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?"

Comments

Outlook 2003

[timothv]

Outlook 2003, which has best calendar/todo interface I've seen.

Re:Outlook 2003

[ejdmoo]

Ditto. I even do fancy color coding. It syncs with Exchange 2003, which allows for an always up to day copy on the web and on my pocket PC phone.

MS did Exchange 2003/Outlook 2003 right.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm a big open source convert but email and calendaring are so critical to what I do that I simply can't stand not having the best. Even if it is sadly a ms product. Nothing comes close to MS Outlook 2003, not even outlook XP.

Re:Outlook 2003

[kraiger]

I agree completely... I'm a fan of simple. I don't need a huge amount of features to keep track of where I need to be and when. iCal does this perfectly, along with having great search options to also help keep track.

Re:Outlook 2003

[ciroknight]

Well see, processor speed really has nothing to do with bloat.

This machine I'm typing on has a cool 128 MB of ram. Loading an application that requires 25 software libraries to do something as simple as sort a list or add a funky widget toolbar is not something this machine can withstand with ease. Running thin, streamlined apps is something that keeps my machine enjoyable to use.

That said, the Open Source world is far from listening to our calls to reduce bloat; instead they drive forward, coding the same application over and over, disorganized libraries, untracable dependencies, all and all just masses of code lumped together. While this bulk of code has thousands of useful features, many of them are hidden from sight behind a terminal which scares people away, and the few that make it through to the desktop are often behind clunky software libraries that people are constantly at war building and defending.

I hope this post doesn't come off as a troll because I really love and enjoy Linux and the BSDs that gracefully allowed Mac OS X to come into being, but I seriously hope that we get better at organizing our efforts as developers and software engineers and not continue forever honing our programming skills. While an app may not be perfect, it can Just Work, and we can fix the bugs as we go. For the critial apps, good design begets good implementation. We should embrace these lessons as we look to the future.

Re:Outlook 2003

[gessel]

Does anyone who ever worked on Outlook ever get on a plane? Ever? Do they know what a time zone is?

There is only one program I've found that handles time zones correctly: TrueSync Desktop and it is abandonware. I kept buying motorola P8167s for years just so I could stick with TSD.

There are two features of TrueSync Desktop that no other PIM seems to do correctly, and there is only one correct method. The two features are:

1) When you create an standard event, you specify the time zone the event will happen in. All time zone math is handled automatically. This is the only correct method of handling events for people who travel outside their time zone regularly.

2) When you mark a special day, say a birthday or a holiday, TSD remembers the date, rather than creating a 24 hour event from 0:00 to 23:59. This is the only correct way to handle special days.

Consider the following scenarios, which I face almost every week:

A) You are in California on the phone with someone in Boston planning a phone conference from 10:00-11:30am for next week at which time you'll be in London. What time should you set the conference for? Can you do the math? How about if you're in Phoenix in April? There are 31 time zones and almost all contain some regions that observe and some that do not observe DST. This is the sort of irritating arithmetic my computer should do, and only True Sync Desktop does it the right way.

With Outlook can set your system time zone to the time zone the event will happen in, then create the event, then set your time zone back to the time zone you're in. Oh yeah, that's really convenient.

B) You make a new friend on a visit a trip that includes a visit to Hawaii and Boston and put her birthday in your outlook/phone tools calendar. You get to San Francisco. What day is her birthday? With outlook when you change time zones the event straddles two days, only one of them the actual correct day. Depending on whether you travel east or west, the correct date is either the first or the second of the two days marked. How flabbergastingly stupid is that?

Now one would think that _someone_ (anyone) involved in the development of outlook would, sooner or later, actually travel to a different time zone and realize just how utterly brain dead their handling of time zones really is (yes, outlook supports two (2)whole time zones, and for purely bicoastal people that's fine, but some of us actually travel to the flyover states occasionally. And some people even travel outside the US, which is still legal.)

