How it all started

In 2002 I was developing a headless web service (named flyingOX) that was to be the ultimate resource scheduling web service. You may be familiar with the "chicken or egg" problem that platforms like this face. We also faced this challenge, so we began looking for small applications that could demonstrate the functionality of the platform.

While the web service was never completed, one of these demo ideas: a simple web and email- based meeting scheduling application, has been in the back of my mind ever since. The value of such a service was that it could automate much of the work that goes into finding commonly available times to meet others.

We did release an alpha-quality version of the service, which was code-named Thresher. Several people were kind enough to try it out, but user interface problems (it used Javascript) and a design that unfortunately generated way too many email messages failed to impress many people. The fact that the demo service also relied on our complex and unwieldy web service was also a problem.

With these lessons in hand (along with some hardcore Flash/Actionscript experience) I resolved to try to build a completely new version using Flash for the user interface and my lightweight XML storage architecture for the backend. Wish me luck.