Calendar API

Now there's a calendar API [code blog, [general blog]. Should I write my own outlook sync program that does what I want or wait for someone else? Have to balance having it act like I want to vs. the time investment.

One thing that is making it look like something worth bothering with is the emerging concept of GData. When I first heard of it, I thought it was going to be something like RDF (Resource Description Framework). It's more of a combination of REST and ATOM, with some query and update capabilities. [the API] The thing that Ray Ozzie is working on over at Microsoft is going in this same direction, with more focus on sync, which is something he has down cold. I think Google are making an effort to have the growing array of APIs be somewhat consistent. If all of the APIs move to this kind of model, it could have a simplifying effect on development.

In any case, the common kinds schema is pretty basic model of the world from the Google perspective. It has a couple of location specific concepts:

A place (such as an event location) associated with the containing entity. The type of the association is determined by the rel attribute; the details of the location are contained in an embedded or linked-to Contact entry.A element is more general than a element. The former identifies a place using a text description and/or a Contact entry, while the latter identifies a place using a specific geographic location.

gd:geoPt

A geographical location (latitude, longitude, elevation).
Examples



Schema
start = geoPt
geoPt =
element gd:geoPt {
attribute label { xs:string },
attribute lat { xs:float },
attribute lon { xs:float },
attribute elev { xs:float }?,
attribute time { xs:dateTime }?
}