[uf-discuss] [pf] Ideas and initial efforts

[Tantek Ç elik]

Andrew these are very good problem statements for picoformats.

I encourage you to add them to the picoformats wiki page in a new "Problem
Statement" section.

http://microformats.org/wiki/picoformats

Let's get your ideas on the wiki so folks can iterate on them and add new
ones as well.

Thanks,

Tantek


On 7/29/06 8:35 AM, "Andrew Turner" <ajturner at highearthorbit.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone (interested in picoformats), I wanted to introduce myself
> and some of my thoughts/ideas on picoformats.
> 
> I'm a freelance developer for geolocation software/sites as well as
> home automation. Specific to picoformats, I'm working on several
> projects for mobile geolocation services, and am also a writer of
> GeoRSS.org blog, and developed a Calendar appointment routing
> application, when2where.com.
> 
> I'd like to use picoformats to:
> 1) send messages to user mobiles - via SMS, or a small application,
> that contains information like appointment times, locations,
> directions, and contact info. For example, when2where.com reminds
> users when they need to leave to get to their appointment, so the
> message may be like:
> leave @ 4:35PM ~Dentist Office -> Detroit, MI
> where the text itself is simple and readable, but there *may* be an
> small utility that would parse the @ symbol to add the event to the
> calendar, the ~ to allow the person to quickly call that contact, or
> the -> to pull up a Map/directions to the location
> 
> 2) allow users to write messages to query an application - this is
> similar to what Mozes has started with notes:
> when2where: ?today    --- what appointements to I have today
> new @ 4PM ~Olive Garden -> Novi     --- add an appointment
> In addition to the obvious mobile device arena, I think picoformats
> are usable in any context where "markup" is too heavy. For example, I
> also just put together an IRC bot, whereisbot, that announces user
> locations as they sign into a channel, or allows people to do:
> .whereami, or .whereis <nick> to geolocate other people in a channel.
> I want to 'markup' the information, but putting actual XHTML or XML is
> annoying, since IRC doesn't parse the information at all. So right now
> the response is:
> 
> ajturner: .whereami
> whereisbot: ajturner is in Northville, MI, US  [42.4365 x -83.4884]
> 
> So then someone could write a Picoformat parser for
> X-Chat/Colloquy/other that would parse the [ #### x #### ] and provide
> a Map url link.
> 
> Sorry for the long email - just a lot of ideas and I wanted to get
> them out and start sharing them.
> Andrew