Do you have a calendar you’d like to share with the world?  With Windows Live Calendar, you can create a calendar badge to post on your blog or website. That way, anyone can see your calendar from any browser.

Here’s what a calendar badge looks like:

You can move forward and backward in time by clicking either a date or the month arrows.  The event list shows events starting from the highlighted day. It will show as many as will fit within the badge’s height. (My next blog post will show you how to adjust the size of your badge.)

Here’s how you create a badge:

1. Click on the calendar that you’d like to share — you can find your list of calendars on the left side of the page.

2. This brings up the calendar settings page. Click Edit sharing, and then Share this calendar.

3. Check the box for Make your Calendar public, and then click Get your calendar links.

4. Click Preview in a web browser—the pop up shows a URL like this:

http://cid-235e8e235b98a7295.calendar.live.com/calendar/My+calendar/index.html

.  This can be a little tricky, but I’ve tried to make it simple for you. For the calendar badge URL, the two important parts are your user code (cid-235e8e235b98a7295) and your calendar’s published name (My+calendar).  You will use these values in the final step.

5. Some calendar publishing URLs may not be in the format shown in step 4. If the URL doesn’t start with “http://cid-”, click the Profile link at the top of the page. When the profile page has loaded, the URL will look something like this: “http:// cid-235e8e235b98a7295.profile.live.com/?...” Your user code is there in the URL.

6. Build the HTML snippet for the badge using the user code and calendar published name. Take the following HTML code and replace [user-code] with your user code and [calendar-name] with your calendar’s published name. You can then re-use this HTML snippet anywhere you want to show a badge for that calendar.

<iframe src=http://calendar.live.com/calendar/badgeif.aspx?user=[user-code]&cal=[calendar-name]></iframe>

One wrinkle for you savvy bloggers and web designers is that the badge won’t obey your page’s CSS. But fear not, the badge can still be customized so that it works well in any web page. I’ll leave the details of how to customize your badge for the next post.

Happy sharing!

-Evan

We are aware that some of you may be experiencing difficulty accessing your Windows Live Hotmail accounts. We’re actively investigating the cause and are working to fix this as quickly as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience

and disruption this may be causing you.

The Windows Live Hotmail Team

Update:  Service has been restored for all users, and we’re taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  Thanks again for your patience, and we’ll make sure to keep you updated. 

In my last post

, I talked about how to avoid e-mail overload by using to-do lists to save my messages from an inbox black hole.  But even with those ideas, I still found it difficult to sift through all the e-mail I received on a daily basis.  I knew there had to be a better way to manage my inbox and I thought that some of you may have struggled with this also. Here are some of the tips and tricks that have helped me cut my inbox clutter.

Set up automatic filters

It’s best to use filters sparingly.  When I first experimented with rules and filters, I got very excited and set up them up for just about everything.  I had folders for everyone and filtered the messages by sender.  I quickly found that checking too many folders is a nightmare.  My inbox became useless because it only had the e-mail messages that I didn’t really care about.  So, I refocused my filter efforts.

I removed all the filters for individuals and instead, filtered mailing list and auto-generated e-mail into their own folders.  This greatly reduced my inbox clutter and gave me the control I needed to read those bulk mails when I had time.

Set up reminders

Once I had a good set of folders and filters set up, my inbox was usable again.  But then I ran into a new problem—I didn’t check the new folders regularly, and I couldn’t seem to get into the habit of checking them.  The new folders were turning into smaller versions of my cluttered inbox. Another black hole.

I decided to set up a daily reminder for myself to check those folders.  I created a daily recurring event in Windows Live Calendar for each folder I needed to check, blocked out as much time as I’d need for that folder, and set a reminder for the event.  This turned out to be a great solution because in addition to receiving reminders to check my folders, the event allowed me to block out the time I needed to check them. Problem solved!

Here’s how to create a filter in Hotmail:

1. Go to Options and select More options.

2. Select Automatically sort e-mail into folders.

3. Click New Filter and then choose which message types you want to filter and where you want those messages to go. That’s all there is to it!

Here’s how to create an event in Windows Live Calendar:

1. Go to http://calendar.live.com/, or from Hotmail, click Calendar under Related places in the bottom left side of the screen.

Windows Live Calendar will ask you to select your time zone if this is your first time visiting the site.

2. Click New, and enter your event’s details in the pop-up.  To make it a recurring event or to customize the reminder, click Add more details.

3. Save it and you’re done!

More productivity posts are coming soon.

Enjoy,

Evan