iPhone 3.0 features Calendar Subscriptions, where you can enter the URL for a shared calendar and near-instantly add it to your iPhone.

That’s all well and good to share a family or business calendar, but what about more wide-ranging ones? What about national holidays, religious events, movie release dates, sports team schedules? Luckily, Apple’s already made this simple for Mac OS X iCal users, and even more luckily it works just as simply for iPhone 3.0 users as well.

We’ll share how, after the break…

Adding Subscription Calendars

Just point Mobile Safari on your iPhone to: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/. Apple provides categories for Most Recent, Most Popular, Alphabetical, Staff Picks, plus a handy search box. Once you find a calendar that interests you, click the Download link.

Your iPhone will ask if you want to subscribe (see image above), and once you confirm, will offer to take you straight to your calendar events to see what’s new.

Viewing Subscribed Calendars

Each subscription is given its own calendar in the iPhone Calendar App, so you can choose just that calendar to view. All views, month, day, and details are supported.

Removing Subscribed Calendars

Not all shared calendars are created — or maintained — equally. Movie Release Dates doesn’t seem to include June or July yet (making it rather useless at the moment), though national holidays and others seem quite up to date.

If you subscribe to a calendar that later disappoints, just head on over to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendar. You’ll see all your subscriptions listed under Accounts. Choose the one you want to edit or remove, and hit Delete Account if it displeases you.

Share Your Favorites

If you have or find any great shared calendars, please drop a comment below and let us know about them!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 3.0 How To: Easily Subscribe to US Holidays, Sports Team Schedules, Movie Release Dates, and More!

Apple’s MobileMe News shares how to view calendars published to MobileMe on iPhone:

MobileMe members who use iCal on a Mac can publish calendars to MobileMe to share with friends and family. To publish an iCal calendar, simply click the calendar and select Publish from the Calendar menu. You can then send an email inviting other iCal users to subscribe.

Your friends and family can now subscribe to your published calendars and view them on their iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 3.0. They simply view the invitation email on their device and tap the link to set up the subscription to the calendar. For more details on how to publish calendars to MobileMe and subscribe to them, please read this support article.

Subscribing to calendars is a great new feature in iPhone 3.0, but is buried in the Settings. This, however, looks like a much friendlier way to set them up. Hopefully commonly shared calendars, like holidays, sports team schedules, etc. will set up some similarly easy add options for iPhone users.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

How To: View Calendars Published to MobileMe on iPhone