IAnn: An event sharing platform for the life sciences

Summary: We present iAnn, an open source community-driven platform
for dissemination of life science events, such as courses, conferences
and workshops. iAnn allows automatic visualisation and
integration of customised event reports. A central repository lies at
the core of the platform: curators add submitted events, and these
are subsequently accessed via web services. Thus, once an iAnn
widget is incorporated into a website, it permanently shows timely
relevant information as if it were native to the remote site. At the
same time, announcements submitted to the repository are automatically
disseminated to all portals that query the system. To facilitate the
visualization of announcements, iAnn provides powerful filtering
options and views, integrated in Google Maps and Google Calendar.
All iAnn widgets are freely available.