Google Calendar on Mobile Devices?
Speaking of getting all my information through my mobile phone, I have started to use Google Calendar in a big way. However, Google Calendar explodes spectacularly on my phone, which may cause me to dump it if I can find something better. Is anybody using a web-based calendar that works with Windows Mobile that they like? (I should point out that I don’t want replication here; I’m done with replication, permanently. I want a web calendar that also happens to work with Windows Mobile’s web browser.)
Update: I have started using 30boxes and it is tremendous. Only thing it’s lacking is the ability to import my Google Calendar data, but I’ll do that manually over the course of the next few weeks.
I would not be surprised if Google is readying a Google Calendar Mobile, just like they have for Gmail. If you are impatient, you could certainly have a go yourself. Google publishes their Google Calendar APIs. So, just a matter of time.
I recently contacted Google to inquire about a Mobile Calendar app akin to the Gmail app…they said they are not developing, nor do they plan to develop a mobile app.
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for an aspiring web developer to get into the game. If you are interested, in my spare time, I could come up with something.
There are couple ways to tackle this problem. One is to create a web interface specifically for IE Mobile. The other is to create a J2ME app much the same way as their Gmail mobile version works.
J2ME app has its advantages. J2ME can interface directly with any mobile phone’s PIM functions. Therefore, you could program the GCal Mobile to save an event on both the Google Calendar online and to your phone’s PIM calendar. This way, you can have your data both persisted online and offline locally on your phone.
The advantage of an IE Mobile version is that it supports AJAX. The disadvantage is that only Windows Mobile phones will be able to use the web app.
References:
http://code.google.com/apis/calendar/gdata.html
http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/clientlibs.html
http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/apis/pim/pim1/