Home > > Search results

EtherTV: video playlist editor

At the beginning of this year, I had an idea for a web site that would allow you to string together videos from other sites to make video mix-tapes. I've called it EtherTV, and it's located at http://www.ethertvtuner.com/ (similar to my streaming radio station aggregator RadioWave at http://radiowavetuner.com/). Basic information, along with any updates, can be found on my public wiki here.

EtherTV allows you to create and share streaming video stations by aggregating videos from web sites like YouTube. Each station broadcasts the videos in a fixed order then repeats when all videos have been shown. Like broadcast television, anyone watching a station at a specific time will watch the same video, at the same location, as anyone else who is watching. However, viewers can choose to skip to any other video in the station any time they like. Viewers can also easily return to the current location in the broadcast.

It's light on features right now, but I'll be continuing work on it to slowly implement my feature list. If you find it useful, recommendations are welcome.

Of note: RMI libraries

Article via Reddit comparing the Thrift RMI protocol developed by Facebook and open sourced to the Apache project, and Google's protocol buffers protocol released under BSD. The primary benefit of both is that they're much (much) leaner than XML and SOAP. The interesting point of the linked article was that (with the implementations used...) using compressed JSON was faster. Neat.

I've never been impressed by the incessant bitching from developers who decry the bloat of SOAP. I can understand the potential need, but I suspect that most of the time we're fighting server speed and not throughput. Slashdot discussed Thrift two years ago. There are a few gems in the comments--albeit buried under the usual jags about NIH syndrome. Meh. Many good libraries come out of NIH along with many bad ones. I know I've benefitted greatly from open source so, like the argument against "useless blogs," useless code is harmless when ignored.

Where was I?

Busy couple of weeks.

Thursday the 23rd we went to see Cannibal! The Musical with Kevin Roy. Very funny and very, very weird at times. The best and grossest impulses of South Park's Trey Parker. Highlights: the creepy, mechanical look on the pianist's face during intermission music; the disco number sung by the cyclops on the mountain as his black and white sheep friends dance around the stage in a shall-we-say suggestive manner; the "hit" song "Shpadoinkle". Afterwards was an awesome dinner at Sotto Sotto.

On Thursday the 30th, I voted! Took me ~2 hours this year. In 2004, I had a 1-1/2 hour wait. Voting this year went much more smoothly. No complaints except for the bald-faced lie that we needed to turn our cell phones off because they interfered with the voting machines. One volunteer even said that they had "mishaps" the previous day because someone didn't obey. Fuck you and your lying shit. As with how I felt in 2004, I hate how gays lost big in several states. It's odd and disheartening and gives this country a one-step-forward-two-steps-back sort of score on human rights. *sigh*

Saturday the 1st was Wicked at The Fox. Entertaining and funny (though I didn't think it was as funny as the two ladies who laughed-at-fucking-everything-to-the-point-of-annoyance did). First complaint: it needed an overture to open the piece. It started somewhat too quickly and needed a few minutes of music to warm up. Maybe that's not de rigeur for the modern musical? Second complaint: the music was (generally) standard musical style and less demanding than I'd hoped. Genre writing with few chances taken. With the potential for rich psychological examination of the characters, more could have been done. I think of the continuum of musicals going from Rent (blech! horrible, horrible musical) on one end and Sweeney Todd on the other. Wicked was somewhere in the middle. Overall, it was more buffa than what the subject matter could deliver, but still very enjoyable.

Tonight is Joshua Bell at the ASO. Barber Violin Concerto (outstanding piece!) and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. Yay!

Where was I?

Vacation in Miami and Key West last week!

Flight out Friday night to Miami. After the luggage, rental car, and check-in, we hit Ocean Dr. and camped out on the patio of a little place called The News Cafe at ~midnight. Drinks and tapas until 2 or 3 whilst people-watching.

