[uf-discuss] Project microformat: pre-research heads-up (consider doing "to-do" microformat first)

[Michael Leikam]

--- Chris Messina <chris.messina at gmail.com> wrote:

> FYI, ToDo X can be found here:
> 
> http://www.nomicro.com/Products/ToDo/index.html
> 
> And I really like the idea of ToDo items contained in
> hAtom posts --
> that can be assigned to hCards... or, put another way,
> the way
> SproutIt handles assignments with email (similar to this:
> http://www.nomicro.com/Products/M2TX/index.html) is a
> very exciting
> idea...
> 
> Imagine a widget that creates a vToDo payload that you
> send via email
> to an account that records all your tasks based on the
> recipient email
> (which is how GooToDo works). Wow. A complete
> microformats task
> management workflow.
> 
> Chris
> 

One of the things I'm very interested in is the idea of a
task list built from distributed sources that doesn't need
any particular "reader" site/software.  In other words, an
open and distributed task/todo format.  I haven't looked
far into the "2.0" apps yet, but I haven't seen this.

What benefit does email as a communication medium have over
ping/search?  Your widget could just as well ping an
"hToDo" aggregator with new tasks and query it (or several
aggregators) to find out about to-do items for you.

As I see it, the transactional nature is key.  In the
person-to-person world, tasks are defined, assignments to
people are proposed and accepted or rejected or the details
are negotiated. And then there's status information that
changes over time, all of which would need to be tracked. 
Have microformats been defnied for transactions?

The way many to-do list implementations seem to work is on
the assumption that resource delegation is top-down and
that there is one definition of a task that is authored by
one person at a time.  How does it look for collaborative
projects?  Can I define a proposed task for you and publish
it on my blog?  Can you redefine "it" by publishing a page
on your site?

Good stuff...

-ml