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Where is the Killer Calendar?
AnonaCow writes "Firefox and Thunderbird rock my world, but Mozilla's Calendar (Sunbird) has a long way to go. This maybe mundane, but what software does the slashdot community use to schedule? How do you keep track of your various appointments? What about your 'To Do' List?"
Outlook 2003, which has best calendar/todo interface I've seen.
pen and paper, and sometimes pen on the back of my hand.
-- SKYKING, SKYKING, DO NOT ANSWER.
I don't.
*shrug* stone me, whatever. It does what I need to do and synchs nicely with my ppc.
at work outlook, at home nothing(perhaps why I'm disorganized)
iCal. ...or the brain. Brains tend to work well. And..you don't even have to type anything!
Pen plus Arm
notepad.exe
...the same $10 calendar I buy at Staples every year?
Kalarm is all I ever need to keep track of things.
Free will is just an illusion
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Korganizer as part of Kontact does a decent job and it actually integrates with Exchange.
Terrifying.
So I'm 1337 and I have a good memory (for all the console commands) so I just remember what I need to-do ( which is usually just getting new kernal 8-| )
1. Write down things to do on paper 2. Recycle Paper 3. ??? 4. Have done the things to do?
Seriously. Until I can safely and securely use a remote calendar cross-platform (OSX and Linux and Windows), I'm going to stick with the PDA.
I use my newton 2100 ...
Nothing I've seen beats the Paper calander. Customizable notes, available with any wallpaper you could ask for, and quirky quotes available upon request. User can edit most all of the interface by writing, cutting, and/or pasting objects into the suqres and into the pictures. Beat that, Outlook 2003!
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
I write stuff down on bits of paper and stuff them into my pocket.
To make sure I look at it, my login session opens it whenever I log into my machine (and I do shutdown nightly just to start clean though it's hardly necessary). A cron job to open it every morning would be just as helpful.
Obviously, this needs at least some level of KDE installed.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
Works for me. Email. Calendar. meh.
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
I find that using my left arm as a to do list functions quite well. I just write everything i have to do, and every morning, when I shower, I clean my arm off so that I have a few minutes of blissful nothingness before I get to work.
I keep my todo list and calendar that travels with me - always accessible even when away from power, more reliable than a palm device, easily handles exceptional scheduling cases.
iCal.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
I wonder what program slashdotter's use to keep track of girls phone numbers?
to keep track of your todo stuff and your notes you can use keynote. Not the Mac app, but the keynote from http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html windows. I like yahoo calendar for appointments if you are always connected and checking email frequently.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Seriously though, the Emacs diary is pretty flexible, can be configured to give reminders of events and actually works pretty well as long as you have emacs up all the time. I like it better than anything else I've run across. The old PalmOS diary was pretty useful, too, but my last PalmPilot died a couple of years ago and I haven't found a PDA to replace it yet. I'm thinking of writing a webapp for calendar events and hooking it up to Asterisk to call my cellphone with reminders (Use festival for TTS or something like that *vague handwave*)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Post-It Notes.
Outlook 2003, synchronizes with both my PDA (Pocket PC) and my cell phone (BlackBerry).
I also use software that allows me to share contacts and calendar information with my GF.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
I gave the Mail/iCal/Address Book combo a shot when I first bought my iBook a year ago, but it just didn't do everything I was looking for and I didn't like having to keep 3 apps open at the same time.
I've been using Entourage since Office 2004 can out for Mac. It's great, the mail client, calendar, to do list, and address book all integrate nicely. It really simplies all the things I need to do to stay organized.
While I'm not sure it's worth the high price of Office, if you can get it through a campus agreement (like I did) for under $20, I'd recommend it.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
The wife just reminds me
It's about the only PIM I've seen that can handle things like 'tomorrow', 'a week Friday' or 'next Thursday' in a date field and figure it out for you. Makes entering appointments and tasks quicker and more intuitive for me.
I sometimes stick personal appointments into my Outlook calendar at work, but for the most part, I simply don't keep a to-do list or a datebook or anything like that.
I've found over the years that if I start compiling things into a "to-do" list or a schedule, then I'm more inclined (not less) to miss things or not do things, because they have officially become more of a nuissance by being on a list of things I feel obligated to do. When I just keep track of things mentally instead, then it doesn't feel like it's hanging over my head all the time and I feel like I can do it whenever I damn well please, which makes it more likely to actually get done.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I actually use an organizer / to-do list that I programmed myself in PHP and Javascript (actually using AJAX!), so that I can access it and modify it anywhere in the world! (As it resides on a web server on my computer)
"Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write it should be hard to understand."
The answer for me is easy: kontact. I use all the components, including KMail. It syncs the Calendar, TODO list, etc., perfectly with my PDA (a Sony Clie).
I use evolution to do my calendaring and to-do lists. It's really quite good. I also prefer it as a mail client to thunderbird, which kinda irritates me for some reason (I still use thunderbird for reading usenet though).
But this isn't much use if you can't read your calendar when you need to, so I use some of the scripts from gtkPod to sync my calendar, contacts and todo with my iPod. It works quite well, and since I carry the iPod around fairly often I can always get to the information.
I have vague memories of gnome's time/date widget thingy also showing me my appointments for each day, but it doesn't seem to do that anymore - I think after I upgraded evolution. (I'm running debian unstable).
www.fearthecow.net
I just use the Evolution calendar. Simple to use, and right there on my desktop at all times.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
For scheduling? Why cron, of course...
You can pick up an old Palm Vx or M500 for $35 on ebay. They're extremely portable, and the battery lasts a month.
It rocks my world. AIM and Yahoo screen names feed right into GAIM 1.3, my GNOME taskbar calendar shows my appointments right then and there, and it runs fast (at least for me).
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
I guess you didn't get the memo.
However, I use iCal on OS X for all my calendar needs.
Actually, I still use my PDA. It's very flexible, not tied to whatever OS I'm booted into at the moment, and does everything you inquired about.
And, if it doesn't do something that I need, I'll write something that does.
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"
Mozilla Lightning is also doing well in development. You can see some screenshots of it here (may load slowly): http://diary.e-gandalf.net/?p=35.
It seems like these developers finally understand the great need for Calendar products. I frequently hear discussion of the most wanted features, such as different calendar formats, integration with other handhelds, etc.
I use moinmoin http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/> with the MonthCalendar macro http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MonthCalendar>
How about "Nothing"? I can count on one hand the number of things I need to accomplish and places I need to go, other than my commute on work days, during the next 8 weeks. Stop living such complicated lives. You do not need to schedule a trip to the grocery store. When the thing you want isnt in the cupboard, go shopping.
I've been lookin' *forever* for a free (OSS is fine) calendar for Windows, but I can't find nothin' that comes close to Outlook. I've been watching Sunbird, but it's going *very* slow, and they're still in the fix-the-major-bugs-so-it-doesn't-lose-data stage, so adding features will (hopefully) come much later.
Simple..
Unix its simple, but sometimes it takes a geniuos to understand the simplicity -- Dennis Ritchie
Yahoo has an EXCELLENT calendar, w/ to do list and notes. It synchs to your PDA using free software from yahoo (and the default datebook on a palm pda). I never actually look at the thing online, but if my pda ever dies, it will re-synch to the net and I'm good to go.
Post-it notes. A lot of them. I even have an orginisation sceme for them. Ones on the monitor are Ugrent. Second monitor are daily, the window beside me (also covered in post-its) are reminders (hours for work, to do sometime in the next week) garbage can under the desk is the "out" tray. If I need to look back I dig through the can. Holds 3 months worth of notes.
I use iCal, simply because of the iSync support and the ability to publish calendars easily (I have some third parties who schedule me on occasion for their clients, and it's easier to avoid being inadvertently double-booked if I publish my schedule for them to check). I sync between three different Macs (home, office, and PowerBook), my cellphone, and my PocketPC.
I like MS Entourage a lot better than iCal, and if it had direct support for iSync I'd probably use it instead. Supposedly an update this summer will enable that feature on Tiger. Besides that, I was an avid user of Outlook 2000 at my prior company, and I've set up plenty of Windows clients on Outlook 2003 (with an Exchange Server and a good antivirus/antispam front-end, it's a nice workgroup product). If my business were more Windows-focused, I'd use Outlook 2003 without hesitation. And as nice as Entourage's Project feature is, overall Outook makes Entourage its beeyotch - provided you can get past the Windows thing.
Also on the Mac side, I've used both Now and Daylite - Now is OK but not really my cup of tea, and Daylite is nice in a workgroup plus it adds some CRM function. Both are better than iCal for multiple users.
I think ultimately Sunbird needs to be incorporated into Thunderbird in order to give Outlook a serious run. Calendaring and e-mail just have so many logical ties to one another that it's a good place for a monolithic app. As slick as the Mac built-in apps (Mail, Address Book, iCal) are, they just don't offer that nice level of integration you get out of Entourage or Outlook.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
If you don't need workgroup calendars (although Ecco does those too) and if you run Windows, it's great software. And the price is right.
I submitted this as a "feature request" for Evolution in 2001 or so. Still not a feature...
Are we really evaluating version 0.2 of a product now? I think it's a WEEEEEE bit early for this discussion.
Using a computer for a "to-do" list or calendar is just using technology for the sake of using technology. Pen and paper works fine. It has the advantage of being more portable than the smallest PDA as well.
I myself use Time & Chaos 6 from http://www.chaossoftware.com/ It sync's with my ancient but still servicable Palm IIIxe. I particularly like how you can customize fields for contacts, track to-do's as done for a history. I also use the Activity Series to create standard sets of events when I initiate a sales contact and for tracking customer statisfaction. I would like to see this use a better websync ability other than their proprietary usage but this is a good solution for me and my consulting business. I like the billing addon which helps me track hours on specific projects for billing as well.
Given the price this is effective and reasonable software. I will admit it's not perfect and I would love to have events that stretched over multiple days rather than having to copy an event over the period of days, but that's really a minor consideration. In a small workgroup this works quite well for my office (there are 4 of us) co-ordinating meetings and checking each other's schedules.
Give it a try, you may find this works better for you. It's not free software, but it is quality shareware by a good company.
Any PHP project out there? It would be nice to have a web based interface that can support a small company.
It's not a calendar, but for a quick little Todo list, I just use GTodo (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gtodo/ for lack of a real home page). It's nothing fancy, just a list of items with a few fields and sorting by the various fields.
I wish you could mark a whole day on a calendar, but not tie it to a specifc task that needs to be checked off
For example:
Recycling day. Mark the day before the actual day to remind you to take it out to the curb. But if you miss it, no big deal.
Pay day. Direct deposit, whoopee.
I'm sure a lot of other people will or have said it,
.mac
but iCal synched with iPod is bliss.
Additionally, you can post your iCal schedule online and share it with
Being dyslexic and dyspraxic (it has its perks once and a while), I can't write well on paper. Infact, my fine motor control is so bad that it looks like a spider has died, rather than my todo list.
