It’s one of those days that nothing goes right.
First, after I thought I completely solved the linux wireless mystery, it appears that a new and startling problem has now preventing me from connecting to wifi. I’ve learned my lesson. It looks like I’m going to buy a #$#$#$# external wifi card. Or uninstall FC 5 and go with Ubuntu.
Second, I wanted to post an email on a developer’s list on SourceForge. Guess what? The new member registration page doesn’t work. (And this is a site catering specifically to SW developers!)
Third, I noticed that one of my meetup groups is becoming defunct. No biggie, but apparently as a come on, meetup.com is sending me “Please start a group” email whenever another tech writer registers. Meetup.com is one of the craziest sites I have encountered. A brilliant idea, but the steep price for organizing a group ($12/month) just made it unrealistic except for well-established organizations. I would be willing to pay something for using Meetup (maybe $20 a year or so), but meetup’s price is just absurd. What were they thinking?
Fourth, I was hoping upcoming.org would turn into the next meetup because it allowed you to create groups and associate events with groups. Apparently, though, they erased all my groups (perhaps through inactivity) and past events I organized. In this respect upcoming has fundamentally misunderstood the demand here. People want a way to find out about new groups and events; they also want a way to make postings about their own groups. Really, this isn’t that hard.
Yes, people want shared calendars, but the problem is not only event management but group management. I attend about 5-10% of the meetings of groups I am involved in. Obviously I would love to go to more, but time makes you choosy. So there are hundreds of events I am missing each year, but maybe 10-12 groups I am involved in (most in a casual once-or-twice-a-year kind of thing). From the standpoint of data, it’s easier to deal with groups than expiring events.
Upcoming is owned by yahoo. They could deliver a great solution if they wanted. Instead they are focused on a smaller subset of the problem. They may be limited by resources. But by scaling back their scope, they may in fact may make the problem more difficult to solve.