Guy recently suggested that we implement a calendar system. Initially, I disagreed and deemed it out-of-scope on the basis that a we mostly wanted to share family news on pinedas.com. Also, to write such a system would be unnecessary since there are free applications available that do the same thing.

However, after some reflection on the matter, I have to agree with Guy and see some usefulness for a "community calendar of events". Similar to perhaps your local church calendar, we can track organized events that we want to share with family members throughout the world. The good news is that we can do this for free (as well as on an individual basis).

Visit YourDay.com (http://www.yourday.com), a web-based calendar application. As best I can tell, it is free. When you get a chance, please visit this site and respond with your opinion of the service. If anyone signs up for an individual account, please share your experiences with the service.

Thanks, epp

-- Anonymous, February 20, 2000

Answers

The CGI stuff is a possibility so long as it's compatible with the hosting service. Last I checked, we're running on a NT box. CGI is usually a Unix thing. We can do CGI so long as a CGI engine is running. I wrote the WebCal people to ask how appointments, etc. are stored. The CGI scripts aren't what's all to this type of system. The information has to be stored *somewhere*. We need to find out where.

The benefit of the YourDay.com service is that I believe they manage that data for you. I'll have to take a closer look at this by signing up myself. Hopefully there's no charge, or at most a small charge.

epp

-- Anonymous, February 20, 2000

I just joined YourDay.com. Some important findings: (1) It is *free*. (2) It will keep your personal appointments. (3) It will synchronize with your PDA in the future. (4) Most importantly, it can provide a *collaborative* calendar. This is exactly what Pinedas.com needs.

We do not need to program this feature, anymore. You will see what I mean when I send out the formal invitations to our development group. If you guys like it, we can invite the rest of the visitors for a Pinedas.com.

epp

-- Anonymous, February 21, 2000

I got a response to my pre-sale question about WebCal. Appointments are stored in a flat-file system. I see two potential problems with this. Firstly, the file-based access will be fairly slow. Worse, a file system won't handle multiple users accessing the same data at the same time.

-- Anonymous, February 22, 2000

Hey I checked out yourday.com and it looks pretty cool but can put that service on Pinedas.com or were you planning to put in a frame on the site? I looked around and did not see an area for affiliates or anytype of co-branding.

I am in process of looking for CGI scripts for another site that I am working on that would provide the calendar functions. I found WebCal which is free but it certainly doesn't have the bell and whistles of yourday.com but it resides on my server and I control it. Check out the demo: http://www.extropia.com/products.html

Let me know what you think.

-- Anonymous, February 20, 2000

A community calendar would be very useful for all those birthdays and all that other stuff... I dont know much about CGI scripts but if you go to www.freecenter.com there are links to CGI scrips and stuff like that...

-- Anonymous, February 20, 2000