Probably the Best Event Calendar in the World!     (Updated)

OK, I am biased.  How could I not be, when we have the  in common?  

Seriously, it has the most user-friendly interface of the bunch: Eventful (formerly EVDB), Upcoming (acquired by Yahoo) and of course Zvents.  Ease of use is really important, as this dummy (yours truly) never fully figured out how to work evdb, so for me it really doesn’t matter how powerful it may be if I can’t even pull an event into sevaral calendars.

Zvent is the only one of the crowd to serve up a Google Map of your event location, and it’s loaded with features: private / public / group events, subscriptions, blog integration (check my right sidebar) … just to name a few.  The database currently has events of the San Francisco Bay Area only – btw, the database itself is another significant differentiator, as they scout the web and scrape events off the entertainment  venues themselves.

This wealth of information is also a problem in certain situations: if I do a search based on date / location, I may have to flip through dozens of pages of generic entries like wine-tasting, permanent exhibitions ..etc.   It would be nice to find a way to optionally turn off display of these recurring programs, and list only the real “happenings”.  For example if I search the Napa area, I don’t want to see hundreds of regular tastings – those are non-events, but if one of them has a Chef’s dinner with wine-pairing, or a musical / theater show, that’s definitely an “event”.  
The ability to exclude search arguments would also be nice, e.g. “-wine” should skip everything tagged as wine, wine-tasting ..etc.

There are lots of reviews on zvents, including  here, here, here, here, and here – the last link happens to be Ethan Stock, Zvent CEO’s blog.   Hmm… I don’t see any way to leave a comment or trackback – what happened to the “conversation”, Ethan? 

Update (10/27)  Apparently zvents set the standard for future competitors. See Ethan’s post:  The Sincerest Form of Flattery…

Update 2 (1/21):  Stowe Boyd’s Eventful calendar is all messed up. Hey, Stowe, time to give zvents a try!

Tags: zvents, evdb, eventful, upcoming, yahoo, events, calendar, social calendar, event calendar, web 2.0, techcrunch, techcrunchbbq