This may be a month on the late side, but I’d be remiss if I never posted anything about our trip to SxSW. The short version is that Austin was a total blast. Tibet and I had the most ridiculously awesome time, and met all kinds of high quality people. Frankly, it was such an obnoxiously amazing time that I’ve been putting off writing about it - I had no idea where to start!
Fortunately our friends from Batch Blue were kind enough to document some of FuseCal’s SxSW saga to video. Thanks to Michelle’s expert documentarian-ship, I can just let my talking do the talking… Did that makes sense?
With no further ado, allow me to present:
FuseCal.com’s sad SXSW tale
It’s true - Delta temporarily lost a very important bag of ours. But I like to think we made the best of the situation, inventing the “shitty card” in the process.
FuseCal.com has a fancy SXSW booth
We were on such a roll with the “shitty cards,” that we had to up the ante just a little…
Believe it or not, the self-awarded Fanciest Booth prize may have been our greatest asset at the trade show. Folks in the SxSW crowd generally had great senses of humor, so I think this was actually a really remarkable way to make an impression and start a conversation, which of course led to talking about FuseCal.com.
On the last day of the trade show, the SxSW organizers were even cool enough to announce over the loudspeaker that FuseCal.com had won the Fanciest Booth award, making the title almost-kinda-sorta-quasi-official. Sweet!
Who needs schwag or a big marketing budget when you’ve got notebook paper and tape?
I’m heading down to Austin tomorrow, to make a fashionably late appearance at SxSW Interactive. Ahhh, I can’t wait!
I’ll be meeting fellow FuseCal’er Tibet Sprague, who’s already down there, rocking the scene. (If you see a tall hippy, be sure to say hi.)
Sunday through Tuesday, you can visit us at table 707 in the trade show. We’ll be showing off FuseCal, looking for user feedback and good conversation. Come talk our ears off about calendars or your pog collection… It’ll be fun!
I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted, but it’s all with good reason… We’ve had our heads down, cranking out the next release of FuseCal, which is set to come out on February 1. This will include some new features, which I’ll tell you more about soon, as well as a bunch of under-the-hood improvements to make everything faster and more stable. Many thanks to everyone who has already taken FuseCal for a spin and given us feedback… I hope you’ll like what we’ve been cooking up!
On a side note, I’m very interested in talking to folks who build web mashups. Bonus points if they use any event data, and/or you live around Providence. (Note: Points not redeemable for cash.) Drop me a line if you’d like to talk shop.
Incidentally, the RI Nexus calendar is probably the best source of tech sector events in the greater Providence area. So, after you read about us on their blog, you might just want to pipe their site into FuseCal… how meta is that?
What more exciting time is there for a calendar enthusiast than the start of a brand new year? Those of you still stuck in the Paper Age have crisp new wall calendars and day planners to break in. And let’s not ignore the stack of daily vocabulary words or Dilbert cartoons that may have just materialized on your desk.
Good stuff, no question.
But what of techies like us? Folks who rely on electronic calendars? We might not need to restock any paper goods, but that doesn’t mean that now isn’t the perfect time to kick your scheduling up a notch. Unless you’re already getting everything done that you set out to do, then this may be the year to resolve to improve your Calendar Fu. (At least, Mark Hopkins at Mashable seems to think so…)
Think about it: your other resolutions are only as good as your ability to execute on your plans. Why not make the pursuit of schedule mastery a top priority in 2008?
Join the FuseCal team this Wednesday, December 19, for yet another installment of the monthly Providence Geek Dinner at AS220. It’s always a great time to network & talk shop with other local techies. If you’re in the area, you definitely should check it out… This time, there’s even gonna be robots!!!
Of course, in the interest of keeping this post at least tangentially related to online calendars, here’s the Providence Geeks iCal feed.
I’ve already made my iPhone devotion quite clear, but seeing how our CEO is a long-time BlackBerry user, I feel compelled to at least make mention of new calendar features for everybody’s favorite thumb-crippler: You can now sync your BlackBerry with Google Calendar.
Can it possibly be a mere coincidence that Bill was in Mountain View yesterday? Spooky.
I hope you like going to the dentist, because you just ran out of excuses to miss your regular cleanings.
You can also look forward to changing a lot of smoke alarm batteries, donating a lot of blood, and all kinds of other things you’ve been putting off. Here’s a great list of Brilliant Recurring Events [found via LifeHacker], that a bunch of very responsible people have been putting together. Consider them your pro bono personal assistants. Except they won’t bring you coffee. Which is probably okay, since your dentist was just going to complain about your yellow teeth anyways.
Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “Snakes on a Plane,” but then we all can’t be Samuel L. Jackson, can we? (Note to self: Try to be more like Samuel L. Jackson.)
Aaaanyways… a couple of us on the FuseCal team have converted to the Church of iPhone, so we have a heavily vested interest in calendar technology for our touchable little bundles of joy. Here are a couple updates in that department… probably the first of many.
Scott Mace at Calendar Swamp has a few calendar features in mind that he’d like to see in the upcoming iPhone SDK. I hope Apple’s listening to him, because I definitely like his vision of the future. The iPhone’s calendar is really slick, and it works even when I don’t have a network connection. The better I can keep that calendar updated, the happier I’ll be.
On other hand, though, I am really liking the new iPhone UIs for the various Google apps, as reported on earlier this week by Mike Arrington at TechCrunch. The calendar looks great, and this approach eliminates the need to sync with iCal on my laptop, which I really like. I’ve already got a few FuseCal feeds updating my Google Calendar all the time, so for the time being, this seems like the best way to make sure I have that info up-to-date when I’m away from the computer.
