Update: As of Jan 11, 2010, this works again!

In Google Calendar, a web content event is an event displayed as an icon that pops up an image or web page when you click on it. For example, if you subscribe to this sudoku calendar, you can get a new sudoku puzzle every day. This wizard helps you add your own web content events to Google Calendar.

How do I delete a web content event?

What are other popular web content calendars?

Why aren't there more sample icons to choose from?

Where can I find more resources about creating web content events?

How did you create this site?

When the web content feature was first announced, you needed to know a thing or two about programming to add those types of events to your calendar — that's where this wizard comes in. The wizard makes the event creation process transparent: now it is clear what data you need to enter, whether it is valid, and what it will look like when it is displayed in Google Calendar.

I was personally disappointed by the initial reaction to the announcement of the web content feature on sites like Digg. Comments generally fell into one of the following categories:

• Now Google wants to know where I live!
  How do you expect to get a weather forecast for your location without providing your location?

• Google's weather forecasts suck.
  Have you ever heard of any entity that reliably provides accurate weather information for everywhere in the world? I cannot speak to the accuracy of Google's weather forecasting, but complaints such as these are almost always based on anecdotal evidence, adding zero value to the discussion.

• They've been working on this instead of Outlook sync?
  Since the launch of Google Calendar, Google announced that it was would provide Outlook sync for calendar. Some features get completed before others — it's that simple. If you can't imagine why we wouldn't have the entire team working on Outlook sync, then please go read The Mythical Man-Month.

I didn't see one person who said, "Wow! This is a cool, new API — I bet there's a million cool things I could do with it!" Only recently have third-parties such as rememberthemilk.com started to recognize the potential of this feature. I think it's critical to realize that Google Calendar is a web calendar, and therefore one of its biggest strengths over traditional calendars is its ability to interact with other content on the web. That's really what web content events are all about.

And just so you don't leave feeling like I think sites like Digg are all bad, I will also admit that one of my favorite comments on the Calendar launch appeared on Digg:

This much excitement over a calendar?

Really guys, get a life.
The paper playboy calendar on my wall will never be replaced by Google.

Touché, MephistoX, touché. (Though perhaps you could write some sort of Chickenfoot script to help you out with that.)

Below is a screenshot of the web content wizard in action. It is a simple form that lets you enter the data for your web content event:

• The title of the event (this appears in the popup title bar or when the user mouses over the icon).
• The date on which the event occurs.
• The URL for the icon. (If you need web space to upload your icon, try Google Page Creator.)
• The content type for the icon. If you simply want to display an image in the popup, then choose image; otherwise, choose web page.
• The URL to the content to be displayed in the popup. If you simply want to display an icon on the day, then you can leave this field, and the height and width fields, blank. (For an example of an icon-only calendar, subscribe to the Phases of the Moon calendar.)
• If your web content event has a content URL, then you must specify the height and width of the popup, in pixels.
• The calendar in your Google Calendar account to which the event should be added.

Before you create your event, you can see a preview of what it will look like when popped up in Google Calendar. For users interested in using Calendar's GData API, you can see the ATOM that is used to create the event.

Login

If you already have a Google Calendar account, log in to Google Calendar.

Otherwise, you need to create a Google Calendar account.