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April 27, 2006
Tales from the Mash Pit II
I was more prepared for this Mash Pit than the last one. Even with that, it has still taken me nearly two weeks to blog about it. I did get a Flickr set uploaded pretty quickly, but I digress. The 25-cent summary:
Two projects that stood out in my mind were Mapendar, which I helped work on, and Lovendar. As you can probably guess from their names, they're both mutations of the standard calendar concept in order to better use online event resources. (Details for each project, plus all other Mash Pit projects past and future, are available on the Mash Pit wiki.)
Mapendar is an attempt to radically redefine the calendar interface. It throws out the idea that the grid of little boxes is king, and replaces it with views into the location, flow, or content of your events. The map and photo views are novel enough, but my favorite aspect is the lifeline, a "piano roll" that shows events as they really are: stretching from past to future, zoomable from the minute-by-minute level to years at a time, related to other events on parallel lifelines. It all exists in mockups at the moment, but the concept is pretty compelling.
Lovendar serves to answer a different calendar question entirely: why should we care? People busy enough to require a calendar are probably too busy to keep it up-to-date, and people who have enough free time to take care of a calendar probably aren't doing enough to warrant it, right? Lovendar makes both those groups happy by suggesting ways to make time for the ones we love most... even ourselves.
Both projects have great promise, and I look forward to working on them at future Mash Pits. Maybe we can put one together in San Diego so I don't have to travel so far.
Posted by chris at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2006
Spotted in the Wild: search Eventful from your phone
As seen on Programmable Web: 411sync now provides an event search via SMS, WAP, or email using the EVDB API.Posted by chris at 11:53 AM | Comments (1)
April 13, 2006
Google Calendar (Our Icon is Internet Famous)
So you've probably heard about Google Calendar by now. You might even know that Eventful integrated with Google Calendar on day one. If not, take a look at any Eventful page with events on it and click on the "Add to calendar" button. Google Calendar is on there, along with Rabble and Yahoo! Calendar. Neat, huh?
Here's the fun part. If you look at the calendar settings for any Google calendar (hidden under that little drop-down arrow thingy), there's a familiar icon near the bottom of the page. Yep, that's our ICAL icon, pixel for pixel. You're welcome, Google!
Posted by chris at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2006
We got Farked
...or rather, the demand for the Impeachment of George W. Bush was. It got us an interesting little traffic spike.
Posted by chris at 09:54 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2006
the Performulator, its use, and benefits
Looking to add a performer to all of his/her event listings at once? Tired of the tedium of adding the same image to myriad events? You, sir/madam, need the Performulator.
Simply enable the Performulator in your EVDB Labs preferences on Eventful, then perform an event search for your performer's name (or any keywords that would identify both performer and events). Once you see a list of suitable events, click "Show Performulator" from the Tools menu on the lower right.
The page will refresh to display a Performulator menu of possible performers, plus a checkbox for each event in your list. Uncheck any events that don't involve your chosen performer, and click the Performulate button. It may take a few seconds.
The end result is either anticlimactic or disturbing, depending on your expectations: your checked events are gone from the list! Never fear; that just means they no longer need Performulation. Continue with additonal pages of events, or click through to the performer's page to see the fruits of your labor.
And such fruits! With the Performulator at your disposal, adding an image to all a performer's events is as simple as adding the image once to the performer, then Performulating away. Try it and be amazed!
Please enjoy this Performulator and send along any suggestions or comments you may have about its performance or ease-of-use. Good day!
Posted by chris at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)
Spotted in the Wild: Dublin theatre listings
Eventful feeds for Dublin theatres have been added to the Irish Open Directory, an OPML-based social bookmark listing.Posted by chris at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2006
Spotted in the Wild: Pandora Recommends with Eventful
Jacob Smith let us know that he added Eventful performer links to his Pandora Recommends plugin for Wordpress. I like the way this one works, looking up performers to see if they're already in EVDB, then displaying either the performer page on Eventful or a New Performer link, as appropriate.Posted by chris at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)
Spotted in the Wild: Eventful + 30boxes = crazy delicious
Rajlogs posted a way to add Eventful feeds to a 30boxes calendar. It's more a quick hack than a mashup, but it was useful enough that I applied it to my 30boxes calendar immediately. Raj also gets extra points for encouraging API use, even though it's not strictly necessary in this case.Posted by chris at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)