Saturday we had to purchase beach gear that we didn't want to pack and then head to the beach! I had a horrible meal at Front Porch Cafe (Lisa's was good though), then off to find me a beach book at Books and Books on Lincoln (awesome book store! reminded me of Sundog Books in Seaside, FL), I ended up with the enjoyable World War Z. ZOMBIES! Beach was nice and hot. Toplessness was enjoyed as was the warm ocean water. Realized that with just the two of us, only one could go swimming at a time. :(

Evening was one of the best meals at one of the best restaurants I've ever been to in my life: Wish Restaurant at The Hotel. Glowing drinks at the rooftop bar with a beatiful view of the city followed by a meal on the first floor patio. We sat at a two-top next to a circular fountain surrounded by larger tables. Those were shaded by large umbrellas and the whole patio was surrounded by a garden wall of flowers and vines. The sounds of the fountain in the small space was perfect. The waitress was a songwriter that had just moved down from NY. Neat!

The next morning was checkout (+ a we-lost-your-car scare) and lunch at Versaille in Little Havana on the way out of town. I had some nice, strong Cuban coffee after and we shared some sort of sweet (Dolce Leche?) dessert. Road trip to Key West!

(Lisa at the Southernmost point in the US.)

Key West is a mishmash of bars and restaurants and walkin' around. Everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, we refreshed ourselves with frozen drinks at The Flying Monkey Saloon. Sqeeze bottle with cheap refills FTW.

(Roosters abound in Key West! Hog's Breath at said saloon and Kalik at our last lunch in Miami. Not show: a bottle of Quilmes enjoyed on the drive in.)

Monday morning we went for a jog. It was my first real jog since I found out about my herniated disc almost two years ago. It felt sooooo good, and it was fun jogging with Lisa, but that combined with a half day of walking the next day put me in somewhat constant pain for the next couple of days. I still may try a 10k sometime and just accept that I'll need a week to rehabilitate.

(See, I told you. And some clouds on the drive back to Miami.)

Weather was perfect every day except Lisa's b-day on Tuesday. We spent that day walking around the city (*ouch*), saw the six-toed-cats at the Hemmingway house, and made a failed attempt to hit the beach when we thought the rain had stopped. We were wrong. I'd never read any Hemmingway, so when Lisa spotted a German translation of Der Alte Mann und das Meer in the gift shoppe, I picked it up along with the English version. Sentences are short and readable, so it will be a perfect exercise. B-day dinner was at Cafe Marquesa. Excellent food with an atmosphere inside similar to La Tavola in the Highlands.

(I was pitching him a story about kids in a rock band trying to stop an evil genius from taking over the world. He wasn't buying it...)

Final day was delicious breakfast at Croissants De France (logo: gecko eating a croissant), souveniers of coffee and coffee mug at Cuba Cuba, then a slice of key lime pie and final frozen drinks for the road back to Miami. In Miami we had some time, so we ended where it all began with drinks at The News Cafe. Ahh.

Lisa just reminded me that I forgot about our parasailing trip. We went on Monday in Key West and had a blast! Good group of ~10 people on the boat plus the two crazy guides from South Africa. Gettin' ready:

Goin' up:

Smilin' at the Earth:

We got pretty high up and saw (1) a sea turtle surface and dive and (2) a porpoise or some-such animal swimming around. My fear of heights kicked in and it was really fun.

Where was I?

Friday we got to leave work early, so I got some piano in before meeting the wife and brother-in-law at the Cypress Street Pint and Plate for a few drinks ... who am I kidding? We were there until an undetermined time when somehow we walked the two blocks back home and scarfed on a take-out box of their delicious meatball sliders.

Saturday was exercise and coding, and then an evening of crawfish at Tedra and Bill's XXth annual Crawfish Boil. Sunday was a cookout at Alicia and Dan's (delicious lamb burgers filled with feta and spinach), then to Eddie's Attic with A & D & Jonelle & Theresa for a fun set of music by The Bonaventure Quartet (with Amy Pike of the long defunct Lost Continentals).

We cut out just before midnight to get Lisa home and rested for her Monday morning 10k at North Point Mall where I hung out at the only Starbucks in the world that doesn't offer wifi, free or otherwise. OTP is barbaric. We kicked back until noon and then headed up to Liz and Matt's to relax around the pool. For the rest of the day. Drinks and snacks that we really didn't need at the Vortex after we got home, resisting the end of the long weekend.

