Econ Technologies Inc. has a new Mac OS X calendar-scheduling application, DayChaser, due Sept. 23. The product was in the works before Apple announced its upcoming iCal application at July’s Macworld Conference & Expo in New York.
The US$20 DayChaser will let you create and manage multiple calendar documents simultaneously. You can schedule appointments and events, record memos and automate common system tasks, according to Joseph Japes of Econ.
Each calendar document contains its own unique set of scheduled entries (events, appointments, memos, and executable tasks). With executable tasks, you can use DayChaser to assign tasks to events and appointments and have things happen automatically, or with a single click, such as opening up other documents from the calendar, Japes said.
With DayChaser you can display schedules in year, month, week, day and list view. You can post notifications and reminders of upcoming appointments and events. DayChaser lets you associate contacts to a calendar entry and have the list of contacts receive e-mail notifications. You can also attach documents to calendar entries; create filters to display only the calendar entries that matter at a given moment; perform automated system tasks at any hour of the day; and customize the user interface.
DayChaser can be instructed to automatically notify you when an event or appointment draws near. It can do so by posting an alert message on your system and/or by sending an e-mail message to a list of recipients. It can then continue to remind you of an upcoming event so you won’t forget about it. It can even do all this when DayChaser isn’t running, Japes said.
DayChaser also features repeating entries, customizable filters, user definable categories, color coded entries, customizable views, date range queries, automatic e-mail generation and calendar/itinerary printing. Plus, it takes advantage of Mac OS X technologies such as drag & drop, Services, Quartz Imaging, and AppleScript. More details of features can be found at the product Web site.
“We were surprised when Apple announced iCal,” Japes told MacCentral. “When we first heard about the iApp, we decided to scrap the Day Chaser project, which was 90 percent completed. But after a week we reconsidered and decided to go ahead and finish it. We looked at it, and decided it was a really good application. If we had only been halfway through the project, we might not have finished it. But we jumped ahead, even putting some things in that we originally planned for future versions.”
DayChaser is designed for users who work at their computer all day long; the app isn’t connected with the PDA world. If you need to sync with a handheld device, this isn’t the product for you (though PDA connectivity is being considered).