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Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, First Look

First Look: CheckOff 4.0 for Mac OS X

I'm one of those people who "Gets Things Done" the old-fashioned way. I've tried just about every To-Do list manager for the Mac and iPhone, and I still end up resorting to writing lists in my Moleskine notebook and then crossing off the completed items. Still, when I saw that an upgrade to CheckOff had been shipped by Second Gear Software, I decided to give it a try.

CheckOff 4.0 is not the latest navigator and weapons officer for the USS Enterprise. It is a compact and easily accessible to-do list for Mac OS X, and it runs both on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard. CheckOff 4.0 is shareware, and requires that you purchase a US$12.95 license to use it for more than ten to-do items.

After installing and launching the 4.4 MB application on your Mac, a check mark icon appears in the menu bar. To add or delete items from your to-do list, you click on the check mark to make the CheckOff menu appear (below):

What you see is the complete user interface for CheckOff 4.0. Those five icons are used to add a new item, add a new folder, delete an item, change the color or category for an item or folder, and to delete checked (completed) items. There's a place for notes down at the bottom of the the window.

Continue readingFirst Look: CheckOff 4.0 for Mac OS X

Filed under: Features, How-tos, AppleScript

AppleScript: Creating To-Dos in iCal


Recently, a friend asked me to create an AppleScript that would allow him to automate To-Dos with a Mail.app mail rule. I immediately rose to the occasion because this was a cool idea: Mail.app could run the script when you get an ebill, for instance, for your car payment. The script would then create an iCal To-Do for "Pay your car payment, now!"

The script
set theSumm to "Pay My Bill Soon!"
set dueDate to (current date) + 10 * days
set theUrl to "http://www.paymybillexample.com"
set thepriority to 1

tell application "iCal"
make todo at end of events of (item 1 of every calendar) with properties {summary:theSumm, due date:dueDate, url:theUrl, priority:thepriority}
end tell


Customizing the script
To customize the To-Do's title, fill in the text you want, within the parenthesis on line 1. To Change the due date, change the "10" in line 2 to the number of days until it is due. If you want to change to weeks or months, use the appropriate wordage instead of "days" at the end of line 2. To change the URL, paste a URL in the parenthesis on line 3.

By default, the script will set the newly created To-Do to have a priority of 1, however, you can change this to your priority preference.

Continue reading to learn how to integrate the To-Dos with a Mail.app mail rule.

Continue readingAppleScript: Creating To-Dos in iCal

Filed under: Software, Freeware

FlexTD - Free, Fast To-Do Entry

FlexTDUp until today, entering to-do info into iCal was an exercise for my mouse-clicking finger. I'd click iCal in the Dock, click again on that little pushpin icon, and then finally double-click to create an empty to-do task to fill in. One more double-click, and I could actually edit the to-do and put in the information I needed.

Enter FlexTD from flexgames. It's another unitasker, but it does one task very well - just hit a pre-defined hotkey and it brings up a transparent edit window. Type in your to-do, press return, and the info is entered into your favorite Mac calendar app.

One suggestion for the developers; the hotkeys only go up to F8, and I'd love to be able to assign something to F13 through F19 on my keyboard. How 'bout it?

The app is free, appears as a pref pane in System Preferences, and can start up at login. Many thanks to flexgames for a nice productivity booster!

Tip 'o the TUAW homburg to Elsa for the news!

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