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Versit's Personal Data Interchange team, having launched vCard (the Electronic
Business Card) in April 1996, will launch vCalendar in September at the
Networld/Interop Trade Show in Atlanta.
vCalendar defines a format for electronic calendaring and scheduling. The
vCalendar format allows for the capture of information normally stored within a
calendaring and scheduling application; such as a Personal Information Manager
or a Group Scheduling product. vCalendar is intended to be used for exchanging
information about event and todo types of calendaring and scheduling entities.
An event is a calendaring and scheduling entity that represents a scheduled
amount of time on a calendar. For example, it may be an activity; such as a
one-hour department meeting from 8am to 9am, tomorrow. A todo is a calendaring
and scheduling entity that represents an action-item or assignment. For
example, it may be an item of work assigned to an individual; such as 'turn in
travel expense today'.
In today's business environment, this information is typically kept on a
paper-based day-planner or calendar. More and more, this type of information is
being also managed within electronic Personal Information Manager or Group
Scheduling products. Prior to the introduction of vCalendar, users of such
applications typically had to re-key the original information, often
transcribing it from paper day-planners, scraps of paper or electronic mail
messages. With the advent of vCalendar, this information can be exchanged in an
automated and consistent fashion.
The basis for this specification have their origin in openly defined, industry
specifications; such as the X.400 API Associations Calendaring and Scheduling
API (CSA). In addition, this specification has capabilities that were derived
from the experiences of multiple vendors' demonstrations.
Versit provides a sample vCalendar implementation which is available at a Web
site:
URL: http://www.ralden.com/vcdown.htm
And, we offer technical assistance just by sending Email to:
pdi@versit.com
Information about Versit' "Personal Data Interchange" activities (including
vCard) can be found at:
URL: http://www.versit.com/pdi
I invite you to consider these specifications (copy attached) which we shall
offer to the IETF later this year. We offer an open distribution of these
specifications and the shareware for vCard and vCalender support to the
industry at large in order to promote interpretability between differing
Calendaring and Scheduling products currently available in the market.
Companies who demonstrated prototype support at PC Expo in New York include:
ú Lotus/ Organizer
ú Sundial/ Relish
ú FTP Software/ OnTime
ú Ring Zero/RingCentral
ú Four11 Online Directory
If, after consideration of these specifications, your company wishes to
endorse our vCalender or vCard formats, we would like to use your name and a
quotation for our Press Release in September at the Trade Show. Your support
could be as strong as;
"(Company name, person, title) endorses vCalendar/vCard and will embed the
standards into our future product(s)
(Product xxx)",
/or/
"(Company name, person, title) endorses vCalendar/vCard and hopes to see their
software vendors adding it to their next releases of their
calendaring/scheduling products"
to as little as;
"(Company name, person, title) endorses vCalendar/vCard! It will be a boon to
Interoperability when widely adopted and/or it becomes a defacto standard."
Please contact
Dave Mabe: Phone: 914-766-1487 FAX: 914-766-9162 Email: mabe@gemini.ibm.com
/or/
John Christensen: Phone: 919-254-9557 FAX: 919-543-6822 Email:
christen@raleigh.ibm.com
directly with any questions.
We look forward to hearing from you.
- VCAL03.DOC <==Versit's vCalendar Specification in Microsoft WORD format
(VCAL03.DOC)
- VCAL03.TXT <==Versit's vCalendar Specification in ASCII text format
(VCAL03.TXT)
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