So to organise anything, I use a whiteboard with pens. Why? Its better than any digital application as it works without power, doesn't require me to sit down to use it, and most importantly, it requires gross motor control, something that I still have.
When you're able to write your todo list in 10cm letters at any time, able to check it off in many ways, and even the ability to doddle when bored, you'll see that there isn't a single application that can ever come close to a whiteboard.
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
I use pscal to create calendars that I print out and tape to my wall. I write things on them. Ta da! Free and easy.
I tried using iCal but it didn't quite offer me what I wanted.
I ended up using php-calendar (demo) set up on some webspace. It's very simple, but it does the job for me.
I can't help but feel that Google must be working on a calendar system akin to Gmail.
Well, there should be one. They give us everything else including the kitchen sink, so why not a free calendar program that keeps all your appointments from the past 10 years, automatically cross-references them to your emails and gives you driving directions when applicable. I can't believe Google doesn't have this yet!
Having a calendar client is all fine and good, but until open source calendar servers are as ubiquitious as Apache, a calender client isn't going to be a lot of use.
An especially promising initiave in this are is the Hula project.
I love it.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I am currently trying to get off the ms outlook.
It is hard.
I have replaced it w/ thunderbird and sunbird. Both are leaving me wanting though.
What i miss most are the contacts from outlook. I have my phone line plugged into my modem and would use outlook to dial phone numbers - it worked great expecially when i had to dial long-distance numbers. I wish thunderbird had this feature.
Sunbird seems to be meeting my needs mostly. i use the calendaring prog to keep track of client billing hours mostly.
for the todo - most of my todo comes in the form of emails sent to me. so i just right click and mark the as important. In outlook this was cleaner than it is in thunderbird.
I still find myself opening outlook to find emails or use the contacts.
... because of all the post-its on my monitor
I used Outlook XP with my BlackBerry 7100t until my desktop machine died at the hands of...well, me. It's replacement is a Mac Mini, and I use Office 2004 for Mac. Using PocketMac for Blackberry, I am all nice and synced. In fact, it was the syncing that made it easy to import my Windows Outlook XP contacts and appointments over to the Mac.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
I also use software that allows me to share contacts and calendar information with my {punchline} GF {/punchline}
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
really, is it?
What keeps me going is my inertia.
I used to use Palm Desktop on my Mac linking to my Palm PDA. However, our university went to a central scheduling system called Corporate time. It allows people to book appointments on other peoples calendars and to book rooms and equipment. It can sync with the Palm PDA. However the interface is not the greatest and is somewhat clunky.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Very simple but easy to use interface, which is fine for me.
I have tried them all, Julian, Aztech... you name it. But I find that Gregorian does the job with minimal fuss and a high degree of accuracy (but not so much accuracy that it is cold and unfriendly.)
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
"Hello? Mom? Yeah... Do I have anything going on tomorrow at 3:00PM? What time do the guys need to have the first stage of CMS development done? Okay... Thanks for trying... Love you too. Bye."
www.horde.org See the kronolith project It's what I use for web-based email, calendar, address book, and more on my home server, and is available anywhere I have access to a web browser.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Its great! It does everything, includes a timeclock for my projects, wiki note taking.. and no rodent fondling required.. its all keystrokes.
Palm Desktop is a great, relatively bloat-free program for managing this stuff. Mind you, I don't actually have a palm pilot (though might get one in the future). The program is FREE on Palm's web site, and unlike Outlook, it has better compatibility with third party software (like, say, a different e-mail client). It's also a bit more simple and intuitive. Give it a shot.
sticky notes
Philosophy.
I have a small network with a few users and we use a combination of iCal and Sunbird. We have an apache web server with a WebDAV repository to store the calendars, so we can all look at them. All three compuers can see all four calendars (there's an extra "common" calendar) and changes are automatically propagated between machines. iCal even syncs one of the calendars to my Treo 650. Yes, Sunbird can be a little hard to work with and a little buggy at times, but it mostly does the job. And we don't need any kind of expensive Exchange server software.
Oooh, they seem to de going through some "restructuring". You can still download Sherpa here IIRC it can read/write .ics files
Want me to make you a calendar, complete with whirling blades of death. It shall be booth shaped, and have two killing speeds.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
I didn't like having to keep 3 apps open at the same time.
Out of interest why?
One of the things I hated when I had to use Windows (in business) was that unlike the OS I loved (RISC OS which doesn't have the concept of the MDI and everything is opened in its own window) it had big monolithic apps rather than lots of little ones that worked together.
One of the things I like about OS-X (and the earlier MacOSes) is that they have relatively small apps that do work together.
Isn't the point of the GUI to be able to have several apps open at the same time? So as I've said above out of interest why do you prefer one monolithic app?
The Hipster PDA.
Seriously. Look into it.
RTFA again for the best results.
... until I finally started using one.
As trite as it sounds, iCal is great because it Just Works. I sync it to my cell phone, which basically fills the role of my old PDA - reminder alarm works, and my schedule is right there. I don't generally need to enter new events "on the go" so using the phone's interface on those rare occasions isn't a problem.
The iCal / Address Book / iSync combo is very sweet, with just about no overhead required in terms of effort on my part. Compare that to the "emacs calendar" post a bit higher, which I seriously hope was written with tongue in cheek...
#DeleteChrome
It seems like most major universities have some kind of deal with Microsoft to let students buy Office for cheap. Most of the time you can check with your schools IT department to see if your school is part of the program. And sometimes the school isn't part of the program, but individual colleges within the university are enrolled in the program. (The Computer Science dept I went through had the Microsoft agreement before the entire school did).
And for people that graduated from College and are in the real world (and the people that didn't go to college), some larger companies have a deal with Microsoft to let you get MS Office for cheap. You'll again have to talk with your IT department or whoever, to see if your company is enrolled in the "Home Use Program". https://hup.microsoft.com/
I just ordered Office 2004 from the Home Use Program... and it is showing as "Backordered" on my order status now. >
Its not what it is, its something else.
Nothing like a canary pad to write down what you gotta do.
Didn't even know firefox came with a calendar.
Always used the one on the wall or cal.
Two words, pencil and paper.
I like Outlook. Please don't hurt me.
The very convenient combination of Microsoft Outlook 2003, a Nokia 6230 and Bluetooth. The phone and outlook automatically sync whenever I get within 20 metres of either my home or work computer, keeping both PC's and the phone in sync at all times.
If you use gnome and haven't tried gTodo yet, you're missing out on the simplest/cleanest todo list program ever written... check it out!
For all of us students, integration with the TI-89 Titanium would be truly awesome. The built-in calendar software is pretty cool (basic, but it gets the job done), but trying to type on the keypad is damned near impossible. The calculator comes standard with a USB port; it's almost a PDA.
For appointments, to-do lists, scheduling, etc. I have tried:
1. Dayplanners-- useful for a few days and then I forget it somewhere and then its not so useful.
2. PDA-- small and stylish (at the time), but too slow to input anything.
3. Software-- great when you're at home, but locked into the computer which makes it not so portable.
Finally I wound up relying on my brain to keep track of everything. It's portable, doesn't take up much space, somewhat stylish (if you're into that kinda thing), never runs out of memory, input is quick, output is quick unless hampered by beer or boobs.
I got a Samsung i500 phone a few weeks back and its my first PDA. It has Palm OS, internet via Sprint's network, and if I could find an ssh client that didn't blow up constantly the machine would be perfect.
There is a light, fast Windows app called Palm Desktop that came with it. This rocks - runs, its quick, doesn't crash, has nice features.
I tried Kpilot and it just doesn't grok i500 yet. I tried Outlook (Outbreak) that came with Office 2000 and it is teh sux0r - what a bloated hog of an application - feels like 1/4th the speed of the Palm Desktop app.
In an ideal world that Evolution Exchange connector thingy I just started playing with will support the i500 and I'll again be free of M$'s evil Fatware, till then its a Thinkpad T22 with burned out video hooked up to my KVM running Win2k with no internet connection for the backup side of my PDA.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
I like Kontact, it has what I need and it's well designed. At any given point, however, I'm working from one of three computers. If I stored my calendars (or email) locally I'd have a problem.
Solution? egroupware on my server and sync Kontact with that.
I still don't have email quite figured out, currently I download it to each computer and then regularly clear off the POP3 account. My other problem is that and KMail doesn't seem to have a search-in-all-messages function.
I'd recommend the Hooters Calendar, available at your local store by the same name. Each month features a new photorealistic "TO DO," though the probability that you'll ever get around to doing her is about as likely as a really solid Mozilla calendar.
Who needs a calendar when you have a wife?? She's great, she sends me reminders about 3 hours before an appointment starts and can schedule multiple appointments at a time... She has saved my ass more times than my Palm Pilot has.. When my wife is sick, or can't remember anything, I switch to Outlook...
Pen + Back of hand.
seriously.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
I don't use a calendar. Maybe this has to do with how young I am (17, going into my senior year of HS) but I've never found calendar applications useful. I use mozilla and gmail for my web/mail applications but there's just no need for a calendar. My calendar would consist of "Wake up at 3 PM, hack a little, eat, and repeat". :o)
sharpy + arm opposite to writing hand = simple semi-permanent to-do list.
For those who want something really lean and mean, try my app, called When.
Find free books.
I wish Google would extend Gmail and Gmail Notifier to include PDA stuff like TODO lists and a calender (with reminders). They could call the new client program "Google Notifier" since it would notify you about anything in your Google account, not just new e-mails.
Gmail is great, so I bet Google could design an excellent web-based calendar program (could work on PDAs too, no HotSync necessary!)
I already save a collection of Gmail Drafts that aren't "To" anyone, but have subjects like "Programming Ideas" and "Stuff To Remember". That way I can add stuff whether I'm at work, home, or school.
Remind is a powerful open source program available on several platforms.
-- john
Don't laugh. It's still the best free calendar app out there.
And it syncs with my old Sony Clie.
Am I eagerly looking at each checkin for Mozilla Calendar? You bet I am. But until then, it's Palm Desktop.
I believe the "maybe" in the story should be "may be." I am a computer science major so I could be wrong.
Outlook has that feature.
I use evolution and recently started running cyrus-imap.. gota love imap!...
But is there an standard protcol for "server stored" calaners / contacts ??
What do people to to replace this functionality of M$Exchange ?
is there a windows equiv. of evolution (not outlook) ?
Obviously. Syncs to Palm, PocketPC and particular mobile phones (like my SonyEricsson) with MultiSync too. Supports standards like iCal. Available now for Linux, a Windows version is on the way. And the mail part is pretty good too - one of Outlook 2003's biggest features is vFolders, something Evo's had for about five years now.
If you haven't used Evolution in a long time, its worth checking out. There have been significant improvements, especially since the 2.0 release. I've been using evolution for about four years now exclusively with great results. Calendaring is ical based, connects to exchange and others. The e-mail client and todo list is top notch too.
