Tuesday, 14 October 2008

Yahoo Reveals New Calendar Based On Open Standards

In an announcement, Yahoo recently made available an all-new Yahoo Calendar. Based on open standards, the new Yahoo Calendar beta makes it easy for users to discover, share and keep track of events and appointments.

Yahoo Calendar is a popular feature within Yahoo Mail.

The new Yahoo Calendar is built on the Zimbra platform using the iCalendar (iCal) and CalDAV standards. The new calendar is interoperable with other online calendar services including those from Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, AOL and Google, so users can share their calendar data with friends who use other online calendaring services and subscribe to any iCal-based public calendar.

"With the new Yahoo Calendar, we've taken the concept of a traditional paper calendar and transformed it into a smart, yet simple online tool that helps people to keep track of their schedules, stay organized and be more productive," said John Kremer, vice president, Yahoo Mail.

New features included in the new Yahoo Calendar are layering functionality that makes sharing events and keeping track of group activities easier, Web 2.0 drag and drop functionality that makes it simple to move appointments to new times -- all without refreshing the Web page, and a reminder feature which makes it simple to set email, IM or SMS reminders for important Calendar activities.

When the Yahoo Calendar beta becomes generally available in the coming months, it will include additional synching features and the capability to discover events of interest through tight integration with Upcoming.org and other Yahoo properties.

The Yahoo Calendar beta is currently being rolled out in five markets: the United States, Brazil, India, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Plans for global general availability will be announced later this year.