Local basketball fans with Blackberrys, iPhones, Outlook, Palm devices and more, rejoice! I’ve uploaded the 2009-2010 basketball schedules for UNC, NCSU, and the entire ACC in .CSV, .ICS, and Google Calendar formats.

The new ACC calendar includes not only the game times for every ACC game, but also links to ESPN’s team pages and the name of the venue where the game is being played. This enables some applications to include a quick link to a map showing the venue’s location.

In addition to the comprehensive 276-game conference-wide calendar, both complete and home-only calendars are available for UNC and N.C. State.

Outlook-Based Blackberry/iPhone/Palm Users

• After downloading the appropriate CSV file (see below), create a new folder in your in Outlook calendar (Bball10, for example). Use the File | Import and Export… to import from “another program or file”, then “Comma Separated File (Windows)”. Be sure to pick your new calendar folder as the target. This will set up the schedule in your new sub-calendar where you can make whatever changes you want.
• iPhone Users – Open iTunes with the iPhone connected and sync (you may have to specify your newly added calendar in the “Info” tab’s Calendars section.) Now you can view the basketball schedules as their own sub-calendar or as a part of all calendars.
• If you have a device which doesn’t support subcalendars (like Treos and older Palm devices), you’ll need to move the basketball events into your main calendar. When you are happy with the way the subcalendar looks, change the calendar view to “Events” (instead of 7-day or 31-Day or whatever view you’re using). “Select All” from the list, and drag them over to your main “Calendar” (The Treo and other Palm Handhelds only sync to the main calendar – time for Palm to get with the program on that one!). If you want to keep your sub-calendar intact, use Ctrl-drag instead of plain drag. That will create a copy of each event to the main Calendar and keep the Bball08 calendar in place. Sync your handheld to copy the events to the handheld.
• CSV Files (right click on the link and “Save As…”):
  • UNC – Download UNCBB_10_complete.csv (version: 8/26/09)
  • UNC (Home-only) – Download UNCBB_10_home.csv (version: 8/26/09)
  • NCSU – Download NCSUBB_10_complete.csv (version: 8/26/09)
  • NCSU (Home-only) – Download NCSUBB_10_home.csv (version: 8/26/09)
  • ACC COMPLETE – Download ACCBB_10_complete.csv (version: 8/26/09)

Google Calendar Users

Perhaps the best way to follow the ACC’s basketball calendar is to add it to your Google Calendar set. The Google Calendar is a dynamic, subscribable calendar that offers much flexibility. For instance, several game times have not been announced. As soon as they are set, events will automatically change from being all-day events to having a specific start time. Also, Google Calendar offers a map link for quick viewing of the game’s venue location.

Google has created a simple interface for the iPhone’s Safari browser which allows one to view and implement ACC Calendar events. It also recognizes hyperlinks in the event’s description, so easy access to the team files is achievable by using the online Google Calendar app. To view these add the calendar using the link below, then visit http://calendar.google.com from within Safari on the iPhone.

(Note: Gogoraleigh will carry the home-only calendars as an integrated feature of its normal gogo-calendar, so they will not appear as stand-alone Google Calendars).

To view a Google Calendar, click on the appropriate link below. To add the calendar to your set of Google Calendars, click on the “+Subscribe” bottom on the bottom right:

• UNC Google Calendar
• NCSU Google Calendar
• ACC COMPLETE Google Calendar

iCal Users

There are two options:

• Use iCalTextImport to import the .CSV version (linked above) of the schedule.
• Download the .ics files and import them into iCal.
  • UNC – .ics file (version: 8/26/08)
  • NCSU – .ics file (version: 8/26/08)
  • ACC COMPLETE – .ics file (version: 8/26/08)

Palm Desktop and Yahoo! Calendar Users

My brother-in-law taught me a neat trick. In order to get a CSV calendar into Palm Desktop, one can use Yahoo! Calendar as an intermediary. After downloading the .CSV file from gogoraleigh, open Yahoo! Calendar and click “Options” in the upper right. Then select “Import/Export”. Go to “Import From Outlook”, selected the filename, and click “Import”. Yahoo! Calendar users are done at this point. Palm Desktop users need to verify the import, then return to the “Export to Palm Desktop” section. Pick your target and hit “Export”. The resulting .DBA file should then be ready to import into Palm Desktop.

Beware! It appears easy to lump Yahoo! Calendar events that are unrelated into one calendar. If you are simply using Yahoo! Calendar as a conduit to Palm Desktop, verify that your calendar is clean before originally importing the .CSV file, otherwise unrelated events will get lumped with basketball dates in your resulting .DBA file.

RSS

Each of the three Google Calendars carries an RSS feed. This might be an interesting addition to your RSS Feed collection because each calendar change will appear in the feed. This is most useful as an alert to a game time changes in the schedule. The RSS Feed for each calendar can be found when viewing each individual Google Calendar.

Notes

Calendars are apt to change, so check back occasionally for updates. To determine the version of your schedule, open the note associated with any event, and look for the version number. If your calendar is older than those listed above, simply delete the events in Outlook in your old one and import the events of the newer file. Google Calendar is dynamically updated on the back end, so you always know you are up to date when using Google Calendar.

Use at your own risk. I do not accept responsibility for any consequences resulting from errors in the schedule.