Radio interview covering the Calendar Project (in German)
Two weeks ago, I was interviewed by the Bavarian broadcasting station here in Germany for their weekly computer radio show. The interview went pretty well and we covered a lot of areas, including:
- Current project situation
- History of the project
- Major pain points of radio listeners with our applications (enterprise features vs. small business feature set, mobile phone synchronization)
- Project roadmap
- Contributing to an open source project
You can listen to the podcast of the show by downloading the mp3 file (the interview covers the last eight minutes). As this was a German radio station, the interview was conducted in German as well. Sorry to all our non-German-speaking folks about that.
Nevertheless, this gives us some much needed publicity, for which we are grateful. We are already discussing some followup actions with the radio folks. More about this, when things get more concrete.
Comments
Great interview & interesting insights!
It reminded me of donating to the project - something I should have done some time ago! :)
Also, I like the notion of focusing on the needs of small business/private users, rather than enterprise features. I'm looking forward to further options of contributing to the project as a non-programmer!
Greetings from Germany,
Johannes
Posted by: Johannes | September 2, 2009 4:50 AM
Thanks for the link to the nice interview!
My 2 cents about the phone sync: just provide an awesome, open API and let plug-ins do the rest.
regards
Marco
Posted by: Marco | September 2, 2009 9:20 AM
Hi Simon,
in my opinion, it's no longer important to support direct sync with mobile devices. The better feature is sync between the mobile device and the calendar server, because you can sync anywhere.
This is supported by many calender servers today, e.g. the Google Calendar: http://www.google.com/mobile/products/sync.html
For me the most important features are in the area of group calendaring to organize meetings with several people. For private users it's important, that everybody might use different calendar servers...
Best Regards,
Jörg
Posted by: Joerg | September 2, 2009 11:32 AM
"in my opinion, it's no longer important to support direct sync with mobile devices. The better feature is sync between the mobile device and the calendar server, because you can sync anywhere."
As someone remarked iirc on the newsgroup some time ago: It might not be desirable to put the calendar somewhere on the Net ...
Posted by: Jens | September 7, 2009 11:10 AM
Hi Simon,
what about the syncML protocol to sync with mobile carrier servers?
some of them support it already in some incarnations on serverside...
Thunderbird 2 has a plugin that supports syncing of calender data from lightning as well.
BTW good interview...
Posted by: Steffen | September 8, 2009 5:09 AM
Hi,
can you please give some news about next releases ?
Tks,
Posted by: Tomcal | September 16, 2009 3:01 AM
Yes, please give some news about the planning for those who can't listen radio interview.
Wasn't the RC expected for july or august ?
Posted by: nicolas | September 17, 2009 10:39 PM
String freeze for the upcoming Lightning/Sunbird 1.0beta release on June 23 [UPDATE]
I'm sorry, but I totally forgot to tell, that we currently expect to have the 1.0 beta release ready in about four (4) weeks from now. So that should hopefully give every localizer enough time, who have not been following our checkins on a daily or weekly basis.
I'll inform you as soon as I know about a definitive code freeze and release date.
Posted by: News | September 23, 2009 2:44 PM
String freeze for the upcoming Lightning/Sunbird 1.0beta release on June 23 [UPDATE]
I'm sorry, but I totally forgot to tell, that we currently expect to have the 1.0 beta release ready in about four (4) weeks from now. So that should hopefully give every localizer enough time, who have not been following our checkins on a daily or weekly basis.
I'll inform you as soon as I know about a definitive code freeze and release date.
Posted by: Tomcal | September 23, 2009 2:44 PM
Hello,
BUG report: I don't know if it is duplicate or not but
TB2.x with Lightning 0.9 caldav is prompting for username password for a remote calendar
Tb3.0b4+ Lightning nightly 22 and 23 september 2009 I have no prompt for username/password and so not bale to retrieve the calendar. Not possible to test tb3.0b4 with Lightning 0.9 as the UI is then completely crap.
Continue the good work
Kind REgards
Posted by: Christophe | September 24, 2009 2:19 AM
Is this blog dead?
There has been no update for 26 days!
Is there another (more active) calendar blog?
Posted by: Peter Lairo | September 28, 2009 9:45 AM
I'm a bit scared from the absence of posts on Bugzilla.
Calendar project should be near the beta and the work should be more, instead on Bugzilla there is a very low activity. Is there a reason?
Posted by: Jason | September 28, 2009 9:54 PM
Hi guys,
i think you are doing a difficult but a great work on lightning.
Please don't give up and give some news for those like me who made donations...
Posted by: Tomcal | September 29, 2009 12:19 AM
I think this project has made a very good progress in the last couple of days. The calendar extension can now be added on the SeaMonkey beta 2.0b2. I've been using it and yes there are couple of issues but all in all it is working. Good work to all those who have been working on this project.
For those curious on whats going on here is a list of recently fixed bugs.
Posted by: aerosmith | October 1, 2009 9:46 AM
ok, the html tag was screwed up. Here is the raw link.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&classification=Client+Software&product=Calendar&component=Alarms&component=Build+Config&component=Calendar+Views&component=E-mail+based+Scheduling+(iTIP%2FiMIP)&component=General&component=Import+and+Export&component=Internal+Components&component=Lightning+Only&component=Lightning%3A+SeaMonkey+Integration&component=Preferences&component=Printing&component=Provider%3A+CalDav&component=Provider%3A+GData&component=Provider%3A+ICS%2FWebdav&component=Provider%3A+Local+Storage&component=Provider%3A+WCAP&component=Security&component=Sunbird+Only&component=Tasks&component=Website&target_milestone=1.0&long_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&status_whiteboard_type=allwordssubstr&status_whiteboard=&keywords_type=allwords&keywords=&bug_status=RESOLVED&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailqa_contact2=1&emailtype2=exact&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&cmdtype=doit&order=Last+Changed&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=
Posted by: aerosmith | October 1, 2009 9:50 AM
@ aerosmith:
I do believe the project makes progress but not this much (275 bugs in the last days?).
I understand some German and the interview covers some of the problems associated with projects like this. But still… I would expect some focus on the more important issues. There are three bugs blocking the beta and there seems to be little activity for the last few weeks.
I appreciate the work that is being done and do hope that in the background the project is still on schedule.
It is important to keep (future) users interested in the project. No news and no apparent activity turn people away from the calendar project, possibly never to return again.
So a sign of life would be nice, at least a small update on the bugs been fixed. The beta release is expected in three weeks from now, according to the comments added September 23. Why is this announced in a comment and not a separate post?
Posted by: MarcoS | October 2, 2009 10:30 AM
@MarcoS
I am simply an end user tracking the bugs that is all. So, I do not know anything about the lightning development. Your questions could be answered by the lightning management team. Sorry.
Posted by: aerosmith | October 2, 2009 10:47 AM
I understand. Only the first sentence should be addressed to you. Not all bugs the link refers to are recently fixed.
The rest of my comment is without a doubt meant for the calendar team.
Posted by: MarcoS | October 2, 2009 11:42 PM
Any chance of a transcript so people who don't speak German can at least stick it through Google Translate? :-)
Posted by: someone | October 29, 2009 3:01 AM