Many folks may not realize it, but having a Google Calendar can be an effective (and free) way to keep a whole group on the same page.

Visit http://www.google.com and signup for their free service. That will allow you to create a calender. From there, review the various settings to enable sharing, and locate the iCal link for your Google Calendar. You can paste an iCal link, provided by Google, link onto your website or email it to colleges. Remember that iCal is not just for Apple's iCal program -- ANY application (including Microsoft Outlook for Windows) that works with the industry standard iCal format can subscribe to your Google Calendar iCal link.

Here's the basic steps for subscribing to a Google iCal link in Apple's iCal application in OSⁱ X:

• copy the link that google gives you from your settings page
• put that link on a website or email it to colleges
• copy the link from the website or email
• launch iCal and choose Calendar > Subscribe...
• Paste the URLⁱ and press Subscribe

Note the instructions will be slightly different for Outlook users the but the process is essentially the same.

To refresh the Calendar in iCal:

• press Control and click on the Calendar Name
• Choose Refresh from the contextual menu
• Any changes made to the master google calendar appear in iCal

XMLⁱ Feeds too
If you prefer to get your content pushed to you in an RSSⁱ Newsfeed reader, a Google Calendar can provide that type of feed too! Again, in the settings for your Google Calendar, locate the XML feed link. From there, you can post that link on your website or email it to colleges. Changes made to the Google Calendar are pushed to the RSS Newsfeed reader automatically so the person reading the feed will always have the current information for your calendar events.

Why use a Google Calendar?
Basically, Google Calendars use a web interface so anyone, any platform, can use them. Further, you can specify who, besides you, can manage or edit a particular Google Calendar. That ability pays big dividends if you want to maintain a group calendar, where perhaps more than one person will contribute or manage content.

You can also configure Google to send a reminder or invitation to a calendar event to your cell phone -- that's right, the content can be pushed from the Google Calendar to your mobile phone which can have some significant benefits.

A Google Calendar can also be embedded into any webpage on your website using code provided by Google (and YES it works with iWeb if you're using iWeb 08!). That means you can provide a web based interface to an internet based calendar. Visitors will see changes posted automatically when visiting the website, contributors can add or edit events (based on access privelages) via a web interface so it's cross platform, and you can get the changes updated automatically to your iCal calendar or pushed to your mobile phone.

How cool is all that? Well, I think it's pretty cool and it has some interesting potential for real world use for clubs and even business (yes, those solutions have been used in Enterprise solutions for a long time). Here's a link to a demo page of the principles in action: http://web.mac.com/huc/Demo/Events.html so you can see the basic behavior. That example shows an embedded google calendar in an iWeb created webpage. It include an iCal and XML subscription link with some basic instructions. While you won't have access to creating the Google Calendar events, you can get a sense of how the basic steps above work so hopefully it'll spark some ideas on how you can massage the basic process to suit your own particular needs.

Have fun -- it will take a bit of learning but if you have a group that needs to share a calendar, and you'd like to make it cross platform with the option of distributing managing and creating content, a Google Calendar is well worth considering.

When I get time I"ll likely write a comprehensive tutorial (with detailed step by step operations) on my own website but I wanted to post some basic info here as it might help others in the short term.