Andrew Ferguson
Romping Around in Europe
Subscribe to RSS Feed30Boxes + MSN Direct + Outlook 2003 + Remote Calendars = Awesomeness
I’ve been using 30Boxes for almost a week now and love it. I love being able to have my calendar online so I can modify it and love having such an easy interface. I’ve also had MSN Direct for just over a year now. MSN Direct is the front end to SPOT: Smart Personal Object Technology. In short, my watch is like a pager: I can get MSN Messages, the weather, news, quote of the day, this day in, sports scores, stock prices and the real reason I pay $60/year…synchronized calendar. My Outlook calendar syncs to my watch, ensuring that I don’t miss anything critical…which I tend to sometimes do.
But I had two problems: First the Outlook 12 Technical Beta doesn’t work the MSN Direct plugin. Second, Outlook doesn’t natively support the iCal format.
There is a work around though! I still have my old server that I don’t really use for anything even though I should. So I decided to put it to good use. I installed Outlook 2003 and, thanks to a heads up from the 30Boxes Blog, I installed Remote Calendars, a “COM-.NET Add-in for Outlook 2003…[that allows a user] to subscribe, reload and delete a generic remote iCalendar (RFC 2445) from Outlook 2003.” Bingo.
I can go to 30Boxes and do my calendar thing. RemoteCalenders automatically checks my iCal feed every once in a while to see if anything has been added. If it has, it loads it into Outlook 2003 and the MSN Direct plugging sends it to my watch. Am I wired (or wireless) or what?
Technorati Tags: 30boxes, outlook 2003, msn direct, spot, remotecalendars
Tags: for Robert Scoble
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[...] One of the main reason I got the watch was so I could schedule events in Outlook, have them beamed to my watch, and then not forget them. But once I ditched Outlook, it became harder to do this. I ended up using Outlook exclusively for calendaring and Thunderbird for email. Then I started Beta testing Outlook 2007 earlier in the year. The plugin for Outlook wouldn’t work with the Beta. Around the same time, I started using 30 Boxes. I jury rigged a string of programs on my server to get data to my watch. Finally, I switched over to Google Calendars. With GCal, I was able to send the messages straight to my phone. This was easier and more reliable then my jury rigged solution. [...]