Gero Vermaas on...

Check out my JavaOne 2005 Scheduling aid. Using this web page you'll be able to:

• Get an overview of all JavaOne 2005 technical sessions and BOFs
• Define which topic's you want to include in the overview
• Generate a vCalendar file that can be imported into lots of Calendar applications (Outlook, Evolution, Palm Desktop, ....). This file can either include all of the sessions that you selected, or the sessions you selected and all other sessions.

I succesfully imported data into Evolution and Palm Desktop.

There are some things to keep in mind:

• I noticed that Palm Desktop creates duplicate entries if you import the same file twice :-( This is a problem of Palm Desktop. Importing the same file multiple times into Evolution did not create duplicate entries.)
• The generated vCalendar file is very rich (check out here). However, not every Calendar application imports all data. Evolution for example does import meeting attendees and categories, Palm Desktop does not.

There are still some things I'd like to improve:

• All sessions are displayed on the webpage with the same length, which is not true. Some sessions are longer than others. The vCalendar file does contain the correct start and end times for sessions.
• Add alarms to session that have been selected to attend
• Create a slicker look & feel (it's really basic now).
• Set up an automatic process that takes the latest updates in the JavaOne schedule.

That should be a nice job for the flight to San Francisco... if my battery lasts long enough...