What are vCalendar and iCalendar?
vCalendar and iCalendar are standard formats used by many calendar applications as a way to exchange schedule items with others. They are simple text files which you can download and import into your date book program so that you instantly have all the COM events in your schedule. We publish these files for each month. The "Subscribe to Calendar" link is an iCalendar file that is intended for applications that can subscribe to and regularly receive updates from an online calendar. Please note: The calendar for future months can change. So if, say, you download October's iCalendar file in September, those items may change and you may need to download the file again in October. Once a calendar is published to the main calendar page, it is final—barring any unforeseen circumstances.
iCalendar is the newer of the two formats, and is supported by most applications, including Outlook on Windows and iCal on the Mac. We also provide vCalendar for older applications, and for users of Palm PDAs.
How to Use these Files
How you use these files will depend on what application you use. Find out which format your program supports, and download that file, which will typically involve right-clicking on the link and choosing to save the file to your computer. Then, open your calendar application and go through its import process to add the items to your schedule. A note for Outlook users: If you left-click the link, or download the file then double-click on it, you will only get one event. You need to open Outlook and choose "Import and Export" from the File menu.
If your software supports subscribing to a published calendar (Apple iCal and Mozilla Calendar do), then you should right-click on the "Subscribe to Calendar" link and copy the link location. Create a new subscription in your calendar program and paste the link into the URL field. Your calendar will now always have the latest event information from the COM web site.
Hopefully, this will be of use to you. If you have further questions, feel free to ask. I most likely will not be able to answer any application-specific questions, but I'll do what I can.
A Few Applications that Support vCalendar and/or iCalendar
Please note: Standard file formats are kind of like the Bible—there are many different interpretations. A program may say it supports a particular format, but there could be a quirk in their implementation that keeps them from importing our particular files. I can't guarantee what success you will have with any of the following programs.