Hello!
On 6th April, Dave Thewlis invited brief introductions from subscribers to the Caladmin list.
The brief section of this long message should squeeze on to one A4 sheet! Beyond that section, the extra information will hopefully spark people’s imaginations. If you don’t want to take it all in:
I’m posting this information to my blog, rather than the mailing list, for two reasons:
As the background section, which currently spans multiple organisations, is necessarily long, I’ll begin with something more digestible…
Free Your Mind
- Figure out why it’s gotten so complicated
- Blow away 20 years of obsolete assumptions
— St. Petersburg at OpenSolaris.org | How ZFS Works (11 April 2007)
— ZFS Learning Center | ZFS-The Last Word in File Systems (2005)
I was dearly hoping for Apple iCal Server to appear in Easter 2007.
For a while, I wondered why this list and related resources were apparently so quiet. More recently I am reassured by an April announcement and the revised timeline and roadmap for Darwin Calendar Server.
The delayed release of Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server 10.5 was disappointing, and inconvenient to our organisational plans, but understandable. I do hear the “iPhone” line that is being spun to us, but I imagine that behind the scenes there is much more going on than iPhone alone. Four things come immediately to mind:
— and sure enough, on 24th May: Google Calendar for mobile devices.
In my day job: I work with researchers, in a centre that has a focus on innovation management.
Beyond my day job: I recently joined the open source MacFusion Project. A very busy five weeks on this Project are the main reason for my late introduction to the Caladmin list.
MacFusion 1.1 was released on 22nd May. As a member of the Project, I’m encouraging innovative activities across communities that are apparently disconnected, but if we
Blow away 20 years of obsolete assumptions
then a great deal of activity might occur for the common good.
Keyword is FUSE. This may mean little to Windows users, but should bring a smile to Linux users.
I veer towards the ‘collaboration’ part of the URL that leads to Darwin Calendar server:
OpenID could be of great interest to me. If you can bear to wade through the two sections below that outline calendaring and synchronisation at the two universities, you’ll understand why any technology that simplifies or integrates will be of great appeal to me!
CENTRIM’s web site will be thoroughly overhauled in the next couple of months; right now, it’s a stride short of properly reflecting the group’s activities.
I’m UK-based.
Since 1993 I have worked for CENTRIM —the Centre for Research in Innovation Management (formerly CBR —the Centre for Business Research). I provide ICT and other support to a team of around twenty researchers and three other support staff. Mixture of Mac OS and Windows, and creep of Ubuntu in lieu of Windows is doing no harm at all.
At the moment, it’s mostly Mac OS, and we’re generally a very happy bunch of users.
CENTRIM has a long history of collaborating formally and informally on various projects with SPRU —Science and Technology Policy Research— and with other organisations internationally.
Since 2003, CENTRIM (University of Brighton) and SPRU (University of Sussex) have been co-located in the purpose-built Freeman Centre building on University of Sussex campus.
A recent round-up of projects counted around fifty in CENTRIM alone. That many projects across a team of around twenty researchers may be mind-boggling to some readers…
Microsoft Exchange-based.
Does not extend to the SPRU individuals with whom many of us work on a daily basis.
Exchange services are not provided to students.
Whilst the University recommends and supports Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS, the PDAs most recently recommended are neither immediately nor easily compatible with Entourage. Also,
University of Brighton do not currently support Exchange Active Sync … PDA to sync with the local copy of Outlook …
For University of Brighton users of Mac OS, Entourage is recommended for calendaring. Whilst in theory an Exchange server can be configured to provide services securely to Entourage clients on the WAN, the actual service configuration demands a VPN connection for Exchange connectivity.
Experience with VPN hardware, software and support has been less than sterling.
Re <http://www.calconnect.org/presentations/freebusydemo.pdf> I’m aware of the Boeing-supplied connector for Microsoft Exchange but I don’t imagine that any such connector will be applied to the Exchange service here.
Presented through a Blackboard portal. This calendar operates on three levels:
A TWIG interface to the UNIX e-mail system for students offers another calendar, but AFAIK the calendar here is deprecated.
Staff and students at University of Brighton share an Elgg area.
Currently featured at <http://elgg.org/features.php> —36,000 users.
Whilst a Google search for Elgg +iCalendar reveals things like this, I don’t imaginge that calendaring for students in BlackBoard — and/or calendaring for staff in Exchange — will be deprecated in favour of a more unified/extensible system.
IT Services recommend and support version 3.1.6 of Mulberry.
I know that Mulberry 4 is CalDAV-oriented. Kudos to Cyrus.
In our multi-organisational collaborative environment:
For the majority of room bookings there is a Brown Bear iCal server —a legacy from SPRU’s past residence elsewhere on campus— and whilst the most recent version offers iCalendar publish and subscribe, we don’t intend to purchase the relevant upgrade.
CENTRIM and SPRU have access to the University of Sussex Meeting Maker server. SPRU has 37 users and one resource within the system but the actual head count around the building is far greater. From CENTRIM, there was an underwhelming response to invitations to attend Meeting Maker training sessions and get started, so I took that lull as an opportunity to veer (sometimes painfully) towards more future-oriented technologies.
Enter: iCalendar, WebDAV and CalDAV.
Calendaring and resource scheduling for CENTRIM is currently provided by SchoolTool, which is broadly compatible with Apple iCal and other iCalendar-savvy applications. Keywords: iCalendar publish and subscribe, although data is stored in a ZODB (Zope Object Database).
The membership of PeopleCube in CalConnect is, I hope, a sign that future versions of Meeting Maker client will mesh more gracefully with infrastructures that are iCalendar- or CalDAV-oriented.
Things … could … be … better!
As the MacFusion Project provides a plug-in architecture to MacFUSE — allowing developers to focus on what they know best, without the distractions of GUI-related issues — so I envisage all manner of things (including but not limited to mobile phones and PDAs) being presented to users in novel ways.
One such novelty could be … effective, stress free, broad ranging synchronisation.
That’s a less-than-subtle hint to any developers that may be reading this!
Google Calendar has some very good points and solutions such as Spanning Sync fill some gaps.
If CalConnect members wish to get their heads around MacFUSE, MacFusion and the current and forthcoming plug-ins, the MacFusion page in my blog is a good starting point.
Very broadly speaking, Freeman Centre is a mix of:
For the organisation(s), I’m yearning for
As Darwin Calendar Server Preview 1 is 96% complete:
Possible use of CalDAV clients whilst we await iCal Server:
I’m encouraging free thinking and innovation across the various communitites.
For me personally:
Thanks for reading!
Graham
