Now Software on Tuesday announced that it’s shipping version 5 of its Now Up-To-Date & Contact software. The new release of the contact management and calendar software offers many new features and improvements and supports Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger.” Now Up-To-Date & Contact 5 costs US$129.95 for the boxed version or $119.95 for the download version. Upgrades cost $49.95.
Now Up-To-Date & Contact 5 adds a new Schedule View, a group scheduling enhancement that lets meeting planners and supervisors select multiple users and display their calendars simultaneously for a given day. This makes it easier to track staff availability and activities, according to Now Software.
The New Server Manager is also new in version 5. It lets you install and manage and number of calendar and contact servers, and can also be used to automatically publish calendars and address books to the Web. Now Up-To-Date & Contact 5 is backwards-compatible with the Mac OS X v4.5.3 and Windows 4.5.2 versions, as well as the “Classic” Mac OS 4.0.3 version. The new Now Server Manager supports all of those releases simultaneously, and version 5 users can also access existing version 4 Now Up-To-Date & Contact servers.
New import and export features support drag-and-drop exchange with Apple’s iCal and Address Book software. And using “Sets,” users can create and switch between multiple calendar views. The software also gains a redesigned interface with customizable toolbars and dozens of enhancements and improvements.
Now Software said in a statement that with this initial version 5 release, Now Up-To-Date & Contact supports Tiger — but later this year, the company will add Tiger-specific features including Dashboard Widgets and Spotlight support. Those updates will be free.