What's LuckyCal?

LuckyCal finds LuckyCal Events, or matches, for you. LuckyCal Events can be anything from: your favorite band playing in a nearby club, last minute tickets to a game, a distant friend travelling nearby on business, or when a local friend can meet for lunch - the possibilities are endless!

LuckyCal does this by mixing together whatever information you provide -- interests, friends, and/or schedule (via an online calendar). The more information you provide, the more LuckyCal can find for you.

With LuckyCal, your calendar doesn't just remind you what needs to get done; it's a dynamic, personalized tool to make it easier to do the things you want to do.

What does LuckyCal do with my personal information?

LuckyCal takes the information you provide and looks for matches in other calendars of interest to you: bands, friends, clients and customers. When it finds a match, it notifies you. If you match with another person's calendar, it notifies them too.

So, you're showing my calendar to all my friends?

No! That'd be creepy. LuckyCal looks for matches: when you're near to where a friend will be. And you control how "near" that has to be. Here's an example: I travel a lot. So does my kid sister. Don't tell our Dad, but I don't actually care about my sister's schedule unless she's coming to the east coast. And she doesn't care about mine unless I'm flying west. LuckyCal tells me when she's in NYC, or if I'm in Mountain View, so we can meet up. When LuckyCal finds a match, it notifies both of us.

Just so we're absolutely clear: LuckyCal NEVER gives out ANY information from your calendar. And in turn, you'll never see your friends' calendar information.

Oh, so you're selling my calendar information to other organizations, right?

What?! NO! That'd be even more creepy! Seriously. Yuck. Again, LuckyCal looks for matches. An example: now that David Lee Roth is back in the band, I'm mildly interested in seeing Van Halen live. I don't really care about their tour dates unless they come by Boston. If they do, that date will match with my location and calendar and I'll get notified. Just to be clear, the band doesn't receive any information about where I am.

How do you know where I am?

LuckyCal makes some educated guesses. To make it sound more impressive, call them "heuristics." Whenever you put a location in the event in your calendar, LuckyCal will assume you're at that location for the duration of the event. If another event overlaps, it'll assume the later location is now accurate. If you don't set a location, LuckyCal will use whatever location seems most reasonable -- in many cases it will default to your home address.

How do you know who my friends and contacts are, and where they are?

You tell LuckyCal who your friends and contacts are. You can import them from a bunch of different places: Facebook, Outlook, etc. You choose who you want to be part of your Lucky Network. LuckyCal encourages your friends to provide their calendars so that its guesses heuristics are more accurate. If a friend isn't part of LuckyCal, it will assume that she/he is at whatever address you gave LuckyCal for them.

Here's why that's cool: I have a lot of relatives who I'd love to see more, but I'm never going to convince them to use an online calendar. However, if I tell LuckyCal that Uncle R. is in Chicago, it'll notify me when I travel to Chicago so I remember to give him a ring.

I'm confused. What's a "Friend"? What's a "Contact"? What's the difference?

It is a bit confusing. We're trying to keep stuff flexible and simple. Here's how it works:

Friends are people that you want to know about your travel plans and location. Inside LuckyCal, they're people who you've decided to match calendars with. They never see any of the details on your calendar. Instead LuckyCal will use the location information in their calendars and the information in yours to find out when you're near each other. And when you are, you'll both get notified. Friends don't happen automatically: only when someone accept your invitation in LuckyCal or you accept theirs.

Contacts are people from your addressbooks. You will get notified when you're near them, but LuckyCal only matches against whatever address you've told us. Your contacts will NOT get told that you're coming to town unless you decide to tell them.

Most people will have far more contacts than friends.

Do you tell ALL my friends where I am?

No. Only those for whom it might be relevant. You configure LuckyCal as to how close someone needs to be before you both get notified.

Can't this be used for stalking?

We worried about this when building LuckyCal. A lot. We took several steps to avoid this being a stalking tool. First and foremost, if you don't want someone to be matching to your calendar, remove them as a friend in LuckyCal. That's simple. Secondly, notifications for users are only generated if both sets of "distance matching criteria" are met. Let's go back to my kid sister traveling from out west. According to my parents, she's a very busy go-getter, so she might only be wiling to travel 20 miles to see me. On the other hand, my parents think I'm a big slacker, so I might be willing to spend more time, driving 50 miles to see her. For a match to get generated, she'd have to be within 20 miles -- her more restrictive criteria automatically wins.

So if you want to minimize how much someone knows about your travel, set the matching criteria very small, or to "Never". Voila, no stalking. But seriously, just remove them as a friend.

