iCalendar Support

Ever wanted to add your favorite upcoming concerts to your calendar, automatically? The weather? Your favorite blog’s posts? Some other time-based data out there on the web? Until today, unless the website provided an iCalendar interface, you were at a loss.

We’re pleased to announce that you can now use Dapper to take information from any webpage and put it into Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, Microsoft Outlook, and any other program that supports the iCalendar standard. Even better, as you’d expect, the data is dynamic and constantly updates from the website via Dapper.

To use the feature, just find the Dapp for the website you’re interested in (or create a Dapp if one doesn’t already exist), then choose the iCalendar option. There you define which fields contain the date and what you want to show up as the description of the event.

One great example is to take news items from apple.com from recent days and make an iCalendar for it. Try it out using the Apple News Dapp.  You can generate the URL for the iCalendar and insert it into your calendar program.

If you have any questions, run into any trouble, or want to recommend a related feature, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sandbox Extension and Private Dapps

For those of you who have asked for the ability to keep Dapps in your sandbox for longer periods of time (for the sake of editing them or deleting them after the 24 hour period), we’re happy to announce that this is now feasible. When viewing a Dapp that is currently in your sandbox (e.g. after creation), you can click the option to keep the Dapp in the sandbox indefinitely. When you are happy with the Dapp, you can release it to the public by publishing it. The Dapp will remain in your sandbox, open to editing, until you publish it.

This feature also addresses those of you who have asked for the ability to keep your Dapps private. By keeping a Dapp in your sandbox, it remains visible only to you and to those to whom you give the URL.

Enjoy and please do not hesitate to send along any feedback.

Linking Dapps

We’re happy to announce a new feature: Dapp linking.  This feature lets you links two or more Dapps together.  The ouput from the first Dapp is used as input to the second Dapp (and so on).  For instance, if you have a Dapp which takes a zip code and returns movies playing in that area, and another Dapp which takes a movie title and returns reviews, you can link the two together.  The end result is a new Dapp which, in this example, takes a zip code and returns a list of movies playing in the area and reviews of each movie.

To link two Dapps together, find the first Dapp and select “Use this Dapp” – from the next page, click “Link to Another Dapp” and you’re on your way.  As always, your feedback and bug reports are greatly encouraged.