September 3, 2009

Sports and Gadgets in Google Calendar

Google has the strange habit of removing features and killing services only to resurrect them after a few months. A lot of people complained when Google Calendar removed the gallery of public calendars. Google's explanation was that few people used that feature and it was difficult to internationalize it.

Google Calendar's gallery isn't back yet, but you can now subscribe to sport calendars for baseball, football, soccer, rugby, hockey and basketball. How to find the new calendar directory? Click on "add" below the list of "other calendars" and select "interesting calendars".


Like Gmail, Google Calendar is now a container for iGoogle gadgets. To enable gadgets, go to Google Calendar's settings page, select "Labs", click on "Enable" next to "Add any gadget by URL" and don't forget to click on "Save". You'll see a small box that lets you enter the URL of a gadget. It's not user-friendly and Google forgot to list some samples, but you can try this Wikipedia gadget:

http://www.google.com/ig/modules/wikipedia.xml

or this gadget for driving directions:

http://www.google.com/ig/modules/driving_directions.xml
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11 comments:

  1. ChrisSeptember 3, 2009 at 12:10 PM

    I noted over in the Blogoscoped forums that it isn't possible to sync these new calendars on the Calendar sync app on a Blackberry, which is really disappointing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alex ChituSeptember 3, 2009 at 12:28 PM

    Indeed, these calendars are only available in the web interface.

    ReplyDelete
  3. U'nikSeptember 3, 2009 at 12:28 PM

    How I can see these cals in a Google Calendar gadget for Desktop?

    ReplyDelete
  4. ChrisSeptember 3, 2009 at 12:42 PM

    Alex, do you have any idea why that is or when it might change?

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousSeptember 3, 2009 at 3:12 PM

    the sports calenders stink. For instance, if you follow Penn State NCAA football, on the calender they write it as "Penn State Nittany Lions, Illinois Fighting Illini". My God! So at first glance you can't tell who the opposing team is because it's scrolled WAY off the calender.
    I will continue to use the calenders I imported using the iGoogle gadgets for sports. These ones just say "Texas A&M at Texas"-- nice and short.

    I'm surprised the Google-approved version didn't use "Pennsylvania" instead of the shortened "Penn". Obviously they missed that one!

    Also, I don't need the cute football symbol to differentiate my Penn State football calender from my Philadelphia Phillies calender. cute, but dumb waste of valuable space.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownSeptember 3, 2009 at 3:23 PM

    Google Calendar Help Forum:
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar

    ReplyDelete
  7. StareClips.comSeptember 3, 2009 at 3:29 PM

    You're doing it wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Freddy TorresSeptember 7, 2009 at 6:11 AM

    The Game length should be included. Like 12-330p. Or just please bring public cal back - it was very useful.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousSeptember 12, 2009 at 10:21 AM

    That's how you do it

    ReplyDelete
  10. SPA2TACU5September 15, 2009 at 11:50 PM

    It's not really useful so far. I subscribed to multiple football clubs
    but since they also play each other I have a lot of duplicate matches in my calendar. Why isn't there just one feed for an entire league or group?

    ReplyDelete
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