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Multi-Layered Calendars

julian.digital

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Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#31

Post by lattalayta »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #8

I just wish more companies communicated using iCalendar. In work calendar events are ubiquitous but I have found it really valuable to use them to organise my personal life as well. The problem is that it can be quite tedious to enter everything by hand. I wish cinemas, theatres, restaurants, hotels, airlines, train companies, etc etc, all sent you calendar appointments when you booked with them online. In my experie…

I agree with you. I'll probably get some flak for this, but this use case is one of the only times where I'll use Siri.

Create a new event called , on , from to

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#32

Post by maweki »

This is a stark reminder that our personal devices are still very dumb. The article points out multiple times that all this data is readily available and it's still not combined in a way that enriches or simplifies our lives.

Reminds me of this GNOME-adjacent project (forgot the name) at the start of gnome 3 where every activity, every open file, every played music, ever visited website, location data, etc. was to be stored and you then were supposed to be able to search for files through a timeline of activities and how long you worked on a file or what music played during, instead of its name. But more importantly, the desktop environment was supposed to suggest activities based on learned behaviors. Visit Uni on Thursday -> already open my Algorithms-notes. Such a marvelous idea.

And yet we're stuck with systems that barely anticipate our needs, if even.

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#33

Post by miguelrochefort »

I highly resonate with this. In fact, I spent over a year buildng it [1].

My thesis is that the calendar will play a significant role in the next OS UI paradigm, replacing the old grid of icons and overlapping windows. Everything will happen around a unified timeline, through which you will launch an app by time-blocking its use, check notifications by looking at the past, forecast battery life or weather by looking at the future, undo/redo actions (or view snapshots/backups) by time traveling, etc.

It is shocking how far behind our map of time (e.g., Google Calendar) is compared to our map of space (e.g., Google Maps). Every spatial feature has an obvious temporal equivalent that just isn't implemented. I want to be able to search, save, and review events. I want to schedule an itinerary of events. I want turn-by-turn navigation in time.

Of course, solving time is just the beginning. The real magic happens when you combine space and time. For this, we may need to wait for more AR/VR adoption, whose added dimension should make this realization obvious to most and significantly facilitate its implementation.

[1] https://chronomize.com/

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#35

Post by landgenoot »

smeej wrote: post #19

I can't even find a calendar that lets me enter where I'm leaving from to get to an event and where I'm heading after it to add the travel time automatically, with a specified margin of error. Much less can I export the details of my activity from my smart watch or my web browsing history so I can easily review my day and figure out what happened and why. Calendars suck at being calendars. We're not even close to rea…

Google calendar supports travel time. https://www.howtogeek.com/839258/how-to-add-travel-time-to-a...

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#36

Post by yonatan8070 »

jkl5xx wrote: post #26

Time and space are constants of everyone's life. You're always somewhere at some time . I've been dreaming of a centralized time & space view layer for years. Something that ingests all this data we have at our fingertips. This article gets really close to what I've imagined. Add in a map and you're able to correlate all sorts of behavior in order to understand yourself and the human condition so much better. P.S. I'…

While reading this I was thinking about how it would integrate with the OS calendar implementations, I my primary thought was to have it connect use the description field as a text document with all the additional metadata about each event. Possibly as YAML, JSON, or some custom human readable format

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#37

Post by c0balt »

maweki wrote: post #32

This is a stark reminder that our personal devices are still very dumb. The article points out multiple times that all this data is readily available and it's still not combined in a way that enriches or simplifies our lives. Reminds me of this GNOME-adjacent project (forgot the name) at the start of gnome 3 where every activity, every open file, every played music, ever visited website, location data, etc. was to be…

This sounds like GNOME tracker[0]. At least for the data collection/ db side of things.

[0]: https://tracker.gnome.org/

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#38

Post by nicbou »

The past section resonated with me. I spent some time building a personal timeline during COVID. Parts of the interface are exactly like you designed them, but the screenshots are outdated.

This project is partly abandoned mainly because it’s impossible to get the data out of various silos. I only get geolocation and photos now, and even that relies on very specific software that is nontrivial to set up. It’s just not elegant.

https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/timeline

I love your website design, especially the mockups. How do you make those?

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#39

Post by LaundroMat »

irrational wrote: post #28

> Notes are just emails to your future self. Emails are just tasks. And tasks are just calendar events So, Notes are Tasks and Calendar Events? The author must be taking different kinds of notes than I do.

I found that too reductive too (emails aren't always tasks either).

Making the point that notes are emails are tasks wasn't even necessary as an introduction to the main ideas of the article.

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#40

Post by smeej »

landgenoot wrote: post #35
smeej wrote: post #19

I can't even find a calendar that lets me enter where I'm leaving from to get to an event and where I'm heading after it to add the travel time automatically, with a specified margin of error. Much less can I export the details of my activity from my smart watch or my web browsing history so I can easily review my day and figure out what happened and why. Calendars suck at being calendars. We're not even close to rea…

Google calendar supports travel time. https://www.howtogeek.com/839258/how-to-add-travel-time-to-a...

It doesn't do what I said, though. Try it. It doesn't let me specify anything about the return trip. It also doesn't support adding it for recurring events, even if I always expect to leave from the same place.

It's also extremely glitchy, so I wouldn't even be generous enough to call it "supports" even for the features it does try to have.

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