Two days out in the sun and no sunburn. A first, and a good omen for summer.

Where was I?

Spent the first two weeks of January doing Scott's Patented Slash and Burn Diet. Monday through Thursday only 1000 calories per day; weekends do whatever I want (within reason, no setting hobos on fire). I was in a sad fatty fatty fatso state from the holidays and needed to take control. Success!

Beginning of January was spent caulking and puddying the molding my brother helped me put in in December (250 feet around the entire condo). We threw away my college bookshelves and just purchased new bookshelves from The Container Store but there are still continents of books distributed throughout.

Last weekend at a cabin in Blairsville with A & D and S & R. Hell ride up through Friday traffic down 85, over 285, then up 75 to pick up Lisa and get supplies for the gang at Total Wine on Barrett Parkway. Quick 2-hour trip once we got out of rush hour traffic and we were rewarded with a meal of lamb, couscous, and asparagus. And wine. Saturday was wandering around outside (I forded a Major Waterway), extended session of Oh Hell (re-dubbed "I'm Fucked"), dancing, Cabin Fever, etc. Sunday was another session of Oh Hell and considerable denial drinking. Great weekend and now Lisa & I are on the hunt for some North Georgia land on which to build a cabin.

Tomorrow night is our 9th anniversary at Aquaknox and Saturday is Cathy and Steve's 0th anniversary. No other big plans AFAIK.

new

Our various New Year's celebrations (how come I can't remember more?!?):

• 1998 (?) - Dinner with Lisa and my brother and his wife at South of France (closed)
• 1999 - Millenium fun at Pricci, private room with around 15 friends
• 2000 (?) - Romantic dinner at home
• 2001 (?) - in New Orleans for a bowl game and craziness on the streets
• 2002
• 2003 - Big party at the Georgia Tech Conference Center with multiple DJs and craziness
• 2004 - Big party at our pad
• 2005 - Dinner at Nakato with friends
• 2006 - Party at Stacey and Alby's
• 2007 - Charleston, SC, dinner at Cyprus with Lisa
• 2008 - Palate and Feast with Shelby and Robert

Where was I?

Thanksgiving Eve drinks at Northside Tavern where I saw the funniest/most offensive graffiti joke about Cabbagetown, crack whores, and the relative cleanliness of the NST men's bathroom, in between watching episodes of Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. After that, an early-ish dinner at Marlow's and an early evening home.

Thanksgiving was just Lisa and me and my parent here at Peachtree Lofts Central. I cooked up the Rosemary and Thyme Roasted Cornish Game Hens (aka "Midtown yardbird") and Lisa slaved over garlic mashed potatoes, green beans and prosciutto, and the best cornbread chorizo and mushroom stuffing ever. Everything turned out surprisingly well.

Friday, Lisa suffered through an LSU loss after three overtimes, then we went to the ASO to watch The Wizard of Oz with full orchestral accompaniment. They need to do this with more movies (although, I'm not sure which would benefit most). It may have been The Live Affect, but the WoO soundtrack seemed to have so many more ideas than the orchestral soundtracks I hear today. I think the contrast is similar to, say, a Mahler or Wagner compared to a Copland or Diamond. Not necessarily better.

Sat nite was drinks and chicanery over at Alicia and Dan's then late nite appetizers at Milltown Arms (you know, because we'd been starving ourselves most of the weekend...).

Lazy Sunday in front of the TV catching up with Heroes and Dexter.

Top Flr

Went to Top Flr after seeing Eastern Promises [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] last night. Top Flr: every dish we had was excellent. Mixed green salad with lavender honey dressing and figs, lamb skewers with tsatsiki and cauliflower couscous, gnocchi with spinach and garlic, and pork tenderloin (plus a couple of vegetable sides). The pork and gnocchi were the stand out dishes of the meal. Prices were between $5 and $12. The pork was the only entree we ordered, the rest were appetizers or sides. All had very good flavor. Where Da Vinci's used to be.

