[Design] Web Service and Syndication Support

[Anders Schneiderman]

Andrew Francis writes:
>   What I would like is to give my PIM the ability to
>either poll or subscribe to various information
>sources. In turn, the PIM would incorporate this
>information into my schedule, reminding me of
>important events or allowing me to do what-can-I-do
>this weekend planning. 

I think something like this, even it's a quick-and-dirty version that requires some user scripting, will be key to building a great PIM.  For example, many people have jobs where they need to call/email a group of people based on the results from a database query:

* I work in a Pediatrics Spina Bifida clinic, and each month I need to call people whose children are due for their yearly exam.

* I'm a salesperson, and every quarter I touch base with any client who's doing more than $100,000 of business with us.

* I work for a union, and I need to email and call the political director of every local with more than 10,000 members & has a major political election this year to get their input on a phone survey we're going to do.

In each case, the user has another database they use to get the information they need, and then they want to take this information and turn it into a list of tasks.  With most PIMS, this requires a painful amount  of manual work.  But if there was some way to copy & paste the results of the database query (assuming exporting the results is difficult/impossible) into Raymond, using a bit of simple, Hypercard-like scripting & possibly some help from a wizard GUI, it would make a real difference in what you could do.  Obviously, this ain't version 1 or 2--or 3 or 4?--but still worth thinking about, if only in helping shape the (hopefully very modular) architecture of the first few versions.

Thanks,
Anders Schneiderman
Information Manager
Service Employees International Union