I too had this same question Friday. I was looking for something to keep up with multiple projects with a good gant chart interface. This works well for me but it does lack some advance features and interface objects. It is written in JAVA and is free!
jxProject
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
once a year i buy one of those BIG desk calenders made of paper...
Having one "Monolithic" application for email/calendar is rather nice to have. While I'm at work, I have a minimum of 5 programs running in my Taskbar at any given time while I'm programming. Having a single application to do Email/Calendar is nice at this point, because it is one less window I have to keep track of while coding.
This is the same reason I use Firefox at work over IE. Tabbed browsing keeps down the number of windows I have opened at any given time (especially with the TabbedBrowing plugin).
Also, my company is completely Office/Exchange based, and Outlook is really the only good program at communicating with an Exchange server. I know there are all those optional programs out there (like Evolution Connector and Groupcal for iCal). But nothing is as good as Outlook is. And getting my company to buy it for me is pretty hard to do since they already bought Office.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Because I work on various computers in various parts of town, they don't make good organizing tools. A reminder in some organizing app on some computer will probably not reach me when it's due. On the other hand, I always have the phone on me. My age-old Nokia mobile phone has a reminder feature that I normally use for appointments and such.
As for todo lists, I normally store my todo.txt in the project directory (normally a website's DocumentRoot). I've never seen an organizing tool do the job as quickly and efficiently as a good old text editor.
Notable features of todo.txt:
- Keep multiple TODO lists conveniently organized in a single file or keep them separated.
- Quickly add, edit, remove and prioritize items on your lists.
- Fits nicely with standard backup routines - no additional configuration required!
- Zero learning curve! Just use your favorite text editor!
Windows only, freeware, and I wrote it myself: RMP
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Yeah ical is ok, but actually I had serious problems when I wanted to print a fairly complicated itinerary. I ended up inputting the whole thing into palm desktop because I was in a crunch. I needed printouts that I could hand out to people. If I had more than a few things on a day, It would truncate text on the printout, rendering it useless and wack. So, great for scheduling your little activites, but for anything complicated (production schedule for example) its a no-go.
ical is also not equipped for work groups, strictly a single user experience. At the office (1000+ workstations) we have been using groupwise for years and years and years. It is not without its ups and downs, but for email and calendar/scheduling it is a decent mule.
music lover since 1969
I find chandler to meet my calendering needs. Sure, it's 1000x slower than the DOS program it is supposed replace (agenda) when running on a modern computer, but that python interface is sure sweet!
What? No one is using WebCalendar? ;-)
It is open source and will work on Windows, MacOSX, Linux, etc. You just need PHP and a database (MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc.)
You can now use Sunbird as your UI to manage your calendar, and your events will be stored in the WebCalendar server. (Just setup a remote subscription to WebCalendar from Sunbird.) You need the latest code in CVS to do this, but it's pretty cool. You can do this with other ical clients (like Apple iCal), too.
http://webcalendar.sourceforge.net/
The one area where WebCalendar is lacking is hotsync-ing with a PDA. However, that is on the to-do list, probably using SyncML.
http://www.k5n.us
I'm still waiting for google's calandar offering. Unfortuneatly, I'll have to keep missing appointments and deadlines in the meantime...
Is it just me, or does everyone here think the Newton is still the best PDA, PIM, whatever. . .
.crickets chirp. . .)
(. .
Philistines.
I use Life Balance for my todo list. It runs on both Windows and Palm OS for me and there is also a Mac version. I like it because it has a hierarchical structure so I can manage both single tasks as well as projects. Each task also has a place associated with it. This allows one to see all tasks that are relevant at home, at work, when running errands, etc. You can also set priorities at any level in the hierarchy to change the ordering of the tasks so it can help you determine what to do next.
I use the Post-It program to write down all my to do things. It's actually one of the most useful programs out there... at least in my opinion
post-its and mass amounts of them.. that and folded up peices of paper.. the interfeaces are a little bloated in your pocket after a bit but I find them very effective.
1. Find Killer Calendar
2. Make sure Killer Calendar pays for its crimes
3. ???
4. Profit!
I use the built-in organizer on my cell phone for most of my scheduling needs. It beeps in my pocket before all appointments to let me know I'm going to be late. My life got a lot easier when I figured that out.
hey.. does anybody use this adware to keep track of thier stuff... longago i found a ripped version of this Datemanager somewhere in google. from that time, i am using it. for simple reminders it works gr8...
Knotes
Post-It notes, the only way.
iCal hands down. I use it on my laptop, which I use at both work and home. It manages my to-do list, and my appointments. It also functions as a great alarm clock with some Perl/Applescript kung fu.
For TODO list, I've found that the best is a flat text file, 3 columns x ~80 lines, edited with vim, stored under subversion source control. It fits around 200 items (more than I'm likely to ever actually get around to), and I can see it all at one glance. Left/right/middle column = short/medium/long term. Broken horizontally into major categories like "to get", "house", "work", etc. One or two *s go before high-priority items. The whole thing can be dumped onto a single sheet of paper for pocket portability. The source control system preserves a complete history of my progress over time or lack thereof.
I use Meeting Maker '99....
I can book conference rooms... they force me to use it at work.
Personally I use Rainlendar. It looks cool, has a light footprint, and just plain works. It's Windows-only, though =\
-Ares
I use Meeting Maker. It is cross platform (servers run on Windows, OS X, Solaris, and Linux).. clients are Windows, OS X, and HTML.
It is everywhere.. I'm surprised I don't hear it talked about more often.
http://www.meetingmaker.com/
I use Yahoo's calendar. The advantage is that it's cross-platform, so as long as I have a web browser, I can view and edit the calendar. The drawback is that it's missing a few features, so I'd rather set up my own. Does anyone know of a free calendar program that I can install on my web server? My ISP controls the web server, so I have limited configuration. It also needs to be compatible with MySQL.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I'm still using it. I've found it to be far more usable than the alternatives. I think providing it as freeware was one of the smartest bits of marketing to come out of Palm. It's a pity they've stepped backward from that.
As a 5-year-old release, the Agenda version I'm using is probably getting hard to synch up with desktop- or network-based apps, but I've never really seen much point in doing that. I can check it whether I'm at the office, at home, or anywhere else, after all.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Some of us are glad that google is not (yet) trying to be the kitchen sink like yahoo.
There's a cool calendaring program written in Java that I use. Check it out at www.scheduleworld.com. It reads open format calendars, runs on the server and emails reminders!
Cheers!
I know others have brought up iCal, but the reason I really love it is that it makes it very easy to sync appointments and todo lists with the web (.Mac) and my cell phone (a Sony Ericsson T616).
I love my cell phone - it's small and simple and has just enough 'extra' features I like (mainly calendar and an alarm), but before I bought my Mac I didn't have a good way to sync the calendar. With iCal and iSync, I just turn on bluetooth on my cellphone, stick it next to my Powerbook, and click sync - by far the most user friendly syncing technology I've used. I think a lot of people who use PDAs, but mainly just use them for appointments, would be surprised how they could ditch the PDA for a cellphone/iCal combination.
Keep my own schedule? Peh, why create more work for myself?
I figure if it's important, someone will remind me.
I use MeetingMaker, which runs natively on Windows and OSX, and I run it under Wine on my Gentoo box. It works well, has a utilitarian interface, and most importantly allows me to schedule my co-workers and meeting-rooms as well when I'm planning things. When you want to have a departmental meeting, clicking the "auto-schedule" button is a dream instead of trying to talk about when would be good for everyone. Now if I could just get everyone else to be as anal about keeping it updated.... only thing I don't like about it is the tranceport between MM and other things (PDA's for example) SUCKS and is a pain in the ass to keep working.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
...is Notepad.exe. I've been using it for years and it's not failed me once. Other programs are so bloated! Notepad takes care of everything you need in only 68KB! Not only is it perfect for managing appointments and important dates, you can also jump right over to writing code on it, without having to learn a cumbersome new interface.
I'm a big fan of King Design's Tasks:
http://www.kingdesign.net/tasks/
It is a web based application (very reasonable priced) that uses php/mysql to organize your tasks. Email reminders, notes, and nesting for both tasks and notes are both supported. Attaching files and urls to items is another feature I use a lot.
If you don't want to host and configure it yourself, Usetasks is a good option:
http://www.usetasks.com/
Stephen
I prefer Linux and open source.
Here is the needed feature list:
Hula: Hula is a calendar and mail server. We want to build a real web-based calendar: to make it trivially easy to publish a calendar, to invite anyone with an email address to an an appointment and process their RSVPs, to get to your calendar via HTML or RSS or with an instant messenger or with SMS.
It's an actively developed open-source derivative of Novell's NetMail
-metric
For a calendar app, I'm currently using iCal because it syncs with my Palm (albeit poorly, thanks Apple). I really like Remind and I would commit to using it if I could get it to sync with the Palm (I'm tempted to use Remind anyway, regardless of the Palm, I could always output Remind to HTML and sync it with Plucker or something).
For todo lists, I have completely adopted the David Allen Getting Things Done method and I just use plain old text files which I can sync with NoteTaker on my Palm (and vim on the desktop for super rapid processing better than any Todo app I've ever seen).
I'm just a Hipster PDA away from being Merlin Mann.
I have never found a software package that adequately replaces my Moleskine.
I saw someone pick up a Tablet PC the other day. He played with it gleefully, and showed me the coolest app: Microsoft Journal.
Behold: it looks just like a marble notebook page that you can write on with a "pen" thanks to the touch screen! It allows you to save notes and even try to digitize the text! I remarked that it was quite indeed an impressive piece of technology for only $3000.
When am I going to get one? Probably not anytime soon, since I've discovered a much better solution for myself: a small attache journal and a fountain pen. Total cost: about $50 (I splurged on the pen).
Check it out, with the journal I can:
It's always on me, requires no external power source, and is quite pleasing to use. No spyware, viruses, hackers, hardware failures, or bugs to worry about.
Plus, since the pen is a indispensible part of the equation, you always carry it on you, and can sign your name with a flourish on a credit card receipt, or otherwise display the quality of your pedigree to impressionable onlookers.
I've also found that, at least when I speak now, I slightly better organize my thoughts before I open my mouth since it's a pain in the ass to re-word a paragraph that you've half-written. This journal dialogue transfers to my vocal dialogue, for some reason.
Oh, also, cursive handwriting is the shit. I forgot how much I loved it.
Yes, it's the ultimate personal assistant. Between you and me, I think these things are going to be BIG!
Portable, can stick to my cell phone, and are easily disposable when I'm finished. They are also compatible with any monitor and computer.
Maybe I'm just lucky I don't live in a world where my life is not yet run by appointments or where an audible alarm is necessary for reminding me where I need to be. Maybe some day it'll happen, but until then the post-it notes suit me just fine.
"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."
Seriously, I never have to boot up to see what there is to do next, (some times she gives me the boot to get me going!), and she has this knack of being able to track me down and remind me of things no matter how far I am from a computer.
I suppose some of you have a secretary that does the same, but the beauty I married is a beast when it comes to reminders, and I'll bet there's none better!
