Meryl's Notes Blog

9 comments

• Posted by: Marc Guldimann on October 19th, 2006, 11:38 AM

  Hi Meryl - take a look at Spongecell. It’s very easy to publish a calendar to your webpage using our tools. Just create a new calendar, making sure events that you want to show up on your public calendar are viewable by “Everyone”, then click Publish/RSS, the details are under Embedded Calendar.

  If you want to make multiple calendars for your different PTA groups, just create them by clicking “Add” next to Calendars on the top left of your main calendar.

• Posted by: Marybeth on October 19th, 2006, 3:07 PM

  We’re in the same situation. Trumba is (was) BEAUTIFUL. I loved how easy it is to use and add to and most importantly, how great it was to integrate into our school’s website. I loved the news listing, and the subcalendars. I loved that our parents were adding their events to their own calendars and trying out the idea of a web calendar on their own. I truly loved the recent addition of mashups and the customization.

  Trumba was so great I’d be willing to pay the now discontinued Pro price ($99/year) out of my own pocket just so the school could have this service. But at the newly released prices I can’t think of how we might possibly begin to pony up $1200 a year when we’re constantly looking for money to plug the holes that the lack of state funding has left for our schools.

  It appears Trumba has evolved out of our price range. I realize they’ve gone through a ton of changes (most of them very lovely additions) - but oh, heartache! I will miss them, the parents and grandparents that I was just beginning to educate on the value of a web-based calendar will miss them - and darnit, the kids will miss them - as we revert back to the sign in the front of the school with it’s 3-line limit and difficulty in updating at any hour.

  SHOOT!
  Now we too will root around the web for something similar. I’m looking at both the Google Calendar and the Airset Calendar options as I think both will allow publishing and a tight integration with a website. And I will take a look at Spongecell (thanks Marc!)

  Strangely enough we came about using Trumba because of a Trumba deal that encouraged the free use for the educational market for a year. I am so sorry to see Jeremy Jaech abandoning those of us in the underfunded always overlooked educational market. This all would have been so much easier to swallow had it come with at least an appology to those educators out there that had embraced the new technology and beauty that is and was Trumba.

• Posted by: SteveM on October 23rd, 2006, 12:16 AM

  Meryl, part track back as I mentioned your site in my Forum post at Trumba, and also wanted to make sure that you saw some of the alternatives I’ve tried to develop there. I hope some of the links are helpful to you and MaryBeth and anyone else.

  Here’s the URL: http://forums.trumba.com/index.php?showtopic=1193

  Tally ho

• Posted by: Meryl on October 23rd, 2006, 6:10 PM

  All righty, folks. I decided to go with Google simply for convenience. The calendar nice and it’s easy to use. Plus, I am managing the web site-based calendars of four organizations, three of which can actually have identical entries.

  I created a separate GMail account for all four because eventually, I won’t be managing more than one or two. I gave my main Gmail account edit access to all four. If the next person who takes over has a GMail account, all I have to do is give her access — if not, she can use the generic account I created for the organization.

  I looked at Spongecell and it’s a nice and easy one to use. No concerns. Just know Google makes it easier on me. If I were looking to put a calendar on my own site to manage forever, then my search would take a more feature-oriented approach than convenience.

• Posted by: Chris on October 24th, 2006, 9:59 PM

  I am seriously looking at Google as well but fell in love with the weekly email feature of Trumba. Meryl, have you found away to accomplish this in Google calendar?

• Posted by: Meryl on October 25th, 2006, 7:35 AM

  A person can subscribe to the calendar and go into Settings in Calendar to have emails sent. Can even do SMS. One drawback — it requires the user to have a Google account.

• Posted by: Meryl on October 27th, 2006, 8:26 PM

  Ninth Space has excellent commentary about Trumba’s move from a business perspective.

• Posted by: Meryl on November 10th, 2006, 8:30 AM

  Another one has popped up: Famundo. The calendar has just released Famundo for Organizations. It’s a free web-based calendar scheduling and communications tool for schools, teachers, students and faculty. The calendar has a central calendar hub.

• Posted by: Richard Kuhlenschmidt on November 10th, 2006, 9:48 AM

  Hi Meryl

  Thanks for mentioning Famundo.

  We’ve just released Famundo for Organizations and the response has been great. We will soon be releasing a new build that includes many new features.

  I look forward to hearing any comments, questions and suggestions from you and your readers

  Thanks again.

  Richard Kuhlenschmidt

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