Hawk Wings » to do

GTD-style widget for iCal to-dos

Tim Gaden — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 11:58:11 +0000

ConceptDraw Lab has produced a little Dashboard widget that “partially implements Getting Things Done” by allowing for the quick creation of iCal to-dos without the need to open iCal.

It works by presenting each calendar in iCal as an Inbox, which can be selected from a drop-down menu at the top of the widget.

Entering text then creates to-dos attached to the selected calendar.

In the Next Events view, it displays all events scheduled for today.

Despite my normal charitable outlook, I struggled to see how this would gain a place in someone’s GTD toolbox.

Event Maker remains the tool of choice for creating iCal events and to-dos for those not using MailTags or Quicksilver (one, two Hawk Wings post on Quicksilver and iCal) to do the same job.

For power and ease of use Event Maker is hard to beat.

Perhaps I am becoming a “Productivity snob”. It’s not always about power. For some people this might be just the ticket and serve as an excellent bucket for collecting things to do.

GTD widget for iCal is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .ical, to-do, events, calendars, GTD, getting things done, not apple mail, quicksilver, productivity, widgets, dashboardSimilar Posts:

Ghost Action GTD app: simple, slick, syncing

Tim Gaden — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:48:45 +0000

Ghost Park Software has released a simple, slick and polished app “for keeping track of your to-dos using the simple and stress-free Getting Things Done method”.

It comes from the “lean and mean” end of the GTD app market and looks more like Actiontastic than Midnight Inbox and other “eye-candy heavy” apps:

Context, Project and Action views provide powerful and flexible ways to carry your to-dos forward.

The developers give a lot of attention to syncing, which is good. Ghost Action has full two-way synchronization with iCal. It can also synchronize with any iSync-compatible device — a PDA, an iPod or a phone.

Syncing options are provided in the app’s Preferences:

One user provides Ghost Park with a full praise for its clever syncing:

I love the fact that Ghost Action recognizes theâ€¨project name in the to-dos imported from iCal (like â€œsome task [Project â€¨X]â€). Very handy, that means I can enter to-dos on my Palm and and they will be properly synchronized to Ghost Action through iCal. Cool! â€” Ksenia Marasan

Ghost Action is an universal binary and shareware (USD 19.95). You can get a free 14-day demo from the developer’s web site.

It seems like just yesterday that I wrote up “Ten Mac Tools for Getting Things Done“. Now it could easy be twenty Mac tools, all of them high quality solutions.

Ghost Action has the edge in sync options. Actiontastic gets brownie points for Quicksilver integration.not apple mail, getting things done, GTD, productivity, to-do, task management, getting organised, ical, syncing, isyncSimilar Posts:

todoPod: To-dos on the go

Tim Gaden — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:30:13 +0000

todoPod is an Automator action that takes a note or to-do you have written, records it and then syncs it to an iPod, where it is available in the “Notes” section and in a VoiceNotes playlist.

Grocery lists, short motivational snippets, thoughts and tasks for the day, as well the more traditional “to-do” can now travel with you wherever you go. (If you have an iPod. I don’t, although recently I nearly cracked, so I couldn’t test this.)

todoPod is freeware and available from Thought Bottle Software’s web site .ipod, to-do, productivity, notes, reminders, voice recording, automatorSimilar Posts:

Weekly Update

Tim Gaden — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:19:53 +0000

Plugins and Addons

Two things were added to the Hawk Wings Plug-in and Add-on List this week.

To Do X (a richly featured To Do list app) was added to the helpful apps / Miscellaneous section.

Dates to iCal (sync birthdays and other dates from Address Book to iCal) was added to the iCal section.

Back-end

I finally nailed the problem with the Live Comments Preview plugin.

It was something I don’t really understand to do with the way my webhost’s Apache server handles requests for gzipped files. Anyway, it is restored now and in more sophisticated form (thanks to Daniel Jalkut. Read his Red Sweater Blog — as I do — for pleasure and profit). You now have the option of turning it on or not.plugins, addons, ical, address book, to do, dates, birthdays Similar Posts:

Event Maker: iCal events, to dos from an email

Tim Gaden — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 13:31:38 +0000

Event Maker is an app that creates an iCal event or to do from a selected email in Mail.app.

There are no release notes or instructions provided by the developer.

I got this to work by putting it in my Mail scripts folder (~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail), highlighting an email and running it from the Script menu.

It pops up a dialog allowing you to select either an event or a to do:

The subject and contents of the message are copied over into the Title and Notes fields, but the rest you need to fill in yourself.

After the event is created, the app offers you a number of options:

The developer points out that this is “an early release that is missing many features”. He is looking for some user feedback and for an icon for the app. You can contact him by email.

There are various other ways to perform the same task, among them the Mail2iCal and fuhgeddaboutit scripts. The new version of MailTags will also create iCal to dos.

Event Maker is donation-ware and is available from the developer’s web site .ical, mail.app, event, to do, apple mail, feedbackSimilar Posts:

AppleScripts for iCal Events and To Dos

Tim Gaden — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 22:33:02 +0000

A few days ago Darren posted two AppleScripts in the comments on the post about Zoodo.