I personally can't stand the outlook look and feel. I find it sort of smothering, though I acknowledge that there are some good features to it, but if there's one good model for how a PIM should work it's True Sync Desktop, but since it won't sync to a modern phone, it's just not all that useful anymore, sadly.

Thanks to my incessant whining, BVRP has put time zones on it's feature path, so Motorola's PhoneTools might soon correctly implement time zones and all-day events, probably more quickly if more people encourage them to.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Keebler71]

iCal is not only 100% less bloated, it's also much easier to track things like to-do lists, and have multiple, overlapping schedules. In combination with using an open standard, it's easy to publish your calenders and keep track of everything.

This is all very astonishing of you, considering that later in this thread you admit that you have never actually used Outlook2k3...

Re:Outlook 2003

[ozmanjusri]

Outlook 2003 is the best calendar/to do program available for Windows.

I know I'll probably get shouted down over this, but I switched from Outlook to Lotus Notes and have never looked back. The interface is, um, idiosyncratic, but once you get used to it, it's immensely customisable, and surprisingly effective at ensuring you know what you need to know.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I have exactly the same timezone handling requirement and surprisingly, the evolution calendar does it right. You can set separate timezones for the beginning and end of an event, which I particularly like for entering flights with the "local times" listed on the airline itinerary. You can also trivially change your timezone for viewing the calendar, independently of the timezone for your computer/shell environment.

I've been using it for years now (since my reliable calendar stopped being supported on RedHat). They seem to have shaken most of the annoying bugs out of its time handling in the past few releases that are bundled with Fedora Core. What irritates me is that evolution wants so badly to be a suite when I just want a damn calendar to go with my fetchmail+procmail+sa+mutt+rsync+ssh+xterm distributed mail handling gyrations.

Re:Outlook 2003

[ciroknight]

I've used Outlook 2k1. Unless the entire product has gone and done a COMPLETE 180 degrees, new design team, less code bloat, less confusing options and hard to set up nothings, I doubt if it's gotten any better.

That being said, I'm open to try it, but I don't have a machine capable of running it. I've been Windows Free for quite a while now.

Re:Outlook 2003

[UnderScan]

I agree that OSS could certainly be better, but how about recognizing something like KDE? KDE could use better defaults but there are activly working on improving that. As for the design, libraries, & performance, have you heard that like OS X, KDE gets faster on the same hardware with every new release? Did you also know that KDE uses compontenized & modularized (I am killing the spelling) KIOslaves & KParts which help to expose functionallity to every KDE app which reduces redundancy & waste. If a new KPart or KIOslave is created for 1 app, it can be used by all apps. This is how you open a text file from a remote system in the Kate editor by pointing the Open dialog to ftp://ftp.system.com/directory/file.txt.

Also note that your complaint about bloat falls on the deaf ears of comercial/propreitary software devs too. Close source apps are bloating up all the time. Think of how much redundancy is used even in MS apps when Office XP or 2k3, Visual Studio, Media player, & normal apps use different libraries which provide different GUI widgets & controls. How about Adobe Acrobat? They finally heard the collective complains about that bloated POS & v7 is quick to load up. Now only if they could retroactively make v5 & v6 quicker.

Re:Outlook 2003

[The Conductor]

Fair enough, but y'know, Outlook doesn't make backup management easy. Everything...every email from the beginning of time to two minutes ago, every contact, every appt, all in one honkin' PST file. Not the sort of thing that lends itself to incremental backups. Get a single email today? That's the whole 2 GB PST file to backup tonight. PST file bigger than 700 MB? Gotta figure out how to span multiple CD-R's, or no soup for you!

Where I work, the users have pushed their PST files onto the local fileserver, and the nightly backup (out the building's T1) has become so large that it runs into the next work morning, clogging the link so people can't login.

I use have to use Outlook every day and my conclusion is that it is for people who don't care about reliability. The users have gotten a vague feel for this fact and have developed workarounds: People in our Chinese locations routinely request return receipts. Anything really important doesn't go over email anymore, making conference calls with Europe & the far East very common, and the workday stretches out to all manner of odd hours.

