Uber-nerd (in the best possible way) Andy Baio has a launched a new site called Upcoming.org, a collaborative event calendar. Metafilter creator (and social software hater) Matt Haughey has the scoop:

Upcoming ties together a few of the strings that the past couple years of software tinkering has made for us. It's got parts of Craigslist, MetaFilter, Friendster, and weblogs rolled into it. You create an account and post events you're going to, and friends and others in your metro area can find out about them via the site or RSS. Every event is like a blog post that allows comments from others.

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Andy's told me that more RSS feeds, FOAF, iCal support, and Trackback implementations are on the way.

Just like how Movable Type built upon the first generation work of earlier blogging engines, I think upcoming is the first of a new breed of social software apps that fills a need, and samples the best ideas from a previous generation of applications. I think it's baby steps in the right direction and I can't wait to see what applications look like in 2-3 years when a site like upcoming.org is more the norm.