Updating Google Calendar with your mobile phone and Twitter GCal
This isn’t a new app by any means but it’s only in the past few weeks that I have seriously begun to use it in a big way and it’s only now that I am beginning to realise its usefulness.
I explained the whole concept in an article for Geeks Are Sexy but the short version is that if you have internet access, you can use Google Talk to send direct messages to Twitter bots which will then update your Google Calendar for you. No more having to go to the Google Calendar page. You can update your page using Google Talk on your PC desktop and have your daily schedule emailed to you each morning.
But a comment by one of the GAS readers made me realise something else - if you’re out on the road with no internet access and you need to update your Google Calendar, just send a SMS to Twitter with your mobile phone. I’ve just tried it and it works perfectly. It costs the same as a regular SMS to the United Kingdom.
All you have to do is add GCal to your Twitter watch list (so a bit of pre-planning is required). Then authorize GCal to access your Google Calendar.
When everything is set up, send a SMS to Twitter at +44 7624 801423 (add the number to your mobile phone book so you don’t forget it).
The SMS message should start with d gcal (the “d” stands for “direct”). Adding this to the start of the message ensures the text goes directly to GCal and not to the public Twitter page for all to see.
So if you want to add your appointment with a Playboy bunny for Friday at 7pm, just type in the SMS :
d gcal meeting with Playboy bunny on Friday at 7pm
If you then check your Google Calendar (it may take up to a minute for it to appear), you’ll see your calendar duly updated!
The only snag (to the best of my knowledge) is that you can’t alter existing calendar entries by SMS’ing Twitter (if say for example an appointment time is changed). If I am wrong and this is indeed possible, please let me know!
UPDATE :
I did some digging around and discovered the SMS phone numbers for the US and Canada :
Twitter Canada: 21212
Twitter USA: 40404
