Archive for the ‘Today’ Category

Today 1.3 is now available. The focus of this release was on making the task management features much more powerful based on user feedback. One thing I learned from users is that while viewing a single days worth of events is a great look, many users want to be able to see what tasks they have due several days in advance. You can now do that with Today 1.3. With the influx of more tasks in Today, I went ahead and offered a few sorting options so you can organize your tasks by title, calendar, due date or priority.

In addition to the task enhancements, there are some smaller, but useful navigation and usability enhancements to make working with Today better. If you use a CalDAV this release should also be more friendly.

Today is $15 and has a 10 day trial at the Second Gear Web site. I hope you enjoy the release.

I’m sure many of you were also waiting in line today to grab your iPhone 3G. I picked one up this morning and am very pleased with the speed improvements of 3G network and (for the most part) the applications that are available on the AppStore.

The thing I am most excited about, however, is MobileMe. Apple’s .Mac replacement makes it incredibly easy to automatically push email, contact and calendaring information to and from the iPhone without having to rely on syncing. This is a great feature for Today users!

Let me give you an example.

This afternoon at lunch I making plans for a meeting for drinks later in the day with a friend. I entered the information into my iPhone, which was now set up to automatically sync calendaring data with MobileMe. When I got back to my desk an hour later, I popped open Today and the new event was automatically in the list: no sync required on my part.

Thanks to the hardworking MobileMe team at Apple for such a great tool. It’s well worth my $99 a year.

Today was recently reviewed on Mac software site MacApper. As part of the review, we did a giveaway where the entry requirements was to suggest features you’d like to see in Today. By far the biggest request was the ability to use the application with Google Calendar.

This is actually already possible! Spanning Sync is an excellent utility that can automatically sync your Google Calendar data with iCal and Today. Here’s a quick tutorial to show you how.

1. In iCal, create calendars with the same names as each calendar you have created in Google Calendar. We will use these to sync data between Google Calendar and iCal.

2. Download and install Spanning Sync from their Web site. Spanning Sync is a $25 a year subscription or 1-time $65 payment for a lifetime of updates.

3. Launch the Spanning Sync preference pane and authenticate with your Google account. This will enable the sync settings window as you can see below.

4. For each Google Calendar you want to sync, match it up with it’s corresponding iCal calendar.

1. Set your syncing frequency to every hour.

2. Press the Sync button. It may take a while to get all your data synchronized between the two services depending on how long you’ve been using Google Calendar.

3. Once everything is synced, what you see in Google Calendar will also be in Today. Any changes you make on Google will also be pushed directly to Today each time Spanning Sync runs.

Spanning Sync is a great application for those that want the power and convenience of Google Calendar, but still want to enjoy some of the luxuries of using iCal and applications like Today. If you have any other tips or tricks on how you’re using Today, please do share them with us!

I’m not one to let a month go by without a release, so I’m happy to present you all with Today 1.2. Today 1.2 adds a few features I think everyone will find beneficial.

• Today will now automatically shift the date forward at midnight. This only happens if you haven’t adjusted the date away from the present day.
• You can now edit events and tasks by double-clicking on the item. It will automatically launch in iCal.
• The date browser is enhanced so you can navigate ahead more than just a day at a time. Click on the currently selected date to expose the new date picker.

Beyond the new features, there are several other tweaks and bug fixes that we outline in the release notes.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about the stuff we’ve added in Today 1.2. I gave the folks at TUAW a “>video demo and interview about the new features in Today 1.2. I can’t stand to watch the video because I have a phobia of hearing my own voice, but hopefully you will find it beneficial.

I hope you enjoy the release.

Today uses the same task storage engine as iCal, Apple Mail and any other application that takes advantage of a new framework in Mac OS X Leopard called CalendarStore. This makes it easy to integrate Today’s task functionality with your favorite GTD applications such as OmniFocus or Things.

I’ll show you how I’m using OmniFocus along with Today to have an outside view of my OmniFocus tasks.

1. Open iCal and create a few calendars that will hold your tasks. This is optional, but I have a lot of contexts and they didn’t all perfectly fit in my “Work” and “Personal” calendars. For instance, I setup an “Outside World” calendar that has any of my frequently visited places that I’ve set as contexts.

2. Open OmniFocus’s Preferences window and go to the Sync pane. On the left you’ll see your iCal calendars. On the right will be your unsynchronized contexts.

1. Drag any context that you want to be synced to iCal to the calendar you want it to synchronize to. In my case, I’m only syncing my most important, non-work related tasks over. Usually this is things like errands, bills and phone calls I need to make.

2. Go to the File menu in OmniFocus and select “Synchronize With iCal.” The tasks will automatically be filtered into your Today window’s task pane. It will also pass any task that was already in iCal to your OmniFocus inbox so you can keep them organized as well.

A similar workflow is possible in other applications, so if you have a favorite application you’re syncing with Today, let me know in the comments!

We just released a maintenance update for Today, our daily event and task manager for Mac OS X Leopard. Today 1.1.1 fixes several little issues that user have reported with Spaces, hot key interaction and other small usability issues. We also decided to extend the Today trial period from 7 days to 10 days so you can get a few more days to see if Today is right for you.

Because we don’t like new releases without something new, we’re happy to announce that Today is now localized in French and German. Our thanks go to Ronald Leroux and Leif Singer for their French and German translations respectively.

We hope you enjoy the new release.

In a few weeks, the most hardcore of the Apple faithful, the developers, will be descending upon San Francisco for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple recently released the full schedule of sessions that will be taking place during the session. Using a mix of Today and Adrian Kosmaczewski’s WWDC iCal creator you can have a quick way to see what sessions you plan to be at each day.

Here’s how.

1. Download the iPhone, Mac and IT calendars from Adrian’s site and open them in iCal.
2. Edit them as necessary to only show the events you want to head to.
3. When WWDC week arrives, you can quickly pop open Today to see your schedule as you head from session to session. Couldn’t be easier!

If you’re going to be at WWDC, be sure to come up and say hello. I’ll be the guy wearing the Second Gear t-shirt.

We’re big fans of the Mac software site iusethis. iusethis takes the software update listing site idea to the next level by allowing users to mark each application they use in a Digg-like update.

Presently Today’s iusethis number is pretty small, and certainly not indicative of the number of users that are actively using the application. If you’re using Today, please consider going over to iusethis and adding our application to your profile.

I’d love to get the number of users above 75 by the end of the week. Let’s do it!

Today users around the world are starting to share how they are using the application to make their daily lives easier. Michael R. Grossman, a lawyer in Evanston, IL, is using Today as a way of managing his law practice. He writesL

For now I’ll rely upon Today, a Mac desktop application that displays appointments and tasks on one convenient window, linked with iCal. And since I use iCal and other Mac applications within my practice management workflow, Today will become a regular and useful tool within my daily grind.

If you’re using Today in a fun or unique way, let us know.

One of the best ways to help solidify a new application is to get a review published in one of the major Mac magazines. In the US, Macworld is on top of the heap. Because of this, you couldn’t imagine the joy I experienced when I refreshed my RSS reader and saw that Macworld had published a review of Today 1.1 for their MacGems section.

Dan Frakes writing for Macworld:

On the Mac on which I use iCal, I find Today to be very useful for quickly viewing my commitments for the day… Since I don’t like to keep iCal open when I’m not actively using it, I’ve long wished Apple would offer an easy way to create new events and tasks without having to open iCal each time.

The article is only online presently, but I’m sure it will appear in a future edition of the magazine. If you haven’t tried Today, hopefully Dan’s review will entice you to give it a shot.

If you would like to review Today in your magazine, blog or podcast, be sure to contact us