Yet more calendar requirements

Ben Teitelbaum of Internet2 pushes his availability to his web site from his calendar application. He “takes Apple iCal’s iCalendar file and strips out the subject, location and agenda for each item, leaving only an availability mask” which he feeds to PHP iCalendar. This makes scheduling time for a phone call with Ben very easy.

Calendar applications should provide a configurable feed for this data that could easily be picked up by another person or by a blog plugin to do what Ben has done with slick scripts.

Oracle Calendar allows for searching of resources and people but you have to anchor the search with the correct starting characters. Example: I can search for the DoIT ARCH LCD PROJECTOR with DoIT ARCH and find the item but not with ARCH LCD PROJECTOR.

Name aliases: Oracle Calendar doesn’t understand (in LDAP lookups as we have it configured at least) that Jim might equal James.

Links I use in my folksonomy demo

Here is the long list of links I use when I give my Folksonomy and Web2.0 talk…

There are three sections:

* Tagging and Multiple Tag browsing
* Folksonomy and Social Discovery
* Cool Apps, REST and RSS

Continue reading →

Best Practices and General Requirements for Collaboration Tools

This link is a pdf version the Best Practices and General Requirements for Collaboration Tools document the Enterprise Collaboration Tools team developed about a year ago.

Three forces for migration to SOA

There are three forces that we can bring to bear to push change to a Service Oriented Architecture.

(1) Architectural Purity

>This is the force of arguing that it is the right thing to do. You can state a lot of reasons why it is the right thing to do like: composite applications, workflow, ROI, integration cost reduction, etc. Basically, you stand on high ground and preach that this is the correct approach. This is a difficult sell to pull off especially in a heterogeneous and feudal enterprise like a higher education institution.

(2) Consumer Request

>This is force of the consumer of the information or service asking for a new way of getting information. The statement goes something like, “I need to know X from your system. I would prefer to get that information in a Web Service rather than a flat file.” The reasons for making this argument may have to do with timeliness of data (it needs to be up-to-date at this moment) or ownership of the business rules (e.g. you have all of the data to determine if X is true so you should just provide the answer instead of sending me the data so I can derive the answer) or possibly wanting to be on the front edge of technology.

(3) Provider Demand

>This is the force of the data provider (or source or system of record) deciding they will no longer support older interface styles (flat file transfers et al) and instead will only support a Web service interface. This argument can bring to bear cost incentives. The provider can state, “if you use the Web service, we will make sure that the Web service is upgrade and updated. If you must have a flat-file, then you must pay for all of the work to develop, maintain and deliver the file”. They can also bring policy enforcement into play. “Any request for a flat-file will be reviewed and you will have to make an argument why you must have the flat file rather than use our Web service”.

The Provider Demand force is the one that has the most weight behind it and is the one that is mostly like to carry day. We can argue about the Architectural Purity of a SOA and we can request Web services but that will fall on deaf ears or at least un-funded ears. When the data providers demand that the data consumers use their Services or pay the bill, then we will see rapid adoption of SOA.

Three more Calendar Requirements

I would also like to be able to tag calendar events with keywords then bring up a list of events that match a given keyword or suite of keywords. I have a bunch of presentations that I am giving on my calendar. I don’t remember what all of them are. I would like to search for events with the keyword: presenting and see the list. I have to go through my calendar, week by week, to look at the up-coming presentations.

Also, I want to be able to bind email to a calendar event. I have an email request to present at a given time and place. I want to be able to attach that email to the event.

Finally, I should be able to attach, flag, tag events which I do not control but have been invited too. I should be able to add my own notes for myself, my own details, etc. even though I do not control the invite.

Sleepy = Good




Sleepy = Good

Originally uploaded by jimphelps.

Lola after several days of hard play and fun. Sleepy dogs are good dogs.

Why don’t calendars do Time Zones?

My laptop and my palm both understand Time Zones. I understand Time Zones. Why don’t my calendar applications (Oracle’s Calendar and the Palm Calendar in the handheld) understand Time Zones. What I want:

(1) When I create an appointment I should be able to mark the Time Zone for the appointment. I should also be able to make appointments that are Time Zone neutral – not tied to a Time Zone.
(2) My clients (Palm and Desktop and Web) should all understand Time Zones and should be able to shift the alarms to compensate for my changes in Time Zone.

How would I use this? Well…

– If I get an invite to join a conference call at 11AM EST, I could just enter that time without adjusting for my local time zone. Same with UTC time.
– If I changed time zones (say fly from Madison to San Francisco), my alarms would change to be appropriate. As it is now, if I fly to California, I need to keep track of the fact that the 10AM meeting is really a 10AM Central time so I need to set an alarm 2 hours earlier.
– But I can’t do a global change because some things might be dinners in California so they need to stay on Pacific time.

We have these bright machines that understand our location and time zones. This is the perfect task to offload to these systems. It is simple and fussy and requires sifting through events and applying rules. Perfect work for a computer.

Why don’t calendars do time zones?

My laptop and my palm both understand Time Zones. I understand Time Zones. Why don’t my calendar applications (Oracle’s Calendar and the Palm Calendar in the handheld) understand Time Zones. What I want:

(1) When I create an appointment I should be able to mark the Time Zone for the appointment. I should also be able to make appointments that are Time Zone neutral – not tied to a Time Zone.
(2) My clients (Palm and Desktop and Web) should all understand Time Zones and should be able to shift the alarms to compensate for my changes in Time Zone.

How would I use this? Well…

– If I get an invite to join a conference call at 11AM EST, I could just enter that time without adjusting for my local time zone. Same with UTC time.
– If I changed time zones (say fly from Madison to San Francisco), my alarms would change to be appropriate. As it is now, if I fly to California, I need to keep track of the fact that the 10AM meeting is really a 10AM Central time so I need to set an alarm 2 hours earlier.
– But I can’t do a global change because some things might be dinners in California so they need to stay on Pacific time.

We have these bright machines that understand our location and time zones. This is the perfect task to offload to these systems. It is simple and fussy and requires sifting through events and applying rules. Perfect work for a computer.

Cory Doctorow’s New Book – Someone Comes to Town

Cory Doctorow has a new book out Someone Comes to Town

I really enjoyed his previous books: Eastern Standard Tribe and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

Cory publishes his books as free eBooks and print books. As he said (can’t find the quote) – I’m selling more books because of the free publicity I get by people passing around the free eBooks. I might loose a few sales but I am gaining much more.

Cory used to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Looking forward to reading this new novel. Thanks for the good work(s) Cory.