The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hello.

I use Google Calendar a lot. I thought it might be cool if there was a Google Calendar we could subscribe to that just dropped the title onto my normal calendar so I could see it and know the due date. For example,
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/6u ... blic/basic

I suppose other things could be added too, like sidefights and stuff, but essentially, I'm just trying to give myself a daily reminder of the title, which I will see whenever I look at my calendar (I'm a monthly view kind of guy) and then maybe, just maybe, I'll actually write a song.

If this has already been suggested, I apologize for the duplication.

Frankie Big Face

P.S. Spud and JB, if you like this idea and want to use the calendar I've already set up, I've already given you full permission to edit the calendar.

That's a pretty cool idea. A little extra workload for the Fightmasters, but a very cool idea.

It might be possible to export a .ics feed that Google Calendar can read already, from the data that's already on the website.

I added the new title and due date. This is something I would be willing to do as long as I'm paying attention. So if people want to subscribe to the calendar I posted, go right ahead. Also, if you send me your e-mail address, I can add you to the permission list, fluffy. Then you can work your .ics auto-magic if you want.

I don't think the calendar sharing works that way - a shared calendar is something you subscribe to in Google Reader (or iCal or whatever), and I don't think Google Calendar has a provision for actually aggregating external feeds into an existing feed (and even if it does, it definitely doesn't need my permission to do so).

Oh, here's a question for the people who would be using this: would you want it to provide a calendar event, a todo item, or both?

It looks like Google is actually sharing it in some RSS/Atom variant (which they call gCal), and what I'd probably do is make a thing that can also provide an .ics feed as well (which would work with iCal, Outlook, and a few other things).

Okay, I've whipped up a VERY TENTATIVE and EXPERIMENTAL ics feed for people to use. The URL is http://songfight.org/cal.php/songfight.ics (don't click on this unless you want to do a one-time import into your calendar).

To use this in iCal, do "Subscribe" (in the "calendar" menu) and then paste this URL in.

To use this in Google Calendar, under "other calendars" click "add" and then "add by URL" and then paste the URL in. (gCal claims it "will be indexed" but I don't know how long this will take, or if there's some error preventing it from working.)

I have no idea how to do this in other calendaring apps.

I would subscribe to this. I already share a number of band calendars so this would be fine for me. I think an event that says, "9:59am - "song title" due. Would be fine for me.

Ken

By the way, I recommend waiting until I get gCal format support before subscribing in Google Calendar. I'll try to get to that this evening.

Okay, the ICS link is working in Google Calendar, so feel free to use that if you want.

Seems to have worked for me! One suggestion would be to make the end time 9:59am instead of the start time.

Thanks!

Ken

This is awesome.

ken wrote:Seems to have worked for me! One suggestion would be to make the end time 9:59am instead of the start time.

Well what would the start time be, then?

12:01am on the due date? When do most people submit their songs? I assume on the morning of the due date.

ken wrote:12:01am on the due date? When do most people submit their songs? I assume on the morning of the due date.

That works fine. I just need to see it show up in that morning's slot.

Okay, that's certainly doable. Next time Google updates the feed it should go from midnight to 9:59 PDT (or if you're using iCal you can right-click the calendar and select 'refresh').

There will probably be some weirdness around daylight saving time, by the way, due to the way this calculates the timezone offset and me being lazy because DST is a major pain to deal with correctly. Just to let you know.

Thanks fluffy, but I still like my original idea better because it's the announcement of the title that I really want. The due date's important, but not unless I already know what the title is and with enough time to actually consider writing. Also, I preferred not to associate the event with a time because it gets blended in with (and lost among) the rest of my appointments. By keeping it as an "all day" event, it stays nice and bright in a big block on my calendar.

I can certainly make it an all-day event. That's easy enough. It still seems like that would get lost in most calendars though.

The advantage of a gCal calendar is you can also subscribe to it in Google Reader or some other RSS aggregator and be notified when the item is added.

[EDIT] Set it to all-day, and also added a 'create time' for when the title got posted, in case that helps people. (And it will definitely help when I get the gCal output going.)

Argh, I can't make heads or tails of the gCal format. But I've changed the ICS version to at least make the current challenge a multi-day event that lasts from when the title was posted until the due date. Does that work for you, Frankie, or would you rather it be two separate all-day events like you had it in your calendar? It's easy enough to go either way.

That works. It would be impossible to miss now! (Except the ending date is actually incorrect--it's set to end on Wednesday instead of Thursday.) Although, a giant bar may get a little annoying, especially if other things with longer deadlines are added (like a sidefight, for instance). I guess I actually prefer the two separate events, but I am only one person. I'm hoping this would benefit and be of use to others as well. This format actually helps people who use the daily calendar view more because it will be ever-present in their calendar as a daily reminder, so I would say keep it the way it is.

So this is something that will happen automatically with no-one actually doing anything? If so, awesome and thanks.

Oops, I don't know why it's ending the day before the thing. vCalendar is kind of a crappy format too.

This will automatically update as soon as a new title gets posted; it comes from the exact same data that shows the next title on the front page. I think the thought of it including sidefights is just a *little* optimistic right now though.

I'm not really in favor of the calendar entry going from announcement to deadline. It seems like a way (cheat) to not have to check www.songfight.org to see what the new title is. I think a lot of people have asked for other ways to get the title in the past and they have been shot down. I'll live with it for a while and see how I feel. No need to change it, if I'm not into it, I'll just unsubscribe from the calendar.

i tried it in outlook (at work) and it created an entirely new calendar instead of adding something to my existing calendar... was this the desired behavior?
Edit: once you bring it in that way, you can select "view in overlay mode" and see the SF notes in your regular calendar. That's cool!
-bill