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Multi-Layered Calendars

julian.digital

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Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#41

Post by smeej »

_virtu wrote: post #20
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…

So something like rescuetime that exports data from your active programs to a calendar/event timeline visualization a la the spotify example from the article?

That would be one component, yes!

I'm thinking of some sort of standard history export format that can be overlaid onto a calendar. The Spotify history bar mockup would be one example. My browser history could be another one. So could the various data tracked by my smartwatch.

It would transform the calendar from something that is only used for planning the future to something that helps us recall the past.

We know this data is out there. Shoot, companies use it to build marketing profiles of us all the time. It would just be cool to be able to build such a profile about ourselves so we could review our decisions and evaluate our choices.

I feel like the quantified life folks would be all over this!

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#42

Post by smeej »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #33

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…

When you say "spent," does that mean it's in the past and you're not building it anymore? Or are you still actively developing it?

I love the idea behind it and would be very interested in using such a service, even if it might require some reimagining from traditional calendar format to make it fun and intuitive to use!

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#43

Post by perilunar »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #33

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…

This was the idea of the Lifestreams project:

https://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#44

Post by perilunar »

lloeki wrote: post #6

This echoes how my calendars are organised (and thoughts I had on calendars for the bits that cannot be implemented, Fantastical gets close... yet so far) Expanding on these "key moments", sometimes I wish I could create such durationless events (i.e a single datetime), but for these to show up properly I have to set a certain duration so that the label is readable at every sensible zoom level. In addition some time…

> I wish I could create such durationless events (i.e a single datetime), but for these to show up properly I have to set a certain duration so that the label is readable at every sensible zoom level.

Yes! The importance of an event and its duration are not connected.

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#45

Post by perilunar »

Digital calendars are a real pain if you want to look up any event that’s more than a few months away. They don’t show the importance of events — everything is just a box. In year view they don’t show much at all.

I built a personal timeline[0] because I really wanted to be able to look at life at various scales: from right now to my whole life, my parents’ and grandparents’ lives, and beyond. I wanted to be able to zoom and pan easily, not just have the default day/week/month views. Initially it wasn’t planned as an actual calendar, but the more I use it the more I want my calendar to work this way also.

0. https://timepasses.net

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#46

Post by vxNsr »

actionfromafar wrote: post #13
andrewrothman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be of interest: RFC 8984 JSCalendar: A JSON Representation of Calendar Data https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8984.html

xkcd://927#standards

If a browser ever implemented this that would be hilarious: the xkcd protocol

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#47

Post by the_omegist »

Nice article. Indeed many tools used in parallel could be merged into mostly one.

After many todo lists, calendars, ... apps I personally came to the conclusion the better way to visually display tasks and events is a timeline. And in a Gantt diagram, to be more accurate.

So I am using excel and this video tutorial [0] and made different timelines for different projects and even a calendar-like events view with emojis appearing when the date is right. So far I like it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuQpGzL_14g

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#48

Post by maweki »

c0balt wrote: post #37
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/

I found it. It was then known as project Zeitgeist. The initial imaginations were quite wild and cool.

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#49

Post by libealistand »

> Something I never really noticed before is that we only use our calendars to look forward in time, never to reflect on things that happened in the past.

This is called a "diary" and is as old as humankind.

I use a calendar to track workout sessions. All in the past.

Re: Multi-Layered Calendars

#50

Post by jkl5xx »

yonatan8070 wrote: post #36
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

I've had similar ideas and have tried little scripts that do this. It's a start but I think the crucial issue is the format and ui of calendar apps. It doesn't feel durable or easily searchable. And they've been seemingly stagnant for years.
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