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
Personally for me what I look for in a good Calendaring solution is something that is in a digital format(allows for easy editing and provision to have data backed up).
However, I also want this to be mobile as often I want to access such information when I'm driving somewhere (where was that place I'm meant to be going to at 1pm again?). Or at other times when I'm going somewhere and don't want to lug a huge laptop.
I guess everyone's different but for my requirements my Palm Zire does pretty well. It's also pretty cheap.
I find the Palm Desktop software to be pretty adequate and there is reasonably good open source palm software around too.
IMHO the ultimate would be storing all contacts, to-do, and calendaring data on a mobile phone style device. However at present the current interfaces to these either make the mobile the size of a PDA anyway or have input methods that take to long to enter data and are frustrating.
I guess in the future it may be possible, perhaps with voice input it might get rid of the frustrating sms-style keyboards.... who knows....
I don't need a damn piece of software to tell me what I have to do next, I'm quite capable of remembering on my own.
I know a couple folks who continue to use Palm Desktop even after ditching their PDA.
The latest version can be downloaded for free at PalmOne.com
I used a software for a while called Active Desktop Calender it was quite interesting. A calender sat on your desktop overlayed on top of your desktop and would show you the day and which days had tasks or appontments and what they were.
Id be using it now but I dont have a computer of my own.
but you don't hear me though!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Since we've had a rails article today, what about this rails web todo app from the creators or rails itself... http://www.tadalist.com/
>I'd have to argue.
>
>iCal is not only 100% less bloated it's also much easier.....
I use iCal everyday and all I can say is:
MODERATORS, MOD UP +1 FUNNY
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
All,
.csv files. For example : report of what's due for completion this week, or everything of priority 1 that is late to the clients)
I have been meaning to ask this question to the community here for a while.
I am looking for good task management software. And I haven't seen anything yet that does what I need. Please let me explain.
I'm a project manager and Architect (software development) with 5 direct reports and an Offshore Team which I co-manage with others. It's a large project...30 people, over 4 years.
At any given time I have approx 125 tasks out there, for myself and my team. I have been having a hard time keeping track of stuff using excel and pen and paper.
I've considered writing the software I need (possibly in perl/perltk/mysql) but I don't have the time.
I'm looking for something more flexible than MS Outlook...which is way too simple, but not as top heavy as MS project (which I use for long term planning...but does not really do what I need for task management).
I should be able to assign a task with:
-5 levels of priority
-Task description
-Status (not yet assigned, assigned, in progress, cancelled, hold, late, completed)
-Proposed start and end dates
-Actual start and end dates
-Assign primary responsibility, backup, and off responsible helper
-Task due to (group or individual)
-Category (by my definition)
-Sub-category (by my definition)
-Status comments (by date)
It should have the ability to assign subtasks to a task... for example, task 10, which is a UAT release, is dependant on task 15 which is a daatabase refresh assigned to our DBA. This requirement sounds like MS Project but I really don't need top heavy project plannig software in this case... just task management.
Yhe tool should be able to generate reports and
I should also be able to program it with a simple schedule, say a schedule of software releases and I should get reminders of what's coming up in the next X period of time.
I am sure that someone else has needed this level of detail and control, and has this problem already solved. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
wbs.
Huh?
Evolution has a fantastic calendar. It's on the heavier side for RAM, and it's Linux-only, but the current development on Evo is focused, among other things, on reducing resource usage and porting to Windows...
The Free desktop that Just Works
Runs great and has tons of features. Works on Netware, Windows and Linux. New Novell PDAConnect program works like a champ.
It almost seems a bit of a pen-and-paper approach, but I use spreadsheets for my TODO lists. I used to use Pocket PC's Tasks to do this, and the equivalent tool on the Palm, but I found the categories and priorities too limiting.
So now I use Pocket Excel on my PDA (which interacts nicely with Office and StarOffice and such). I make up a little spread sheet, have tabs (sheets) for each major category (home, work, etc.), and customized columns as I need them (date due, priority, etc.)
The spreadsheet functionality lets me sort, print, create views, search, and so on. Ordering, inserting, deleting, all much faster than the dedicated applications.
I wish there were the killer app for TODO's (and calendaring), but for now, spreadsheets are the way to get what I want. Nothing else seems flexible enough.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
The idiots at Novell didn't bother to quality test the sync features of Evolution 2.0 AT ALL.
It's Palm sync features are totally broken. It will always dupe every contact in my Treo 600's contact list, and will also destroy any category info I've set.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Advantages:
- Free/Open Source
- Single or multi-user
- Old and fairly robust
- Optional command-line appointment entry
- has official IANA assigned port (netplan)
- PDA sync available through PilotManager
Disadvantages:- Unix/Linux only
- Requires Motif/Lesstif (hence the previous)
- Not widely known
- A little fussy to configure sometimes
- Uses identd for auth - not for use on the open Internet
It's a simple system, but works fairly well on a single machine or small LAN.I create a TODO.txt file and keep my life organized through that. Thats as complex as it gets...
"C++ is to C as Lung Cancer is to Lung"
I keep a paper to-do list, a whiteboard for immediate upcoming events and a paper calendar for longer term things. As much as I love computers, this is the only way I can look whenever I want on what is coming up.
Works remarkably well, too.
Which PIM package has nested tasks? Frequently, I'll add a bunch of tasks to my task list, but some of them depend upon other tasks. No package I've seen so far will do this. Sure, I can put them into categories, but categories don't work the way that nested tasks should.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Try this for windows.
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/pttimecop.asp
desktop reminder clock notifier
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
My shop recently switched over to Exchange from a sweet Qmail/vpopmail toaster setup, solely because we wanted the shared calendar. The exchange server hiccups every few days, but its worth it for the shared tasks.
When, oh, when, is someone going to code a decent exchange replacement that does not require over 100 RPM's to install?
Newsfollow.com
No, it's there. Scared the shit out of me the other day when I had left it plugged into the speakers when I went to bed.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Lotus Notes, does the job gets me to schedule with my work colleagues. Also knows when I will be out too . . .
I'm all about the Palm calendar/to-do. For a while I used Agendus Pro but now I'm using the built-in Datebook+ and a third-party package called To Do Plus. On my desktop I used Tinnes software's Desktop Calendar, which is a very nice solution that unfortunately doesn't sync with anything.
On that topic...does anyone know how to turn that feature off? I am in China right now. Your tomorrow is my today. My yesterday is your today. Ack, the clock on the wall doesn't always match the clock on the PC!
I prefer the dead tree model. I am forced to see it as I walk out my front door.
I also like... cough... sort of like apples iCal or whatever it is called.
I use iCal and it does for me, personally, especially since it syncs happily with 'basecamp.'
But this is just for me. The real strength of Outlook, (as it has been mentioned before,) is really it's connection to an Exchange server. The problem is that it ties you to an Exchange server.
If anyone has ties to the P2P networking world, *This* and not simple file sharing, would seem to be the killer app.
can you imagine the ability to link and unlink with various groups and schedules via a peer to peer protocol? If there were a convenient way to connect a group of people's scheduling etc. without having to maintain a central server? and be able to segregate the views based on selected groups?
hmmmmmm.
though I suppose that you always need a central server for those who only occasionally connect, but that might be relatively easy...
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
synapses in my head that fire in freaky patterns and frequently fucks up as my girlfriend would testify to.....
It seems to have some potential. :(
I'm just waiting for LDAP support
http://www.schooltool.org/schoolbell/
Maorong Zou's Webcal:x .html
http://www.math.utexas.edu/users/mzou/webCal/inde
It runs on Apache and it works. Need I say more?
Oh well, what the hell...
0 8 20 6 * /usr/bin/Mail -s "Do not forget your anniversary this year." my-pager@my-domain.com < /dev/null
Looks to have pretty sweet calendaring features. Might be worth a look when they *finally* get it out, only been waiting a couple of years.
There is also the benefit of NOT getting all the viruses, spyware and other malware that plagues Outlook. Nothing from Microsoft is used to get compromised. Ximian doesn't have a todo, they call it tasks and they can be shared as well via calendar server. Much easier to set up than an exchange server.
I have used both recently and I think they are very close functionally. However not having to worry that an e-mail has the exploit-du-jour for outlook makes using ximian a no brainer. What are you waiting for? Get rid of outlook. Yes, they do spellcheck as well. Works with ldap... just try it for a month!
How about integration with other calendar programs.
iCal, Netscape Calendar, and Outlook- none of them actually work with each other (sorry, they DO NOT despite what anyone has told you; for example, an iCal calendar item's title won't show up properly in Mozilla Calendar.)
It's pretty astounding that a simple file format like a frigging CALENDAR can't be standardized across calendar programs which all claim to be able to use the same...uh...standard file format.
Most of the dependency on Outlook would be eliminated if all these programs generated the same invitation format emails.
Please help metamoderate.
I *love*hierarchical notebook - http://hnb.sourceforge.net/
HNB is a curses program to structure many kinds of data in one place, for example addresses, to-do lists, ideas, book reviews or to store snippets of brainstorming.
Lovely thing to log in to my server at work via ssh and have my todo list in a term.
The developer, Øyvind Kolås, is also a maniac for eliminating extraneous keystrokes during entry, which makes this prg rank #1 for me.
http://www.phprojekt.com/
open source groupware - includes calender, export & import of contacts, web-based email (sorta hurting mind you, no anti-spam etc), todo management as well as web-based file management among other things.
i've been using it for a few years and it does the trick very well - particularly if you are frequently online and need to get that one useful piece of info from anywhere.
todo's can be assigned to projects, specifically to individual contacts, you can have any number of notes per contact (useful for phone discussion logs) and also has built in 'bug tracking' as well.
we use it for all of our project management simply because i haven't found anything else as useful.
no matter HOW useful outlook is, there's no way that it is worth the license fee and yearly tax that is required to set it up and keep legit...
other web-based options:
http://www.phpcollab.com/
phpcollab is a bit easier on the eyes than phprojekt, but seems to complicate the process more than it should be.
Gekido's Lair
I use my Pocket PC running Windows Mobile 2003 and the Agenda Fusion PIM software from http://www.developerone.com/agendafusion/. Handles the calendar/to-do/address book/journal functions very nicely.
The best one is: ECCO. A free abondonware from NetManage. Available free at: ftp://ftp.netmanage.com/support/pub/utilities/EC40 1/Ecco32/. For windows only currently, but in the process of going open source.
I use my brain...uh...I'm late! I'm late! I very very late! I really need to get a watch, or reset the clock on my computer.
--
When we look back on all we accomplished we think, oops.
I don't preview or spellcheck.
I just remember to do things, which is probably why I get everything done late. I need a good pda.
..is that I'd probably switch from Thunderbird to Evolution *IF* Evolution shipping with the plug-in that let you copy an email to a task. I'm not about to embark on re-compiling the whole damned thing everytime I upgrade versions just to get this very basic, should-be-included-automatically feature.
