World Cup KickOff
After what seems like months of (on-and-off) development, I am happy to finally launch a new service that will make your life much more organised for next month’s World Cup. It’s called World Cup KickOff and, in a nutshell, it tells you all the match kickoff dates and times in whatever format you want.
A bit of background
The idea came about a few months back when I was looking into Microformats. For those who haven’t heard of Microformats yet, basically they are a Standard method of integrating data models into your XHTML content that can easily be recognised and extracted. For example, you can include contact details that can be extracted into hCards simply by attaching some simple code to your webpage. For a full explanation, visit the Microformats website.
Back on topic, I was wondering how these formats could be extracted into a useful format such as something I could import into Microsoft Outlook. With a little research into this, I found Brian Suda’s X2V project which did just that. You pass the system the URL of a webpage with Microformats and it generates the relevant calendar or contact files for your personal organiser.
At about the same time as this, the World Cup schedule was released to the world. The problem I noticed was that there was no way of keeping the match details handy for me to organise my time around the World Cup fixtures, specifically the England games. What if I could download a file that imported the matches into Outlook? Once stored, it could then synchronize my Outlook “appointments” with my mobile phone’s calendar making life even easier. BAM - the project was born.
How it works
The website is fairly simple to use. The first thing you will be presented with is all the matches for the tournament in a table.
For some people, that would be enough but I wanted to allow users to personalise their experience.
There is also the ability to narrow down the matches to either a specific Group, such as England’s Group B, or even just an individual team (again, I’ll use England as an example). You can even find out what time the matches kick off for your timezone simply by choosing the timezone shift in the second stage of the filter.
Once you have set up the details to your own situation, you can then download the calendar file that can then be imported into your own personal organiser, be it Microsoft Outlook, iCal or Mozilla Calendar - whichever calendar programme you use that supports the standard VCS calendar file format.
If you are using Firefox, you can also use the Tails Export extension which alerts you of any Microformats on a webpage through a small Microformats icon and gives you the option to create individual calendar files on demand.
There is also the option of accessing the events in an RSS feed for your own personal use or development (this would be of more use to the developers out there).
Best Practises
With this being one of the first web applications I’ve built since the whole Web 2.0 fad began last year, it seemed like an ideal opportunity to put some of the Web’s Best Practises into play wherever possible. Obviously, the entire front end is developed using Web Standards such as XHTML Strict and CSS2, while I have also worked hard to implement good usability and accessibility into the system by using good semantic and minimal markup.
Finally…
I also need to take this opportunity to thank a few peeps for their services during this project. I’ve had Trev on standby in MSN to sort me out during the tough times for the last few months. He has also had Brian Suda on hand when we were struggling with the calendar file download, who I have also got to thank for his great work on the X2V project.
All that is left is to send out my full support to England for the coming games. It’s going to be tricky but, as we say every 2 years, “This year is OUR year! COME ON!“
awesome! Hopefully you’ll get some well deserved recognition for this!
Jon
18 May 06 at 4:17 pm
This is a fantastic little app. Furtermore it is just beautiful under the hood too (the code makes me horny…) and I also love the fact that I can type in worldcupkickoff.com/england/ or worldcupkickoff.com/b/ and get the appropiate data. This website has all these little touches that make it pretty damn hot!
Well done my son!
Paul
18 May 06 at 5:04 pm
The ‘nice-URLs’ is what I helped out on… but hey, whadda I know??
trovster
18 May 06 at 7:54 pm
[...] Pretty neat, I’d say. For more info, see developer Simon Jobling’s blog. The only suggestion I can offer is to incorporate television/radio broadcast information. It’s a pipe dream but it’s my dream… [...]
ThroughBall.com » World Cup match calendar application
19 May 06 at 12:53 pm
Simon, thanks for the site, looks awesome!
One complaint though: The timezone shifter is incomplete. Some countries (like India, Iran, parts of Canada) have a timezone that’s not a full hour from GMT. India’s for example is +5:30. You can get a list from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_zones .
Rabin
23 May 06 at 9:36 am
Wonderful piece of work, like the GUI very much!
Pelocorto
24 May 06 at 7:19 pm
I selected England but appear to have loaded all the fixtures in iCal ;(
Thanks for the nice idea though.
Tom
25 May 06 at 7:04 am
Wow - that is cool - well done Simon! Very useful and functional - with a bit of advertising it could go a long way!
Rodney Joyce
25 May 06 at 2:04 pm
Great site, but unfortunately the app doesn`t get the +8 GMT times right (for Perth, Australia). I was wondering why some of the games were being played at midnight (GMT)
If you could get that fixed for Outlook Express we`d be grateful. Cheers, and C`mon you Aussies! (fat chance
).
