I had an idea today that had its origins about 4 months ago when I read a blog post about a “logarithmic calendar” by Marco Arment. The logarithmic calendar is a very practical solution to an obvious problem: we care more about what’s happening in the near future than the far future, so why not make a calendar to reflect this need? The idea of a rectangular page with equally-sized blocks representing days is so… Gregorian, however. Why not use the visualization power of a computer to help us out?
Rather than use a 2-dimensional plane as Marco suggests, why not use our 3-dimensional spacial perception ability to “see into the future”? (Perhaps this is what he is suggesting by the mention of a “navigation screen”.) The real benefit in this case would be that we could give “high priority” events a larger size so that even when they are way in the back (far in the future) we can still see them coming from a mile away:
I would love to be able to view this calendar with a zoom in/out function, and the ability to look in the “rear-view mirror” at a history of big events in the somewhat recent past. You could even change the perspective ratio to get more or less time in visible scale.
Also, you could put “tags” poking out of the side for holidays or other day-long events that need to be marked. If the Perspective Calendar caught on, perhaps a tube or tunnel would be an even better metaphor, since it would allow for 360 degrees of events in a day… except for the clutter that might cause. In any case, I hope the makes the rounds and someone implements it on top of iCal or Google Calendars. 
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Alex Bartlow
