For a while now, I’ve been wanting to connect the wealth of musical performance schedules on MySpace to the elmcity calendar project. For example, here’s the MySpace page for Jatoba, three young guys from Brattleboro whose eclectic, high-energy, acoustic string instrumentals and vocals have inspired me the couple of times I’ve seen them around town.

As is typical, there’s a calendar on their page. So I should be able to plug its iCalendar feed — and more specifically, the Keene-based performances in that feed — into the Keene calendar hub. But MySpace doesn’t export iCalendar feeds. What to do?

Today I hit on a solution. Here’s the recipe:

1. Visit a band’s MySpace page:

2. Click the (view all) link on the calendar to arrive here:

3. Copy the URL of the (view all) page, paste it into FuseCal, arrive here:

4. Filter the list, arrive here:

5. Click the Add to my calendar bar, arrive here:

6. Click Other Calendar, arrive here:

That’s your iCalendar feed URL in the box. In this example, the feed contains just two entries for Jatoba’s two upcoming Keene performances. Here’s the first: 

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Public Display Inc//FuseCal Software//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
URL:http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=
 bandprofile.listAllShows&friendid=273136461&n=JATOBA
SUMMARY:VENDETTA  \, Keene\, New Hampshire  - free
DTSTART:20090507T213000
END:VEVENT

You can subscribe to that URL directly in your calendar program. If you’re an elmcity project curator, you’ll want to take one extra step to syndicate this calendar into your hub:

7. Bookmark the FuseCal URL.

Now Jatoba’s Keene performances will appear on the elmcity calendar, courtesy of FuseCal and Delicious. And neither MySpace nor Jatoba had to get involved. The web’s funny that way.

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