

I suggest this all the time to families. If you have two or more people who lead active lives, sharing your calendar with the others is a good idea. This way you can see what they have going on before you make plans that include them.

I use this for the soccer club trainers and also my team. I share my main training and game schedule with my team so all they need to do is look at their Google Calendar and see the most up-to-date schedule of events.

2. Different colors for different calendars or events

Google lets you change the color of an event or calendar to help it stand out. Depending on the time of year, I manage 8 calendars. All of these calendars have a different color to make the event easier to differentiate from the others.

3. Print it

As strange as it may be to some, printing your weekly or monthly calendar really works for some people. If you have people who are not tech savvy or have a spot where your family may look for information naturally (the refrigerator door or a dry erase board), you can print your calendar for all to see.

Some of these may be simple fixes. The hard part is getting into the routine of using your digital calendar. If you have an Android or other smart phone, you can sync it with your Google account and start using your digital calendar right away.

How do you keep life’s events in order?

Image credit: Alaivani

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Installation

To install Thunderbird 5 via PPA, open a terminal and type the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install thunderbird

Done. Go to “Applications -> Internet -> Thunderbird” to run the application.

Integrate Thunderbird to the Messaging menu

For the Thunderbird to appear in the Messaging menu, all you have to do is to install the “Ubuntu Unity Messaging Menu” extension.

In Thunderbird, go to “Tools -> Add-ons“. Search for “Messaging Menu”. Install the first extension that appears in the screen.

Restart Thunderbird after the installation. The Thunderbird entry should appear in the messaging menu now.

Replacing Evolution

If you are using the calendar feature in Evolution and you want to migrate to Thunderbird, you might be disappointed to find that Thunderbird does not come with a Calendar feature by default. You can, however, install the several extensions to implement the calendar feature.

Lightning is the most popular (and most comprehensive) Calendar extension for Thunderbird. It is almost a “must-install” for every Thunderbird user.

Alternatively, if you are a Google Calendar user, you can also install the Google Calendar Tab extension that loads your Google Calendar in a new tab.

If you are using IMAP to check your email accounts, there is no need to do any email migration from Evolution. However, for those using the POP protocol, follow the instructions here to migrate all your settings from Evolution.

Lastly, enjoy your Thunderbird.

Note: Thunderbird could be the default email client for Ubuntu Oneiric. It will be good if you can familiarize with it now.

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1. Set-Up TV Episode Calendar

First, head over to the TV Episode Calendar website and create an account. I have come across many similar TV calendar websites, however this particular one has given me the least problems and it is fairly intuitive. The main page lists a variety of TV shows, including American and British ones, that are airing on any given day.

You can simply use this view to view all the currently airing show, or alternatively, you can create a personalised TV calendar. To do so, select “Register” from the top-right corner to create a new account.

On the next page, you can register your personal details to create an account.

After creating a new account, you will be returned to the main page with the complete list of TV shows. Here you must select “Add Shows to Your Filter” from the top-centre of the page to personalise your TV calendar.

The next page provides the full list of TV shows which you can select.

You can view the details of each individual show by clicking on its respective link.

You can add shows to your list by clicking on the big red “X”. Once selected, it will convert into a green tick.

Once you have chosen all the shows you want to add to your TV calendar (there is no limit), select “Save Filter“.

A week by week guide showing your customised TV calendar will now be viewable.

You may want to change your time zone settings to reflect your current location. This makes it easier to ascertain the exact time the TV show will air (usually shows air in the evening on the East Coast of the United States).

2. Link TV Calendar With Google Calendar

Having the guide available on the TV Episode Calendar website is useful. It becomes infinitely more useful once it is added to your Google Calendar.

To do so you must first obtain the “iCal” file. There is a link on the top-centre of the TV calendar website called “Download iCal File“. Right-click on this link and select “Copy Link Address“.

Now head over to your Google Calendar.

Here you can add your personalised TV Episode Calendar. To do so, select the “Add” link under the “Other calendars” tab.

A pop-up will open where you can paste in your iCal link which you copied earlier.

Finally select “Add Calendar” to create your new TV calendar in Google Calendar. Your selected TV shows will appear as “events” in your Google Calendar.

That’s it, now you can share your Google Calendar with others and view it from virtually any device, which in turn allows you to view your custom TV calendar from any device.

