hcalendar-advocacy

<entry-title>hCalendar advocacy</entry-title>

Part of the larger microformats advocacy effort. Adding hCalendar to these sites would improve their usability and ambient findability.

Here are sites that could use hCalendar to provide more/better functionality to their users.

event sites

Sites that host online calendars of different sorts, containing information from many different areas. (These could also make use of hCard, since they often contain contact information to a lot of different places.)

• http://alltomstockholm.se A (Swedish) site that hosts information about concerts, pubs, movies, theater, etc in Stockholm (Swedens capital).
• http://www.alltomgoteborg.se A (Swedish) site that hosts information about concerts, pubs, movies, theater, etc in Gothenburg (Swedens second largest city).
• http://www.alltommalmo.se A (Swedish) site that hosts information about concerts, pubs, movies, theater, etc in Malmö (Swedens third largest city).
• Ticket Master (main UK ticket agency) - a TicketMaster Monkeyformat can be found at Userscripts.org
• UK Theatre Guides multiple sites for UK theatre listings
  • Requested by e-mail, 2007-09-03 Andy Mabbett
• Localist.com event listings for Washington DC, Baltimore
  • Requested by IRC, 2009-02-20 to add hCalendar support to events listings pages (e.g. http://www.localist.com/dc/browse ) and individual event pages (e.g. http://www.localist.com/dc/event/david_wilcox ) Tantek 17:35, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

30Boxes

• 30Boxes could accept a URL, parse the page for hCalendar microformats, then present a list to the user. These could be selected (via check-boxes) and uploaded. Andy Mabbett 13:41, 14 Jan 2007 (PST)
  • Upload of hCalendars requested on 30Boxes forum 2007-01-14

Apple Calendar Server

• Calendar Server hCalendar input/output: http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/calendarserver/ticket/19
• Wiki Server hCalendar output (internal RADAR ticket [rdar://5180875/])

iCal Share

• iCal share
  • Requested by e-mail. 2007-01-14
    • Reply recieved 2007-10-14 (!) confirming "definite plans to support microformats in the future". Andy Mabbett

Upcoming

Upcoming has been supporting hCalendar since May 2005, the first major events site to do so. There are more opportunities for Upcoming to support hCalendar:

• Accept a URL, parse the page for hCalendar microformats, then
  • allow a user to automatically syndicate *in* their events from another site like their blog
  • or present a list to the user and allow them to manually check/import events.
  • Upload of hCalendars requested on Upcoming wiki 2007-01-14

conferences

• An Event Apart
• WordCamp

travel itineraries

• Dopplr is a site that lets users publish their travel plans to other users.
  • It would be great if they let you subscribe to external travel hCalendar (e.g. DanC travel) and incorporated it into your Dopplr travel data. Originally suggested by Dan Connolly.

general social networks

Many general social network sites have event features like event sites, and it would be great if they too supported hCalendar.

...

government events

UK Gov hCalendar

• E-petitions (in draft, and asking for suggested improvements}
  • Requested by e-mail, 2006-12-01 Andy Mabbett 11:47, 1 Dec 2006 (PST)
    • reply: "I've added it to our list of ideas." 2006-12-04 Andy Mabbett 11:07, 4 Dec 2006 (PST)
• Scottish Executive Bank Holidays
  • Requested by Scottish Executive feedback form, 2006-11-13 Andy Mabbett

concert and theatre listings

e.g. (please add other examples!):

• Birmingham Alive! (UK)
  • Requested in person; now on "to do" list

sports fixtures

e.g. (please add other examples!):

• PremiumTV (UK, Soccer, has a page for each team)
  • Aston Villa
  • West Bromwich Albion
    • Requested by e-mail, 2006-11-13 Andy Mabbett
      • "webmaster@" bounced. Andy Mabbett

television listings

• A major coup would be to get one of the major players (the BBC, Sky, or PBS, say), to mark up their TV or radio listings with hCalendar - does anyone have contacts in such an organisation? Andy Mabbett 10:53, 21 Oct 2006 (PDT)
  • Does anyone have URLs to the TV or radio listings of the major players? Getting those URLs would be the next step, and then doing the markup ourselves would be the next step after that. Tantek 13:02, 21 Oct 2006 (PDT)

e.g. (please add other examples!):

• TV Times (UK)
  • Requested by e-mail 2006-11-13 Andy Mabbett
• BBC main listings (e.g. BBC One)
  • Requested by BBC Feedback Form 2006-11-13 Andy Mabbett
  • "We're currently looking at using the event microformat on the redesigned radio 4 schedule page (and possibly throughout bbc.co.uk/radio4" 2007-01-14 per email.
• MTV Europe
  • Requested at User talk:AndySmith, 2007-06-11. Andy Mabbett 07:59, 11 Jun 2007 (PDT)

ideas for possible hCalendar sites

Travel Industry

any travel site is based on calender type data! Airlines, Hotels etc. Sure it will be nice to get your reservation confirmation, but what about suppliers "syndicating" their product details that are calendar based? This would allow any other to mash-up supplier offerings. Sorry no examples... but I hope this will stimulate others to add some if the know them or just to make others think about possibilities.

related and complementary

CalDAV

• Microformats vs. CalDAV? October 2006

For more information, see:

• http://ietf.osafoundation.org/caldav/
• http://trac.calendarserver.org/projects/calendarserver

past or historical

Many sites contain reference to past events which would still benefit from markup with hCalendar for findability, time search, and constructing timelines.

W3C track at WWW2006

• DanC offers a 150 point bounty to anybody who takes the W3C track at WWW2006 and adds hCalendar markup and sends it to connolly@w3.org,www-archive@w3.org
  • DanC, did this happen? Could you renew your bounty for WWW2008 etc.?

successes

When an advocacy effort succeeds, please move it here and also add the site to the hcalendar-examples-in-wild page.

Facebook

Facebook events have plenty of data that could be marked up with hCalendar. Plus it would be great if public events on Facebook were at least viewable without logging in (like Upcoming!), thus allowing indexing, search, and link traffic from hCalendar search results.

• Twittered request 2008-11-28 - asking for hCalendar support, and making public events viewable without login. Tantek 00:53, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Timothy Fitz suggests http://fbcal.com/
    • fbCal requires Facebook login / allow permissions - whereas request was to be able to view public Facebook events WITHOUT login. Tantek 04:50, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
    • fbCal does not appear to support hCalendar - no mention of hCalendar on fbCal about page Tantek 04:50, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Success! 2010-02-17: http://microformats.org/2011/02/17/facebook-adds-hcalendar-hcard

old

These should be rechecked to verify.

• Details of hCalendar should be added to the Internet Mail Consortium's vCalendar page
  • Requested by e-mail, 2006-11-24 Andy Mabbett
  • Success achieved 2006-11-27. Andy Mabbett
• Radio Times (BBC, UK)
  • Requested by e-mail Andy Mabbett
  • Success! 2007-03

rejections

• DTI: Bank Holidays (not Scotland)
  • Requested by e-mail, 2006-11-13 Andy Mabbett
    • Response: "At the moment we have no plans to use hCalendar or hCard coding due to unresolved concerns about accessibility issues (especially text-to-speech readers), however, we thank you for your suggestion."
    • Request for clarification of concerns unanswered.

see also

• hcalendar-examples-in-wild
• advocacy
• hcard-advocacy