Menu search on EventNett

I've added the ability to search restaurant menus on EventNett. Users can edit restaurant entries and add URLs for their menus. EventNett will read the contents of the menus and update the database with menu items, descriptions, and prices. You can then search for specific dishes. Here's a list of events at restaurants in Midtown that serve lamb. You can view the full menus and links at the bottom of the restaurants' location pages. Here's Ecco's page with their late night and dinner menus. Price ranges are also displayed.

This is a first draft, so bla-bla-bla. There's so far few menus added, it doesn't parse PDFs yet, and the HTML on a very few menu pages is so chaotic that EventNett can't find anything of value and may return nonsense. Finally, screen-scraping is an uncertain art at best, so menus will be only 90% accurate. It remains to be seen whether that's valuable enough.

I had the idea last weekend when Lisa & I were out trying to remember where we had mini-burger appetizers. We never figured it out, but the a-ha moment came soon after.

Where was I?

Long week.

Last Wednesday, I got the itch to go to my newfavoritesushiplace Fune. We fell in love with their salted squid appetizer the first time we went, but every time since it has gone downhill. Still, there is much good to enjoy. Drinks at The Vortex after where we saw our long-lost bartender Artie.

Thursday was the downtown dinner week evening with friends at Pacific Kitchen. Outstanding food; we'll definitely be going again for the full menu. And to top it off, we walked to a new(ish?) bar just down the street called The Albert. Tin ceiling, gothic arch liquor shelves behind the bar, and a friendly bartender.

Friday was a vacation day for me. Call it an atheist holiday: Friday is our sabbath. I got caught up on things I needed to get caught up on, and then we went to Enoteca with Codermonkey and his wife before they went to see Kathy Griffin (a surprise that I pretty much spoiled with my big mouth). We got the lowdown on their honeymoon in Europe: Paris was spent on jet lag and bad weather, London was much better with musicals and late-night chicanery. Lisa & I are now talking about doing a London weekend and catch Wicked or maybe even Lord of the Rings (I didn't even know they made it into a musical!). Lisa & I continued on to Avra for drinks and gabbin' with the bartender and ourfavoritewaitress, then more drinks at The Vortex while we played the pornographic video games. Rearrange puzzle-pieces to reveal naked ladies from the 70s! Awesome!!

Saturday we went to see Paris, je t'aime (3/5) [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ]. A quirky, varied, and satisfying collection of 18 short stories about love in Paree. For all of the variety contained, it held together. A hot walk up Highland for pre-dinner wine at Murphy's then tapas afterwards at Noche. I ended up snagging two bottles of Syrah at Murphy's wine shop: a Rosenblum and an Australian Molly Dooker. The walk back to the car off of Ponce was much cooler after dinner. Ended at McCray's.

Sunday was low-key with drinks at The Grape before watching the 7:50 show of Superbad (4/5) [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] at Atlantic Station. We had intended to see the 6:30 show, but everybody in Atlanta was in line to see a movie that night. I don't need to add to the praise, but Seth's "drawing affliction" was ridiculously funny. Home after and The Asphalt Jungle (4/5) [ IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes ] from my film noir collection.

I need a break...

Where was I?

Drinks and pizza over at Alicia and Dan's on Friday. Low-key in preparation for Cathy's b-day dinner at Shaun's on Saturday. Items of note: We accidentally yelled "surprise!" to a Cathy look-alike who, after the initial shock wore off, handled it well. Cathy arrived later in all black while her look-alike was in all white. Odd. Our end of the long-table-of-16-people lamented the horribleness of the movie Battlefield Earth. Lisa & I caught the last half earlier in the day and so the scars were still fresh. Alicia's had long healed over. Fun fact: one of BE's record-setting eight Razzies is Worst Screen Couple for Travolta and "anyone sharing the screen with him." For dinner I was the winner with the beef tartar appetizer and grilled trout with corn risotto entre. Both excellent. Post-dinner was drinks and dancing by everyonebutme at The Warren. Possibly going to see Stardust tonight and get 1/2-priced bottles of wine after at Avra.

Where was I?

