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    July 17

    Windows Live Calendar beta update with birthday, holiday, ical calendars and more

    The Windows Live Calendar team has been working hard the last few months on a cool update to the Windows Live Calendar beta. After many more bowls of udon noodles, lots of lattes and many late nights …we’re live! Everyone on our team is fired up about the release and we’re looking forward to your feedback. Give Windows Live Calendar beta a try by clicking the calendar tab in your Hotmail account or by going directly to http://calendar.live.com if you haven’t done so already. New coolness delivered in this update includes:

     

    1. Birthday Calendars that automatically create events and reminders for your contacts’ birthdays. (Make sure to add birthdays to your contacts. Add the birthday to your own profile, too: http://spaces.live.com/profile.aspx?action=edit&mode=activecontacts. That way others who subscribe to your contact update will get a reminder about your own birthday!)
    2. iCal Subscriptions that allow you to show calendars that update automatically from around the web. (This will be up and running very shortly!)
    3. Holiday Calendars that are automatically added to your account depending on your location. Many more are coming, but in this update, there are holidays for: China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Spain, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, United States and United Kingdom
    4. A number of user interface changes including the ability to right click on calendars in the calendar list and to reorder that list
    5. Improvements to accessibility functionality, including better tabbing and F6 key support
    6. Additional print views that allow you to print from the day, week and month views
    7. The ability to directly connect to the Windows Live Calendar beta via the calendar tab in Windows Live Hotmail
    8. Vikram S., one of our dev leads, says that we shouldn’t add any more to this list as it will look like we’re trying to squeeze juice from a rock!

     

    We’re already busy working on our next beta update and look forward to sharing more when we’re ready to release it.

     

    The Windows Live Calendar Team

     

    Updated July 18, 3:00 PM. Added the "y" in Germany and a few other minor country changes.

    5:45 PM | View trackbacks (4) | Blog it | team posts

    Comments (16)

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    Marwan Al Khaldiwrote:
    Thank you for the good work! I really like it, BUT(!!!): as some already mentioned there are plenty of free online calendars out there with almost all these features - more or less, however all of them lack the one cutting edge: the possibility to intuitively sync with desktop & mobile programs. That kind of feature(s) would be of a nature worth celebrating for and really no one would have to tell you then you're sort of "trying to squeeze juice from a rock!". 
    As Matthew indicated earlier, on the entry page it says you can sync (for free) using Outlook Connector. It's not working for me either, I'm still getting the same error "Calendar is available only to subscribers". Has anybody made it to the other side?
    21 July
    Rogerwrote:
    Have been using the beta (shared) for ages but like others wish list includes "tasks" another would be for it to work properly in Firefox
    21 July
    Picture of Anonymous
    Dave wrote:
    I can't open messages in a new tab in firefox (using the middle mouse button)

    Javascript doesn't allow it. Please restore this functionality.
    20 July
    Steve Yateswrote:
    Synchronisation with mobile phones, blackberries etc, will we be able to do this with windows live calendars in the future?
     
    Best wishes, and thnx for windows live, I think its great
    20 July
    Mikewrote:
    Are your event and birthday calendars immune to time-zone shifts? These usually get wrecked in any zone move or synchronisation.

    I'd like to see proper integration of Vista and Windows Live features. Too much doubling up, and with the Live features usually much slower than any comparable desktop or web client.
    20 July
    Domenico Dovellawrote:
    Excuse me double Post

    Pls. Add Sync with Vista calendar.

    Many THX!!
    18 July
    Greg Kramerwrote:
    The feature I'm waiting for is one that's currently in MSN Calendar, namely Tasks. When are Tasks finally going to make an appearance in Windows Live Calendar???? Events just don't cut it (no start, due, status fields, etc.) Honestly, the lack of Tasks makes Windows Live Calendar worthless to me as a time management application.
    18 July
    Picture of Anonymous
    Andrew wrote:
    Hello,

    I am trying to subscribe to a published Outlook calendar. The address to subscribe is in the format webcal://.....calendar.ics.
    I used the "subscribe to a public calendar" feature in the new Live Calendar, but I'm getting an error message that says "There's a problem with the calendar URL that you entered. Please make sure you've entered it correctly and try again."

    Will Live Calendar be able to subscribe to this kind of calendar?

    Thanks,

    Andrew
    18 July
    Domenico Dovellawrote:
    Many THX!! Great Work PLS add Italian Calendar !!
    18 July
    Picture of Anonymous
    Kelley wrote:
    I'd be more impressed if I could make my text BOLD, Italicized, or change the color or font.

    I've contacted HELP every which way I could and never ever received a reply. I'm thinking... what exactly am I paying for? I couldn't care less about 'spaces', etc. I just want really good, reliable email with lots of storage, that I can personalize as I go along. How hard is that? We USED to have it with the old version. Hey... if it ain't broke.....

    Gmail is looking better and better.
    18 July
    Picture of Anonymous
    Peter Henning wrote:
    On the new switch page next to the new live calendar you point out free outlook syncronization as a new feature. And it links to Outlook Connector, still outlook connector says that calendar sync is only available to subscribers. Is it now free or not?
    18 July
    Teodor Georgievwrote:
    Make connection between Windows Vista Calednar and Windows Live Calendar
    17 July
    Picture of Anonymous
    Matthew Gray wrote:
    On the entry page, it says sync with outlook connector. But this is still broken. Will I be able to sync with outlook connector soon?
    17 July
    Seika Natsukiwrote:
    Thanks for the subscribtion feature. But can we have synchronization also against desktop application ?
    And will this made it into Live Mobile suite ?
     
    And a question. Is the birthday information synamically synchronized with Live Contact ?
    Consider these cases.
    - I accidentally deleted a contact, then I re-added that person. Will I get two birthday event of the same person in the same day ?
    - I read the birthday wrong (e.g: dd/mm/yyyy when he actually wrote it mm/dd/yyyy), then I edited the date. Will the person get two birthday in different months ?
    17 July
    Thomas Lopez Jrwrote:
    That's all fine and well, but countless other online calendar apps already have this. When do we get some kind of offline sync, and I don't mean iCal subscriptions.  Publishing from Windows Calendar to Windows Live Calendar would be awesome...
    17 July
    John Kavanaghwrote:
    Thank you very much for your hard work.
     
    17 July