QuickCal is a widget that allows you to enter appointments into iCal using plain language.

Instead of remembering obscure tags or negotiating a series of check-boxes, you just type your upcoming appointment in normal words. The widget parses your text and creates the appointment for you.

There is a Quicksilver plugin that does something similar, but with the continuing uncertainty over Quicksilver’s future development, some people way be looking for another way to do the same thing.

It is simple to use. All you need to do is type:

(It even copes with the fact that I can’t type “tmorrow” properly!).

Options on the back of the widget allow you set a number of defaults — the calendar in which the appointment should be created and a number of default ways to handle reminders:

It seems quite smart. The developer provides a list that shows the variety of “plain language” it can understand:

It can’t do repeating events or strip out the location of the event and put in iCal’s location field. But the developer is cranking out the updates and improvements, so who knows how much smarter it may become?

QuickCal requires Leopard to work its magic. It’s donation-ware and is available from the developer’s web site .

[With thanks to Dave, a Hawk Wings reader, for the tip-off.]ical, productivity, widgets, plain language

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Tags: iCal, plain language, Productivity, widgets

This entry was posted on Saturday, 20th June, 2009 at 7:56 am and is filed under Productivity, iCal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.