Google has just released a very cool utility (.exe download for Windows) providing users with the ability to synchronize their Google Calendar with Outlook.

Some nice features in their 0.9.3.0 release:

• schedule the sync frequency: every x minutes
• define directional flow: 2-way, and 1-way (either way)

A bit of a buzz going on about this...

Now, what if you could do the same over the web - no download, just use your browser (IE, FF, Safari)...? And not just Google Calendar <> Outlook, but others too...?

Well, it's certainly possible...First, watch this screencast I put together tonight (apologies for sound quality...done from home equipment):

About WideLens

A couple of weeks back Bungee Labs released a reference calendaring application, called WideLens, designed to show off some of the power of the Bungee Connect platform, from the kind of rich AJAX UI experiences delivered through to the high level of functionality developers can create by wiring up and integrating multiple web services and distributed web data sources into a single web app.

• Video: WideLens User Experience
• Video: Developer Overview

WideLens connects to Microsoft Exchange calendar, Google Calendar, Salesforce.com, Facebook, MySQL and iCalendar feeds, representing a variety of protocols and authentication schemes. MS Exchange is accessed through WebDav, Google Calendar through gData, Salesforce.com via SOAP, Facebook through REST and MySQL connectivity is based on client libraries provided by MySQL (integrated directly inside Bungee Connect).

WideLens is an uber-mashup.

WideLens connects to each of the sources in real-time, presenting the user with live data. With the exception of Facebook and iCalendar, users can create and modify events and those changes are immediately posted back to the source. MySQL pulls double duty, serving as both a WideLens native calendar source and as the persistence layer for all kinds of application data including user preferences and credential information for each service.

Developers: Have At it!

As mentioned above, WideLens has been released as a Bungee Connect reference application where we're encouraging Bungee Connect developers to customize the WideLens application as much as they want, deploy their own version of the app as their own app - to their own domain, at no charge, branded however they want and with whatever features / cuts / modifications / extended they want - the WideLens code is released under a BSD licence (read more here).

To get going with Bungee Connect and develop your own vision of what WideLens could do, sign up for your Bungee Connect account.

Read the original blog entry...