One of the things I’m very big on is open data. Not necessarily just broadcasting everything to the universe for all to see (which would be stupid), but instead offering data in a format which is machine readable by design, and which can be easily taken, manipulated, shared, mashed and displayed as the user wants to see it and not as the company decides it should be consumed (although providing a ‘default’ view for users not savvy with open data is acceptable and indeed encouraged).
Which is why I’m happy to announce that a Level 2 Computing student has undertaken the monumentally complex task of taking your University timetable and turning it into an iCal format. The monumentally complex task which people assured me was technically very difficult due to the way timetabling was organised. The nigh on impossible challenge of extracting data and presenting it in a new format. The arduous task which took Alex an hour of tinkering in PHP, without so much as access to the raw data.
If you’re interested in getting your timetable in a format you can use on many devices, head off to Friendly Student Timetables (beta) at Learning Lab. Source code available.
Interesting point on data extraction, For simple stuff i use python to extact data, but for anything slightly hard i have used extracting data for getting data from the web, files, or documents