Codermonkey's wedding two Saturdays ago (June 30th). They shuttled off to Gay Paree soon after, then to London, and they're probably back home (although his blog is still curiously quiet).

The fourth was spent at Stacy and Alby's joint where I was slightly more anti-social than usual when I saw that someone had brought a deluxe DVD of The Kids are Alright (purchased soon after). Then drinks on Ecco's back patio w/ Shelby and Kabao and a very slow-to-recover day at work the next day.

Friday was my brother's b-day dinner at Rathbun's Steakhouse. Mixed reviews from friends but we had a great meal (despite the two bottles of port that were accidentally added to the bill). Drinks afterwards at Ecco (see a pattern?) and then I--and I am not fucking you about this--logged in to work to help with a midnight upgrade. In bed by 5.

Saturday afternoon was all piano. I went through Bach's French Suite #4, the Stravinsky I've been working on (the last two pages are the killer), and variation #29 from the Goldberg Variations. 29 has like the most oblique rhythms of all of those. I had avoided it because of that but I'm now completely warmed up to it. Saturday evening was Allison's b-day and drinks afterwards at the Old Towne Bistro and The Catch, OTP.

Sunday was that crazy Russian movie Daywatch at The Plaza on Ponce with Scott and LC. The four of us had watched Nightwatch a year or so ago, so this was the long-delayed part two. Very visually creative. The plot is a mishmash but worth the ride. I recommend hunting it down. Dinner at Manuel's.

Rare

I am so ready to try out Rare on Piedmont near North across from the Publix. Tapas with a southern flair (crawfish, grits, chicken and waffles...). Beware their need-I-say-annoying Flash site. A co-worker went there and from his description and the photos it sounds like Bazzaar near the Fox. That area of Piedmont has been cursed by its location. We used to go to the average-but-pleasant Tin Roof Cantina (until it turned into some other, more average, bar) and enjoyed the seedy Brit-pub down the street (now closed). It's an odd area for an upscale joint, but we'll do our best to support the effort.

If only for the nice wine menu.

Where was I?

Friday nite at Slice in Glenwood Park with friends. Glenwood Park has a small neighborhood with walkable streets but only just a few restaurants so far (Slice, Vickery's, and Vino Libro). Friday was perfect for some patio food and wine.

Saturday was the Symphony with the Beethoven Pastoral Symphony and the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi's Garden of Cosmic Speculation based on Charles Jencks garden in Scotland. First time I'd heard the Pastoral live, and it was a very lively performance with the separate sections of the orchestra really standing out. The Gandolfi was, in places, phenomenal. He has MP3s of the work at his site, and I can only assume they are from the ASO's performances this past week. Movements I-V were outstanding with a mix of Messiaen, Reich, and a little Persichetti yet still original and at times very rock and roll. Good use of polyrhythms throughout. He lost the crowd with his Baroque pastiche in the sixth movement suite. Although well done, it didn't fit with the rest of the work. The remianing movements got back on track and the final movement, "The Nonsense," provided a spectacular ending. During the intermission, before his work was performed, we actually saw him mingling in the lobby. I had the chance to go say something, but what? After the performance I realized that an invitation to free drinks at The Vortex would have been appropriate. Maybe next time.

Afterwards was a late dinner at Trois. Nice atmosphere and great food. I had: Alaskan Halibut with pea fricassee, tender onions, and tomato confit. Lisa had: Braised Beef Oxtail with roasted scallops, butternut squash, thumbelina carrots, and pecorino. Both were outstanding. Chatted with an older couple having their last meal in Atlanta before their return home to Manhattan.

Sunday was, of course, poolside drinks and chatter up at Liz and Matt's. Many arguments were had; I got scraped in odd places while swimmin' around with the dogs; and I got schooled on various human rights issues by Matt's friend and his friend's g-friend (whose name I forget but who is in school for international studies).

Movies were: The Killing of Satan, which would be a good challenge for Joel and the robots; The Narrow Margin, an outstanding protect-a-mob-informant cop drama from 1952, smarter than most coming out today; the 1933 King Kong, which I can't believe I've never seen; and the first 3rd of Clash by Night with Barbara Stanwyck, Marilyn Monroe, and directed by noneotherthan Fritz Lang.