Storm
26 May 06 at 6:08 am
I emailed your World Cup fixtures program to a friend in Amsterdam (I am in the UK) and its put all the times in as GMT (der on my behalf) - is there any way you can uninstall the original fixtures from Outlook so you can go and download and install the GMT+1 fixtures?
Many thanks,
Mel
Mel Smith
31 May 06 at 9:39 am
Very nice application. I was thinking such a thing should exist, typed a few keywords in google and landed on your site.
Thanks a lot. it saves hours of manual entries! Very nice GUI by the way.
Congratulations!
Manuel
wehateworking
2 Jun 06 at 4:36 pm
Nice. BTW, what font did you use for the title, headers and labels? TIA
Sherwin Techico
2 Jun 06 at 5:45 pm
Thanks Simon, fantastic idea! I do have the same problems importing the vcs into outlook, I only get the GMT’s. Sadly, I’m in California at GMT - 8. Does anyone know an easy way to add hours to a selection of calendar items.
Someone asked earlier, I don’t think Outlook has an uninstall, but an easy fix to unload the schedule is to search for all calendar items with the string “v” and you will get a list of all the matches (be careful as you will also get any other calendar items you have with the single isolated character “v” in its name) and can delete them.
travis simpson
7 Jun 06 at 7:16 am
Thanks for all the comments guys. The project has generally been really well received from all over so its great to actually do something that people are finding useful.
In answer to some of your questions…
Rabin: I apologise for the incomplete timezone list. I havent had the chance to implement the “half hour timezones” so hopefully you will be OK with what is already there.
Storm/Travis: Again, apologies for the problem with correct times. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really test this properly as all my “users” (read friends) are based in the UK. From the general response though, it seems most Int’l users are finding it working fine. It’s probably too late to implement any changes but hopefully you can sort out the problem anyway.
Mel: As Travis said, the best way to do it is with a seach - maybe you could search for ” v ” (with the spaces around the letter V) to narrow your search down even more.
Cheers guys.
Si
7 Jun 06 at 9:24 am
Hi Si, Excellent app…. have loaded it onto my phone. Just a quick note tho - the times are BST (rather than GMT), according to the BBC site.
Haroon
8 Jun 06 at 4:45 pm
Hi, is it possible to get a RSS feed which displayed the Kickoff time?
When I use yours, I get this:
World Cup KickOff
Germany v Costa Rica
World Cup KickOff
Poland v Ecuador
World Cup KickOff
England v Paraguay
World Cup KickOff
Perhaps put the time in the World Cup Kickoff line?
Mental
9 Jun 06 at 6:49 am
Hey! Nice website.
One problem; the rss feed only works occasionally otherwise it just shows “The connection was reset”.
It would be cool if you had another feed for the latest scores/time/scorers for the matches that have been played.
Keep up the great work
hmaster
10 Jun 06 at 10:52 am
[...] With the World Cup in full swing now, I thought I would venture back to previous World Cups for this month’s Phat Tune and Phat Classic. Back in the Summer of 2002, this track was leaving its mark on the charts and dance scene. If you don’t know it, where have you been?? Turn it up and sing along! [...]
Peel Here aka. Simon Jobling » Blog Archive » One Phat Summer
20 Jun 06 at 10:00 pm
Hi.
It seems to me that the dates starting with the 2nd round are wrong. For instance, Germany-England will be 17:00 german team, but the calendar says it’s one hour earlier…
Otherwise: good work!
Julian Reschke
21 Jun 06 at 12:31 pm
Hello Simon
Just a quick note - this is wrong:
Sat 01/07/06 3:00PM England v Netherlands Gelsenkirchen Quarter Final
Portugal beat Holland…
Thanks
Rodney
Rodney Joyce
26 Jun 06 at 7:56 am
Yes, if you get it fixed for Outlook Express would be great
Also guys, don’t forget to make save a copy of your emails every now and then.. I used to do it manually by saving the .dbx files, until I found http://www.amicutilities.com/outlook-express-backup/ - Outlook Express Backup Genie that does it automatically at regular times.
I choused it over other because it can work with both MS Outlook and Outlook Express
Alicia
Alicia
30 Jul 06 at 2:42 pm
Hey! Nice website.
01download
12 Dec 06 at 7:47 pm
Great application and graphical interface trying to get it loaded on my phone. Helps if you are technically minded unlike me
Scruffymoo cards
1 Jul 07 at 5:42 pm