How many entries for "hang around in parent's basement playing Everquest" does anybody really need?
/yeah, trolling. //still not wrong.
Just proves that most free software is copied from ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ err.. "inspired by" commercial software.
I *still* miss my Psion for this sort of thing. (I needed wireless internet for my work, and had to switch.)
--
slashdot me at http://www.sledgehammercomputers.com/ then totally obliterate me with remote help requestshttp://www.sledgehammercomputers.com
I've always been of the opinion that if you have to use software to schedule your meetings, you have too many meetings. I have no need or desire to share my schedule with others, so I found calendar/todo software pretty useless - until I found Mupo.
It's primitive, but the very important thing it gets right is the nature of to-dos. They can recur ("take out the trash" every Wednesday night), and they stack up if not completed ("water plants", set as a to-do for every Wednesday, will still be on my list Thursday if I neglect to do it). I have a lot more "to-do" items than appointments, and Mupo is very useful in helping track them.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If I don't remember an event/task then it wasn't really important.
At my age I find coming up with a witty signature too exhausting.
What about your 'To Do' List?"
I started using Ta-Da List the day it launched and haven't looked back since. It's incredibly simple, free, web-based, and endlessly useful. I have a dozen other tools on my computer that can handle to-do lists (with syncing, priorities, due dates, etc), but Ta-Da List's basic approach makes it more useful than any of them.
37signals (the makers), also run two similar-but-different web-based organization apps, Backpack and Basecamp, that I highly recommend. All of them can be used for free.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Lotus Organizer is really great. It even runs under Linux (thanks to Wine). Unfortunately, it's showing its age (the last release was 1999, and IBM seems to have abandoned it). Does anyone here know a good way to migrate the data to something like korganiser?
It's free and simple: Just a database of events. I'd prefer to be able to see more than one month at a time, and I don't see much point in the ToDo List, but overall it does the job.
There's nothing wrong with Outlook, but it's overkill if you're not using Exchange.
We use a white board and some dry erase markers.
Call us out of date, but being bogged down with more software is the last thing we need at work.
I just use an old Handspring Visor Deluxe and jpilot. Most of what's in my PDA is a checkbook, handyshopper, phonebook and work schedule, so it's pretty easy to keep track of to-do lists.
This sig no verb.
"(Why would I? I'm on a Mac and I like having free space in my ram.)"
Stop the insanity!
I've got Outlook 2003 open to an Exchange 2003 server right now. My mailbox is about 1.3GB. I've got a few add-ons, too, such as the LookOut search tool. It's using 25MB RAM.
It loads very fast, too.
For what the application does (it's not just e-mail) I think 25MB is certainly very resonable. Where's all that bloat you mac users like to spread around about Microsoft and Windows and Office?
Not liking the company is not a reason to lie about the applications they create. I hate Microsoft just as much as the next guy, but I really like Outlook and I look forward to when an OSS replacement app matches it. Evolution is very close, and I think in a few more revisions it'll be there. But it doesn't mean Outlook is crap. It's not.
And why do you need all that free RAM anyways? I have memory in my computers to use it. Sure, every software developer could write software that uses almost NO memory. But then they'd all run like shit, too. No, I'd rather use all my RAM up if that means my apps run faster. Because, you know. THAT'S WHAT IT'S THERE FOR.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Now Up-to-Date/Contact... Mac and Win compat.. can share my schedule to other computers (with NUTD/C installed), can sync to my iPod.. Been my fav calendar since 1998...
I've tried any number of calendar programs out there, including Outlook, iCal, my Clie PDA, various OSS offerings, even the paper and pencil kind.
In the end, I discovered that there were two issues. First, there was always a couple of things that I liked but couldn't do - sorting, or categorizing - whatever. Second, and more importantly, I never managed to get into a reliable habit of checking my program d'Jour.
So, I decided to take advantae of what I DO habitually do. I open a web-brower every day with a tablist of sites for daily reading. And I always check my email. Taking advantage of that, I built a small system on top of MySQL for personal use. All the features I want, none that I don't. The main interface is a web form (written in bash of all things - practice for a project at work). It only took a couple hours to get it up and running. It's viewable from anywhere, and it sends me email reminders for those important things.
The project is nowhere near being ready for release into the wild, even in the event that demand for a mySQL/bash-driven calendar app increased beyond the current estimated level of zero. Nonetheless, there's no vendor lock-in and no difficulty learning the features or making time to check up on the information daily.
Umm...
:(
I hope you realize that Adobe did nothing to stop the bloat of Acrobat 7...
Instead, they created a "quick-launcher" that starts up with your system, and preloads most of acrobat into memory.
Don't believe me? Look in your Startup group on your Start menu.
Here's a short list of what I'd like to see:
- daily time slots
- weekly & monthly views
- flexible repeat entry scheduling
- warnings & reminders that go away if the event has long since passed
- different warning/reminder behavior for meeting vs. appointment vs. reminder vs. anniversary vs. event
- knowledge of company holidays
- configurable "weekday" vs. "weekend", including weird schedules that use 40 hr weeks by 10 or 12 hr days.
- settable by other people via email, but with "exclude user X" capability.
- viewable by others
That's all I can think of for now.....The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
If I can't remember it, it ain't worth doing. That's right child support payments, I'm talking to you!
Taskmaster is great for ToDo's. It doesn't do calendar stuff, and it is windows, but it's free.
free online diet tracking.
It would be very helpful if someone could tell me, can you specify a folder for incoming attachments? And, are they then independent of the original message (ie not deleted if the message is)? I am using Eudora for this reason, plus I have been turned off by Outlook Express, which seemed to handle attachments horribly.
Additional plugins are required to display all the media on this page.
I use iCal, but I'd rather use something from the command-line.
Does anyone know of a good schedule/calendar app for the console? I want something screenable and available from any computer on the internet.
I tried some emacs scheduler thing once, but didn't like it. Perhaps it was because I use vim, not emacs.
(Check back, some people actually modded comments as "Troll".. heh.)
The Mozilla Org's "lightning" project is interesting. I had a question published in one of the interviews with the project leads but didn't get a real answer, more of a vague response.
Now that Red Hat has released Netscape Directory Server, are there plans to release Netscape Calendaring Server at all?
How about Oracle Calendar? (Cross platform, works well)
Isn't Novell doing something?
Fact is, calendaring in the open source world pretty much sucks. This isn't a troll or flamebait. It's a straight up fact. If it was doing well, would we be asking these kinds of questions? No, because we'd have a decent calendaring application.
Right now, the best hope is for the Mozilla Foundation folks to bust some ass on Sunbird and make it into a triumphant cross platform application. Look at the features that keep people tied to Outlook and figure out how to make them a reality in the free/oss world.
Or am I just dreaming?
I've been wondering how Lightning was coming along.
:(
* Can you send calendar invites to other users?
* If you can, will the recipient be able to just click it and add it to their calendar?
Those are two really basic things that are useful to have in a corporate/small business calendaring solution. Sadly, they're features that can tie people into Outlook..
Evolution on my Linux boxen, iCal on my Mac. Kept in sync via a webDAV published .ics file. Works perfectly, never had a problem with it.
How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
They call it an agenda. yes, on paper !
I use Outlook 2003 with the FranklinCovey tools ("Seven Habits of Highly Effective People") installed. Being able to organize tasks across a 3x3 matrix of "importance" vs. "urgency", having master and daily task lists, etc. seems like it will be very useful for me with respect to getting organized, ensuring that I deliver what I commit to, etc. An additional nifty feature is associating notes that you take in a meeting with the meeting, and giving you a master list of the notes you've taken... ahhh.
If you have Outlook, you can download Plan Plus for a 30 day trial here.
I'm not an agent or representative of the company either, I just think it's a pretty good tool.
-Matt
check out demo calendar
the todo list kinda sucks (ok it sucks hard) but the calendar works well, and you can put a mini/small calendar on the left folder view and it highlights dates that have appointments on them. I believe you get an email reminder as well (optional).
do you have shinyfeet?
I really liked the original "WebCalendar": http://www.math.utexas.edu/webcalendar/ . Perl-based, e-mail reminders with daily to-do summary e-mail, supports iCal and VCS file import/export, a shared "corporate caelndar", Free/Busy functionality, nice interface, tooltip information drill-down, GPL'd. No direct Palm support, though. Very stable. I wish the PHP WebCalendar hadn't "borrowed" the name... :(
I had many happy client users! But, to be fair, Outlook/Exchange supplanted it. I do think the functionality of Outlook/Exchange is quite nice, and is going to be hard for F/OSS to beat.
A Palm device, with DateBk5 and ShadowPlan, with no synchronizing to anything, except for backup purposes.
I've recently been using Trumba, which is a commercial web-based calendar service that recently came out of beta. It has a nice interface (I think it's just as good as Evolution, which I was using before), and a number of nifty features. It can import and export ICS files (iCal format), although I should mention that the last time I tried it, it didn't import recurring events correctly. I thought the export feature in particular was cool because you don't have to worry about being locked-in to the service. There's also a tool for synchronising calendars with Outlook, but I don't have Outlook so I can't tell you how well it works. Trumba also has quite a large focus on sharing events and calendars between different users and groups of users, but I don't know anyone else using it at the moment, so I haven't tried those features either.
The best thing about it, of course, is that you can access your calendar anywhere where you can use a web browser. You can get a free 60-day trial and it costs $39.95 a year after that. That's about the same as I pay for my IMAP mail account. I'd prefer it if there was a standard for remote calendaring, but there doesn't seem to be one at the moment, and a web-based service seems to me like a fine substitute in the meantime.
I mean like notes/exchange/etc. Totally not intended as flamebait, are there any open source notes/exchange server alternatives that actually have integration with a decent client that do shared calendars, resource booking, shared todo lists, etc. (all the crap that notes/exchange give you)? Cause I have yet to find anything (I admit I haven't spend a TON of time looking yet...). I'm not talking about, "sure, if you download these 8 projects, and this merge, apply these patches, etc.", I mean a real groupware server that could be a viable Notes/Exchange replacement...
Kontact and/with Korganizer do their thing quite nice.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
The two best apps I've ever used are Omnigraffle and iCal. Both for the mac.
iCal can do almost all of the things that I like about outlook (and that list isn't very long) and does it prettier, easier, and it makes more sense. the only thing that it cannot do is coordinate resource scheduling against an exchange server. But that isn't a big loss for me and how I work.
Omnioutliner is simply amazing. I like to assign myself tasks, and then break them down to subtasks, and then sub-subtasks, ad infinitum Apparently most people don't do this, or so I assume, considering I've only found one decent app to handle this sort of information sorting. Omnigraffle allows me to do this easily, and allows for some very useful features as well (to-do lists with large text fields attached, inserting images into the to do list, cascading summary information amongst tasks and subtasks, etc.)
Both of these apps were free (as in beer) with my powerbook.
Since selling my powerbook and switching back to a windows environment for work, I have nearly gone mental without omni outliner. The tasks in outlook are just so lame (as in a duck with no legs) in comparison.
iCal was replaceable. I just liked how it worked.
