
Minetime.ai – A Calendar for the 21st Century - turrini
https://minetime.ai/
======
anconam
Hello everyone! Marco here, main contributor of MineTime. Even though I didn’t
start this thread, I am very happy to see enthusiasm about the project and I
am very interested in hearing your feedback.

Here are some background information and (opinionated) replies to some of the
concerns:

\- I know that for many 21st century means “mobile-first”. There are several
great calendar apps for iOS and Android and I believe the focus on these
larger markets only has prevented the progress of productivity tools for
desktop environments (see, for example, lack of a fully-featured calendar
application on Linux). At some point we surely want to have a mobile version
but at the moment we need to focus on something, and I believe desktop
calendaring has some important gaps to be filled.

\- Electron vs Native. This discussion is as old as Electron itself. Everyone
would prefer a native app for his/her platform but the truth is that we (and
many others) don’t have the resources to do that. Electron allows us to focus
on developing new features, instead of spending time porting the old ones onto
different platforms. Performance are surely not optimal but MineTime can be
still largely optimized in this sense. And I am sorry for your RAM, it’s
either this or nothing until somebody finds a way to optimize Electron.
Calendar.google.com is not always an alternative.

\- Web vs Installed App. We believe web apps cannot provide the same UX of a
native app. Yes, I used the term “native”, although controversial, because
MineTime still uses many native OS APIs to integrate into your system,
something that a web app can simply not do! But the main reason why we decided
for Electron when we started this project is different: user privacy and
security. Any web-based calendar application would require us to sync your
calendars on our servers. Now, we want to integrate all calendars, not just
the easiest ones. Microsoft Exchange is still used in many corporations and
they don’t provide an OAuth mechanism . This means we would have to store the
user email and password on our servers, something that is simply awful. This
is also the reason why no web-based calendar synchronizes with Exchange and
will never do. With MineTime, your usernames, passwords or access tokens never
leave your computer. Yes, if you agree, we transfer some calendar data and
provide some interesting features in return. In the future, we expect to be
able to provide all these “advanced” features without any data transfer at
all, thanks to the fact that everything runs on your computer.

\- Advanced features and AI. This is still WIP. Besides focusing on adding and
improving all the necessary and well-deserved traditional calendar
functionalities, we are doing research on Visual Analytics and Assisted
Scheduling. Great improvements in this direction are expected to come during
the summer, so stay tuned... An important side note: the calendar data is only
used to provide these features, not for monetization, definitely not for
espionage.

You can download MineTime for free on Windows,macOS and Linux from
minetime.ai. Feel free to use the contact form for any question, feedback, or
to tell us about your use case.

------
jammygit
I used minetime for a bit after getting frustrated with some bugs in
Thunderbird with lightning. It stopped updating my calendar mysteriously on my
desktop but not my laptop, but was good besides that. I'm uncomfortable
sending them my data so never used any advanced features - I guess its their
selling point but really the main app was fairly user friendly.

By contrast, I can't switch an event's calendar in Thunderbird successfully,
gnome calendar isn't working with caldav, California didn't support click and
drag last I checked, and evolution is really clunky (why is the week view not
a normal week view for example?). Gnome calendar used to also move events
inaccurately when click and dragging, being off by X hours...

Tempted to switch to a web calendar tbh, these apps need to team up and make a
single version that works better. Each is so close to being good but none is
quite there.

Edit: typo

~~~
phillc73
> why is the week view not a normal week view for example?

Can you please clarify this a bit further? I'm not a regular Evolution user,
but happen to have v3.22.6 installed. There's a Day, Work Week, Week, Month
and List views. I couldn't find anything specifically abnormal about any of
them.

I am interested in a better calendaring solution that can integrate both my
work calendar (Outlook) and my personal calendar (whatever I happen to be
using at the time; Thunderbird, Fastmail web calendar, paper diary). Mobile
syncing via CalDav would also be nice.

