Superscription: A Better Model For Publish/Subscribe

It occurred to me the other day that the basic "publish/subscribe" model that underlies the iCalendar approach is inadequate, and is actually the opposite of what is needed. Or at least it is the opposite of what I want.

The last thing we need is two dozen applications, all of which have some sort of event management build into them, publishing their information in such a way that it winds up in a read-only format in iCal. In my case, those apps include invoicing software, reminders from various to-do lists, and events listings.

But I really want something else: an application -- let's call it Time Matrix (a souped-up version of iCal or 30boxes, perhaps?)-- that can pull together representations of all these timestamped bits of information, but in an editable way. Imagine if instead of just publishing the event information, an extended standard provided a collection of actions that could be associated with the events, and an interface description for making those actions real. I could edit, or delete the events, and even create new events associated with a specific external app. If I drag an invoice reminder event from one day to another on Time Matrix, the appropriate edit of the date field would be sent to the invoicing application, and I wouldn't have to do anything else.

Here's how it might look: Time Matrix might look something like 30boxes or iCal, but which would support this kind of "superscription" (instead of subscription) to events in other applications. Imagine if Upcoming.org supported superscription: I would superscribe to the feed of Upcoming.org events in Time Matrix, which would display the events in the appropriate days of the calendar. However, I would have the ability to edit those events, in place. Or in the worst case, the request to edit an event would lead to popping the appropriate window of the corresponding application, instead of having to do it manually. And simple, common activities -- like dragging events from one day to another, as mentioned earlier, would be handled directly in Time Matrix, without opening the other apps.

This is somewhat analogous to using an external blog editor, like Ecto, and then using the XML-RPC interface that most blogging platforms support in order to upload blog posts. The XML-RPC works because most blogging systems are based on the same notions of what's in a blog entry: a title, the body, categories, and so on. The same is -- largely -- true with timestamped infomation, like calendar events and reminders.

There are some difficulties in the non-standard elements of these timestamped bits of information, but in the case where I want to add a link to an Upcoming.org event (or an invoicing reminder, or a to-do), the superscription model would simply pop the corresponding Upcoming.org page (or whatever app), and I would have to use the application's native tools for editing. In fact, just adding this capability to publish/subscribe would be a big step forward.

In an increasingly interconnected world, where we rely more and more on online tools to manage our time-bounded lives, the publish/subscribe model is too limiting. I don't want to have to edit time-based information in a dozen separate places, if I can avoid it.

If there is anyone out there doing anything like Time Matrix or superscription, I would like to hear about it.

tags: publish+subscribe, superscription, time+matrix, calendaring

Comments

[Florian Matthes]

The goal of our research project "user-centered social software" at the Technical University München is to develop a desktop application (called "Social organizer") that gives the user a unified (read & write) access to information objects (in your case calendar items) she/he has published on multiple "object-centered social software platforms".

Unfortunately, only one of our papers is in English (http://wwwmatthes.in.tum.de/file/Publikationen/2005/LMW05c/050802-LMW-User-Centered%20Content%20Syndication.pdf), the rest of the paers and web pages is in German. As a (rather trivial) example, http://del.icio.us/personalbrain is my collection of (2000+) non-private bookmarks synchronized via a Java application with a desktop knowledge management software (PersonalBrain 3.0, www.thebrain.com).

As you write in your posting, there are many types of object that I would like to "superscribe" to (calendars, to do lists, bookmark collections, weblogs, contact directories) in a uniform way even if they are scattered across multiple platforms. A (desctop) application could help me to manage my superscriptions in a uniform way and to establish semantic links between these objects at multiple sites.

[Stowe Boyd]

Florian - Sounds great!

[Ciordia9]

Isn't CalDAV going to fix some of this? Most of the calendar faciliators out there are onboard with it and Apple's new push is square behind it. IETF with their hands in it will near guarentee it's cleanlyness.

It is long past due though.

-a