For the record, I use Kmail & Kalandar at home. Not quite as automatic as Outlook (when it works, that is, and when you can trust it, which is never), and a little more work to set up, but not lacking any feature I really need.

Re:Outlook 2003

[killjoe]

I could not disagree more. It's bloated, overly complex, has options buried 15 clicks deep, slow as hell, and really gives you no more functionality then dozens of other PIMs on the market for the windows platform. I used to be forced to use it at work, I am so glad I don't work there anymore.

Re:Outlook 2003

[circusboy]

sigh... Some people just don't know their pop music...

'Hope that helps. have a nice day.'

Re:Outlook 2003

[swmccracken]

You've not been using Outlook 2003 in the recommended Cached Exchange Mode. We are - and it makes PST files look quaint. :-)

(In cached mode, Outlook "merely" synchronises against Exchange. Everything is stored in both places - meaning that nothing on the client has to be backed up, you only have to back-up the store on the Exchange server. This is easy to do - just use NTBACKUP to generate a BKF file - you don't even shut the server down. Also, since you only have to protect the server, you'll often use a decent RAID setup to reduce the chance the backup will ever be needed.)

If a workstation falls over, you reinstall outlook and set up the account. It just downloads everything back from the server and you're up and running.

It also sounds like you have an information managment problem - people's outlook account is not really where you should be storing important corporate information.

Re:Outlook 2003

[mr. methane]

For those who use the Treo, there's an app called "versamail" (I think) which sync's the palm calendar with outlook as well. It's not real-time, but pretty close to it (I think mine is set for hourly updates.)

Re:Outlook 2003

[Dorothy 86]

The Mac version, Entourage, that comes with Office 2004 is just as nice. In fact, Entourage is why I started using Outlook on my PCs. I couldn't live without a calendering app. In fact, I've thought about buying a PDA that will sink with Outlook and Entourage. Any ideas?

Re:Outlook 2003

[moosesocks]

As much as I frown upon people posting without knowing all the facts, I will say this (from the perspective of someone who has dabbled in both)

iCal in theory, will always be less bloated than outlook, simply because it has a more limited feature set --- read into this however you may.

By its own nature, all iCal has to do is provide a rudiementary scheduling interface. Although the UI is beautiful and the program very useful, the future set is very basic. For people like myself who do not require the full capabilities of outlook and exchange, iCal is more than adequate. On top of iCal's very basic architecture, of course, you get neat features tacked on top such as automated reminders and web publishing.

If you work in a big company and use exchange, quite simply, that extra code bloat in outlook is going to pay off bigtime, because you're actually going to be using that "bloat" to boost productivity. If you need the advanced workgroup features of outlook/exchange, chances are you're already using it.

At the moment, for windows, Outlook 2003 appears to be the best calendaring/email application out there, regardless of wether or not you use it to its fullest extent. Although I love iCal for its simpliity and ease of use, I give major props to the MS development team for creating a damn good application. Considering the extra capabilities outlook brings to the table (wether or not they're actually necessary), Microsoft managed to do it with virtually no bloat. Outlook 2003 truly is an elegant application.

Re:Outlook 2003

[NotBorg]

Does anyone who ever worked on Outlook ever get on a plane? Ever? Do they know what a time zone is?

Anyone take an exchange server around the world? I maintain a few shipboard servers for the US Navy, and one thing I know (believe) is that Microsoft never intended for exchange servers to change time zones. If we update the time zone of the server, say advance it by one time zone, all scheduled events are off by an hour. The only solution we found that outlook, exchange, and some other software would work with (because they seem to have differing ideas about how to reflect the change) was to leave the time zone the same and just advance the clock.

It seems also that both exchange and outlook have some if-then blocks to deal with some time zone changing, but nether knows what the other does about it. I'm not sure if this has changed with newer versions of the software (we are several behind the current).

One would think that if the exchange server doesn't move (it usually doesn't), that outlook would work across time zone changes.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Spetiam]

I use Evolution, and I've got to say... Outlook blows it out of the water. I like things to be free and open source, but Outlook (2003 especially) has no equal in the foss world. None. Fanboys can mod me down, but it won't change reality. Groupware and calendaring have a LONG way to go in foss.

