Google Calendar Beta Available
April 13, 2006 | 1 Comment
I found out from Matt today that Google Calendar is now available! Matt has been waiting for this for awhile. If you have been too, go get your account, it’s easy and worth it.
The interface on this new product is great, very similar to GMail or any of the other Google services. However, I do have a couple complaints.
They did not implement any sort of desktop plugin for synchronization. I’ve been playing with Airset for a few months now, and it has this functionality. As a guy who needs to use our institutional Sun Java Enterprise System Calendar Server to interoperate with co-workers, Outlook is my glue, and desktop sync would make my life easier.
My other complaint is that there is basically no integration between Calendar and GMail. I want similar functionality to how Zimbra is able to detect dates inside emails you receive and allow right click capable add to calendar. If you haven’t seen this yet, go watch their demo, it’s slick.
OK, so these are frosting, but I expect perfection from Google! I’m sure these features and more will be slowly rolled into the product over time.
Tags: airset, calendar, gmail, google, google calendar, Sun Java Enterprise System Calendar Server, web 2.0, web20, zimbra
Ultimate Directory of Services
March 13, 2006 | 1 Comment
With the many diverse services we offer our users in higher education providing an easy way to find them can often be a challenge. Many institutions have attacked this issue in a series of ways varying degrees of success. It was with this in mind that I’m sure led Middlebury College to develop a service they call “Go”.
This creative solution basically attachs services to keywords to services. These keywords can then be simply appended to the URL ‘go.middlebury.edu’ or just ‘go’ on campus. For example, someone on campus can simply type ‘go/registrar’ and immediately get where they want to go. According to some of their IT guys, this idea started quietly and gradually. The underground movement soon picked up and go became a very poplular service. I can see why.
As an added benefit, they have created a “GOtionary” which is presented to you if you enter a keyword they do not have linked to a service, or you can simply browse it by go directly to go. To add to the power of this system, Middlebury also solicits constant feedback about what should be added to their “GOtionary”. They’ve also created a browser toolbar to bubble up the power of go into their users browsers.
A more common approach for many institutions is to build a monolithic portal application structure where all the various services are linked in (hopefully) appropriate locations. This is a model we at Plymouth State University have operated under for years. This approach has been successful for us, but I think it is interesting to compare the two. These are the questions I ask anyone reading:
Which is more scalable?
Which is more flexible?
Which is more user-centered?
Which rewards repeat users?
Which most intuitive?
What are the learning curves for each, if any?
Are there major drawbacks to one over the other?
Are there major benefits to one that I am glazing over?
Which is the right solution?
Remember, we’re talking purely about findability of services and ease of accessing them. Not about integration, security, identity management, or any of these types of things.
Tags: directory, findability, higher education, keyword, keywords, middlebury, portal, web, web development, web portal, web20, web_20
Google’s Next Big Thing!
March 12, 2006 | Leave a Comment
It was announced this week that Google bought Writely! Clearly this is their first step in building a fully web based office sweet of applications that will hopefully rival Microsoft.
I’ve had some limited email correspondence with Jen Mazzon who is part of the Writely team. As we’ve started using Writely in small groups at Plymouth State University, we’ve discoverer some great power in it’s collaboration abilities. With some APIs and similar integration opportunities, we could see using Writely on a much larger scale. She has always been very responsive and willing to consider our suggestions for improvements and new features. I wish her the best of luck in this exciting new endeavor.
Calendar appears to be around the corner, this gives them word processing… I’d like a spreadsheet application, maybe iRows? Or how about an presentation solution, maybe build an application on top of S5? That would only leave Access and Visio without competition in this space.
For more on this, read Matt’s article on Borkweb.
Tags: google, microsoft, office, web20, word, writely
Displaying My Photos
March 10, 2006 | 6 Comments
One of the largest driving forces for me to create my blog originally was to have a web based gallery to manage and share my pictures with family and friends. Originally, I thought Gallery was the right solution for me. I used it for awhile, but, in the end it felt a bit clunky.
Eventually I played around with Flickr under repeated advice from Casey. It became immediately clear that this interface was much friendlier. I started using it and converted a lot of my old Gallery images. The more I used Flickr the more it became clear how much it rocks.
One problem… I really wanted to be able to present my galleries inside the look and feel of my website. This slowed down my conversion. I was caught now with two ways to manage images, each with great benefits, each with their own chunk of my images.
The solution is using FAlbum by Random Byte. Now I can have the best of both worlds. So click on my new “Photo” tab, and say goodbye to Gallery.
Tags: FAlbum, flickr, gallery, photography, photos, pictures, web20
Behaviour, Return of Clean HTML
March 9, 2006 | 1 Comment
As we’ve begun adopting Ajax, JSON, and similar JavaScript heavy technologies a problem quickly arose. Suddenly our clean HTML was being cluttered with tons of script tags, onclicks, and other various event handling functions. Trying to extract this logic back out of the HTML was a definite desire for us.
Enter Behaviour.
Behaviour uses CSS selectors to specify what elements to apply JS handlers to.
Check out these demos. View the source and you’ll see clean markup that is free of logic. This allows us to step back and once again fully separate the presentation layer from the application layer.
Tags: AJAX, behavior, behaviour, css, functions, html, javascript, js, JSON, programming, web, web 2.0, web development, web20, xhtml
S5, A Good Start
January 18, 2006 | 2 Comments
I really like the idea of having all my office applications replaced by web based versions. I want to be able to manage any document from where ever I’m sitting on whoevers computer. I then also want to be able to collaborate and share viewing and/or authoring with whomever I like.
Writely does this very well as relates to Microsoft Word. For three months now I have used Writely exclusively for my word processing needs. I no longer have any use for Word.
S5 is billed as “A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System.” Check out this example slideshow. I love what they are accomplishing with their standard, and it is purely XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the background.
If someone can take this concept one step further and build a nice WYSIWYG tool to create slideshows and make it web based, PowerPoint may be the next Office application I stop using.
Maybe the Writely developers could add a simple tab to their app that allows creation of presentations on the S5 standard… Whoever does it, I’ll be in line for the beta, as I’m sure thousands of other will be as well.
Tags: collaboration, excel, html, javascript, presentation, presentations, s5, standard, web 2.0, web20, word, word processing, writely, xhtml
MooFlex
December 18, 2005 | 1 Comment
MooFlex is a CMS that may be interesting. What interests me primarily is their heavy AJAX usage. If this application is designed well, using modern web technologies, I am intrigued by its long term potential. As we look to find a CMS to convert our University to, we hope to have a great deal of flexibility in what we can accomplish. Some on our team have even gone as far as saying we want to create a Web 2.0 university site. We’ll see how close to that we actually get.
The company responsible for producing this is based in Italy and called mad4milk.
Tags: AJAX, cms, contend, content management, higher education, mad4milk, mooflex, university, web content, web development, web site, web20, web_20