Time is our most important commodity. None of us are getting any younger, and every passing day it seems like there’s more and more things we’ve got to do. No worries, though: with smartphones and web apps with reminders, surely we won’t forget any of those important days that seem to sneak up on us, right?
Not so quick. It’s easier than ever to remember perfect strangers’ birthdays thanks to Facebook, but it seems like we’re as likely as ever to forget our Mother’s birthday or that meeting at 2PM this afternoon. Why? Because we’ve learned to rely on our digital calendars. If you forget to add something to the calendar, chances are you’ll forget it.
That’s where iCalendar files are supposed to come in. They give you a way to subscribe to public or shared calendars so holidays, meetings, and even perhaps family birthdays will be automatically added to your calendar. They work with Apple’s iCal app, but also with most other calendars including Google Calendars and other popular calendar web apps.
It used to seem like you’d see holiday and event calendars on tons of sites across the ‘net. Today, though, it seems like it’s less common to see iCal files with up-to-date events and holidays. That got us curious: do you use iCal files? Or do you just manually add your own events? Perhaps iCal files, like RSS and other more geeky file formats, are too much trouble to hunt down. Could you survive without shared iCalendars? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!