Actiontastic is a “a lean mean” Getting Things Done app which is nice clean interface and no distractions from its main job of helping you manage your contexts and tasks.

An updated version (0.9) adds support for iCal syncing via OS X’s Sync Services and corrects a few minor bugs that make it faster and more efficient to use.

iCal syncing, like the iPod syncing added in the previous update, is handled by a new button at the bottom of the app’s interface.

The first time the button is pressed, you are greeted by an alert:

After a sync, you will find that each of your “contexts” has become a separate calendar in iCal, with the “actions” for that context added as iCal to-dos. (This is GTD lingo for the place in which you do things and the things that you need to do).

Additional options are handled by Actiontastic’s preferences, which among other things offer an option to remove Actiontastic from Sync Services.

Read the small print though, as this will require the removal of all the existing contexts in Actiontastic before the conduit can be activated again.

I really like the look of this app (although I use Mail.app for the actual GTD work Actiontastic does). It stands at the opposite end of the interface spectrum from Midnight Inbox which has a more “bling bling” approach to productivity.

Actiontastic is beta-ware (free) although time limited to 28 February, by which time another version will be available. You can get it from Jon Crosby’s web site .

UPDATE: Jon has released version 0.9.1 which corrects some iCal niggles in the 0.9 release. Get it here . ical, getting things done, gtd, syncing, context, actions, productivity, nice interface, task management, not apple mail

Tags: actions, context, getting things done, gtd, iCal, nice interface, not apple mail, Productivity, syncing, task management

Advenio has published three Automator actions for iCal.

The Find Past iCal Events action allows you to search for past events based on timeframes of one week, two weeks, four weeks, two months, six months and one year. You can also search just for today’s or yesterday’s events.

The Move iCal Events action moves specified events from one calendar to another, or to a new one.

The Get Date Range String from Events action creates a date range string from the iCal events provided to it.

Like many people I fooled around a lot with Automator when Tiger first came out, and then forgot about it.

Now I’m rediscovering it to automate backups with Transmit . It’s a clever piece of work, especially for code-challenged people like me.automator, ical, actions, events

Tags: actions, Automator, events, iCal

The hunt for useful apps to post on Hawk Wings often produces strange results.

Sometimes I come across things that are worthy but just “too niche”, even for a site that occupies a niche in a niche market, like a plugin that allows customers of a Swiss cell phone company to send SMSes from Address Book.

Sometimes I come across something distasteful like eMail Ripper , an app that extracts email addresses from files, folders, web sites and text files. There must be a legitimate use for this. I just can’t think of one.

Sometimes I come across something wonderful and weird like FaithConverter (“the premier theological plagiarism solution for Mac OS X”), an app that automatically translates religious texts between thirty different faiths, including Christianity, Buddhism, Communism, Druidism, Islam, Linux, MacEvangelism, Scientology, Thatcherism and Veganism. (It doesn’t do cartoons.)

This is very entertaining but hard to link convincingly with Mail.app, so staying “on topic” rules out giving it a mention.

Sometimes I come across something half-formed and mysterious. It might be a winner. It might be a goose.

Such a thing is Inbox from Midnight Beep Softworks, “pre-released” last week. (Don’t visit if you are on dial-up. Slow as molasses.)

The web site features some alluring screenshots of an app that promises to be:

a fully automated utility for gathering new things you need to be tracking, to help you get them off your mind. Then for processing all that “noise” into useful projects, contexts, and priorities. And finally presenting a fully managed action list of what you could be doing, should be doing, and might want to be doing.

It not only tracks and manages your tasks and to do lists, it actually does the triage and makes the decisions for you!

Hmmm……helpful apps, niche market, address book, SMS, swiss, email harvesting, faith converter, theological plagiarism, religious texts, productivity, projects, to do list, actions, GTD, weird software, mail.app, apple mail

Tags: actions, Address Book, Apple Mail, email harvesting, faith converter, gtd, helpful apps, mail.app, niche market, Productivity, projects, religious texts, SMS, swiss, theological plagiarism, to do list, weird software