Conclusion

This is a very simple method of quickly creating your own personal TV guide. There is no longer any need to buy a TV guide or subscribe to any blog to figure out when new shows will air. So far, TV Episode Calendar has been fairly accurate as to the date and timing of when shows will air.

Image credit: Joe Lanman

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To add events/appointment to your Google Calendar, the most primitive way is to open your web browser, login to the Google Calendar site and add an event. What about the geekiest (and fastest) way? By the command line, of course.

Gcalcli is a Python application that allows you to access and manage your Google Calendar from a command line. You can use it to retrieve your agenda, event list, and quickly add new events. What’s more, it can also be used as a reminder service to help you remember the things that you need to do.

Installation

Gcalcli is included in the Ubuntu repository, which means you can easily install via the Ubuntu Software Center, Synaptic Package Manager, or simply with the command line:

sudo apt-get install gcalcli

Configuration

Before we start, we need to create the configuration file. Open a text editor. Paste the following lines:

[gcalcli]
user: yourusername
pw: yourpassword

Replace “yourusername” with your Google account login name, without the gmail.com.

Replace “yourpassword” with your Google login password.

Save the file in your home folder with the filename .gcalclirc (don’t forget the “.” in front of the galclirc and no file extension is required)

Usage

To test it, open a terminal and type

gcalcli agenda

It should show your agenda for the next 5 days.

To get a quick glance of your next 2 weeks agenda

gcalcli calw 2

Whole month agenda

gcalcli calm

You can also set gcalcli to show a reminder popup if the event is within 10 minutes from the current time.

gcalcli remind 10

One thing though, there is no automation for the reminder service, so you need to run the command everytime to remind you of your event. A good way to automate it is via crontab or using gnome-schedule

To add an event to Google calendar, use the command

gcalcli quick <event>

Replace the <event> with a brief description of the time, date and event detail. For example:

gcalcli quick '5pm 31/7/2010 Meeting with Advertisers'
# or
gcalcli quick 'Dinner with Eric 7pm tomorrow'

Display Google Calendar on your desktop

To get Google Calendar onto your desktop, we are going to use a combination of gcalcli and conky.

Install conky:

sudo apt-get install conky

Open a text editor and paste the following text:

alignment top_right
background no
border_width 0
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color white
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
gap_x 5
gap_y 60
minimum_size 5 5
net_avg_samples 2
double_buffer yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 1.0
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no
show_graph_range no
text_buffer_size 8096
 
TEXT
${execi 300 gcalcli --nc --cals=owner calw 4}

Save the file in your Home directory with the filename .conkyrc

Press Alt + F2. Type in “conky” and press Enter.

Your agenda for the next 4 weeks will now appear on your desktop and it will refresh every 5 minutes.

Need more help on gcalcli? Check out their HowTo wiki.

Try it out and let us know if it works for you.

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Once configured, Calgoo Connect will sync your desktop and online calendar automatically in the background. Be it PC, Mac or any terminal in the cybercafe (and even your iPhone/iPod Touch), you will sure to have the updated version of your appointment schedule with you.

Installing Calgoo Connect

First, go to http://www.calgoo.com/connect/index.do and sign up for a free account. Once you are done, download the Calgoo Connect app.

Double click to mount the downloaded file and drag it to your Application folder.

When you first open Calgoo Connect, it will prompt you to enter your username and password.

Once done, it will bring you to the main screen where you can click to add a connector.

Start by clicking on the sentence “Click here to add a new Connector to synchronize your Apple iCal and Google Calendars”.

You will be presented with four options. Choose the first one “Sync iCal with Google Calendar”. If you want to include 30 Boxes and do a multiple sync, then select the fourth choice.

Enter a name for the connector.

Calgoo Connect will now scan your iCal for existing calendar. Check the one that you want to sync.

Next, enter your Google Calendar login credential. Similarly, Calgoo connect scan your Google account for all the available cal. Check the one that you want to sync.

Confirm the detail and click Finish to start the synchronization. It will take a while.

More configuration to enhance your experience

Press the Preference button (the wheel icon) to go into configuration page. Here, you can set your duplicated event criteria and configure Calgoo Connect to remove duplicated event when syncing sources.

Next, you can set how often you want it to sync.

Select how you want it to connect to Internet and whether it should run when you boot up your Mac.

‘

That’s all.

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