The calendar displays messages and other content, if relevant
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Likewise, the Today list mashes together your items
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You can see others' calendars in LifeIO--good for families
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Bruce Spector was part of the team that wrote WebCal, which Yahoo acquired in 1998 and remade into Yahoo Calendar. Now, eight years later, he's working on another Web-based calendar.

The upcoming service, LifeIO seems to get it that real humans don't always want to segregate their data into "calendar," "to-do," and other items; we mix and mash up our own life data on the fly as it suits us. Bruce's company, the modestly named ATTAP (All Things To All People), is focused on collecting users' interests, then putting that data where it will do the most good.

These two concepts come together in the way LifeIO clumps related items (calendar items, people, to-dos) together, and also in its recommendation/commerce system. If you calendar an airline flight, the system will assume you are interested in items related to your destination city, such as restaurants or taxi services. If it also knows you're a fan of a musician who is playing there, it might suggest you put the performance on your calendar. The goal is to make it smart about what you like, so you don't have to explicitly enter your preferences into the system.

The screenshot-based walkthrough of this personal information manager shows more flexibility than most and a better fundamental understanding of the way a real human's mind works when it comes to organizing data. Other ATTAP products, like Riffs and PersonalDNA (which I covered three months ago), will feed into the preferences engine that's at the core of LifeIO.

It's too early to say if the product will deliver on its promises, but it is worth watching out for. LifeIO should go into open beta in September.

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