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

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

This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers?¢‚Ǩ‚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 .

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, desktop

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