Gcal Mobile

Development Resumed

2007-05-03T22:13:00.000-05:00

I'm back from my trip and have started my job at Google NY (which is a great place, in case you're wondering). For a variety of reasons, primarily because I want to use it, I've decided to continue development.

Recent changes:

Gcal Mobile now works with aps for your domain! (Which means that I can use it for my work calendar, since Google dogfoods apps as its main collaboration platform.)
Calendar seems to have changed its time format. Gcal Mobile now respects this.

Existing bugs I'm aware of and am currently working on fixing:

Time zone issues for adding events: something is wacky, and I'm not sure what yet.
Sorting: the agenda is not being sorted correctly but the times appear to be correct.

Look for more soon!

Development Suspended

2007-01-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

I'm off for a 2 month trip in Asia and won't be bringing a computer with me, so development on Gcal Mobile is suspended for now. When I get back in March I'll be starting as an Associate Product Manager at Google, so I'll see what I can do to get you all a real version of Gcal Mobile (if it's not already in the works). Rest assured: this project will live on in one form or another.

Thanks to everyone who's been supportive and helped me debug problems!

Build 0.1.10 released

2006-12-16T02:35:00.000-05:00

I've just put up build 0.1.10, which contains:

a bunch of exception handling code to hopefully allow the program to recover gracefully from bad stored data when loading at startup
improved error logging
cleanup of some of the Agenda update windowing logic to address hangs during update

Thanks to everyone who has been working with me to test the application!

Build 0.1.9 released – help me debug it!

2006-12-15T02:03:00.000-05:00

I've gotten a number of bug reports from people that build 0.1.8 hangs on the login and update progress screens. My hunch is this issue is related to the custom window manager I built for the application (the default java window management is very very basic), but I'm not entirely sure. Since the issue is not reproducible on my Cingular 2125, I'm having a hard time debugging it – which means I need your help!

I've cleaned up the logic and built in some instrumentation that should help. Build 0.1.9 is the result. Progress screens now have a "Dismiss" button that will close the progress screen.

If this is purely a windowing issue, pressing dismiss should bring you back to the previous screen, where you can interact with the application. Note that since the progress screen is there so that data structures can update quietly in the background, dismissing the screen prematurely could cause funkiness.

The new progress screen also contains an option to view the "Event log." The event log contains various debugging info that will help me diagnose your problems. So if you think that the application has hung, click the event log, scroll to the bottom, and send me an email with the last few events (or whatever looks interesting).

You can always view the event log later from the menu on the Agenda screen, too:

Thanks in advance for your help!

UPDATE: This build was originally released as 0.1.8.1, but due to some sort of weird limitation of the number of allowed subversions in the .jad file format, users were having trouble installing the application directly from their phones. I have therefore re-versioned 0.1.8.1 as 0.1.9. Sorry for the confusion.

Build .18 Posted

2006-12-13T19:53:00.000-05:00

Build .18 is here and now includes the most commonly requested features:

Multiple Calendars – Gcal Mobile can now download and show all your calendars on the agenda screen! If you there are specific calendars you don't want displayed on your phone (like your Remember the Milk calendar), you can de-select them in the settings screen. To find out what calendar an event is in, just open the event's info screen.

Persistence – Gcal Mobile now saves your agenda between runs. That means you can quit the application to free up memory and still open it up to take a quick peek at your agenda.

TESTING – this build is feature complete for release 0.2

Cancelling Meetings with Gcal Mobile

2006-12-06T23:35:00.000-05:00

As of Build 0.16, Gcal Mobile supports event deletion. While that may not seem particularly noteworthy, it means that you can now use Gcal Mobile to cancel meeings on the go. If you told Google Calendar to send invitations for an event when you created it, deleting the event in Gcal Mobile will send each attendee a nice note informing them that the meeting has been cancelled:

The note also includes an .ics file that will automatically remove the event from compatible calendar programs. Pretty neat, huh?

Build 0.17 Posted

2006-12-04T21:40:00.000-05:00

Build 0.17 is up, featuring multi-calendar support!

Note that the app will connect to download your calendar list at startup now. I'll fix that soon. Also, you cannot currently control which calendars are downloaded, you just get them all.

UPDATE: with build .172 Gcal Mobile no longer asks to connect to download your calendar list at startup; it only downloads your list when you perform an operation that requires synchronization with the Google Calendar Server. Also note that it now looks two weeks into the future. Some UI has changed a little (progress bars).

NOTE: With release .172, the .jar name has changed to GcalMobile.jar. You will have to uninstall the old version manually and reenter your account info.

Build 0.16 Posted

2006-12-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

New feature: you can now delete events from the agenda view. Also, the agenda now shows only those appointments for the next week. I'll be creating UI that lets you set a the number of days in the future to get events.

Build 0.15 Posted

2006-11-30T16:02:00.000-05:00

Build 0.15 is up here from your phone and here from your computer.

New features:

Event info screen now displays meeting attendees, their acceptance status and email.

Up next:

Update existing events
Send late notices to attendees

Build 0.14 Posted

2006-11-27T08:56:00.000-05:00

After a whole lot of refactoring, most of the time code is now together in one easier-to-use class that helped me standardize some of the text formatting.

The only visible changes are:

Menu order for the Agenda screen is now different, with the "Refresh" command replacing the "Exit" command's position on regular phones (closer to Gmail mobile)
Date and time handling is now smarter. Events that do not span multiple days will not repeat the date for the end time. All-day events don't end at 0:00 the day after the final day of the event, and don't display the time at all in the Agenda.

As usual download here from your phone or here from your computer.

Build 0.13 Posted

2006-11-24T17:40:00.000-05:00

New in the 0.13 build:

Selecting an event in the agenda now shows detailed event info
When adding new events, you can now set the end time (default is start + 30 minutes)

Up next:

Change/delete existing events
Attendee info

Gcal Mobile 0.1 Released

2006-11-24T13:40:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Gcal Mobile blog!
Gcal Mobile is a mobile java application that gives you access to your Google Calendar from you mobile phone.

Currently, the application supports:

Agenda viewing
Event adding

An admittedly small feature set, but other features are in the works.

You can find more information and download the app at http://gcalmobile.googlepages.com