Display Google Calendar On Your Desktop Using Gcalcli And Conky

This post explains how to display Google Calendar on your Desktop using Conky and Gcalcli (a tool you can use to manage Google Calendar via the command line).

If you already have a Conky instance running and want to also display Google Calendar on your desktop using Conky, see this how-to on running multiple Conky instances.

1. Install Gcalcli:

sudo apt-get install gcalcli

2. Configure Gcalcli

Unfortunately, Gcalcli needs your password in a configuration file in plain text. But then again, even Pidgin does this.

To be able to use Gcalcli, you have to create a configuration file in your home folder where you must add your Google username and password:

gedit ~/.gcalclirc

And paste this:

[gcalcli]
user: yourusername
pw: yourpassword

Replace yourusername and yourpassword with your Google username and password, then save the file.

3. Install conky

sudo apt-get install conky

4. Configure conky to display Google Calendar on your desktop

gedit ~/.conkyrc

And paste this:

alignment top_right
background no
border_width 0
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color white
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
gap_x 5
gap_y 60
minimum_size 5 5
net_avg_samples 2
double_buffer yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_class Conky
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 1.0
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no
show_graph_range no
text_buffer_size 8096

TEXT
${execi 300 gcalcli --nc --cals=owner calw 4}

Then save the file and start conky: press ALT + F2 and type: "conky".


5. Set Conky with Google Calendar to autostart:

gedit ~/conkystart

And paste this in the file:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 50 && conky

Then save the file and go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications, click "Add" and add a new startup application. Enter "Conky" under the name of the app and for the command, click "Browse" and then browse for the "conkystart" file in your home folder.

Gcalcli can also add events to Google Calendar and a lot of other stuff. See a complete how-to @ MakeTechEasier (this is also where we've found the Conky with Google Calendar on the desktop part).

GoogleCL: Manage Any Google Service Via Command Line (Linux)

I was just reading about GoogleCL at Lifehacker and after testing it for a while I realized it's actually very useful.

Using GoogleCL - a command line tool to manage all the Google services -, you can upload photos to your PicasaWeb albums, post to your Blogger blog, modify Google Calendar events, add contacts, manage your Google Docs (upload, delete, and so on) and even upload videos to YouTube. Unfortunately it doesn't come with support for Gmail.

This can have many uses, other than the obvious ones: you could automatically back up your documents on Google Docs, completely manage your Google Calendar using a script or automatically backup your photos to PicasaWeb.

The instructions on Lifehacker are for any Linux distribution but if you're using Ubuntu, all you have to do to install GoogleCL is download the .deb file.

For other Linux distributions, download Gdata Python Client and GoogleCL source code and install it each of them using the following command (you must run it in the directory of each of the 2 packages mentioned above):

sudo python setup.py install

Using GoogleCL is very easy. For example, to upload an image to PicasaWeb into the album named WebUpd8, you would run this command:

google picasa post --title="Web Upd8" myimage.png

Please note that the first time you use each Google service, a link will be displayed on the command line - you'll have to copy this link into your browser to link GoogleCL with your Google account. But this will be required only once.

See a lot of examples on using GoogleCL, here.

Import The World Cup 2010 Fixtures Into Google Calendar [Football]

We're going to be a bit off-topic, but for a good reason: the 2010 Football World Cup is coming and I saw a post on the Ubuntu Planet about a World Cup 2010 Google calendar and had to share it with you.

To make sure you don't miss any game, you can download the calendar as an XML, iCal or simply click HERE and then at the bottom of the page you should see a "Google calendar" icon - click it and it'll import the World Cup 2010 fixtures into your Google Calendar account.

Oh, and a final note: the calendar is in English but supports any timezone so in the last URL above you can edit the "Europe/Bucharest" parameter to fit to your timezone.

Update: another World Cup related article -> How To Watch The World Cup 2010 Live (Online) In Linux [Free]

Thanks to Brett Alton!

Googsystray: Unified Google Services Notifier [Windows, Linux]

Googsystray is a Google Voice, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader and Google Wave checker application for Windows and Linux. The idea is to be able to keep track of all that stuff without having to keep a bunch of browser tabs open, or constantly checking them.

It notifies on new messages, alerts, etc., and provides basic services quickly (Reading or sending a new SMS message, or marking an email read, for example.)


Installing it in Windows is as easy as any other application, just download the installer.

To install Googsystray in Linux, firstly make sure you have Python and pygtk installed, then download the .tar.gz archive and extract it. Open a terminal, navigate to the folder where you have extracted Googsystray, and run the following command:

sudo python ./setup.py install

Then, go to the bin subfolder from your googsystray folder, and double click the googsystray file.

To configure Googsystray, right click it's icon on your systray and select "Preferences":

To open an unread message, left click the service icon (Gmail, etc) in your systray (notification area). And finally, to quickly see what's new, right click a service icon.

[via gulp]

Integrate Google Calendar Into Your Gnome Calendar [Linux]

To integrate Google Calendar events into your Gnome desktop, go to Google Calendar, click on "Settings", then on the "Calendars" tab and then on your calendar's name:

Then, at the bottom there is a section called "Private Address:" > click on the "ICAL" green icon to get your private calendar URL, like in the picture below:

Now all you have to do is open a terminal and paste this:

/usr/lib/evolution-webcal/evolution-webcal URL

replacing URL with your ICAL private URL you got in the step above.

A window will pop up and here is where you can make the update frequency settings (I set mine to update every 30 minutes).

This is how your Google Calendar tasks, appointments, etc will show up in Gnome Calendar:

Please note: evolution-webcal may be in different folders in different distros. (For example in SuSe, it’s in /opt/gnome/lib/evolution-webcal/evolution-webcal). If the above code doesn’t work for you, you can locate evolution-webcal using:

find / -name evolution-webcal

[via paraisolinux]