Posted on December 3, 2009 - by jono
Lernid Gets ‘Real’ Events
Another quick Lernid update.
So far, Lernid has merely provided a streamlined interface to the common components in Ubuntu Open Week or Ubuntu Developer Week. I have just completed some work which starts bringing unique value to Lernid as a user interface for these events.
I have been wanting to have a means of providing a structural representation of events, as opposed to just showing a web page with a HTML table showing the schedule. This seems easy enough: just have a database, but part of the value of Ubuntu Open Week and Ubuntu Developer Week is that a wiki means that we can share the burden of scheduling the event, making corrections and swapping sessions. Wikis are not optimal though, they don’t give me the structured information I need. Fortunately, I have come up with a better way.
Last night I hacked support into Lernid to read in an iCal calendar for a given event, separate the events out and store them in a way that I can parse in Lernid. I then took this data and converted the times of the events to the local timezone – this solves one of the biggest problems people have with Ubuntu Open Week – understanding what the heck UTC is and calculating the time of the event in their local timezone. Now you can load Lernid and see the list of events with times that make sense to you. I am also planning to build in functionality to set an alarm for a given event so that Lernid will pop up a notification bubble then minutes before an event to remind you.
The benefit of using iCal as a backend means that event planners can put together events using any calendaring application, and you can not only get awesome event support in Lernid but also provide a standard iCal feed that people can subscribe to in their calendar apps. When using Google Calendar, working together on events is really simple. 
So far, the changes look like this:
Please note, the events listed are dummy data, not real scheduled events.
The code is now in Launchpad. I am not going to be generating any more packages in the PPA until I have another tested and stable version ready, which will be 0.3.
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Visit My Website
December 3, 2009
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This may be a stupid question, but where can I download the sources from?
Visit My Website
December 3, 2009
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Wow, this is really cool! I liked the general concept of Lernid for a beginning user, but with native times and notifications, it really seems like something that would make events easier even for an experienced online event attendee / manager.
I suspect I’ll be using this for the next Ubuntu *Week, keep up the great work.
Visit My Website
December 3, 2009
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The speed of development on this is amazing. I can’t wait to see what features you have implemented a week from now
Visit My Website
December 3, 2009
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Very cool features.
Good work!
Visit My Website
December 4, 2009
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When you are creating this great interface for IRC, could you also look into supporting other ways to participate in classrooms? I am stuck behind a corporate firewall that only allows ports 80 and 443 outbound from workstations.
At first I thought Lernid would be a whole different protocol but it looks more like it is an IRC layer.
Maybe there would be a way to have Lernid be capable of also using a XMPP to IRC bridge to give other users alternative connection methods.
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December 7, 2009
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Amazing. I was complaining about how distant UbuntuOpenWeek felt and this program has blown away my every expectation.