Re:Outlook 2003

[julesh]

all that KDE protocol crap is, well, wrong.

If only they got "everything is a file [bell-labs.com]" not "every protocol needs a new KIOslave"

"Everything is a file" is a great abstraction, but it can only be implemented by the operating system. kioslaves are simply an abstraction layer that adds the ability to treat non-file objects as if they were a file without OS support for the notion -- it's the only way they can do it without junking support for just about every operating system in existance.

how am I going to open a remote image with gimp ?

Why don't you ask the GIMP developers to support it? Or ask the developers of the kernel of the operating system you use to support it? Rather than using it as an excuse for complaining about KDE, when it is not the KDE team's fault and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it?

BTW, if you're on Linux you might want to look into the FUSE/kioslave bridge project, which apparently allows you to mount kioslave plugins as if they were a real filesystem...

Re:Outlook 2003

[nihilogos]

Doesn't *anyone* on slashdot run linux anymore?

Re:Outlook 2003

[dbIII]

At the moment, for windows, Outlook 2003 appears to be the best calendaring/email application out there, regardless of wether or not you use it to its fullest extent.

I take it that by the fullest extent you mean a mailbox of 2GB in size just before the whole thing gets corrupted and needs to be recovered by third party tools - or is that "feature" finally dealt with?

How may ways do you want to define where the signature file is today?

Re:Outlook 2003

[exKingZog]

You can make PST files bigger than 2Gb with Outlook 2003. However, if you're connected to an Exchange Server back-end then you're no longer using PST files except maybe as a personal archive. (That said, they're still a pain...)

Re:Outlook 2003

[halo8]

I can answer this because i had another customer with this exact same case 2 weeks ago

the Exchange Team told me that the servers were never meant to have their time changed. Microsoft handles time changes on the client side (meaning windows) so windows adjusts the time for you and that reflects on the Outlook

Re:Outlook 2003

[maxume]

If the PDA is heavier than water, you should be just fine.

Re:Outlook 2003

[unapersson]

"how am I going to open a remote image with gimp ?

oh dear, no go"

File -> Open Location.

Seems to work fine to me, you can also drag the URL from another application.

Re:Outlook 2003

[Christopher Cashell]

No offense, but that's both crap, and unrealistic.

I have to manage an Exchange server, and just recently we had a situation where a user was unable to access e-mail in order to set/change their Out of Office reply. The fact that there's no reasonable way for an admin to do that is just stupid. (Yes, there *are* ways to do it, but they are definitely not reasonable).

Also, in the real world, I'd love to see you tell an executive at the company you work for that they don't deserve e-mail because they're too dumb to manage their own Out of Office status. Somehow I don't think you'd be working there much longer if you did.

This is one (of many) places where Exchange fails to perform as it should.

Re:Outlook 2003

[hacker]

Bugzilla, unfortunately carries the string 'Bug' in its title, and gets branded as a bug-only tool. I much prefer Mantis, and both tools contain a "Feature" item in the dropdown... report your "items" as a feature, and let someone else implement/comment on them. Not everything listed in Bugzilla has to be a "bug" in the system. Lack of a key feature can be seen as a bug by some users.

But my post was actually "bait" to see if the OP had actually mentioned these feature requests anywhere but his rantings on Slashdot. If nobody with the power to implement them sees or hears about them, how does he know anyone wants them?

I see this all the time with bugs that go unreported. It goes something like this:

"How come you didn't fix this bug?"

"Did you report it?"

"No, you should know every open bug."

"Please report it so we can track it and be accountable for it."

"You suck."

Unfortunately, that's the reality of the matter. If nobody wants to help by reporting bugs, adding their comments and feature requests, providing testing resources (especially on hardware or software that developers such as myself do not have access to), or by sending in patches... things don't improve.