~~~
jammygit
Work week is the week view I'm used to I guess and needs to be configured
slightly to get the weekend days included. Week view is like an upcoming
events view separated by day of the week, which I'm sure many people like, but
I cant get used to it personally.

~~~
jammygit
(that said, I think evolution works properly and I'm glad it exists. I don't
recall the specific reason I moved on from it)

------
kgwxd
I'm surprised a basic, open source calendar with a simple API doesn't exist.
I've looked really hard for one and can't find it, it seems like something
that should be part of the LibreOffice suite. The last thing keeping me tied
to Google is a calendar and spreadsheet with a custom script that forecast my
finances. The script just queries the calendar API for all events from today
to a year later.

~~~
mikojan
You can do that with remind[0].

[0]: [https://linux.die.net/man/1/remind](https://linux.die.net/man/1/remind)

------
VvR-Ox
I use it since some weeks and so far I noticed the following.

PRO: \- best desktop calendar app I tried on Linux (which is really f _ed up -
it 's 2019 and there really isn't a good calendar???) \- easy appointment
typing feature is very nice and helps me to get appointments into the calendar
easier even when typing and not speaking

CON: \- minor glitches (sometimes just doesn't save my appointment) \- cool
features only available to people who give their data to everyone (that's just
not me). It would be nice to have something like that without a potential
whole for entities to spy on me

I'd love to have something like this as an open source desktop calendaring
solution with integrations to all important services / data sources and export
functionality (incl. print).

Learned by using it: _ It's 2019 and Linux doesn't have a decent calendar- &
contact- solution :-( * mineTime even with it's bugs is by far the best (which
is unsettling)

So thx for providing this app - it already helps me to stop using my nextCloud
web calendar in the browser (which sometimes sucks).

------
ta1234567890
Looks pretty cool, but I would've expected a calendar for the 21st century to
either be a mobile app or at least be mobile friendly on the web. Instead, I
was greeted by a message telling me to visit from a desktop computer to
download.

~~~
anconam
Although it might looks like a weird design choice, an installed app was the
only possible choice not to store the user credentials on our servers. I have
elaborated this in another post.

~~~
peey
You have localStorage and indexedDB on the web. Web is a pretty powerful
client.

------
platz
\- wants access to your google contacts when you add google calendar
integration

~~~
jerieljan
It probably needs that for contact lookups and insights, since you can compose
invites using natural text.

I'm not comfortable with it either to be honest, seeing that it could delete
contacts according to Google's prompt.

~~~
anconam
Unfortunately Google gives no granularity to ask for read-only access. We
definitely don’t delete calendars or contacts: in fact, there is no code in
MineTime that can do that, neither on purpose nor accidentally.

------
agucova
While the concept sounds great, I was really disappointed with the performance
of app (even for Electron) and the design needs quite a lot of polishing,
multiple events happening at the same time overlap quite badly, and the
positions of the buttons are confusing.

I think a webapp should've been an obvious choice, but I'll be keeping a close
eye on the project, it seems promising.

------
jastanton
Why does it need to be able to delete contacts & calendars:

\- See, edit, download, and permanently delete your contacts

\- See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access
using Google Calendar

So, I am a bit paranoid, but I bet some on HN will enable this for their
corporate calendars. If I were a government-sponsored entity or small
organization I would definitely spend a few grand on designers & engineering
to create a product like a calendar or a shiny new email client to learn some
trade secrets. Just saying... why hack your way into a corp when you can ask
nicely to walk in the front door.

~~~
TheCraiggers
It's not their fault that Google's permission system isn't fine-grained
enough. Besides that, what trade secrets are you going to glean from a contact
list or calendar entries? I doubt even your meeting agendas are going to
contain much info.

~~~
gcb0
good for you that you have nothing to hide in your calendar and contact list.

~~~
TheCraiggers
Then don't use the "advanced features" where your data is sent to a server? Or
don't use the product at all until they open the source? I don't understand
what your point is. This isn't being forced on you.

------
werber
This looks awesome. If I put it on my work PC for Outlook and my personal Mac
can they sync up?

------
poglet
Was unable to get it to authenticate with a NextCloud instance that had 2FA
enabled. Will take another look into this later, seems interesting.

------
b_tterc_p
I think “Siri’s” integration with calendar is as good as I desire. Contact
inference and calendar meeting suggestions.

------
dwighttk
I like the time analytics... I’ve missed email analytics ever since I stopped
using Eudora

------
bm5k
>Please visit this page from your desktop browser to download MineTime

~~~
anconam
Yes, it is a Desktop app. Would you like to see a download button for a Linux
installer while browsing from iOS? What would you suggest to show
alternatively?

