As an owner of a brand new Palm Pre, I recently got exposed to the vagaries of trying to import my Facebook Calendar into my Pre. It’s not as easy as it should be and the fault lies with Facebook and with Palm. While we’re waiting to sort things out, I’ve written a little application, along with the post, to help myself and others out of this pickle

The start of the problem is with Facebook. When you opt to export your Events, Facebook provides you with a URL pointing to an iCalendar file. This contains all the details of your upcoming events. However, what it does not contain (and this is critical) is any timezone information. When you access Facebook normally, it knows what timezone you are in from you computer’s clock and shows events at the according time. This is known as using a ‘floating’ timezone and makes things a lot easier on the FB backend.

However, when you import this iCalendar file into another calendar application, it has no idea what timezone the file represents. Some applications will assume it is your local timezone. Others (especially web applications) may assume that the timezone is GMT. Unless you live in the UK, or other GMT countries, you’re going to see an offset for all of your events.

How does this play into the Pre? Well, I live in Austin, which is in the Central timezone. When I imported my Facebook events, they were off by two hours. After some investigation, I came across this theory, that I find the most compelling: My Pre is synchronised with my FB events via a server at Palm, in the Pacific timezone. Facebook ‘floats’ my events to match the PST timezone. As a result, when they appear in my Pre, they are off by two hours.

So, I though to myself, why not import my FB Events into my Google calendar and use that as my primary calendar. Well, Google has other ideas. It sees an iCalendar file without a time zone, assumes GMT and so shifts all of my events by 6 hours.

As a result, I’ve made this app. Just provide the URL to your Facebook Events Export, set your timezone and give the new calendar a name. A new URL will be generated, which you can then pass to Google Calendars. Within an hour or so, Google will import your events and keep them updated.

You can then sync your Pre (or other PDAs) with your Google Calendar and, hey presto, there are your events.

This process doesn’t add any functionality to the calendar; it just sets to timezone correctly. Any delays in synching will come from the delay of Google synching with Facebook and your Pre synching with Google. My filter adds no significant time overhead at all.

This functionality is provided to you all free of charge. All I ask is that you add comments and suggestions. I’m happy to tweak this and respond to error reports.

Yesterday, my sister sent me a tweet that posed a good question: “How is Twitter any better or different than an SMS or Facebook?”.

To me, the major difference is intent; intended audience and the intention behind all submissions.

Twitter is, nominally, a micro-blogging platform. Blogging (as most readers are no doubt aware) os a form of content generation, whereby bloggers write items called ‘posts’ which are published in a chronological and/or categorized manner for the consumption of zero or more readers. Unless readers are using an RSS feed, they will not be aware of new posts, unless they check the blog manually. In addition, bloggers are not inherently aware of who is reading their blogs (although some blogs will attempt to track reader numbers and locations. However, this is not an inherent part of blogging).

Twitter differs in a number of respects. First, it is a micro-blogging platform. Posts (or ‘tweets’ as they are known in the world of Twitter) are limited to 140 characters. Anybody can read your tweets (unless you elect to protect them), but people can elect to follow you on Twitter. When they do this they will automatically be made aware of your tweets through the client they are using to connect to Twitter.
Twitter also has a much more explicit sense of dialogue than blogging. You can ‘reply’ to a tweet and the original tweeter will be made aware of it. It will also be clear to everyone who is looking that you responded.
In addtion, you can ‘directly message’ a Twitter user. This is more private and remains between you and them.

So, how does Twitter differ from SMS? Well, SMS messages are also 140 characters long (this is not a co-incidence…), but that’s really where the similarities end. An SMS message is intended for a single user and also sent to a single device. ‘Direct messages’ notwithstanding, tweets are for all to see and can be accessed by anybody who has a Twitter client… at any time.

How does Twitter differ from Facebook. They share some characteristics; Facebooks News Feed is a form of micro-blogging and anybody can access your Facebook data (within the restrictions that you set). But, Facebook has a heavy focus on applications and on explicit networking. Twitter is positioned as a communication channel, whereas Facebook is trying to be all things to all men. This isn’t a criticism, per se, rather an observation of their differences.

There is no reason that these platforms can’t get on. You can install Twitter clients on your cell phone; you can add Twitter Apps to your Facebook profile; you can send Twitter updates via SMS; you can receive Twitter updates via SMS.

For me, Twitter has proven to be a great way to reach a wide audience to let them know about events I’m planning; it’s also a great way to maintain a constant low level of contact with people I know, rather than the bursty level of content that email or telephone calls result in

On Monday, I announced the launch of preDevCamp. There has been a fantastic global response and today I’d like to announce the fanclub that we’ve set up on Facebook.

Palm are taking some real interest in this camp and a Facebook fanclub is a great way to demonstrate the level of interest. Please show some support for preDevCamp by signing up.

While you’re at it, swing over to http://predevcamp.org and sign up to one of the events. Coding the Palm Pre is going to be a dream if you have any experience with developing with AJAX, so get involved! If there isn’t an event in your city, let us know and we’ll guide you through the process of setting one up.