The time has come to get back to posting!

I've really been remiss in keeping this up. I'm going to try to do better, and I'll start with some interesting news.

Hans Bjorhdahl, who refers to himself as "the calendar guy" for Micrsoft Outlook, says in some comments on his comics site Bug Bash that Microsoft Outlook will include a new, better UI, but also improved support for iCalendar. It looks as though Microsoft is getting serious about iCalendar interoperability, and practically nothing could be better for us as users of calendar products. Even if you don't use Outlook, you're sure (like I am) to need to interact with someone who does. Improvement of the situation can only benefit all of us. They still need to join the Calendaring & Scheduling Consortium, though.

Secondly, I just learned of the When 2.0 conference which was held in December, organized by Esther Dyson. Ms. Dyson (someone correct me and let me know if she prefers to be called something other than "Ms. Dyson") is a leading thinker whose opinions are highly respected in technological circles. When she and her group become interested in a topic, it can generate a lot of good "buzz", these kinds of things are generally very helpful at keeping momentum going, or starting something for that matter.

Even though we've been seeing a lot of progress in the calendaring field lately, I'd like to quote one phrase from the page linked to on that When 2.0 page:

With the growing use of cell-phones, GPS devices and local search, location has come to have meaning on the Net. But we still ignore time - even though computers already "understand" it far better than they do space.

That's exactly right - we've let our calendar tools be "good enough" for far too long, adopting the attitude that as long as they work for us personally, we don't neeed to worry (yet) about making them work with others' calendars.

That's the latest I have right now. I'm going to try to be more prolific in my posts going forward.