Ronaldinho is a magician with the ball, or is he? (view the videos!)

Google Calendar has launched if you want to check it out. There is also an overview of the features available. Will this be a compelling calendaring solution? After looking it over and checking out the website, I think it might be for me. I've setup DAV on apache before so that I can have a portable read/write calendar available online but it hasn't become critical for me. Of course, I was also the kind of person all through school and college that kept track of due dates pretty much in my head (and that's why professors also give you a syllabus). This might just stick, at least I'll try it out and report on if it does in the near future. This summer is full of travel and events so its as good a time as any.\ \ Some observations on the funcitonality\ \

• Drag in grid to create events (ala outlook)
• You can subscribe to any public ical/ics file (doesn't handle stuff behind a password protection)
• You can invite friends to view your calendar (even if it is not public)
• You can search through other public calendars
• You can invite people to events in your calendar, but I don't see an option for scheduling the time/date conflicts
• Event reminders via email or sms(to cell phone)
• Can import a calendar from iCal or csv export from MS Outlook
• Integrates with gmail
• You can invite people via email to an event and they can reply if they will attend or not, ala evite but without the spam
• You can subscribe to your calendar to view it via Mozilla's Calendar app or Apple's iCalendar.
• Event organizers can embed a little button on their own pages to prompt users to add an event to the user's own google calendar ()

\ Som things Google did not find essential, for this release and possible any other:

• Scheduling free/busy for an event across all participants
• Synchronizing calendars with other devices. Of course, if you have iCalendar on apple, iSync should take care of synchronizing with your cell phone or PDA.

Via BoingBoing, I ran across this item, about how a supporter of the DMCA and DRM technologies found he couldn't access 2 years worth of television programs on his own video recorder.

For those who aren't familiar with Mr. Giovanetti's work, he's a frequent and pugnacious commentator on intellectual property issues, and an avowed supporter of the DMCA and digital rights management technologies. He's a frequent critic of "IP skeptics" and "commonists" who argue that copyright law--and the technological measures designed to protect copyright--have gone overboard. Today he discovered that sometimes, technological measures designed to deter piracy are a pain in the ass for ordinary consumers--like him.

For those who don't know, the DMCA is an overreaching piece of legislation that goes beyond protecting copyrights and actually limiting previously accepted Fair Use activites. DRM is technology that media companies want to put on every digital video or audio device (like your ipod) so that they can control where, when, and how you listen to music or view tv shows, even if you've already paid for them. You can learn more about the DMCA and DRM from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.