Blog moved!

I've moved my blog to wordpress - come drop me a line!
-Doug

NerdDinner.com

Hi all,

If you've ever seen NerdDinner.com, you may be interested in knowing how it was built and how it connects to popular services like Twitter, Facebook, and others.



http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/FT07

Great presentation!
-Doug

iCalendar in XML

For those interested, Jon Udell has had a recent conversation with Mike Douglass and Steven Lees, editors for the draft of the iCalendar XML specification. The draft can be found here:

http://ietfreport.isoc.org/idref/draft-daboo-et-al-icalendar-in-xml/

My name and DDay.iCal are mentioned a couple of times during the conversation. It's nice to see DDay.iCal being adopted by more and more people.

To hear the conversation, follow the link below:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4176.html#

Happy coding!
-Doug

iCalendar Validation

In my previous post, I spoke about Jon Udell's work with iCalendar feeds and his push toward acceptance and compatibility of iCalendar feeds on the Internet. With electronic scheduling and calendaring become a more popular method to manage ones life, the ability to share this information with others also becomes increasingly necessary.

In response to this problem, Jon Udell, Ben Fortuna (creator of iCal4J), and I have started an initiative to standardize the iCalendar validation process, to ensure that calendars indeed will work with any system that consumes them:

http://icalvalid.wikidot.com/

We've also begun work on an XML schema for representing information that validation utilities can use to validate iCalendars. This validation process will notify the end user about variations from the standard, and will indicate areas of their iCalendar that may be incompatible with other systems, along with recommending alternatives.

If you're interested in validation of iCalendars, then please visit the Wiki.

Thanks,
-Doug

iCalendar feeds

Hi everyone,

Jon Udell from Microsoft has been doing some interesting work lately involving iCalendar feeds, their current status, and where they need to go for future acceptance.

Among the libraries he's using to test are:

• iCal4J
• DDay.iCal
• iCalendar.py
• vObject

http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/01/02/feed-validation-revisited-the-parallel-universe-of-icalendar-feeds/
http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/01/05/icalendar-validation-issues-1-and-2-blank-lines-prodid-and-version/
http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/01/06/icalendar-validation-issue-3-quoted-printable-vs-html/

Sam Ruby has also posted about an iCalendar Validator:

http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/01/03/iCalendar-Validator

Check these out if you get a few minutes.

-Doug

MVC Library

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've posted, and I thought I'd start posting more regularly.

Lately, I've been tinkering with the idea of making an MVP (Model-View-Presenter) class library open-source for the general public's benefit. Our team has spent many, many months getting this library setup correctly, and I think other people could benefit from our efforts.

One of the major problems with most people's MVC structure is they violate one of the most principal MVC rules:

The Controller is in control.

For example, in nearly all MVC setups I've seen, the View (i.e. a Windows Forms application) creates a presenter object and a model object, wires them up, and runs. Ideally, the View should be separated from this process, and not be involved. Another rule that is frequently violated is that the View should be separated from the UI layer - in other words, you should not turn your UI layer into the View.

The class library we've been working on tries to enforce as many design rules as it can without being cumbersome and unfriendly. It also makes Dependency Inversion an implicit requirement, making most projects more "plug and play" than they otherwise would be.

Edit: We've published this class library at the DDay Project on SourceForge.

-Doug

New Blog!

Hi everyone,

Many of you have noted that my blog has been offline. I've been tinkering with the idea of making a "global" blog space separate from our web server, so I've finally taken action. Welcome to the new blog!

I'll be posting news about our different projects, and keeping notes of things I find interesting or useful. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it!

-Doug