Filed under: Cool tools, Productivity, Beta Beat
Beta Beat: BusyCal from BusyMac
The BusyCal public beta is out! I got a preview of BusyCal while at WWDC this year, and have been anxiously awaiting the chance to put it into action. As the developers state on the homepage: "Think of it as iCal Pro." The next step from the makers of BusySync, BusyCal offers a full calendaring system with Bonjour and Google Calendar sync, iPhone sync via iTunes or MobileMe, full read-write access for multi-user calendars, and a plethora of other features and goodies.
Dated to-dos are embedded in the calendar, optionally carrying forward if not completed on their due date. You can add recurring to-do items with the same carry-forward functionality. There are customizable views, including sortable list views, plus shared sticky notes, customizable graphics, live weather and forecasts (with sunrise/set times and moon phases), all in an easy-to-grasp, iCal-like interface.
If you've ever thought, "Gosh, I like iCal, I just wish it had about 20 more useful features and could sync across my LAN and the internet," take the public beta of BusyCal for a spin. BusyCal will cost $40US per computer, or $10/computer for BusySync owners. Doing the math, BusySync is $25, plus the $10 upgrade is $35, so you could save yourself $5 taking the upgrade path, even with a new purchase of BusySync.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Evilhomer said 2:41PM on 7-27-2009
Does it work with Exchange?
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Jon Kessler said 4:16PM on 7-27-2009
Well, does it work for exchange or not? I'd love to throw sync'em out the window.
jesus torres said 7:28PM on 7-27-2009
Don't forget, OS X is getting integrated Exchange support with Snow Leopard...
adam said 3:09PM on 7-27-2009
Website's down.
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Brett Terpstra said 3:20PM on 7-27-2009
Not from here…
adam said 3:26PM on 7-27-2009
Useless Safari. Firefox ftw.
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adam said 3:37PM on 7-27-2009
installed. poked around for a beat. deleted.
too much extra crap - giant weather icons and the like... oy. not useful. still waiting on a proper sync of omnifocus + ical.
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frankns said 3:59PM on 7-27-2009
Yeah ...
Pretty underwhelming. Oh ... and the printing is weaker than iCal.
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Russell said 5:49PM on 7-27-2009
I'm a long time BusySync user who has been waiting for this since it was announced. I just played with it and an underwhelmed to say the least. I don't know if BusySync is just that good or BusyCal is lacking. I would have liked the UI to be a little more visually appealing (i.e. event detail entry popup vs iCal popup). For me I just don't see much additional features over BS.
A Few Observations:
- Don't see much difference between text in an event and a tag
- To-Do's displayed in calendar don't sync to Google Calendar
I guess its a good start, but I'm now back to BusySync.
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Philip said 6:20PM on 7-27-2009
Nice program, but my todos don't show up on my iphone calander and it does not let you sync from Omnifocus. Are you going to have Omnifocus being allowed to sync to Busycal.
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jesse seibel said 10:29PM on 7-27-2009
bugs? time does not display when imputing event. i have to drag in day/week view. private caldav subscriptions don't work. any suggestions? no way i would pay for this as is. but if it worked...
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Lee T L said 9:40PM on 7-28-2009
um yea, Its in beta. There are gonna be bugs.
jesse seibel said 9:46PM on 7-28-2009
woops. i guess the confusing part was the need to pay for it within 30 days. is it pretty unsual to pay for something in beta?
Greg said 8:34AM on 7-28-2009
I can sync to-do items to/from OmniFocus just fine, and the iPhone doesn't support to-do items from iCal either.
I do see a show-stopper in that to-do items cannot be dragged to create a calendar event, as can be done with iCal.
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justbn said 9:58AM on 8-02-2009
I'm trying it out right now. I really like the alerts over the standard iCal version. The ability to have optional snooze times is great. However, I do wish they had some reasonable default snooze drop downs to choose from instead of just entering times yourself.
However, compared to the STUPID default iCal snooze options, BusyCal wins.
I sure would like an answer to that Exchange integration question above.
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