About the program:

30 Rock Boxes connects the web-enabled calendar 30 Boxes with the RockBox application RockCalendar, which is available for iRiver H320. H340, and H100 players, Apple iPod (G3 and G4), or the Archos Ondio and Recorder. If you don't have a RockBox-enabled music player, then 30 Rock Boxes is probably going to be of little interest to you.

If you do have a RockBox-enabled player with RockCalendar installed, however, I highly recommend you check out 30 Boxes. It's a web-enabled calendar that allows event sharing, syndicated feeds, and all sorts of other goodness, including one of the cleverest event entry widgets I've yet seen - and now, with 30 Rock Boxes, you can copy your 30 Boxes calendar to RockCalendar and carry it around with you. Enter data on the simple-to-use web calender, and then copy it onto the player with the click of an icon.

Pay attention to that "copy" in the paragraph above - this isn't a synchronisation, the 30 Boxes calendar entries simply overwrite what's on RockCalendar at the time 30 Rock Boxes is run. If you use RockCalendar to edit your entries, you risk losing those edits!).

Running 30 Rock Boxes:

30 Rock Boxes requires an up-to-date installation of Java (version 1.5 or better), which you can download here (Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux), or here (Mac OSX 10.4.2) Note that Mac users will have to tell OSX to use the new version once downloaded - see instructions).

Once you have Java, you can install 30 Rock Boxes by selecting the download link. 30 Rock Boxes runs as a java webstart application, which means that it will be downloaded onto your computer, and will ask you for permission to run. If you grant permission (either once off with "Yes" or permanently with "Always"), 30 Rock Boxes will install itself and put an icon on the desktop which you can run it with. 30 Rock Boxes will automatically check for updates and bug fixes whenever it starts, so you never have to worry about getting the latest version!

WebStart 30 Rock Boxes

The first time you run it, it will prompt you for some information to allow it to run:

An authorization token. This is needed to show that you've allowed 30 Rock Boxes to access your calendar. To find this out, click on the link displayed in the help box. That will open a browser page asking 30 Boxes for an authorization token, which you should copy and paste back into this field. This method allows 30 Rock Boxes to access your calendar without having to store your password or login anywhere.
Optionally, include and exclude tags. More information.
Also, for those who access the web through a proxy, the proxy host and port information. These can be left blank usually, but if you know you need a proxy for web access, fill them in with the same proxy settings as your web browser uses.

Once you've entered those details, plug your player into the USB port of your computer, wait a few seconds for the computer to recognise it, then click "Save".

A little dialog will pop up to show you that the program is working. If your rockbox player has not been plugged in, you will be prompted to do that. If all goes well, the dialog should vanish after a couple of seconds. Congratulations! Your RockBox player's calendar now has your 30 Boxes calendar replicated on it!

In the event that something goes wrong, you will be notified of the problem and 30 Rock Boxes will exit. If you understand what the problem is, just run 30 Rock Boxes again to retry the process.

Bugs?

Surely not! I've done my best to make sure that 30 Rock Boxes works as perfectly as possible, but - well, let's just assume someone will spot something that's wrong. If that someone is you, email me at thirtyrockboxes@kludge.co.uk and let me know what's wrong. If you didn't find anything wrong, email me at the same address and let me know that! I like to hear that!

Acknowledgements

RockCalendar was created by Ben "Paprica" Basha (Spicy!)
"Working" graphics by Wednesday White (Saucy!)
30 Rock Boxes uses the Apache Jakarta HttpClient library.
30 Rock Boxes uses the BrowserLauncher2 library.
30 Rock Boxes uses James Elliot's "Relative Layout" LayoutManager.
30 Rock Boxes uses Santhosh Kumar's Copy/Paste Textfield enhancement.