Many people complain that "Linux usability sucks", but they do nothing to try to solve it. The problem lies in both courts... developer AND user.

pen and paper

[IEBEYEBALL]

pen and paper, and sometimes pen on the back of my hand.

Korganizer

[dangermen]

Korganizer as part of Kontact does a decent job and it actually integrates with Exchange.

Re:Korganizer

[Nasarius]

I love Korganizer and Kontact, but I'm still looking for a decent Windows program that supports the vCalendar format. I dual boot by necessity, so it's frustrating. I've looked at a few online calendar apps, including Yahoo's stuff, but it's not great. I can't wait for Sunbird.

Re:Korganizer

[rampant mac]

"Korganizer as part of Kontact does a decent job and it actually integrates with Exchange."

Shouldn't that be: "Korganizer Kas Kpart Kof Kontact Kdoes Ka Kdecent Kjob Kand Kit Kactually Kintegrates Kwith Kexchange."

bork bork bork?

Re:Korganizer

[xrayspx]

Yeah, you don't need a MAPI client, but prepare for the slowness. Evolution does a very nice job of interoperating with Exchange 2000 and up, but it relies on Outlook Web Access to do it. Overall, it's about the same speed as accessing an IMAP server.

I have no idea how Kontact does it, but that's as good a guess as any.

Re:Korganizer

[d^2b]

Well, surprisingly enough, KDE is not required. There is a project call korganizer-pi (pi=platform independant) that runs without KDE. Indeed, it runs on Windows. The UI is a little less slick than the latest Korganizer, but it does e.g., allow me to sync my laptop and my zaurus to a server via ssh.

I use my PDA

[prockcore]

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.

Re:I use my PDA

[joefish_only_1]

Same here. I have a p910 which is nice. I would use something on my computer, but I don't take that everywhere I go (yes, it is a laptop).

Re:I use my PDA

[Goeland86]

you are right that the PDA is the best.
Even better, to my mind, is that Linux (thus probably OS X, not sure) has a clone of Palm Desktop software: jpilot!
That program does everything I need it to do: to-do list, address book, calendar...
And it syncs with any Palm PDA. I love it, and wish there was one for windows.
Outlook seriously bugs me, though I know that Jpilot doesn't have anything close to an Exchange server (because the PDAs don't use them to start with).
So for small needs, a PDA, or PDA syncing app will do just fine!

So far...

[Tavor]

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!

Re:So far...

[CausticPuppy]

Beat that, Outlook 2003!

Easy. Your method sucks at the office, when you need to schedule a meeting of about 10 people at a time when everybody is free (you need to look at THEIR calendars) and find a conference room that is available for that time period, then track RSVP's. And you have to assume that everybody else actually writes all their own appointments on their calendars.

That's a LOT of phone calls, walking around to cubicles, and collecting post-it notes. And then you're gonna wind up fighting over a room anyway with the other folks who got there first.

Korganizer

[hardaker]

I use Korganizer synced with a palm for my scheduling. It works quite well. Like any piece of software, it's far from perfect. But I'm continually impressed with what I can pull off with it. I really like being able to link in other schedules as well and have them available from a checkbox to display them or not. I have the fedora release schedule pulled from HTTP, my wifes schedule copied to my machine hourly from hers... Lets me quickly overlay multiple things.

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.

Yahoo! Calendar

[TeleoMan]

Works for me. Email. Calendar. meh.

Re:Yahoo! Calendar

[eggoeater]

Yahoo Calendar rocks. I can access it from home and work (two different computers), it will sync up with my Palm (although the sync is a little kludgey), has a to-do list, etc., and the calendar sends me a text message (via an email address) to my cell phone to remind me of appointments.

Way fricken cool. I'll never go back to a non-web based calendar.

Emacs Diary

[Greyfox]

Ow! Stop hitting me!

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*)

My To Do List Is...

[__aaclcg7560]

Post-It Notes.

Re:My To Do List Is...

[__aaclcg7560]

Sure! On a Post-It Note, I write:

Morning - Read Slashdot
Afternoon - Read Slashdot
Evening - Read Slashdot

Note: Time to look for job? Not today.

