uvageek

So a while back a friend of mine was all about Microsoft’s PopFly, which I do have to admit is a cool and flexible framework for bringing different pieces of information together, however I’m not a huge fan of the drag and drop interface that is somewhat rigid.  I realize that if you really want you can dig into the API and connect things up with whatever information source that you like and draw that data in.  “Why are you talking about PopFly?”  Because it deals with Mashups of information taking data from several sources and plotting the information in a visual way that draws the client user in.

Nonetheless, a friend of mine returning from a few weeks across the Pond in Europe popped me a note to see if I could provide transport from the airport to home, sure no problem - I would hope that someone would do the same for me if I asked.  So like a good friend I figured that I should be on time and check the flight status.

…so, in much the same way that you can query Google with various parameters to bring back pre-filtered results, for instance the term “Weather in Washington, DC” brings back what you might see in iGoogle as your local weather, you can do so for flights.

Simply put in the flight identifier and the results are displayed there in Google’s search page with the departure and arrival times and cities - quite handy.  But wait, the mashup of information… so you click on the link and are brought to FlightStats.com which draws in information from a few different sources.  But wait, there’s more, click on the “Track this Flight” button and all of sudden you have a mashup that includes Google Maps integration.

Good show Flight Stats!

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So you want to keep your desktop calendar synchronized and visualized through Mozilla Thunderbird because you just can get used to using something like Google Calendar’s web interface?

Look no further than the Lightning plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird along with the Win32 Provider add-on for Google Calendar for Lightning / Sunbird.

So how do I use them all together?  Check out this blog entry…

http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=239

Note that there are updated providers for Lightning and Sunbird… for the latest, check out http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

I’m using the 0.4 version of the provider for Google Calendar with Lightning integration in Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 with Lightning 0.8 and so far I’m liking it.  The only thing that I’ve found isn’t working is the Invite Attendees functionality - otherwise, pretty tight integration.

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