While I use iCal to keep track of the week’s events, I’m not necessarily the kind of guy who wants to see my calendar 24/7. However, I decided to give it a try, and despite a pitfall or two with the application, iDeskCal is a pretty interesting, transparent solution for giving me a heads up notification to the day’s events.
iDeskCal is initially confusing to use, as there’s really no guides to show you what to do or how to manipulate the application. Suddenly this thing appears on the screen displaying my upcoming events in iCal, embedded on my desktop like wet ink on printer paper. I couldn’t drag the darned thing, so instead I had to dig into the preferences, where finally there was an option to make it draggable.
But making iDeskCal draggable flips the ugly switch: suddenly this transparent window dons a title bar, and the app has to be restarted. Now firstly, don’t add a tittle bar to it - secondly, don’t make me restart the application. It should just display the resizing edge at the corner of the screen, and that’s it. What’s confusing as well is that if I go back into the preferences to turn resizing off, the checkbox is already unticked. According to this default option, I’m being told that the only choice I have is to turn something on that’s already on! Really?
Despite my initial grudge with this aspect of the application, everything else is smooth as butter for the most part. iDeskCal gives you the ability to easily add events to iCal from either a keyboard shortcut or the menubar. This is nice if you’re at a meeting and need to input an event date rather quickly, and you can later see your result appear in iCal. ToDos show up as well if you have them (I never utilize them).
You can edit the calendar’s color, size, and font style from the preferences as well. I opted to hide everything but the text itself, because to be quite frank the calendar icon and the bezel with fill is just distracting.
iDeskCal displays your upcoming iDeskCal events and nothing more. Despite resizing and moving being a pain, iDeskCal is easy to configure and allows you to quickly add events to iCal.
For calendar lovers everywhere, we’re giving away three copies, so check out the rules below for your chance to win!
Rules
We have 3 licenses up for grabs, all you have to do is leave a comment here - telling us why you think iDeskCal can improve your workflow. No tweets required!
Winners will be announced on Friday, March 5th.
Good luck!
