Microsoft recently licensed Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) to the Creative Commons.
Does this mean that I will be able to centrally manage my distributed calendar? I have had the desire to aggregate all of my event silos for quite sometime now. The idea itself is nothing new, and is one of the most basic needs. I mean how am I supposed to keep track of all of my events?
- evite invitations
- friends and family occasions such as birthdays / anniversaries
- work meetings
- reoccuring appointents…like the dentist
- local events (upcoming.org, eventful, zvents)
- conferences / company webinars
- the oakland raiders schedule
- booked flights / hotel reservations
Having a consolidated view is only the beginning. If I can aggregate these events together, then I can build services on top of this aggregation such as managing conflicts, sharing with my friends or even better yet, a unified notification service for all of my events. I looked for many of the recent calendar startups that have created new event silos with flashy ajax interfaces to give me this functionality, but they havent. (Trumba, Kiko).
It is when I have this “Simple” Calendar that I am able to move out of Outlook, stop complaining, stop missing important events, optimize my time and realize that I just missed my favorite band at a local venue. I first thought iCal was going to take me there, then I thought RSS was going to cut it, now it looks like SSE can be added to the mix. I hope it can and soon.