I’ve amended them slightly as Daniel Jalkut suggests in the comments and packaged them up in a zip file called QSiCalScripts.zip.

They were originally posted in the Quicksilver forum (currently down), and are designed to be run by a Quicksilver trigger (although they don’t have to be). Darren has tweaked them for a few additional features. (Thanks!).

Dan Dickinson at Primary Vivid has an illustrated tutorial on how to set up a trigger in Quicksilver, as does Coelomic at WordWorks .

There are other ways to do this, of course, but I am hoping that they will appear in the new (Allegedly) Related Posts feature. We will see.iCal, AppleScript, To Do, events, Quicksilver, trigger, scriptsSimilar Posts:

High Priority 1.1.1

Tim Gaden — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:15:14 +0000

The developer of High Priority continues to pound away at improving this Menubar iCal To Do manager.

The latest release (1.1.1) is a universal binary and allows you to hide subscribed calendars.

It is also much smarter at parsing iCal’s To Do information. The new version correctly displays non-standard completed dates that include time zone, due dates that include time, URLs that don’t contain a specified type and more.

You can use High Priority in a limited-functionality version for free, or pay a USD 6 registration fee for the full version. It’s available from the developer’s web site .universal binary, subscribed calendars, high priority, menubar, ical, to doSimilar Posts:

Zoodo: Mouseless iCal Todos

Tim Gaden — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:30:14 +0000

Studies have shown that using the keyboard is faster than using a mouse.

Not everyone agrees. In 1989 Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini (“Leading authority on software design” — HotWired) revealed that:

We?¢‚Ç¨‚Ñ¢ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:

?¢‚Ç¨¬¢ Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
?¢‚Ç¨¬¢ The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.

This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers?¢‚Ç¨‚Ñ¢ belief that the keyboard is faster.

Interesting as this perception vs. reality debate is, I have long wanted a way to create iCal ToDos that didn’t involve fiddling around with a mouse. And here it is.

ZooDo is a small app that allows you to create iCal ToDos without touching the mouse once.

After installing the app, launch it using Quicksilver (or LaunchBar or Butler or other launcher of choice). It presents you with the following dialog:

The cursor is already sitting in the first field, ready for you to type.

Typing and tabbing gets you to the Create button. It’s possible to get trapped in the Notes field where the tab key stops moving between fields, but Control-Tab gets you out. Hit Return and you are done.

Mouseless To Do creation. Feels faster to me.

ZooDo is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from the developer’s web site .
Similar Posts:

iCalViewer: Streaming iCal on your desktop

Tim Gaden — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:33:55 +0000

In recent days I have been playing around a lot with various iCal addons and utilities.

I can’t tell you why for fear of being drowned in a vat of maple syrup by a bunch of lacrosse stick-wielding Mounties.

Anyway, I discovered iCalViewer, a very creative and interesting add-on for iCal that displays your iCal information in a window or on your desktop:

Click on the picture for a larger view

The idea is clever. The yellow line on the left is “now” and the events and ToDos listed to the right of that represent what’s coming up. As time passes the displays “streams” the information.

The preference pane allows you to set the time period it should display (168 hours by default), which calendars to include, whether to display it over the top of your screen saver or not and various options for displaying the ToDos and the events.

In “Window” mode, double clicking on a ToDo or event opens iCal and selects the item.

It has some interesting applications.

For example, the app maintains a “special event” box for items that fall outside the normal time range. The developer suggests a use for this:

You have an iCal calendar for a project and you really want to be reminded of the final date as well as milestones along the way, so you specify the lookahead for the end date to be 6 months and the milestones to be 3 weeks.

iCalViewer is shareware (USD 11), although you can use it for free with limited functionality.

A 21 day fully-featured demo is available from the developer’s web site.iCal, events, to do, streaming, desktopSimilar Posts:

MenuCalendarClock: More menubar iCal

Tim Gaden — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:31:04 +0000

It turns out that High Priority is not the only iCal menubar utility on the block.

MenuCalendarClock is another menubar app for iCal that gives you access to your iCal events and ToDos from the menubar.

Clicking its menubar icon drops down a display containing a calendar view of the current month, the events for the day and a list of your ToDos.

The display of events and ToDos can be toggled on and off.

Its preferences allow you to control a configurable menubar clock replacement and to set the colour of the window.

Further options determine how the events and ToDos are displayed.

It will also display the Calendar week numbers and offers an autohide option.

There is also a “Tool tip” option that presents a text-only version of the display when you hover your mouse over the icon.

Unlike High Priority, it offers no interaction with your ToDos, which cannot be marked completed or edited from the app’s window.

All these features can be enjoyed for free.

A registered version (USD 18.95) offers further features like the ability to sync birthdays from AddressBook into iCal and to configure a hotkey.

The fully registered version also displays iCal events.

MenuCalendarClock is available from the developer’s web site .ical, events, to do, menubar, plugin, addon, clock replacement, calendar, menucalendarclock Similar Posts: