Today

Today is a nice tiny app intended to have a handy way of adding or modifying iCal's events or tasks without having to open iCal itself (or to keep it open).

Each event or task can be edited directly in Today or be revealed in iCal. There are buttons in the bottom of the window to create new events/tasks. No special setup is necessary to make it aware of iCal's calendars. In the preferences pane you can choose to show or hide specific calendars. There's a video on Today's site that explains the most common features of the program and an image is worth a thousand words. (Better yet, as it's actually a sequence of images).

But what I enjoy the most are the shortcut to invoke Today, the ability to stay in front of other windows and setting the transparency of the window.

After installation, I immediately jumped to the preferences window. There, I opted for putting Today in the menu bar, and assigned a keyboard shortcut to make Today's window appear. For me, this keyboard shortcut is Command + Option + Control + T, as it reminds me the one used to activate the speech service in Leopard (Command+Option+Control+S), which I use a lot. But of course you can set something simpler.

So anytime I need to add a new event or task, simply check if I'm available or see what comes next in the day, I just use my (probably not so short) shortcut and I'm done. Although iCal is not a voracious memory consumer as other calendar apps (Microsoft, I'm pointing at you), it's nice to have an app like Today that is even more lightweight and allows you to do the most common tasks without consuming more memory or cluttering your desktop.

If I am arranging more than one appointment or planing tasks (especially common when I am using any form of instant messaging), I find useful to keep Today's window in front of others and a little bit transparent. That way I don't have to worry to switch between windows in order to see if I am available for next Tuesday at 6 p.m. and am still able to have a clean desktop. And it also accomplishes the noble purpose of providing some eye-candy.

I still use iCal, though, to view my calendars in the week or month views, or to create, delete or subscribe to calendars. But that means I specifically need to use the whole iCal. As Today's developers pointed out, the name says it all: it is intended to focus on one day at a time. But you are not stuck with the current day, you can jump to any date you want clicking the arrows at the top of the window.

Something that I think should be fixed in future versions or updates is that when opening an event that has repetitions from Today to edit it in iCal, it opens the starting date rather than the current date. It can be a little confusing. Besides, it is a nice app to have and use.

Today sells at $15 as of the time of this writing. A 10 days full featured demo is freely available here.