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Dan Karran

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The importance of interoperability

When a colleague asked me today if I knew any way of converting XML to CSV, I was up for the challenge. It turned out that all she wanted to do was import event information into Google Calendar from Groove. Simple, right?

Google liking to follow standards, they allow you to import iCal feeds and even let you import CSV files from Outlook (because that's presumably the main userbase and Outlook doesn't export iCal). But try to import the XML export from Groove, and it tells you - rightly - that it's broken and it can't understand it. Admittedly it's not a format that Google says it can import, but from looking at the file, it does look very broken.

Why have an export facility in Groove that allows you to "export Calendar events for importing into another Calendar tool" when it exports in some propietary format that no other programs read? Just because it's XML doesn't necessarily mean it's interoperable. Groove doesn't even let you export as old-school CSV.

In the end it took the enabling of the "publish all events to Outlook" option, then going into Outlook to export the CSV, and only then is there a usable file that we can import into Google Calendar. It shouldn't be that difficult, should it?

I'm glad Drupal supports iCal - even if it doesn't allow for imports yet. With node_import, it at the very least allows imports of CSV calendar files.

Posted in at 2:58 PM on Tuesday 30 May 2006 | Comments (5)
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Google Spam Recipes
google-spam-recipes.png

Whilst trying to retrieve an email that I'd accidentally managed to banish to my Spam folder in Gmail I noticed something that made me grin. In place of their web clips they offer up Spam Recipes. Talking of Spam, I also tried to watch a Monty Python movie today. This is, until I realised my Australian flatmate's Xbox only plays Australian DVDs (and a few random Region 2 ones, for some reason). No Monty Python for me today, but somehow it lets me play Ghostbusters 2.

Posted in at 9:13 PM on Tuesday 16 May 2006 | Comments (4)
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Stuttgart to get DVB-T on 20th May(?)

The latest update I heard - today, in the new Saturn store in the recently refurbished Koenigsbau shopping centre - was that Stuttgart would be getting digital TV (DVB-T) on either 20th or 22nd May. That's either the Saturday, or, more likely the Monday.

Of course, the salesman may just have been pretending to know the actual launch date to try and sell the DVB tuner to the customer in front of me.

Posted in at 12:31 AM on Sunday 14 May 2006 | Comments (1)
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Linking to OpenStreetMap from Google

Google seems to be opening up more and more of late. They've been offering APIs for their search and maps for a while, but they've mostly allowed information to be pulled from Google to be used elsewhere. Until relatively recently, that is.

I'm thinking through a number of possibilities for the Subscribed Links API that lets you feed your own information into the Google search results of people who have subscribed to your information.

The thing I'd really like to implement with this would be an OpenStreetMap searchlet that gives you a link into the relevant place in OpenStreetMap whenever somebody searches for 'Maps of [Place]' or '[Place] maps'. It would only work for people who have actively chosen to include the links in their Google search results, but I still think it would be a useful thing to do for those that wanted it.

Google even provide a database of cities for people to plug into wihtout having to supply the data themselves, but unfortunately it only works with US cities and only returns a zipcode. It'd be nice if it worked worldwide and returned geographic coordinates as well, then it would be really simple to link into a map from OpenStreetMap.

Posted in at 8:57 AM on Friday 12 May 2006 | Comments (0)
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PfP using Drupal

It was great to see yesterday that Dries Buytaert - the founder and lead of the Drupal project - had showcased one of the Drupal sites we have created at work. The Partnership for Peace Training Centers website is one of over forty that we have built using the Drupal platform.

The PfP Training Centres Website is a common endeavour between PIMS, PRIME and NATO, and is intended to demonstrate the potential for future collaboration in the Euro-Atlantic community.

Posted in at 12:13 AM on Sunday 7 May 2006 | Comments (3)
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Smokers turn to geography

camel_advert.jpgIt's interesting to see at the moment that cigarette companies seem to be turning to geography to help market their products in Germany.

Camel is using advertising it's brand on Bus stops (see left, ignore reflections) using a tactic reminiscent of Multimap's advertising in the UK a few years back which made street patterns in London into shopping trolleys, computer mice, etc. In this case Camel have made a camel shape out of the streets and pen annotations on the map.

Meanwhile, Marlboro are advertising the chance of winning some cool looking new GPS navigation devices. Shame I don't smoke, it'd be nice to have one of those things.

I wonder what the sudden attraction to geography is for the tobacco companies? Is it things like Google Earth that have made their customers more aware and more receptive to maps and location?

Posted in at 12:16 PM on Thursday 4 May 2006 | Comments (3)
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