Adding timezones into
your Upcoming feed
Matt Harris
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Problem
Upcoming doesn’t know about timezones
Their events are “floating”
Different timezone events show as the same
timezone in your calendar
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Solution
Add a timezone to the event ... but how?
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What do we have?
Start date, end date, start time, end time
problem: their floating times
longitude/latitude
Bad, not actually used
Country code
Good, but what about multi-timezone countries
City
OK, but it was entered as free text
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Example Feed
{ \"venue_state_name\":\"England\",
\"venue_country_code\":\"uk\", \"username\":\"adactio\",
\"venue_zip\":\"SW1P 3NZ\", \"tags\":\"\",
\"status\":\"watch\", \"metro_id\":\"49\",
\"end_time\":\"17:00:00\", \"venue_id\":\"69299\",
\"venue_state_code\":\"london\", \"end_date\":\"2008-09-16\",
\"latitude\":\"\", \"venue_phone\":\"020 7390 1590\",
\"personal\":\"0\", \"user_id\":\"81213\",
\"id\":\"449191\", \"venue_address\":\"Dean's Yard,
\"start_date\":\"2008-09-15\", Westminster\",
\"geocoding_ambiguous\":\"\", \"venue_name\":\"Church House ... \",
\"venue_city\":\"London\", \"venue_state_id\":\"59\",
\"longitude\":\"\", \"venue_country_id\":\"6\",
\"venue_country_name\":\"United Kingdom\", \"venue_url\":\"http:\\/\\/url\\/\",
\"name\":\"@media Ajax\", \"title\":\"\"
\"start_time\":\"09:00:00\", },
\"geocoding_precision\":\"\",
\"description\":\"After a hugely successful, ....\",
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Finding the timezone
Couple of providers with APIs
Geonames
Google
Yahoo Location Extractor
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Converting to a Timezone
http://www.geonames.org
Good set of web service methods
Documentation helpful
Various response formats
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Process
Extract City and Country from
Upcoming Feed
SEARCH for city and country code
on GeoNames
Extract Longitude and Latitude from
GeoNames response
RETRIEVE timezone from
GeoNames
Inject into Upcoming feed
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Considerations
Time of response - caching?
Frequency of change, how do we keep this up
to date?
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Step up Yahoo Pipes
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Further Info
http://www.themattharris.com
http://pipes.yahoo.com/themattharris/
upcomingusergetwatchlist
Thanks also to Kent Brewster,Yahoo Inc for
Pipes help
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