iCal + Facebook

How to make Facebook and a diary application of your choice work together. Although I am starting to get queasy Déjà vu feeling about the new Facebook “Applications”, there are still nifty little features that keep me in a warm happy glow.

I recently got invited to a BBQ via Facebook, and I was busy copying the event details verbatim into my calendar, when I noticed the little “Export” button. To my delight, it produced a little iCal file for the event which can then be imported to Apple iCal, Outlook, Google Calendar, and many others. Most of the supported apps/online services for this export standard are listed on Wikipedia’s iCalendar page.

Double click the file… and it arrives fully formed in iCal!

As for my views on Facebook Applications, I am slightly alarmed as they constitute a move towards similarity with MySpace - which is a bad thing. But a move towards some sort of interaction between photos on Flickr and photos of Facebook is a good thing. Stalemate. I think maybe it will be OK as long as people don’t go overboard and start adding silly, (read: pointless), things to their pages like (fluff)Friends and fortune cookies… Although if you are a kill joy like me, you are able to hit the little minimise button on the offending item, and it shrinks down so you don’t have to see it.