Free online calendar lists local & global events

For journalists, and for many others as well, keeping track of upcoming newsworthy events can be a tedious chore — one whose difficulty is compounded when those events span international borders. Aiming to make the task easier, Dutch Zapaday offers a global public calendar that collects and aggregates event listings from around the world. There are already online news calendars from providers such as Reuters and AFP, but generally they’re expensive and closed to most of the world. So argues Zapaday, whose public calendar is open and free, allowing anyone to list and learn about upcoming events. Currently in private alpha testing, the site uses bots that scan more than 4,000 news sites and calendars for upcoming world and local events, and subsequently lists those that are approved by its editors. Users can also make their own submissions in wiki-like fashion. Either way, the result is a single place for international users to learn about the festivals, product launches, conferences, awards, holidays, sports events and elections coming up in the future. Zapaday was named the most promising startup at this year’s Tech Media Europe conference. Once it has built an international user community, it plans to launch additional premium services. One to get involved in early?