The other alternative that I've used in the past, and really enjoyed, is the Palm desktop.
For high school students, http://www.nosleep.net/ Due Yesterday is a great little app. I use it on my palm, but it is available for the desktop as well.
I'm a programmer. I program. I avoid meetings, other than impromptu chats with my colleagues and boss.
The rare appointment I have I ***write on my desk calendar*** - you know, one of those P-A-P-E-R thingies that you flip over each day.
To do list? Answer emails. Check web servers. Work on the same project that I've been working on for several weeks. Attend to interruptions (they announce themselves - I don't need to plan them). Strangely, I can remember all these items using my b-r-a-i-n. Maybe because they are the same every day.
PS: You don't actually need a mobile phone, a PDA, scheduling software, electronic calendars. At least, *I* don't.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Peace
Another odd technique I used was to set an alarm on my HP48GX calculator. It will tell me of the alarm condition when I turn it on. Useful for that old flame whose birthday you've forgotten a few too many times. Set the alarm for a week in advance, and you'll have time to notice it and get a card in the mail.
We have to use Oracle Calendar where I work. There is a Linux, Solaris, Mac and Windows version. I think there is a web app version they make availible to us although I never use it. I also think there is a palmOS sync and PocketPC Sync software availible.
It seems like a decent calender application. I almost always use the Linux version `cause thats the OS I mostly work with every day... (I think it uses Motif on Solaris / Linux)
Oracle was a little slow, I have to admit, to come up with a version that ran on 2.4 Red Hat kernels when Red Hat first made the switch but their Linux support seems better nowadays...
-- If there's one thing i can't stand, it's intolerance!
I'm not trolling with this. I honestly only use pen and paper for appointments. I can't handle scheduling tasks on my computer and then synching to a palm, etc., etc. All the duplicity just slows me down. If I just carry a small planner with me and a pen, I've got everything written down all the time. Best of all, it works during power outages (never read in moon light?) and the batteries never die.
You can make Acrobat load very quickly by removing most of the plugins. Go to your Acrobat install directory and create a new sub-directory called 'plugins_suck'. Move every file except for 'EWH32.api' and 'search.api' out of the 'plugins' directory into the new 'plugins_suck' directory. Presto! Fast load times for Acrobat.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
My Palm pilot does a great job.
I've never had so many things to do that I couldn't keep them in my head.
If you need a calendar or a to-do list, you need to change your life, not your software.
Ah, but Entourage doesn't support interacting with an Exchange 5.5 machine for anything but IMAP/SMTP. Which means no meeting features work or any of the other gunk layered into it. Pretty much just email. Yes, 5.5 on NT4/2k is fairly pathetic, but you have no idea how many companies are still using this. :(
Why stuff it in your computer? It should be in your PDA!
Before the Palm I used my Zaurus for a while, but that gradually transformed to a development station, and the instability of the (non SHARP original) OpenZaurus firmware made it less doable for after a while.
So I bought an old M515 second hand. The thing's batteries last near forever, and the sync software (Palm Desktop), while simple gets the job done for easier PC data entry.
Anyone know a good (FREE) iCal server?
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
Managing developers is a job for development manager and leads reporting to him. Architect should be, ahem, coming up with an architecture. If someone catches an architect writing software to manage people the guy should be fired on the spot because he's wasting money.
Second thing is, you're headed down the wrong track. No one can effectively manage 125 items at the same time, not even with good software. That's why most if not all development teams divide the entire product cycle into several milestones (3 to 5 usually) with clearly defined work items and deliverables in each. You don't exit the milestone until shit gets done and reaches acceptable level of quality. If schedule doesn't work, you make feature cuts. If you can't cut something, you adjust the schedule.
By dividing 125 items into five buckets you only get 25 items in each bucket. A perfectly manageable number if you delegate some of the management to development leads. Heck, you can even hold 25 items in your head without any software at all.
What you're talking about is a slippery bureocratic slope which leads nowhere. You're trying to replace proper planning and management with "a shell script" and that just doesn't work for a thousand of reasons.
I find around the office Outlook is the perfect tool, if only for its ability to add appointments to other's calendars. I don't know if there are other programs that did this. At home and for personal matters, I can't guarantee I'll be at my computer for a timer to go off. Instead, I prefer the wall calandar, either the 1 month view or the 4 month variety that are essentially flexible whiteboards with the weeks/etc permanently engraved. I find it more pervasive this way. At a glance I can get an idea of what I have to do, for myself in the next little while. As some one else said, for personal use it's just using the technology for technology's sake, or something along those lines. Just because it can be done, doesn't necessarily mean it's the better way.
Laziness is a virtue, anyone who bothers to tell you otherwise, is clearly lacking it.
As the blog entry below explains (with screenshot), the way the GNOME clock expands to show a simple calendar, with your appointments from Evolution marked on, is GENIUS.
s impledesktop
http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2004/july/
Lotus Notes.
It's still years ahead of Outlook.
End dual-measurement, let's finish going metric!
http://gometric.us
I think Chandler has a lot of great ideas behind it. I hope some day they'll actually finish
activestudios web design
It has:
* Nested outline notes for everything
* call tracker
* looks just awful
If the last is not too much, check it out. It's great. Available here thands to CompuSol
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
I installed a Wiki on a webserver, behind a password. It's like using pen and paper with endless paper, it goes with you wherever you have an internet connection, and you have hyperlinks.
My calendar is just a page with links to pages named 2005-06-12, 2005-06-13, with headers above them for month names. To-do lists, projects, whatever, I can make new pages just by typing a link to them and then starting to edit them.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Perhaps my answer do not answers your question. I think the killer calendare application is not in you PC but it is you mobile phone.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
I find adobe acrobat 7 loads quite fast on linux, much faster then the old 5.
I have bought myself a Palm Vx off ebay for £20 and it happily handles all my appointments/todos. I can sync it with my computer whether I am in Linux at home, or if I am unfortunate enough to have to use Windows for work. And I have it with me wherever I go. It also handles all my contacts, which I can beam to/from my mobile phone.
Before I used gtodo and plan (although I really could not stand the horrible Motif widget set.)
I have been using this combo happily for some months. The supplied software syncs well with Outlook and the entries seem to map well onto the Sharp PIM apps.
The main drawback for me is that I can no longer sync with anything on my Solaris desktop at work (when I used a Handspring Visor I could sync with J-Pilot). Oh, and Sharp seem determined to reserve the Zaurus line for Japan only these days.
Not everyone out there uses the Gregorian calendar, at least not exclusively. For example, being Jewish I need to keep track of both calendars since many dates are Gregorian, while all our holidays are based on the Hebrew lunar calendar.
Outlook does an excellent job of juggling both calendars at once, as well as maintaining yearly appointments (such as holidays and birthdays) that can be assigned to either calendar - I can set an appointment to occur either every November 4th or every sixth of Tishrei, and Outlook will not mind.
I've recently switched to OSX, and it doesn't seem like anything out there still offers this capability. Can anyone enlighten me? Does anything for the Mac support this? Is Sunbird going to have this capability?
-phozz
I tend to wikify my to-do list. This means that: a) I can get to it from any web-connected computer, without needing special programs b) I can edit it on the fly c) Other people can annotate it if I've missed anything The only risk I've run into so far is wikispam, and a good blocklist + revert functionality clears that up nicely.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Palm Desktop works without a Palm and is a great calendar/todo ap. Much sleaker and faster than Outlook. And it's free (I think ;-).
What about your 'To Do' List?
http://php-todo.sourceforge.net/
Lotus notes is what my little corner of the world uses. It runs perfectly fine.
Wish it was open source solution, but then again
it doesn't kill me to pay people once and awhile.
In all seriousness there should be a open source app that can maigrate with all of these systems.
Accept outlook/Lotus Notes/ical/etc invitations.
It is almost like this open software should perhaps set a standard invitation format.
But hey I stopped writting code now i just watch
other people pull their hair out.
When I'm in from of the CRT I use the wonderful PlannerMode for Emacs to keep track of my day. I work on a lot of stuff on a day-to-day basis, so it makes sense to have a planner based on lots of individual day pages, and tasks that are linked to both a particular day page as well as to another page highlighting the task's usefulness to a particular plan. I also have it integrated to my ~/diary so it could show dates marked on my Emacs calendar, allowing me as well to procrastinate important tasks to be done in convenient time. Avoiding missing deadlines is easy, since PlannerMode also allows me to tag tasks with deadlines, so I have tasks that have me really do stuff while another set for actually clearing the deadline. And, as a side effect of PlannerMode being essentially an extension of EmacsWikiMode, I can publish my plans as a wiki (with RSS even ;) that I use as content for my site, allowing people who I work with to know what I'm up to as well. :)
Now, when I'm not, I use the Hipster PDA. I'm still green using it, but so far, it's great stuff, and I've been using it as my offline PlannerMode.
You may be asking: where's my {cellphone,PDA,laptop}? Answer: I have none of those, but if you're very generous and willing to give me either of the gadgets above, feel free to drop a mail. :D
At work we've been using Mantis (awesome tool) for bug-tracking but we're about to start using NetOffice for Project and Task management, it has a nice bottom up approach (different from something like MS Project) and it's a breeze to set up.
It's worth checking out.
I have an appointment book that fits in my jacket pocket which is the law. Then I also have a 00-NEW folder into which I save emails or jot notes, saved with filenames like "0613-xx-mtg" which I can easily list in an xterm (06* is everything in June). I'm not necessarily happy with this yet. There is also a system I built for appointments (many teachers to many students) which I don't use myself, however it had a phpicalendar viewer to read ical format files, and the ical files were written based on an appointment making web page. I think if someone took on the perl ICal project again and something with perlgtk was made (or an appointment server) it would be quite interesting. I may make a pretty simple version of that for an upcoming app but if someone else knows of an oss server to make appointments between multiple people and share calendars, this is where to post it! When I was making this last year I found Mac OSX had a very nice tool but other os's were not there.
Okay, normally I'm not one to shout, but I've got to on this one. First, I respect your opinion, and if Lotus Notes works for you, fantastic. But...
I work at a really big company, and our e-mail/calendaring application standard is Lotus Notes. It has caused me nothing but immense pain and anguish. I've used and supported both Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, along with their various clients, and I would much rather sell my soul to Bill Gates than use Lotus Notes a single day longer.
I once composed a document three pages long of nothing but bullet points of complaints about Lotus Notes. The "idiosyncratic" interface has literally cost me days of man-hours of work trying to do the simplest of tasks. I won't post the entire list here, because most of the time it boils down to stupid stuff like the fact that it doesn't use standard Windows interface guidelines that allow everyone in the world to just use it like they use every other business application on their desktop.
