How to Connect Windows Desktop Calendar Applications to 30boxes Online Service

Are you tired of constantly switching between your online calendar and desktop calendar applications? Kevin Neely has a solution for you. In this article, we will explore Neely’s ingenious method of connecting the online calendar service, 30boxes, to desktop applications such as Rainlendar and Sunbird.

The key element of this method is the ability of 30boxes to export iCalendar file format (.ics). Fortunately, even in its early stages, 30boxes has provided a couple of ways to get to your calendaring data for importing into other applications. The iCal format is both a standard format for calendar data and the name of the Mac OS X calendaring app.

The first step is to download the .ics file from the “Syndication” page of your 30boxes profile. However, this only gets the file once and does not obtain later changes. To get the changes on an ongoing basis, Neely suggests using a simple script to download the file automatically.

For this purpose, he has created a script that uses wget to grab the .ics file and place it onto your hard drive. You can then import this file into your desktop calendar application, and all your 30boxes events will appear there.

In Windows, this method can be used with Rainlendar or Sunbird. However, it is important to note that Sunbird does not cache the data for offline viewing, so you will need to download the file to your hard drive.

Neely’s method is also platform-independent and can be used in Linux as well. Linux has all the applications mentioned in this article – wget, Rainlendar, and Sunbird.

If you are not familiar with these desktop applications, Rainlendar is a customizable desktop calendar that supports syncing with Google Calendar and Outlook. Sunbird, on the other hand, is a standalone calendar application from Mozilla that supports syncing with Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and other online calendar services.

By using this method, you can have your 30boxes events available offline in your desktop application, and you can also make changes to your calendar from either your online or desktop application, and the changes will be synced automatically.

In conclusion, if you are looking for a way to connect your 30boxes calendar with your desktop calendar application, Kevin Neely’s method is a simple and effective way to do it. With just a few steps, you can have all your events available offline and synced between your online and desktop applications.