Jenny said:

Phil, how did you create the vcs file??!! I've wanted to learn how to automatically generate these in our online calendar at work, but I don't know enough about vCalendar.

Imagine these puppies flowing through your news aggregator at work!

Part 1. Recipe.

How did I do this? Manually, for now.

 Click here to add this event to your Outlook or Netscape calendar.

 

1. I posted two graphics to my blog:
• vcalendar.gif
• vcalendarsmall.gif (the one I used)
  
2. I created a Radio shortcut. vcalsmall. for the picture.
• <IMG height=28 alt="Click here to add this event to your Outlook or Netscape calendar." hspace=0 src="http://dijest.com/aka/images/2002/06/16/vcalendarsmall.gif" width=24 align=left border=0>
   
3. I created the event in Palm.
• You can do this in your Palm Pilot or from the Palm Desktop. I think Palm Desktop is free, and it works with or without a Palm Pilot.
• Open the calendar.
• Type the event name into a time block.
• Right/Option-click to add a note.
   
4. Create the vCalendar file.
• Selecting the new event, File | Export vCal...
• Save the file as a Radio gem (I created a gems/events folder)
• Naming: I try to start with the yyyymmdd format to:
• make it easy to sort events on my hard disk
• avoid duplication of similar events.
• Should have the .vcs extension. It is a text file; you can read it in notepad.
• You can tweak it in your text editor, but shouldn't have to.
   
5. Upstream the event file.
    
6. Refer to it in a post. Outlook and Netscape Calendar claim the .vcs extension, so the browser knows to open your event with it.

Using Outlook?  You can do steps 3 and 4 with a few differences.

Outlook has an Action | Forward vCalendar command, but you have to save the attachment to your hard drive.

Part 2. Futures.

I'd like to:

• add one or more events to a post, with fields like start date, time, end date, time, etc.
• see them as part of the post on my web site
• have them flow out through RSS
• sort a category by event-start-date instead of by post date

I've been working on adding attributes to Radio blog posts. Still learning the basics of the various callbacks, frontier syntax, how renderers work and build on each other.

"When we hired Scott Shuger back in 1997 to try his hand at a new Slate feature called 'Today's Papers,' we thought we were doing him a favor. Scott, who died Saturday at the age of 50 in a scuba diving accident, had been a casual friend of several of us from the small world of Washington journalism, and the even smaller world of alumni of the Washington Monthly.... It turned out that the favor we were doing by hiring Scott was for ourselves. 'Today's Papers' quickly became our most popular feature....

Scott Shuger was, in a way, the first complete Internet journalist, in that the Internet was essential to both his input and his output, and the result was something new and useful that couldn't be done before. Without the Internet, Scott couldn't have read five newspapers from across the country—and done it before the paper editions were even available. With the Internet, Scott could even write the column—about the day's major American newspapers, remember—from Berlin, where Debora Shuger had a visiting fellowship in 2000-2001. Scott used to say that the best place to write Today's Papers from would be Hawaii, where, he claimed, it would almost be a normal 9-5 job."

[Slate, via rc3, via Shifted Librarian]

[aka obituaries a la blog]

Nokia has me in its grip.

Flirting with the...

Nokia 6610: A high-resolution color screen, multimedia messaging, Java™ technology, and a stereo FM radio.

Drooling over the...

The Nokia 9290 Communicator.  PDA , wireless office, messaging and e-mail, Internet access and mobile phone. Calendar, contacts/phonebook, color web browser, email with attachments, SMS, multimedia, presento player. 10h talk time, 9 day standby.

Options like digital cameras, Acrobat readers, IM clients, hands free dialing, ftp, PC remote control, MP3 player. Built with Java and the Symbian OS.

The Communicator may be my next blogging tool (when it becomes available in California. when I can afford it.) Anyone on this bleeding edge? Thumbs up or down?  

Come on down to the Ryze San Francisco Business Networking Mixer next Friday, 28 June, at 7pm. I network therefore I am.

Click here to add this event to your Netscape, Outlook, or Palm Desktop calendar. 

Everyone Loves Shnitzel at Aish HaTorah Jerusalem.

I know this because the school cook writes a column for their web site. So do dozens of other faculty and staff of the Aish school network. They build on their life work, Jewish education. Aish.com brings their orthodox community to the world.

And you can tell they're having a blast.

A rabbi puts up one question with a 60 second answer. Like Dan Pink's Just One Thing but on video.

Speed dating.

Their Western Wall Cam.

Stump the Rabbi.

Packaged like an attractive online magazine. (Better than most.)

From the academic departments, you get columns on society, work, arts, bioethics, philosophy, and women's studies. Tone varies from Seventeen to research journal.

Their public affairs news coverage is local; they have campuses in Europe and Russia, the Americas, Africa, Australia and Israel. So when they write about an attack in Shilo, it comes from a crying community member. When hostile crowds clash at San Francisco State, faculty write in with a personal account.

You may not agree with what they say, but you can hear them in their authentic voices;  hundreds of them. Scholarly, motherly, joyous, angry, curious. Real.

By providing channels for these voices, they reach outside their world.

This is one of the core ideas in Chris Locke's Gonzo Marketing. Your voices are your strongest asset in a world where authenticity is at a premium. Let each voice find its own counterparts in the world. Start relationships through shared interests. And through this, extend your organization's reach and brand to those who might actually care.

The communications teams at Aish.com get it.

Mazel tov.

I'm surprised more universities don't follow this lead. It works.

Back to the Shnitzel. The recipes look tasty and you know they've been tested; rabbinic students make vicious food critics.

Guess what I'm having for supper.