The Rinat calendar is an interactive, electronic version of the monthly calendar (also posted every month in PDF format as well printed as in the Kol Rinat). The calendar supports the Internet Calendar (iCalendar 2.0) format which is compatible with most modern calendaring applications, such as Outlook 2007 (2003 is currently incompatible), Google Calendar and the new Yahoo Calendar.
Look for the iCalendar 
icon on the home page as well as on every calendar page that you view. When clicked, this icon will download the calendar in a format which you can import to your computer, and ultimately your PDA or Smartphone. We'll get into that in a minute.
Firstly, you have two choices: to import the Rinat calendar into your own calendar or to subscribe to the calendar (preferred).
If you want to manually import the Rinat calendar every month, you have to choose the iCalendar .ICS file you want to download (save it to your hard drive then run the program you want to use to import it, i.e. Outlook 2007). The home page iCalendar icon will link to a file containing the current month's calendar. If you don't want to import the entire month data, view the Rinat calendar in Week view or Day view and then click the iCalendar icon for that week/day. While you can technically "import" (or copy) the calendar for the year, it will not include the daily z'manim entries for all months (at this time) as they are uploaded month-to-month.
If you can, you should "subscribe" to the Rinat calendar, which is preferable to a manual import as it will adapt automatically to any changes/additions made by the Office online. This is highly software-dependent, so please consult the appropriate documentation for your product. Specify the server URL as http://www.rinat.org/calendar/ical/ when you set up your software. (Power users note: you can filter the iCalendar feed using the same query string as generated by the calendar filter. For example, subscribing to http://www.rinat.org/calendar/ical/?tid[0]=77 will generate a continuously updating feed containing only Adult Education events, and http://www.rinat.org/print/calendar/ical/?tid[0]=77&tid[1]=59&tid[2]=58&tid[3]=74 will grab all calendar entries except Shiva notices.) Once your calendar is set to sync with the Rinat website, you may still need to force an update by clicking a refresh/update button to confirm that you are using the latest calendar file.
Now, to syncing with your Smartphone or PDA: this depends upon the model of phone you have. In general, you first configure the calendar on the computer that syncs with your particular device, and then you let the synchronization software do it's magic. Some PDAs have apps that let you sync over-the-air directly with the Rinat feed. As a general guideline, use the following software:
- Windows Mobile Smartphone - Microsoft Activesync (Windows XP) or Sync Center (built-in to Windows Vista/7)
- Blackberry - Blackberry Desktop Manager software
- iPhone - iPhone software v3.0 includes the ability to update automatically to calendar changes on the Rinat website (see article) by pointing to the server: www.rinat.org/calendar/ical/
NOTE: In general, unless your software supports subscriptions to our live Internet iCal feed (at http://www.rinat.org/calendar/ical/ which covers the current secular calendar year), you should only upload a .ICS file once for a given month, or else you may wind up with duplicate calendar entries for that month.
Got a question, or have instructions for a PDA/smartphone you don't see listed here? Post it in one of the Website Q&A forums.
Enjoy.
--Glen Marianko
Printer-friendly version