May 31, 2006
challenge accepted! (i think)
Seth Godin posed a calendar aggregation challenge, effectively describing the goal of EVDB and Eventful. We feel your pain, Seth, and we've been working hard to make it happen.
He then goes on to ask why it's so hard: "If each venue published their schedule as an RSS feed, it seems trivial to put this together." That's a point I can answer: events are hard, not trivial at all. They encompass all of time and space, from the Royals playing at Kauffman Stadium to the guy playing guitar at a nearby bookstore next Friday. Worst of all, the people who know about them write them down on little pieces of paper because it's easiest that way. Most of them have never heard of RSS. Collecting them all into a single place (aka aggregating them) is a huge task, but it's a task we've taken on.
What do we have so far? A way to search for events by location (Kansas City) or radius (10 miles from my house) or tag (baseball) or keyword (Royals) or time (next weekend) or a dozen other ways and combinations. A dozen ways to get those lists of events, including RSS , ICAL, and JSON. A decent-and-getting-better way to give us events in ICAL, RSS (plus microformats), or via our API. Plus a big bunch of events and venues that we've already gathered and cleaned up.
It's not complete by any stretch of the imagination, but it's getting there, and we're committed to making it a reality. And (in my very-humble opinion) we're the ones to get it done. So, challenge accepted.
Posted by chris at 01:42 PM | Comments (2)
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 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)
March 10, 2006
Social Networking and Eventful
Recent email from an Eventful user:
Subject: unforeseen benefits (?) of EVDB
I thought that you'd be amused to know that someone I've never met decided after looking at my Eventful calendar to send me an email asking me on a date.
I guess that's why they call it social networking.
Posted by chris at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2006
New: Labs preference on Eventful
A new tab for EVDB Labs projects has been added to your Eventful preferences. To find it, click on "Preferences" in the upper right corner of any Eventful page, then click on the "EVDB Labs" link to see a set of preferences like this:
Checking these preferences will enable experimental parts of the site. These features aren't ready for prime time, but we think they're already interesting enough to play with.
If any of the Labs features gets in the way (or gets on your nerves), just uncheck the preference and Bob's your uncle. We suspect that you'll like these enough to keep them around, though. Enjoy!
Posted by chris at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)