What if I don't want people to know where I am?

Mark your event as private. Pretty much all calendar programs give you the option of marking an event that you create as 'private'.

Private Events can be handled by LuckyCal in one of two ways:

• If you choose should be ignored, LuckyCal will act as if these events did not exist; LuckyCal assumes you're at your home address.

• If you choose should not notify friends, LuckyCal will use these events to look for LuckyCal Events with your friends, but will not notify them if a LuckyCal Event is found. The other important difference is that the matching will be done as if your friends were at their home address: since you're not 'sharing' this event from your calendar with them, their calendar will not be used in the matching either.

  LuckyCal will continue to match private events with your interests, like touring bands, but will not show matches in locations that other people can see, like your Facebook Mini-feed.

Here's an example:

I have a lot of friends in San Francisco. When I plan a trip out there, I can't possibly meet them all. And some of them might annoyed if they found out I was coming and didn't make time to meet with them.

If I use should be ignored, LuckyCal effectively doesn't know I'm travelling, so no one gets annoyed. But it also means I don't hear about Ozomatli playing at the Castro Theater.

If I use should not notify, I see a heap of matches with all of my friends, and I have to decide who to email or call to tell them that I'm coming -- LuckyCal doesn't do it automatically -- and if they're out of town, on their own trip, I won't find out. But I do hear about Ozomatli playing at the Castro Theater.

How do I make an event private?

Look for a checkbox that says "private", or "hidden" on the event.

Why can't I send out invites to my friends?

While we're in sneak preview mode, we might turn off invites if we're having problems we need to fix. Also, Facebook limits how many invites we can send out on your behalf.

I invited some friends, but they didn't get the invite. Why?

While we're in sneak preview mode, we might turn off invites if we're having problems we need to fix. Also, Facebook limits how many invites we can send out on your behalf.

Can I choose which calendars a friend can match with?

Click on the friend's name in the list. That'll take you to a screen where you can choose calendars.

How does LuckyCal keep my friends and interests up to date?

For certain systems, such as Facebook, LuckyCal runs out each night and updates your list. To turn this off, find Facebook Calendar on your Profile page and click on Facebook, it'll let you unset the automatic syncing.

Why do some of my Facebook friends all have the wrong address?

LuckyCal pulls your Facebook friends's adress from their Current Location, which is located at Profile => edit => Contact. If that's wrong or empty, you should tell them to fix it.

What calendars do you work with?

Right now, we're working with pretty much all iCal calendars (Outlook 2003 and newer, iCal.app, Sunbird), Google and Facebook.

Why don't you work with earlier versions of Outlook?

Older versions of Outlook don't publish iCal feeds correctly. Or read them terribly well. Which is ironic, given that Microsoft helped design the standard, back in '98.

Where can I see my LuckyCal Events?

You can see as notifications in Facebook, or as as tiny calendar in your Facebook Wall or Boxes page, on your Google Calendar, in your email or in your Calendar (Outlook 2003 and newer, iCal.app, or the personalized Lucky Calendar created just for you).

How do I stop LuckyCal Events being emailed to me?

Go to your Profile in LuckyCal and turn off the Email Notification.

How do I stop LuckyCal Events showing up in Facebook?

Go to your Profile in LuckyCal and turn off the Facebook Notifications.

How do I stop LuckyCal Events showing up in my calendar?

Unsubscribe to the Lucky Calendar iCal feed. This is dependent on your Calendar client, but all of them let you simply delete it.

Where do you get your band gig dates from?

Today? Ticketmaster. We're intending to add-in events posted on MySpace and Facebook soon.

I'm confused by the distance matching criteria. Can you explain it better?

We'll try. If you're just plain close to a friend, you'll match. That's the easy one. We figured that if you've already traveled a ways, you might be willing to travel a little further to see a buddy, so that's the second pair of distances (how far from home are you, how far are you willing to travel). The last case is when your buddy is traveling: how far do they have be from home before you're willing to travel further.

I live in Boston, but all of the Red Sox games just clutter up my calendar, so can I see only away games?

If you click on the Red Sox on the Interest screen, and then on "You will match when...", you can select a setup that only shows away games, fair weather fan.

Why don't I have any LuckyCal Events?

Have you added any Interests? Friends? Calendars?

How do I add/change my email address?

On the Profile page, click on "change" next to Email.

Is there really patented technology behind this?

Absolutely. We'll tell you the number if you ask nicely.

I appreciate that you've tried so hard, but I want out. How do I unsubscribe?

Go to your Profile page and click on Unsubscribe, at the bottom of the left column.