For OS X: Entourage 2004

[newdamage]

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.

Outlook, for understanding words as well as dates

[Scott Tracy]

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.

Decidedly low-tech

[c0d3h4x0r]

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.

One I programmed myself

[Xeroc]

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)

Re:One I programmed myself

[Bungopolis]

That sounds nice -- have you released it to the world? If not, please do.

Re:One I programmed myself

[HermanAB]

Maorong Zou's Webcal: http://www.math.utexas.edu/users/mzou/webCal/index .html There are at least 3 programs going by the name of Webcal, but this one actually works...

Kontact

[InodoroPereyra]

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).

Evolution + iPod

[chesapeake]

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).

Scheduling?

[Anonymous Coward]

For scheduling? Why cron, of course...

PDA, actually

[mkswap-notwar]

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.

Mozilla Calendar and Lightning

[helix400]

Sunbird is currently undergoing a complete rewrite. I've worked with early builds of the new Sunbird, and it's looking pretty nice. Eventually, it should emerge with a much better framework to handle many Calendar and scheduling needs.

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.

Re:iCal

[mr100percent]

hear hear. I can even publish it to web, and sync it to my other Macs and Palm, and let others subscribe to it in their iCals.

Re:Geeks, organized?

[Sloppy]

I think he got the memo, but he forgot to read it before he lost it.

And of course, the best way to schedule things is to work out the dependency rules, and then just run make on it. If you have someone to help you with your todo list, then make -j2.

Re:iCal

[mr100percent]

iPod and Palm syncing too!

iCal + iPod + iSync = trifecta

[l0ungeb0y]

I'm sure a lot of other people will or have said it,
but iCal synched with iPod is bliss.

Additionally, you can post your iCal schedule online and share it with .mac

What do I use? Pens and a whiteboard...

[NeoThermic]

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

Gregorian

[macz]

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.)

I use my cell phone...

[Skudd]

"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."

Horde Kronolith

[egburr]

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.

The one final and best solution

[Umbral Blot]

sticky notes

Sunbird & iCal

[epall]

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.

Re:iCal

[Darth Maul]

Amen to that. iCal is perfect. I keep my calendars remote on my Linux server (webdav), too. The iCal interface is just right; nothing gets in the way. I can also sync right to my iPod.

Of course this assumes you have a OS X machine around... But try it out sometime at an Apple store or something if you don't have a Mac zealot friend ;).

Killer Calendar?

[Tavor]

Want me to make you a calendar, complete with whirling blades of death. It shall be booth shaped, and have two killing speeds.

Re:For OS X: Entourage 2004

[Goth Biker Babe]

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?

Re:For OS X: Entourage 2004

[Necroman]

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. >

gTodo

[cappaberra]

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!

Re:Now we know your lying....

[Zero Sum]

I prefer to conact my GF with hardware not software.

My Wife...

[nessenj]

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...

Google Notifier

[Better Than Bacon]

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.

iCal is ok but......

[djdavetrouble]

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.

Rainlendar - Lightweight Calendar/ToDo

[ares284]

Personally I use Rainlendar. It looks cool, has a light footprint, and just plain works. It's Windows-only, though =\


-Ares

Psion Agenda

[tverbeek]

I have lived most of the past decade and a half in the "Agenda" programs included in Psion's PDAs. The EPOC5 version has everything I need: customised alarms, recurring events (by almost any formula), multiple prioritised to-do lists, embedded notes... I seriously haven't figured out what features it could be missing. Maybe someone who's used the more recent Symbian versions can clue me in.

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.

Re:MOD UP!

[jondt]

Using a computer for a "to-do" list or calendar is just using technology for the sake of using technology.
On the contrary, I think it is one of the best uses of technology.

Pen and paper works fine. It has the advantage of being more portable than the smallest PDA as well.
Lets see.

