When Apple shipped Leopard they released a tiny feature contains furious potential. This barely-publicized feature of Mail.app hopefully is a sign of things to come. All it does is allow one to click on any written form of date and create a todo or event in iCal. Pretty minor feature, right?
Nifty feature Apple, but why only Mail.app? I think Giles Turnbull was on to something when he suggested creating a system-wide CoreTodo service. Imagine this: I’m in Adium, chatting with a friend and he tells me Paul van Dyk is coming to play in San Francisco on February 9th. I want to be able to just click on that date and create a Facebook event and invite all my friends to go with me. How cool would that be? Oh wait, I can only create an iCal todo or event. Which is why I seriously think there’s one addition to CoreTodo that would create a killer app.
iCal is great. No, seriously. I use it every day. But there’s other things I wish I could do with that data. Why can’t I add it to Google Calendar, check out that date on Upcoming.org, send an event invitation in Gmail, or create a Facebook event? Here’s what I’m saying: create CoreDate (the more logical name for its functionality) and let applications register with CoreDate as a possible action. Even if it’s a web application. Then that drop down menu won’t be so lonely.
Tim Trueman is an engineer living in San Francisco. He commutes to the orbiting HQ of Fluther (using the Python antigravity library). He also hosts a podcast on amateur autonomous unmanned aircraft with Chris Anderson.