YABI (”Yet Another Birthday Importer”) is an
iCal utility that aims to improve on the app’s built-in birthday calendar by making it smarter and more feature-rich.
It can import birthdays and anniversaries, display a person’s age in the title of the event it creates (handy!), and lets you add the lot to the calendar of your choice.
The app’s main window lets you select which of your contacts to include:
Click the Start button and it’s all done for you.
YABI’s preference pane, a nice slide-out drawer, allows other options to be set.
It can add a contact’s URL to the event, set the event to be all-day and lets you decide how many years of repeats to create.
You can also nominate how the name should be displayed and whether or not to add the contact’s age.
The Notification pane will either set no alert or use a configurable iCal message to let you know. I like to get emails for my alerts, but perhaps that being picky.
YABI is a universal binary and a beta. It is free at the moment, although may become shareware when the app is formally released.
You can get it from the developer’s web site 
(scroll down past NetLocation X).
Dates to iCal is another utility (donation-ware) that adds birthday and other event information to iCal. It features the email notification that is missing from YABI.
Clicking on a contact’s birthday label brings up a contextual menu containing the information.
Dates to iCal is an app that syncs birthdays and anniversaries in your Address Book to iCal, adding them as alarmed events to a separate calendar.
