Palm-friendly web calendars?

July 29, 2006 9:31 AM

I need a web-based calendar application, for multiple users, that will sync (or at least read-in) calendars currently in palm pilots.

The two of us have very busy, very dynamic schedules and are having trouble keeping each other updated on changes in those schedules. What makes things more complicated is that we are both very often in situations in which we will go several hours at a time (say, 6-8) without being able to take or make a call or check email, and often there's only a few minutes between those periods in which to do any communication.

So the problem is: how to reduce the time and effort overhead involved in communicating complicated schedule changes enough to make it possible to provide a full update in a couple minutes.

We both keep our individual schedules on palms that we always carry and update on-the-spot, and so it seems like a partial solution is to use a shared web calendar that we can update very, very quickly anytime we can get our palms in a cradle (or on the internet).

The requirements are:

* password-protection (to maintain some privacy)
* very fast palm syncing operation (ideally < 4 minutes from getting a palm on the net)

We don't care about:

* the web user interface, particularly for data entry -- we dont plan on putting data into the calendar this way
* syncing web-to-palm (it'd be nice but not required)
* the platform, although something lamp-ish is preferred to microsoft or proprietary technologies (for ease of deployment)

So: does such a calendar exist? Any recommendations? And, also, this approach is only a partial solution, so if anyone who's been in a similar situation has advice or other suggestions those are also welcome.

posted by little miss manners to technology (3 comments total)

Haven't tried this myself, but since no one else has responded yet... I know that the Yahoo! calendar has an Intellisync thing that lets it sync with Palm organisers, and it also has several options for things like 'share this calendar with another user', 'allow another user to edit this calendar', etc. Perhaps there's something there?
posted by chrismear at 11:49 AM on July 29, 2006

I'm not sure of anything on the Palm, but Plaxo can sync with Outlook and more importantly, you can sync Plaxo with a Pocket PC with WebIs Mobile Sync. Maybe there's something similar on the Palm.
posted by chrisWhite at 12:15 PM on July 29, 2006

phpicalendar

Not sure if it has exactly everything you are looking for, but well worth a look.
posted by blueplasticfish at 1:08 PM on July 29, 2006