Here's a really cool 'tool'.
I was poking around James Walkah's blog and he pointed me to the folks over at UpComing.org.
Upcoming.org is a social event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Manage your events, share events with friends and family, and syndicate your calendar to your own site.As Upcoming.org learns more about the events you enjoy, it will suggest new events you never would have heard about
Well I've signed up...
You can have XML or iCal feed you info on events that are a) near you b) your friends are attending. Or if you are just interested in getting events by type (say concerts) you can grab an XML feed... or if you like going to events at a particular venue (say the Opera House) grab that feed.
There is an API for easy integration into your own site... and a pre-built module for Drupal powered sites (beta). The API is a two way street... Not only can you download events from the site - but you can add your own events calendar to upcoming.org via the API... YUP - that's right... if you maintain your own events calendar for your organization why not let the WORLD know about it (or at least many many many more people than normally would have heard about it).
Sound a bit like meetup? Well it is a bit - but doesn't offer all of the same features... but this is 100% free and, according the website, will remain free! and FREE is good.
In the future they say that they will support Sunbird (iCal) syncrhonization... right now you can already grab events to Sunbird (or other iCal programs) - but you can't publish events to upcoming.org from Sunbird... Now when and if that happens THAT would be amazing!!!
Upcoming seem to be relatively new and there are still a few quirks - but I still give it a 10/10.
andre
Posted by andre at May 1, 2005 04:28 PM