

Please critique my startup: FuseCal.com - sheriff

Hi folks.  We've got a new web app at http://www.FuseCal.com that lets you pull calendar events out of a regular web page and into your personal calendar.  No microformats needed... it looks for event-like patterns right in the HTML document (kind of like Dapper with AI, for events only).<p>We're pretty new, far from perfect, and looking for your standard agonizingly-critical feedback... Please tell me how we can make FuseCal more useful to you.  Thanks a lot!
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dskhatri
It's a good idea with an intuitive UI! You could offer a simple API/javascript
button that event organizers (eg. Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ticketmaster or
StartupSchool.org) could place on their websites. A guest clicks on the button
and gets the opportunity to add the event to his/her everyday calendar app.

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tibetsprague
FuseCal developer here. We've gone ahead and rolled out a new release with
that capability for you... no i kid, we've already got it :)

Check out <http://fusecal.com/welcome/publishers> or log in and click on the
Publish Calendars tab in the upper right. <http://fusecal.com/publisher/>

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Hates_
I only had a quick look but to me it looks great. Not really the sort of thing
I would use but it seemed to work well with the example calendar. My only
gripe was it added all the found events straight off the bat. Personally I
would prefer it to add none and give me the option to add them all or just a
select few.

My only real critique was the audio on the demo video. It really sounded
cheap. You'd get a lot more "wow" factor using a proper microphone.

All in all looks like your creating a great app there.

~~~
dkokelley
To remove all and then hand pick the ones you like, it seems that you can
"select all" and then move them over, then add the ones you like.

I guess a better way to do this would be to default everything to "not
accepted" and then ask the user: "what do you want to import?" with the
option: "Everything!"

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tibetsprague
(FuseCal Developer) We're working on a revamped event selection UI right now
which should be out in a couple weeks. It will make the simple cases of
selecting all the events or just a few of them much easier.

~~~
paulsb
On the example calendar, I think it would have been better to have the green
box on the left and the red box on the right. Drag and dropping things from
left to right rather than from right to left is more instinctive from a users
point of view because one would normally read from left to right (most of your
target audience would anyway).

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kingnothing
Looks pretty cool, although I couldn't get it to work with the first site I
tried. It's one I use for local events: www.thecornernews.com. It worked if I
selected a date and used that URI, but I couldn't find a way to get all of the
events on every day from the front page to load up.

On the plus side, I dig your design and that's a pretty nice domain name, too.

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dkokelley
I really like this application. It works very well for the stage it's in.

I want to point out a simple error I found. Use the link
<http://www.canyons.edu/Offices/PIO/NewsReleases.html> to see events on that
page. These are the news releases for my college. Notice that the application
doesn't find all of the events on the page.

If I could tell the app "This area includes an event not already found. Please
add it." then I could work with any events that are missed (and there will
always be one somewhere that doesn't work).

A feature suggestion along this line is a way to see the events in the source
preview (maybe highlighted in some way) so I can see what the event is and get
any background information from it.

Good luck with this. I really like this idea!

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aykall
Hey! It looks like you are building something great!!

First I tried the page your website suggested and everything worked just fine.
Than I decided to hit back and try another site. I typed the calendar URL I
wanted and than I just couldn't hit Ok. It wasn't working. So I had to reload
the page and than Ok button was working. Well, I'm using Firefox 3 maybe is
because of that but you should check it out.

Also I tried to add <http://www.core77.com/calendar/> and I couldn't because
the only thing I got was the processing status bar for more than 10 minutes.

Have you ever thought about building a Firefox plugin for it? It would be a
great tool.

Well, I can say is that your work is really pretty dam good! Good luck!

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tibetsprague
Thanks for the feedback! Speed is a significant issue that we are working on,
especially when a bunch of people hit the site at once.

A FireFox plugin will also definitely happen in the not too distant future.

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frazerb
Really nice idea. I've hacked countless snippets of perl to do this for me in
the past, so would love an app that would relieve me of this task.

One suggestion -

I used
[http://www.junction.co.uk/HTMLTemplates/whats_on/music/dates...](http://www.junction.co.uk/HTMLTemplates/whats_on/music/dates.htm)

but it kind of got the wrong idea about which bit of text was important.

How about extending the post-process ("Events I want / Events I don't want")
page so that I can give some hints to the app about which bit of text
represents the event name / date / time etc.

keep it up, guys.

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notauser
Picking up on an earlier article, I really like the way you (don't) do user
accounts. Well worth a look by others who want to see how this _should_ work.

I wouldn't have bothered looking at it if I had to log in _, but this was just
easy. And now I have seen how well it works, I might just use it :)

_ Or watch a web cast. It's amazing how many people don't have Flash, or hate
Flash, or are on limited bandwidth/transfer, or just don't like video. And if
you try and use some other format it just multiplies all the above by a factor
of ten.

