Another suggestion: It'd be awesome if somehow on the main page we could see if someone has posted recently, instead of having to click on each one to check. Not sure how complicated this would be, but I wanted to throw it out there.

i totally agree with your idea on the calender. we should setup one on our site. i guess there are many collaborative calender systems available as opensource out there. does anybody have recommendation?
i am pretty much sure that leonard has a good idea on blog aggregation.

brad -
this should be resolved in less than a week. we have been working on it for some time and are quite close to having it implemented.

woohoo!

wait, sorry - the updated last feature, not the calendar. sorry for the confusion there.

Many of us use Macintosh computers and have access to iCal. and dot Mac. Would it make sense for us to use this, or a similar service, in the interim?

Andrew, using iCalendar is a great idea. I threw up a preliminary calendar (read-only interface): http://interactive.usc.edu/calendar/

Users of iCal, Mozilla Calendar, Evolution, or KOrganizer can subscribe/publish to the calendar directly @ http://interactive.usc.edu/calendar/calendars/CNTV-IMD.ics

Read-write should be working via WebDAV, but I haven't tested it out / worked out the authN/Z for it.

http://www.phprojekt.com/

is an open-source group calender (with other modules)

it looks pretty nice, although we'd need to insall php on our server (something that really needs to be done anyway)

I will try and maybe install this today, along with the plugins needed for main page blog aggregation.

thanks leonard for the calender - we'll see how it works.

just looked at the iCal(ender) that leonard put up. It looks nice. windows folks please chime in...

Will, PHP is up and running on the server (was installed before, just the proper type directives weren't there).

If we're going for calendaring only, I'd probably prefer going w/ phpmycal. If we're doing for full groupware, phpgroupware or more.groupware might be better than phpprojekt (although honestly, i don't think we want 'groupware' so much as a community system - something like a postnuke fork or tikiwiki?).

leonard.

thanks...had tried dealing w/ php a bit ago and it didn't work.

right on about the cal stuff. the phpprojekt was something I just stumbled upon...

Hmm, looks like iCal doesn't allow multi-user syncing by default (Mitch Kapor wrote a good summary a little while back it looks like: http://blogs.osafoundation.org/mitch/000432.html )

Basically, options for continuing to using iCal interface (which is nice) but allowing multiuser read/write probably involves... running diffs (tripwire triggered) into something like phpmycal. At least that seems to me to be the easiest way to do it. Anyone able to think of a better idea?

phpcal sounds good.

I think this is a great idea as well. I am wondering if an interdisciplinary calendar would be possible, which includes interactive, animation, scfx, or other department activities which could be switched on and off depending on which ones you wanted to see.

Sandra, those calendar ideas are good, but I think a bit beyond the scope of what we're talking about. That being said, I'm currently working on a revision of the official USC Events Calendar that should provide a large subset of the functionality you mention.

along the lines of knowing who posted recently -

i would love everyone to read my last post and respond with any suggestions. thanks!