Programmer's notebook, May

(new concept, tryin' it out...)

For RadioWave, I continued cleaning up my messy, messy code. Much of it was carried over from when I was learning JEE and so required a tear-down/rebuild. Along with some JSP refactoring, I began converting code over to the data framework I developed for EventNett. It cleanly abstracts objects into classes for HTTP forms, database ResultSets, and read/write POJOs. They make it easy to copy between the different domains and are far better than my first fumblings in Java (without forcing an more invasive, 3rd party framework on the code). All of this refactoring unfortunately means shakier code in the short term as bugs get worked out but a more stable site in the long term.

I added Classic FM, a station in Australian (recommended by a European listener) which has its own weird time zones, and the music and news feeds from KCRW. Along with this new content, I broke out the detailed listings from shows that list tracks they will be playing but that don't say when they'll be playing them. In RadioWave, these un-timed tracks show up with the same schedule range as their parent show, but with the schedule times light gray instead of white.

I also finally got the Arizona stations in the correct time zone. Although, we'll only know for sure when daylight savings (which they don't follow) hits again.

I moved hosting from my server to LunarPages last month. They have something called an add-on domain that is a very inexpensive way (free, +$2/mo. for JSP) to host a new domain using your existing space. They seem to be down for ~15 minutes every week, but the price is right for JSP hosting.

For EventNett I primarily focused on getting the time zone conversions right--converting the GMT database time to the users' times. That was a bitch and it shouldn't have been. Live and learn. The knowledge will eventually be useful for converting RadioWave's times from GMT.

The only other notable update was fixing the JSP/CSS for the embedded feed (you can see an example here). The CSS had kinda skewed from the main site. Most of the problems were with IE's handing of TABLEs that have their widths specified. If IE can't determine the width of a TABLE's parent DIV, it will use the page width. Nice. The solution--as I now know and will cherish--is to create a DIV between the TABLE and its parent and specify a width of 100% in its CSS (not in its width attribute).

Finally, work (isn't it always the least interesting?). I had been struggling with getting the data sent from an existing utility to be received properly by a servlet I had written. The utility had been in the field for years with no issues (AFAIK), but when it sent data to my servlet--via HTTPS PUT--every other message was garbled. Unencrypted data came across fine, but SSL failed. What to do?

After getting schooled in the use of Wireshark from a co-worker, we poked and prodded with the packets for a few days, trying to learn what SSL should look like. I first wrote a Java utility to make the same calls, but it didn't reproduce the mangled packets. Finally, I wrote a C++ utility, mimicking the Win32 calls that the actual application was using. Testing with that, I found that the problem occurred only if data was sent from a Win2000 machine. I did some googling and found that the Win32 calls weren't being passed the correct flags; still waiting on verification though. Man, I hope that fixes it, 'cause I'm all out of ideas.

Where was I?

Inman Park Festival on Saturday. Where I: (1) saw a great monkey clock for a mere 39-bucks, (2) saw some outstanding lithographs from an artist whose name I forget, and (3) slacked off and purchased neither. (2) is showing in a gallery somewhere around the Inman Park area, so there's hope in finding it again. (1) is probably lost forever. Also, throughout the day there was (1) an emotional meltdown, (2) an alcohol-related gustatorial meltdown, and (3) neither were me. Which is somehow surprising.

Sunday was a wine dinner with Tedra and Bill at Sugo. Good food and a couple of very good wines from the Antinori Winery. Get the Tormaresca Rosso and the Villa Antinori Toscana Rosso (which I learned is a super Tuscan).

Where was I?

Last Sunday tried the new sushi restaurant on 7th called Fune. Excellent sushi-on-a-conveyor-belt and good wines. I'm not hip enough, but they'll just have to get used to me.

Friday was The Crazies! on TiVo--I like me some B-movie--and then re-watched Eternal Sunshine. That's definitely in my top 10, and re-watching brought back some swell but forgotten details that I won't spoil here. I had recently passed it around to co-workers, and from our discussions I got the itch to see it again.