• I can sync entries between any computer in the world, including my phone (which is actually smaller than any diary I've ever seen - and is always in my pocket anyway).
• I can create backups at a click of my mouse.
• I can publish selected parts of it so that others can shedule around my life.
• I can include hyperlinks and documents within my entries for easy retrieval nearer the time.

Elaborate please, why is this technology for the sake of using technology?

Re:MOD UP!

[NanoGator]

"Using a computer for a "to-do" list or calendar is just using technology for the sake of using technology."

Generalizations always suck.

My Wife

[HexaByte]

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!

My Brain

[AgentAce]

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.

Project / Task Management Software

[wideBlueSkies]

All,

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 .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 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.

Re:Project / Task Management Software

[gsyswerda]

What you are looking for is Ecco Pro. It was discontinued years ago, but there is still an avid support group.

The closest thing I've found in current software is ShadowPlan (codejedi.com). It runs on Palm Pilots. There is a desktop version, but it is incomplete.

Re:Project / Task Management Software

[Dave21212]

My advice, IBM Lotus Domino products. It's the most powerful, flexible, and comprehensive tool out there. Technically, it's a software development platform for collaboration and messaging. But there's a subset of tools called "Quickplace" which includes out-of-the-box features that I think would be perfect for you.

From the IBM Quickplace site:
* Provides anytime, anywhere access to collective knowledge, information-sharing, tasks and team calendar events whether on-line or disconnected.
* Seamlessly establishes a working community with a sense of accountability, whether team members are centralized or geographically dispersed.
* Increases team productivity and efficiency by virtualizing asynchronous collaboration processes, and optionally integrates them with real time.
* Increases responsiveness among colleagues, customers, business partners and suppliers by facilitating instant formation of working teams -- whether team members reside within or beyond the organization.
* Facilitates faster, collective decision making by centralizing timely and accurate information, and granting all team members equal opportunity to review and react.
* Helps make your teams more productive and self-sufficient through easy, instant assembly of collaborative applications using team space templates -- with just a browser.


I've been using it for years, and I still haven't found anything I can't get it to do. Note that it's not for transactional systems (airline ticket systems) and it's not a relational database system (which is a plus!), but it's just perfect for what you described...

My email is shown here at Slashdot (thank you SpamCop), so please feel free to email any questions you might have and I'd be happy to help. I'm not a consultant and I'm busy anyway, so I can't build you a system or anything (this is not a pitch:), but I would be happy to field any questions you have (I have about 10 years experience with Domino).

Don't miss the developerWorks site for Domino (plenty of info), and feel free to ask questions in the forums (it's a friendly group!).

Re:NOTHING!

[wideBlueSkies]

>>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.

Not to sound harsh, but based upon your comments I get the sense that you probably haven't managed a project or otherwise been responsible for the work of others.

wbs.

Re:Outlook, for understanding words as well as dat

[The Conductor]

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!

the real need?

[circusboy]

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...

how about integration with other programs

[SuperBanana]

I frequently hear discussion of the most wanted features, such as different calendar formats, integration with other handhelds, etc.

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.

The Best

[SysJames]

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.

Re:When

[rsheridan6]

To use Emacs just for a diary would be overkill, but some of us live in Emacs and it makes sense to do stuff in that environment. Once you're already running Emacs, the diary is just a 1500 line extension that comes with it.

Re:Outlook 2003 - Stop the FUD.

[cbreaker]

"(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.

Home-Grown

[PintoPiman]

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.

Thanks for posting that!

[EvilStein]

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.. :(

The Perl-based WebCalendar

[BoldAndBusted]

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.

Make Acrobat load quickly!

[Frodo Crockett]

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.

Re:Make Acrobat load quickly!

[tsa]

I read somewhere on /. that you can also press the shift key during startup. It then skips all the plugins and loads in the blink of an eye. The amazing thing is that I don't find it any less usable without all these plugins.

Ecco Pro

[tezza]

Wow, I can't believe no-one has mentioned Ecco Pro.

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

Wikimedia

[Scarblac]

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.

Wiki

[Lifewish]

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.

Requisite shouting about Lotus Notes

[KingSkippus]

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