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thenotself
This worked well grabbing toronto concert events from
<http://www.rotate.com/tickets.php>

I had problems importing into Google Calendar though. It worked, but it
imported 4 calendars, and eventually timed out and showed a FuseCal.com error
page.

Other than that - great service, although it seems limited for a startup
unless you add some widgets.

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sheriff
weird... i'll put this into our bug db. if it happens again, can you send me
feedback via the form in the app (so we can followup via email)?

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neilk
I tried a MySpace band page (hoping it would import tour info) and instead got
all the comments as "events". Oops. Perhaps you should consider the domain
name, it can indicate certain kinds of calendars worth importing.

It's really slow, unless it's also overloaded right now.

This is a hard problem though, and you deserve credit for attempting it.

~~~
sheriff
What you can currently do to get MySpace events is click the "view all" link
next to Upcoming Shows on the profile page. The URL of the events-only page
will harvest correctly.

You might be onto something with the idea of a rule system to handle things
like that automatically... I hadn't considered it before. Thanks!

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jamesbritt
Interesting, but not working for me.

I imported a calender from another Webs which seemed to go fine.

But when I try to embed the FuseCal calender on my site, nothing appears.

On my FuseCal calender list page, it tells me, "Error processing this URL",
but no details on just what this error might be, or what can be done about it.

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jamesbritt
Follow up: A series of E-mail exchanges with someone from FuseCal got things
sorted out.

They were very nice and helpful.

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powerflex
Website looks really good. When I parsed this url

<http://www.fortmason.org/calendar/2008/03/week4.shtml>

it only listed the first event to follow the date pattern and sometimes listed
all the events as one.

You guys are off to a great start!

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ggrot
I like the concept. In addition to all of the other excellent suggestions
below, you really should tackle speed when processing the calendar - it is too
slow.

I would think not just about end-to-end latency: which you should think about,
but also progress indication so the user has an idea of how things are going.

~~~
sheriff
did you get a chance to try the UI for registered, logged-in users? we're
thinking about making the workflow for guest users more similar to that.... do
you think it would help the perception of latency?

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raju
Wow! Great site. I agree with Hates_ in that you get a lot more bang for the
buck if your demo had better sound.

Having said that, awesome website. Great logo and a very nice layout. I tried
it my library's home page and it worked very well.

I certainly will be using this. Great work! Thanks, and good luck...

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tocomment
That's really neat. I really need a bookmarklet for it though. It shouldn't be
hard. Let me know if you need help on that.

It would also be great if this could work within Gmail somehow, that's where I
most often get frusterated that I can't easily add things to my calendar.

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tibetsprague
(FuseCal Developer) Bookmarklet on the way. We have had a ton of folks ask us
for email integration so it's definitely on our horizon.

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NextNetNow
I've had the pleasure of consulting to the FuseCal team. The problem they are
solving - bringing structure to unstructured events - is really tricky stuff.
Fortunately they are super smart and dedicated. FuseCal is definitely a
startup to watch in '08.

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sheriff
Thanks so much, folks... this has already been way more helpful than I was
expecting!

I'm planning to get back to each of you very soon, but in the meanwhile, let's
keep these awesome suggestions coming!

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shawndrost
Looks good! On the "import calendar" page, I would put the source page below
the detected events, and separate it from the rest of the page (by adding a
border).

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sheriff
hey! great minds think alike!

our latest mockups have had them reversed like you're suggesting. it was a
little weird for us at first, because we'd gotten used to the way it currently
is, but it's definitely better with the source viewer on the bottom.

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chengmi
1\. The page is too wide

2\. The address bar breaks with <http://fusecal.com> as input.

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ken
The audio in your screencast could use some help. It sounds generally dead,
and sometimes goes high, or low, or skips.

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scorxn
I went to the screencast first, and the audio quality struck me as well.
You're too close to the mic. Gotta back up (physically) and keep your record
levels near the top of the green. As you speak, try to modulate your voice. If
you're not recording in a studio, a simple trick is to put a blanket behind
the mic. This will let you back up from the mic and raise your levels without
catching reverb or background noise.

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thenotself
This worked well grabbing toronto concert events from
<http://www.rotate.com/tickets.php>

I had problems importing into Google Calendar though. It worked, but it
imported 4 calendars, and eventually timed out and showed a FuseCal.com error
page.

Other than that - great service, although it seems limited for a startup
unless you add some widgets.

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iamwil
make it so I can forward an evite email to you, and you'll follow the link for
me, and do the processing. when done, send me an email giving me a simple way
to pick and choose which events to add. If I had already set it up, it'll auto
pick and add events to my calendar.

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chrisconley
great work guys; i've been really impressed with it so far. it's been super
helpful for me!

yes, everyone's being pretty nice here, but it's well deserved. you guys
definitely have something going here.

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msfeldstein
This would be cool as a bookmarklet.