Saturday was goofin' off over at Alicia and Dan's after they and the wife and others drank all day watching some sort of sporting event that was happening in Atlanta. We ended the evening with the Borat movie. 3/5 with many laughs. I don't know how he survived some of those skits. Not the least of which the naked wrestling, although I heard that the rodeo was a narrow escape.

Lisa's in Tulsa till Tuesday (hey, it's a Nora Ephron novel!) so I'll be bachelorin' it and will probably be quite stir crazy by then.

Updates to EventNett

New features added to EventNett this month:

• Added a Map view that plots the current search results in a Google map
• Included a map in event and location pages
• Added iCalendar files for downloading into Outlook, Sunbird, etc.
• Enhanced event schedule entry when adding a new event
• Added a Location view that lists all locations and the number of events at each
• Added a thumbnail calendar view of each event's schedules in the event page
• Added a FAQ page

EventNett, a community-maintained events calendar

I created a new web site called EventNett. It's in beta and open to anyone. Try it out.

EventNett

EventNett is an events calendar modeled after the openness of Wikipedia. Anyone can add new events or edit existing events without having to log in or provide any personal information. There are no advertisements so you don't have to click through multiple pages or scroll past banner ads in order to view event information. More importantly, there is no central control. A single company or individual doesn't decide what gets listed or what gets prominent placement. Shows at your community theater or drink specials at your neighborhood's corner bar are as important as stadium concerts or wine tastings--all based on what you want to see.

The intention behind EventNett is to allow you to quickly find what you're interested in or to add what you think others might like. EventNett brings events to you with as little intervention as possible.

The big idea came around a year ago when Lisa & I were at a restaurant that had an advertisement behind their bar for 1/2-priced bottles of wine on Tuesdays. It made me consider the countless other events like it that may only have a few local flyers and no internet presence. Creative Loafing and Access Atlanta have advertising models that just don't accommodate such notices, so I thought that an open-community site might be useful.

Details on how to use EventNett are on the About page. The important point to remember is that you can edit anything. Don't be afraid to add information to existing events or locations, or to delete an event you think has been cancelled. Bad edits can be rolled-back to a correct version, and deleted events can be restored.

Currently, EventNett contains items that I've added and that the EventNett web robot, Yoink, has "liberated" from the AOL Atlanta events calendar (minus any copywrited content). Feel free to contribute, request features, and report issues. This is a beta, after all, so expect some oddities and down-time as the kinks get worked out. If, to consider the unthinkable, you feel EventNett is useless and rather silly, try one of the similar sites instead like Upcoming.org or Eventful.com. They're more polished, but somewhat less open.

Hopefully, EventNett will help you find at least one 1/2-priced wine special to make it useful to you.

Notable features

These are what I feel are the most useful features of EventNett:

• Everyone has control over all content
• Keep track of new and updated events - You can view what's been added in the last week under the Recently Edited tab.
• Each venue has a link to a map of its location (using Google Maps, of course)
• Each venue has a link to directions to it - You can store a "from" address when you create an account or add a temporary address when you're browsing anonymously.
• Permalinks to events, locations, and custom searches - I.e. you could create a search for "jazz" in "Atlanta, GA" and bookmark the link.
• Searches with keywords will automatically include synonyms - I.e. "theater" will find events tagged "theatre" or "drama". Keywords and synonyms are editable by everyone.
• Search within categories - EventNett creates 10 high-level categories from the most popular keywords. These mimic the fixed categories present in some other events calendars, but they are generated dynamically from user contributions.

Upcoming features

These are features that are being developed:

• Private events - accessible only to you or your friends
• Event groups - I.e. group together dinner, a movie, then drinks, or maybe several bars for a Saturday pub crawl
• Live maps within EventNett instead of a link to Google Maps
• Show multiple locations listed in a single map - useful with event groups
• Email notification of upcoming events
• Access from PDAs and phones - So it's easy to find a local event when you're already out
• Import and export iCalendar files - For use in Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.
• RSS feeds for events - Based on a location or a custom search
• Any suggestions?