What is Google Calendar Asking Me?

The other day I opened my Google Calendar and a bar popped up asking me wether or not I wanted to use Google Calendar to open all web calendar links?

You've probably seen this pop up.

I wasn’t sure exactly what this meant so I decided to find out. If you click the “Learn More” link it will take you to this Google help page. If you’re like me and you like things explained in the clearest most easily understandable language you might like this “unofficial” Google page instead.

I’ll try to sum it up:

A good way to think about this is you’re being asked if you want to allow your calendar to subscribe to other calendars in much the same way that an RSS feeder subscribes to content. This tool is called a protocol handler. A great example given is this one that allows you to subscribe to a US Holiday.

The basic idea is to allow you to subscribe rather than download the calendar. As with the example above, this could be used to quickly add all of a country’s public holidays to your calendar.

Either of the help links above explain how to manage protocol handlers. Some other web calendar resources can be found iCalWorld and iCalShare.