------
akadeb
how did you design the website?

I'm pretty much a noob at responsive web design and if there is a template
like this, that'd be super awesome. the website itself looks really nice.

------
zoeysaurusrex
Holy shit HN is extra today. In this thread I counted maybe three responses
that were meaningful. The rest were armchair quarterbacking from a lot of
folks on how to do it better or how the product sucks without substantive
feedback. What happened to HN? Nearly every thread is like this anymore. This
quote is becoming more and more relevant here.

“You write your snide bullshit in a dark room because that's what the angry do
these days”

~~~
telesilla
In this spirit of this thread being completely useless to talk about the app
itself I'm going to comment on your use of the word "extra" which is a
decidedly recent usage for the word and, as a person born in the 20th century,
I'm still getting my head around it. I love watching language evolve around
me.

~~~
SquareWheel
I assumed they made a typo. What does it mean in this context?

~~~
master-litty
This is a funny word. I use it often and I'm finding "extra" difficult to
explain.

My best take is that you take the general expectation or main thing about a
situation -- Then when something is "extra," the magnitude of the expectation
or thing is large. But usually there's an unusual spin involved too, only very
slightly.

Example: My fiancee's makeup is extra. Makeup is typically accenting beauty
and lightly applied, so when it's extra, it's overwhelmingly pretty and
heavily applied.

In this context, Hacker News is known for mostly serious discussion and polite
chains of building thoughts. The users are extra today by being dramatically
serious and having impolite chains of volatile thoughts, or maybe even chains
of echochambering.

~~~
SquareWheel
That is pretty tough to wrap one's head around. I guess it requires reading
into the subject from context and estimating the most likely characteristic
being magnified.

Thank you for the explanation.

~~~
master-litty
It was a tough one to write out too.

Hopefully more help than ramble. Thank you for coming to my TED talk :)

------
jxdxbx
“MineTime is a calendar built on Electron, allowing it to run natively as
desktop application on Windows, Mac and - yes! - Linux.”

So, not a native app then.

------
l0b0
AI-powered? As if calendars weren't incomprehensible enough, now you'll need
to reach fourth level support (that one PhD graduate who is chained to their
desk) to understand why your second Sunday every quarter, 9:00 Europe/Oslo to
12:00 next day Pacific/Auckland event now occurs every Monday.

~~~
dhash
I'm pretty sure when they say AI-powered under "Smart scheduling", it's just
turning scheduling into 3-SAT.

The NLP stuff, fine, but those kinds of queries tokenize extremely well

~~~
nsomaru
Hey, would you mind explaining how scheduling is turned into 3-sat? I’ve read
some Wikipedia and SO but I’m still not clear how scheduling generalises to
solving this problem.

------
fxfan
written using "modern web technology".

------
xvilka
O tempora o mores. Even calendar app requires Electron. Somebody please show
them Qt.

~~~
xeromal
For years, people complained that Linux was left out of the equation when apps
were released. Then electron came along that made it super easy to be cross-
platform with a performance loss. Now people complain that it's not written
natively which seems silly for a calendar app. It's not like performance or
look-and-feel is a huge issue. If they made it natively, people would complain
it doesn't have a command-line API.

~~~
EduardoBautista
When people asked for Linux support, I don't think they meant make poor
performing apps for everyone in exchange.

------
interfixus
How the art of desktop applications has plummeted over the last ten years or
so. Used to be that cross platform releases were - often - tight, well
crafted, native looking, nicely functional apps built with care on some
suitable abstraction library. Qt, Gtk, whatever.

These days more and more otherwise worthy projects seem to be delivered via
the monstrous deformity known as Electron.

Another half gigabyte or so gobbled up to keep a simple calendar running? I'll
stick to my Osmo.