But I'll point out a few that are causes of my most recent irritations. The first thing that you do in Lotus Notes is launch it, and they even frickin' screwed that up. The first thing you see is a huge Lotus Notes splash screen. Lots of applciations have splash screens, so that in itself doesn't bother me. But the goobers who developed this crapplication have decided to force the splash screen to be a topmost window, so while Notes loads all of its cruft, the user is FORCED to sit there and watch a stupid dialog box. You can't Alt-tab over to Word and continue writing a letter, you can't Alt-tab to Firefox and check out the sports scores; no, you have to watch a stupid splash screen.
How about another? I've been working on throwing together a simple report database where a user can simply compose a new document, fill in some fields, hit a button, and e-mail a report to a list of people. One of the things I would like this form to do is to generate a richtext read-only version of the report in the document, a kind of "preview" feature. The problem is that richtext fields on a form just plain don't work. I've read hundreds of pages of documentation about it, and it all boils down to something like this: "Richtext fields, from a low-level system point of view, do not work like any other field or control in Lotus Notes, so we highly avoid doing anything programmatically with them."
Or how about one of my favorites? Right now, we're doing the above-mentioned report manually by opening up a stationery item, changing it appropriately, and sending it out. Depending on what all goes on during the day, this report can take a few minutes or a couple of hours to compose. I was writing one of the latter reports when I decided that I really ought to save it in case something happens and I lose the copy I'm working on. That is important: I was making a conscious effort to avoid losing data. So I reach for the Ctrl-S key, which is the Windows standard "save what I'm working on" key, and indeed performs the same function in Lotus Notes. The problem is that although I've hit Ctrl-S a thousand times before, on this particular occasion, I accidentally reached to far and hit Ctrl-E instead. I was prompted with a dialog box that said, "Do you want to send, save, or discard your changes? Choose Cancel to continue editing." Now at this point, I realized that I had hit the wrong key, and frankly, I have no idea what Ctrl-E does, so I chose Cancel to continue editing my document.
As it turns out, apparently Ctrl-E is the "Lose everything I've been working on without warning me" button, because my report that I had been working on for a couple of hours suddenly vanished and reverted back to the blank template! Cancel and continue editing my ass, who came up with this idiocy!?
Yes, I've heard a million times about Notes's database capabilities (which are a pale shadow of and much more counterintuitive to use than any real RDBMS out there, even the FOSS ones). Yes, I've heard a
The Open Source Applications Foundation is working on a system that goes beyond calendaring, code named Chandler.
What's Compelling About Chandler: A Current Perspective
For my 'To do' and calendar needs I use a plain text file with a light weight editor (EditPad lite).
...
No bloat, no program crashes, no screwy interface.
Easy to push back my To Do from day to day (just copy/paste), easy to interleave apointments and To dos, etc.
Format:
--Sun, June 12, 2:00pm: Apointment, phone#, address
: To do - buy this buy that
Best of all: I know it's portable forever in the future, to any platform I switch to. It will never be obsolete.
$vi ~/todo
I have been looking for a good networkable small multi-user calendar. The best I could find is called Active Desktop Calendar. http://www.xemico.com/adc/index.html If anyone has a better suggestion I would be GREATLY appreciative! All I need is for a few people to be able to schedule each other's calendars. I don't want web-based as I want to keep it as simple as possible. Thanks!
i use evolution, it also contains an exchange plugin which avoids the need of outlook at work.
you can have multiple calendars, task lists, export them, it works pretty good.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Out of interest why?
Having tried both approaches, I think can answer that. One of the really nice things about Entourage is that it lets you connect various types of information (calendar events, to-do items, emails, notes, even files on the hard drive) in some really nice ways.
For example, let's say I get a new client who wants to start a major job with me. In Entourage, I can create a "project" which will allow me to easily combine everything having to do with that job in one place, including any non-Entourage files that may come along. Every email the client and I exchange, every calendar event we've scheduled, all the tasks having to do with the project are linked. I tried this with Mail/iCal/Finder and it just wasn't the same. In fact, I tried it with quite a few software solutions and nothing came close.
I'm not normally a big fan of MS, but the all-in-one features of Entourage have simplified my job and helped organize my life in a big way.
I need to really only share things with my wife, so i've got a web calendar and a to do manager modified (extensively).
We use my modified ToDo @ work, along with a Wiki, to manage the "little details" of software development, things where our bug management system is overkill. The main mods I added were more states besides "complete" and "not complete" -- we need "planned", "active", "on hold", "at risk", "not doing", "complete", and "on going". In addition, I improved the sorting and layout, added filters and the ability to move items among projects, a "copy" capability, the ability to assign a release, and a way to store the submitter of the item, with cookies to reduce the entry tedium of some of those.
I love open-source sometimes. I need to subnit my change back to the author to see what he thinks, since he hasn't updated it in a year.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
http://www.meetingmaker.com/products/webevent/welc ome.cfm/
Simple, easy to use, yet it allows for some of the more complex scheduling tasks. http://www.rockinsoftware.com/ It also does not load a bunch of garbage DLLs like Outlook does.
Well, after I have read some comments it seems nobody uses online calendar applications. I find the Yahoo calendar and other MyYahoo services very useful.
You see, once I started to use the Outlook or other calendars but I find them not very useful as the feature that I use a lot is scheduling.
When I schedule something I want to have a reminder and, as I do not work on my laptop always, it is nice to have an email sent to me and unless my computer is always turned on I think I can not do it.
So that is one of the reasons I think online calendar is good.
Besides, I can also "use it" in every platform, in every place, I can go to a internet cafe if I do not have my computer handy, etc.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
...most of the time. So why not just use your cell phone. I do.
I tried the different calendar software, and syncing with my cell. Some worked somewhat, some didn't. But all was somewhat a mess, so why not just drop the computer.
I use a little guy called EssentialPIM. http://www.essentialpim.com/ Its a free product, is very small, but only works on windows and isnt open source. Works really well for me.
One small thing missing in iCal though, and that's the ability to show week numbers. (e.g. week 24 starts monday).
In fact this microscopic point in the featurelist, makes me use Outlook i.s.o. iCal.
I use a paper diary and my PDA (which has got an alarm!) for appointments and regularly occuring tasks.
My todo lists are little pieces of paper that end up in the bin or large sheets that I store so that I have a 'history'.
For some time now, I have been thinking of employing Bugzilla for tracking tasks though. It is the only program I know that has all the basic functionally for this job, but unfortunately its interface leaves much to be desired.
I keep dozens of items on my todo list at one time, and need them all to come up frequently so that I don't forget them, but don't want to have to look over my whole list every day.
So I made my own. It's called "Prioritizer" and though it's far from finished, you can install and use it [.zip with php for *nix server with php/mysql support, can be installed on a basic shared hosting account] or try a demo out on the web.
It should be considered gamma, or delta, or something short of beta. please give me feedback or edit it yourself!
Multiple calendars, color coded merged calendar display, task list with notes, percent completed, etc. etc. We don't have OpenExchange or Groupwise or MS Exchange or such (which Evolution could work with), but I can schedule meetings with other users of Evolution (and Outlook) directly via email, import iCal files, work with LDAP and sync to my palm pilot. The only things Evolution doesn't do that I would really like is to be able to select multiple calendar events based on the category and export the group rather than export one at a time, and an integrated notes component that syncs with my palm.
Don't use Cached Exchange Mode on a shared machine, though. If you have it on, it will expose each person's cache to the next person without requiring a password.
This may only occur if you're sharing the same local windows account, though.
I'm offering a free Mensa One-A-Day Online Calendar to whomever can make good use of it. Owners of the Mensa One-Day-Day desktop calendars get a free registration for the online version, but I've already got enough electronic calendaring options.
Email ringbang AT gmail DOT com and I'll send the first respondent the registration code.
You can either login at pageaday.com, or have the one-a-day mailed to you daily, as illustrated in this sample.
Take a look here: http://www.sharedplan.com/ It's cross platform for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Not OSS, but it works.
Mozilla Lightning is the future Calendar app from Mozilla:
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Lightning
Sunbird is, as far as I understand, going to be abandoned.
Simpy
An efficient person can keep their whole lives notated in the two-inch squares on the wall calendar. Those seeking greater precision can make a simple Bash script-plus-text file suffice. A whole GUI *just* to serve as an upgraded post-it note tends to strike us as silly, as would a whole spread-sheet program just to figure your budget.
I for one, could care less if I never saw another office application again. They get in the way of doing REAL WORK.
There is an open source program called ToDoList that is really good. You can find it at codeproject.com
If java wont bother you, this seems nice.
http://memoranda.sourceforge.net/
"Memoranda (formerly known as jNotes2) is an open source cross-platform diary manager and the tool for scheduling personal projects."
The Kontact suite on KDesktop is what's really killer. Sure, it will remind you to do things, but it also delivers on promises that Outlook never kept by actually working together and with devices. The address book has everything Outlook does and LDAP lookup and cryptography and a few other useful things. The mail client is very fast and has two or three forms of file format, none of which is a stupid monolithic database that breaks when it gets too big. The on the fly spell check works without being obtrusive and overbearing. Just right click to get chose the right spelling. Filtering by recipient, sender or list is as easy as right clicking too. The Kontact container brings it all together, where you can check out your RSS feeds, see your most important inboxes mail, who's having a birthday or anniversary, what's next in your todos and what's next in your appointments.
Syncing all of that between several computers is not too difficult, but Kpilot is easier. Kpilot syncs well with palm. It stuffs most of the information it can into the device. I use a visor and the USB cradle works using the visor kernel module. I've been using unstable, so there have been a few hickups, which mostly result in duplicate entries, but I've never lost data. Someone using Sarge and nothing but Sarge would be very happy with Kontact.
I've been told by many that Outlook was so buggy and so prone to spy/mal ware attack that the majority of people have turned their backs on PIMs in general. That's too bad. The KDE people have what they wanted and it works now with equipment they already own.
This page covered by Slashdot on May 28th, has screen shots of Outlook, KDE and Evolution that do a nice job of showing how everything stacks up to Outlook. What it does not show are all the cool extras you get with KDE and how well it works. For that, you need to run it yourself. Spam filtering can be a little slow, but that's as easy to turn on and off as running a wizard and apt-get installing one of four packages.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm amazed that the PIM, Above & Beyond, isn't more prevalent. Outlook, Lotus, and all other calendar apps I've seen just ape the original paper diary. Above & Beyond does something much cleverer: enter your To Do list and prioritise it using drag and drop; enter your fixed and recurring appointments; enter your day's start and end times, and it will automatically create your schedule for you (more details of dynamic scheduling at www.1soft.com). This is a great way to accurately predict realistic schedules. Because your Schedule has all your tasks within it, if someone asks you when you next have free time, you can see instantly, unlike the mental calculation required with Outlook-style separate To Do lists and Schedules.
Instead of just doing what every other calendar app does, why not design something that makes use of what computers do well?
To Do list? Depends on the timing:
* 1 Day - brain
* 1 Week - Post-Its
* >1 Week - iCal, which emails me an alert
Appointments work similarly.
I move regularly between three computers in different locations, and Apple's free iCal/AddressBook are enough to keep things in order and sync'ed between them. And web access to boot!
