Windows Live Calendar Desktop Gadget

CodePlex - Windows Live Calendar Gadget

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Project Description
Windows Live Calendar Gadget will be a calendar desktop gadget primary developed for Windows 7. The purpose will be to display (only) events from public calendars on calendar.live.com but it would be capable to read any *.ics file.
Features

• compatible with iCal format (*.ics files) - tested on Windows Live Calendar and Google Calendar
• fully skinable - includes the Aero skin which changes its base color according to your actual Aero color
• multilingual support - currently available English, German, Czech and Slovak translations (in Czech version displays name days)
• highlighting of long-continuing events

Requirements:

• MS Windows Vista or MS Windows 7

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I was just looking for something like this, and worse case a Windows Live Calendar API to write it myself if it didn't exist (and since there's such API, I was back a square one).

Then I noticed a code check-in for this project in my feeds, "Ah yes! I had forgotten about this!" (lol, talk about good timing!)

Downloaded, installed, Live Calendar ICS's hunted down, gadget configured, and low and behold...

JUST what I wanted! A simple means to easily and quickly monitor my Live Calendar events, without the overhead of Outlook or Windows Live Mail running. Oh yeah, it does reminders too... Plus the source (GNU) is available too.

The hardest part is getting the different web calendar ICS URL's, but if you follow the doc's on the project site, it will walk you through it.