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Group Calendar = 30Boxes + PBwikiFebruary 23rd, 2007 by Narendra |
The subtitle for this post is Partnerships 2.0. A couple of months ago, I had a quick call with Ticketmaster about trying to get some relevant event info into 30 Boxes. They send personalized email out to millions of people and it sure would be nice if we could get an RSS feed or make an API call that looks like ticketmaster.getEventsForEmail(). Unfortunately, they still structure relationships based on absurd numbers like insane quarterly volumes (e.g. a deal with AOL) of ticket sales generated. Odd because it is in their best interest to have everyone linking to their events!
Now, lets talk about the new world order. Late last year, I got an email from Ramit Sethi at PBwiki with an idea to integrate 30 Boxes into their wikis. It was a great idea for both of us because:
- 30 Boxes wasn’t designed explicitly as a group calendar but it does have an excellent UI and solid technical foundation
- PBwiki really didn’t want to build up a whole calendar app
The result: in a few short days we were able to tweak a lot of the work we had done for 30 Boxed and our widgets to allow for an “anonymous” calendar to be embedded outside of 30 Boxes. We even created a simple theme to match the PBwiki look and feel. Meanwhile, PBwiki was able to provide the perfect application to host a group shared calendar as well as a permissioning system to let us display an editable or read-only version. The recently completed their transition to a WYISWYG interface and the plugin is now fully integrated.
It’s a great match. They get a best-in-class calendar app and we get to provide another use case for our technology as well as an ability to market into their user base.
It is perfect for workgroups, teachers, committees, heck, anyone with a wiki probably needs a calendar.
To have a look, from your favorite PBwiki: create/edit a page, insert plugin, productivity > calendar. We are hoping that they can bump it up to Template status (like Jot) in the near future! On our side, we plan to add ical/rss out so people can add their group calendar to any personal calendar they might be using.
Tags: 30boxes, pbwiki, wiki, jot, calendar, plugin, widget, ticketmaster, ramitsethi
30 Boxes!
February 23rd, 2007 at 6:44 pm
You bet, we’ll be adding the 30 Boxes calendar to our templates within about a week.
You guys have been great. The calendar is excellent, you helped sidestep some technical hurdles, and your response time is unbelievable. We’re thrilled to have you as a partner to PBwiki. And most of all, our users love the calendar!
Thanks,
-Ramit
PBwiki co-founder
February 24th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Great idea. Tough part is that anyone who can get to your wiki page can then edit your calendar. Perhaps time to add access control to the 30b plugin? Maybe something like how Google Docs lets you add collaborators to a file?
February 24th, 2007 at 9:25 am
@ Arvind, I believe that there is a read only view to the calendar for wiki users that do not have write priviledges…
February 26th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Awesome!
After years of using yahoo groups to manage our ski house, I started plopping info into a pbwiki while managing dates and contacts on an Google Spreadsheet. Of course I would have preferred the ability to integrate a feature-rich calendar like 30boxes! Can’t wait to play around with this.
Thanks to both of you for working together on this.
February 27th, 2007 at 6:34 am
30Boxes Partners With PBWiki
It’s a great match. PBWiki gets a best-in-class calendar app and 30Boxes gets to provide another use case for their technology as well as an ability to market into PBWiki’s user base.
It is perfect for workgroups, teachers, committees, heck, an…