Easy scheduling

One of the hardest things about scheduling a one-off meeting, thesis defense, or coordinating volunteers for an event is reaching a consensus.

A typical method of dealing with the problem is via email, where everyone sends available/non-available slots to a person coordinating the event. The time required to converge to a "solution" is governed by the slowest responder.

If this time is too long (unfortunately all too frequent), it is possible that some of the originally available timeslots have been booked for something else, and have hence been rendered unavailable.

The process often needs iteration, and finding consensus can be a nerve-racking problem.

One of my colleagues, Peter Beerli, recently alerted me (the department really) to a nifty (but really simple) tool called doodle.

Give it a spin.

It is really easy to set up, and people can mark available timeslots for everyone to see, which is a big help. One can also add comments like "I can do this time, but that time is preferable."

It also integrates nicely with other calendar programs, if required.

How to embed a pdf document in blogger?

The idea is like embedding a YouTube video as I remarked earlier. By trial and error, I have come to the personal conclusion that this is going to be my method of choice, from here on.

The steps are simple:
1. Get a Scribd account.
2. Upload your document there, where it is converted into an iPaper format.
3. Look for "Embed Code" - and copy the html code snippet under it.
4. In your Blogger entry, select the "Edit HTML" tab, and go to the place where you want to embed the stuff
5. Paste the html code snippet here.

You should be good to go.

Here is an example.

How to post a ppt, doc, pdf, odf, etc. file on Blogger?

The main obstacle in doing this is, of course, the lack of "space" to upload your document.

One method to accomplish this is embedding. You can use an utility like Scribd, or slideshare. These websites show you how to do the needful on Scribd, and on slideshare. Essentially, this involves registering on the particular website and uploading your presentation there. The process is very similar to how you would upload movies onto YouTube and link to it from your blog.

Another method, which I guess is obvious to many people, exploits the ubiquity of gmail accounts.

1. Go to docs.google.com. Login.
2. Select "Upload" (in the blue band), and upload your file.
3. "Open" the document
4. On the top right corner select "Share -> Get Link to Share"
5. Get the link, and from your blogger site just link to it as you would any other website.

One advantage of this method is that anybody can download the file in whatever format it was uploaded.