Eric: My current project: iCalendars. Mozilla released Sunbird (a stand-alone calendar) and they have a Firefox/Thunderbird plugin which gives you an active Calendar. It outputs the same .ics file that Apple’s iCal does, so it will allow you to sync up a calendar between computers. phpiCalendar runs as a website that will read the .ics file. Mozilla’s calendar is supposed to be able to publish directly to it, but I can’t get that to work yet. It’s driving me insane. See it in action here: [LINK WITHHELD]

Jason: That friggin’ awesome! I’ve been looking for something like that for a LONG time. I’ve always thought that something like this would be a perfect tool for family doctors/dentists as a scheduling tool.

Eric: Well, there’s another option that works well… Tasks (now called Tasks Jr.) by a great coder named Alex King. I’ll setup a demo for you. I really want this first option to work since it works so easily. The piece I’m missing is WebDAV which my host doesn’t support unless you have a dedicated server. This phpiCalendar is supposed to work without WebDAV (uses FTP instead), but I can’t get that to work yet. A 3rd option is using iCal Exchange. It’s a free .ics hosting service that has WebDav support.

Jason: Cool stuff. Oh cool! Houston Area Radio Stations. I wish you guys had “Bob” in Houston. It’s my favorite radio station. Open format w/ no DJs. Commercials only at 15 and 45 after the hour (and the commercials only last about 5 minutes). Other than that, they have non-stop music. And they play anything… and I mean anything. Usually, it is a mix of pop/rock/alternative but they’ve also played country and jazz. You can call them up or e-mail them and request that they play whatever you want.

Eric: That’s awesome. Houston stations are crap. I mean huge crap.

Jason: Yeah, most of the Austin ones are as well. This one is totally different. I love it. They don’t have DJs, but they do have little commercial clips every once in a while with a guy talking about “Bob” in the third person: “Bob didn’t like all the regular radio stations, with their endless chatter. So, he started one of his own.” My favorite one is, “Bob. It’s like putting your iPod on endless shuffle.”

Eric: That’s awesome. I think that’s why a lot of people of gravitating toward Podcasts.

Jason: yep

Eric: Ok. Check out the demo of Tasks Jr I setup for you. Click on New Task and enter a task. Before you click save, click on the WP (WordPress) icon in the upper right of the task box.

Jason: Whoa! The titlebar updates as you type.

Eric: A new window should appear (you might have to enable pop-ups for this site). At the bottom of the new window, click PUBLISH.

Jason: k

Eric: What you just did was publish your task to my blog.

Jason: URL?

Eric: Not only did you publish your task to my blog (not a required process), but if you click save on the Tasks site, your task will be included in the Task list and on the calendar.

Jason: Cool stuff.

Eric: So this one is a little glitchy. The creator (Alex King) has 2 other versions that he gets paid for (this one is free). Yeah, I’m really impressed. I love how you have the ability to share info across websites like that.

Jason: I’m sure the paid versions are better. This one was probably his beta version.

Eric: So it seems. Been following it for a while and I think he stopped developing on this one. He worked his way into the paid ones, so that’s where he spends his time. I don’t think I’ll use this, but I do like it. I really just want to get Sunbird to work with my phpiCalendar. It’s extremely quick and easy.

Update: Sunbird/Calendar is still the best solution I found to fit my needs.