That's good enough for us scientists, but may not be enough for everybody.
For my own use, I don't need anything connected to anything else, so I use a 11 year old copy of Expresso by Berkley Systems (Yes, the After Dark guys), as it has a calander with various views, a to-do list and a names and numbers list, with an alarm facility, and the best bit is when you close it it 'snapshots' itself into a background bitmap, so I can see it all day, when I don't have anything open.
It has themes, and does everything I want, using about 3 Mb ram. I wonder if it was ever updated, or newer versions released. My says C 93 - 94.
There is no good open-source calendaring. Do what all the other sane *nix nerds are doing and switch to OS X.
I have pretty modest requirements, but still found a lot of solutions lacking. At the moment, I am pretty happily using Plans (http://www.planscalendar.com/).
For ToDo functions, I use TDL (http://www.rpcurnow.force9.co.uk/tdl/)
I saw someone else mentioned TODO list. It's free and doesn't have much advanced functionality, but it my all time favorite program of its type and have to say I imagine it works perfectly for 95% of features. For anyone looking for a todo list type program, or if you are looking for something a lot simpler and more functional, lots of people will back me up on this...
http://www.abstractspoon.com/tdl_resources.html
http://www.codeproject.com/tools/ToDoList2.asp
exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis
This is what people fail to understand. I have the feeling -it can't be real, I know- that Outlook is better with very large mailboxes.
It's crazy, I know, but Outlook feels bloated and slow when the mailbox is empty. On the contraire, it feels light and powerful when the mailbox is huge.
How did they do this?
The Tungsten T5 syncs to the family Palm desktop diary etc at home, on an Apple Mac Mini, and to teh a Windows 2000 machine on the front desk at work. I'd as soon sync it to one of the Linux boxes at each end, but have not currently found something simple and easy and good enough to be worth the change.
Hula seems to have a lot of killer-calendar potential but probably has a little ways to go. I installed it yesterday and I'm starting to play around with it. Any positive/negative experiences?
Okay, now I understand. I wonder how Spotlight affects that? Or smart folders? May be now you can do what you want to do using the distinct applications. Not that I'm saying change because I always feel you should use the best tool for the job and if Entourage suits you then great.
I guess you're right - but then, there are a number of advantages to not using the same windows account for multiple people!
(In Exchange, you have to create user accounts in Active Directory for each mailbox anyway, so this is usually not a big problem.)
"Having one "Monolithic" application for email/calendar is rather nice to have"
And yet, having the ability to choose if you prefer having a big monolithic app, or a few bunch of apps you can open and close at leisure is probably better.
And that's what KDE's PIM package gives to you: you can either use the "monolithic" Kontact "shell" or you can open separatly the e-mail app, the news one, the Calendar, etc.
"...and Outlook is really the only good program at communicating with an Exchange server"
And that's probably a very big reason NOT to use Exchange. I thought we all learnt about how evil vendor locking was back in the 70's-80's.
with Evolution and Outlook connectors soon here.
http://obm.aliacom.fr/
I put everything in that little querty keyboard cell phone. I also syncronize with Lotus Notes at work via nokia tools. I've been doing this successfully for about a year.
Calandar
ToDo (three proirity levels)
Reminder
Meetings...
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Ahem ....
This page says that you can sync everything with the Exchange server pretty much everything that Outlook can.
Or does that apply only to Exchange versions after 5.5?
I know its a bit late in the discussion for this to be seen, so I might post it again as an ask slashdot.
One of the best ways to improve the usability and functionality of software is with good use cases. These are just the 'I want to achieve X' that people already post in slashdot articles like this.
Rather than loosing this info, why not have a website that tracks and ranks use cases (100,000 people want to be able to share their calendars, for instance). This would be a very useful resource for both open source and commercial software. Admittedly probably more useful to commercial software though as open source is more written to scratch the itch of the developer.
Check out MeetingMaker. Runs on Linux on the server and clientside.
My point was intended to be that the problem with groupware in general is that it requires a central server. That is a problem with the system, not the individual implementation.
I was sort of trying to imply that a groupware system that used the group itself as the repository for the group information would be preferable to a system that relies on connection to a dedicated server alá exchange.
Wasn't there a ximian exchange client? what happened there? Ah, I see it's novell now... from their adcopy it seems that you can access exchange from 'Evolution,' I suppose its support is limited though?
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Rainlender. Small, compact, configurable, and has some synchronization stuff, too.
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
Support the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium: www.calconnect.org
Become an individual member, or get your company / university to join (especially if you are MS or Palm, two companies conspicuously absent).
This group is working on the calendar interoperability issue.. individual calendaring (as, I think, requested by the original poster) is one thing, but to be really effective you need to be able to work with others' calendars too.
I use BackpackIt to make to-do lists. At home I use a program called Paraben Daily Organizer for reminders. Recently I've started using the online calendar provided by my ISP as part of its webmail service. My ISP's calendar and BackpackIt are quite handy because I can access them from any computer on the Internet.
Over the past 25 years I've tried a few 'calendar 'and 'todo' tools and always come back to: ASCII text files.
Calendar? Lines of ASCII text, mm/dd+[TAB]+description. Sorts nicely, just look at the top, can see everything. When an annual event is finished, move it to the bottom of the list for next year.
ToDo list? Ascii text again. Important things move to the top of the list. Less important stuff disappears off the bottom of the window and never gets done.
Sometimes I share the same calendar or todo file between Windows and Linux. I can edit it over the local network.
Portable, personal, customized, universal. Virtually the same user interface as in 1980.
ADC http://www.xemico.com/adc/index.html has it all. It's in-your-face on your desktop, interactive from the desktop, and uses notes and todo lists. It's highly configurable and shareable on a network. you can create note classes: birthday's, sport schedules, department, etc and assign them as private or public. No, it's not open source. This was the first downloadable software I ever purchased and it's been worth the price. Limited version is free to try. Runs on win98&up. Ron in Atlanta http://conyersportal.com/
- recommended to try out a foss alternative to something
- if it exists, and is easy to find, download the installer. If not, don't bother and go back to working
- try to install, if it's easy, complete the process. If not, give up and go back to working
- try the software
- either : software does everything they want it to, carry on.
- or : software fails to meet their needs/expectations. Uninstall/give up and go back to working
If they're trying to be productive, they don't tend to have the time to work out what's wrong. Most don't know that they need to file bugs/features, and those that do may not have the time/motivation to find out how to.Where there's money involved, the producer has the possibility of having the time, motivation and resources to go and gather a bunch of such people, get them to try this process and provide feedback. Many deride the idea of focus groups and consumer sessions, but that's how most producers hear about improvements that actually mean something to the user.
Until a producer starts to go out of their way to find out the issues users have with their software, they won't have the full picture. The user is not there to service your need, they are there to make productive use of software (or unproductive in the case of games). To expect (note, I don't say "do" here, as I know you may not have time/resource) otherwise is to exhibit a lack of understanding of your target, which will never give you world domination.
I know, I know, you're not in it for that, you're just trying to make the best software you can because you enjoy doing it. An admirable thing to do, far be it from me to say anything else. If that's the case, then please do not complain that the user isn't doing what you want them to do. Take some time out of coding and look at what else is needed. If that means downing your tools and approaching users, so be it.
Yes, KOrganizer is at LEAST as featureful as iCal was last time I looked, and it's much easier to use. It integrates very well with the rest of KDE, and links to KArm for tracking working times. The built-in project timelines (gannt charts) are pretty useful too.
You can set your standard timezone and then make appointments at the time "scheduled" which it gets right.
Personally, I've found that the PalmOS calendaring system is the best in terms of ease of use, logical setup of options, and ability to keep yourself on track with meetings, appt's, all day events, etc. No, I don't fly overseas. No, I don't work with other people from different time zones very often. So PalmOS fits my bill. I also am forced to use Lotus Notes at work. I hate it, but mainly because out of all our systems it seems to have the most problems. And the many menus and scheduling ways of doing things just suck. Not easy to use at all. We're NOT allowed to even use Outlook in any of its many incarnations, but if we did I'm sure I'd be ripping my hair out even more than I currently am with Lotus Notes based on my personal experience at home with Outlook. And YES, I work in a medium-sized company with very qualified server admins who know what they're doing when they set up an email server. My frustrations with Outlook would certainly stem from the crazy ways in which Microsoft likes to set up their toolbar menus and the handling of something as simple as writing a quick email message. No, don't move the bullet point over there! No, I don't want it in HTML format! No, I don't want XYZ to happen, quit asking me!!
We're a team-based business litigation botique that does business lit legal malpractice defense work, board-of-directors defense, etc. generally on referrral from other lawyers or insurance companies. Everything is time-critical; careful back-calendaring and team coordination is essential.
We tried a dedicated law office management program that was expensive, slow, and inaccurate on critical drop-dead dates set by local federal and State court rules. We used Office X/Entourage as well for awhile but didn't care for the costly upgrade to Office 2004 or the MS syncronization feature.
Apple's syncronization keeps everyone on the same page (literally), syncs our bluetooth Motorola cell phones' calendar and contacts functions, and operates in the background while we work. Hardware appears bullet-proof and the OS lawyer-proof. We get off-site backup and restore functions with our firm's dotMac account, a reassuring feature when "Leaping Lawyers with Laptops" data-loss issues are omnipresent.
There may be bloatware answers to calendaring. But for our money, iCal, iSync and dotMac have them all skunked!
I've been using Act since the beginning of time. It's the closest thing to a paper calendar, but does everything Outlook does and more, with a much more intuitive user interface.
The problem with most of these apps, and especially open source ones, is that they all assume the same, very narrow workplace/workflow model -- someone who works mostly by themselves but has meetings occasionally, works for a medium to large company, and all their correspondence via email. These apps are not suitable for a consultant or someone running a business. They don't keep track of written correspondence or phone calls, or they don't do it well. They don't integrate with accounting software, etc. Act, Goldmine, and a few other old school players do.
I've been on a quest to find the ultimate PIM for 15 years. After trying everything else I could find, Act has always won out. For a smaller, lighter app I always liked Starfish, which I don't think is around anymore.
At work, when I need to coordinate with others for meetings, etc, Exchange + Outlook works. I've used Notes in the past also. It's not as good. I've also used MeetingMaker. Also not as good.
It also syncs with my Blackberry and my Palm. The BB can sync on the road.
Home calendar
palm, synced to as much as possible. Yahoo calendar so my wife can see my schedule. jpilot on the desktop. Outlook at work. Yes, I mix home/work appointments.
Shared calendaring is different from personal calendaring. Syncing can help bridge the gap. I use the palm for when I don't have a real computer. It lets me carry a chunk & add to it when I get back. The BB does too.
Most of the FOSS I've looked at doesn't address shared calendaring. For me that means palm syncing and PC user access. I've played with Plan, Solaris CM (Ok, SunOS era). They didn't cut it.
And he has no life!
--LWM