Yahoo Calendar Gets a Major Makeover

Yahoo's 10-year old calendar app received some much-needed attention on Wednesday with the launch of a new, open-standard beta calendar.

After an entire decade untouched, Yahoo has finally gotten around to updating its online calendar with a complete makeover. On Wednesday, the company announced the beta version of its revamped Yahoo Calendar, which will include interoperability with other calendar services, social calendar sharing, and integration with Flickr.

“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 Yahoo Mail vice president John Kremer.

Besides adding events through an intelligent interface that requires minimal input from users, the new Yahoo Calendar allows them to layer over calendars from friends, drag and drop events, and set alarms to be delivered by e-mail, IM, or SMS. Through Flickr, users will also be able to dress up their calendars with pictures available in the Creative Commons, turning calendars back into part art.

Yahoo has also emphasized the openness of its new calendar, which is compatible with the popular CalDAV and iCalendar standards, plus online calendars from Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, AOL and Google.

The beta version of the calendar is available immediately to users in the United States, Brazil, India, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Yahoo hasn’t yet detailed its plans for a move out of beta.