Sectorgame

How many of you would be interested in an online calendar system? Before hitting that vote button just yet, hear some of my ideas out.

Basically, calendars as they stand are static. Sure, you're able to schedule events on them, and some of them even give you both daily and monthly schedules. However, they are mostly dumb--they don't attempt to figure anything out on their own.

My idea is to create a dynamic calendar that, based on events and project deadlines you feed it, will create a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule for you. Basically, instead of putting an event on your calendar that says "Project X is due Wednesday" and working on it whenever, you can simply add Project X to this new calendar system and have the calendar automatically figure out the best times for you to work on each particular project based on a few factors like the estimated working time necessary to complete a project. Of course, you can also schedule normal, single events, as well as repeating events, and the scheduler will work around these events.

Since the calendar system would be online and account-based with a strong security system, you and only you would be able to access it from anywhere you could find an internet connection. If the idea gains a lot of interest, I'd certainly consider adding specialized support for mobile devices as well.

Another possible upgrade for businesses would be an employee scheduler--instead of simply having a lot of employees scheduling all their own events, companies could set up their own account with a certain number of employees. The employers could then schedule project deadlines of their own, schedule company meetings, and prioritize deadlines.

Plus, using this type of calendar system, one can quite literally prove to one's boss that one needs more hours in the day to complete that project.

So, what do you guys think? Yea or nay? Or perhaps you already have something that does this?

I am already well into development on this project, and have implemented a very strong security suite. I am posting this poll on several BBs I frequent in order to gauge interest for this project--it's not worth spending time on it if no one would use it. Your responses are appreciated.

Also note that I would be very interested in some aid from web security experts in testing how well the security system performs.

I already have this at work via Outlook. Albeit the deadline-setting is something that has to be done manually. Particularly when we're working with peeps from San Jose or Bangalore.

I would definatly be interested in both helping develop this and writing a client-side notification system that would be able to run on your computer and tell you about recent project changes and whatnot.

Excellent! What language do you work in?

Visual basic, C#, and C++ (and i can safely say i'm very competent with C++)

I think if you want to do it you should - it'd be a good exercise if nothing else. What you should consider however is that there are numerous open source groupware/project manager calendars out there that can provide similar functionality to what you're describing.

If you want a very basic calendar that can output alerts based on "todo" deadlines, try the "Lightning" extension for Mozilla Thunderbird.

Agreed, but sometimes simply writing the program is fun and good practice for leading onto other web-based ideas