Data detectors

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.