If you have an Android phone like me, you probably use Google Calendar. I like the way it integrates with my contacts so that I can schedule events with people. I like the idea of it integrating with my Google+ contacts to automatically create a calendar of birthdays that I don’t want to miss. There’s a glitch in that, but I’ve created a new app to get around it, called Selected Birthdays.

The glitch is that the builtin Birthdays calendar has three options: show your Google Contacts, show your contacts and the people in your Google+ circles, or nothing. I have a number of contacts who are attractive and successful people, but I’m sorry to say I have no interest in knowing when their birthdays are. Natasha Lomas has even stronger feelings.

Google doesn’t let you change the builtin Birthdays calendar, but it does let you create a new calendar and fill it with the birthdays that interest you. My new web app, Selected Birthdays, automates that process. It goes through your contacts, finds the ones who have shared their birthdays with you, and gives you a checklist. You decide whose birthdays to include, and Select Birthdays will create a new calendar with those birthdays. It’ll also give you the option of hiding Google’s built-in birthday calendar.

I wrote the Selected Birthdays app in Javascript with the Google+ and Google Calendar APIs. Ian Jones was a big help in recommending the moment.js library, which I used to manipulate dates. Bootflat helped me add a bit of visual style.

For the app to work you’ll have to authorize it to read your contacts and write your calendars. For your privacy, the app communicates directly between your browser and Google’s server; once you download it there is no further contact with my server. There is no way for me to see or edit your contacts or calendars. You can verify that in the source code.

Please let me know if you have any comments, questions or suggestions. I have also made the code available on GitHub for free under the Apache License, if you want to build on it. A number of people have said they wish they had an app like this for Facebook. If enough of you repeat that, I’ll look into it!