CrossOSS: Cross Platform Software Database

Time and Contact Management: Now Up-To-Date

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Now Up-To-Date is a cross-platform single-user or shared contact and calendar management application, running on OS X and Windows.

From the Web Site: What is Now Up-to-Date & Contact?
Now Up-to-Date & Contact is a software calendar and address book. And more. Not only can you keep track of your calendar and contacts, but you can share them with others – your business, organization of any kind, your family.

From the New York Time, David Pogue review: It’s an extremely full-fledged calendar program, complete with reminder alarms; syncing to the Palm, PocketPC and even the iPod; little graphics to liven up the calendar squares; Web publishing; stretchy banners that indicate when, for example, you’re away on a five-day trip; an elaborate meeting scheduler that searches for times when all participants, rooms and resources are free; and so on.

As in most calendar programs, you can color-code your appointments. But in Now Up-to-Date, you can also create memorized sets of these categories, so that you can hide or show them en masse. Each member of my family, for example, has his or her own color/category; but I have a Kids set, a D&J set (for my wife and me), a DP Only set and a Whole Family set.

But here’s the really clever part: On one of your computers–the one that’s most likely to be left on–you install something called the Public Event Server. It’s the master headquarters for all of the “public” appointments (the ones you’d like other people to be able to see). Whenever you open Now Up-to-Date on a Mac or PC elsewhere in the house or office, the Public Event Server sends it any changes that have been made by all the *other* computers. Suppose you open the calendar on your laptop. It’s automatically brought up to date with the master calendar. (You may even see the recently added appointments sprout onto your calendar squares in real time.)

Then you go out–to a meeting across town, say, or on a trip across the country. While you’re away, you make changes to your calendar.

When you return, all of your changes are instantly sent back to the master server calendar–which then propagates your changes to everyone *else’s* computers.

I realize that that sounds sort of complicated. But the result is very simple: everybody’s calendar is kept up to date with everyone else’s, even if they make changes while they’re off the network. Somehow, the master server calendar keeps everything straight.

(Up-to-Date also comes with Now Contact, an equally sophisticated address book that, once again, keeps everybody’s address book synchronized with everyone else’s–and integrates beautifully with the calendar program.)

For my purposes, the most important thing that Now Up-to-Date does (that Web calendars like Google don’t) is appear even when you’re off the Internet.

| Post in OS X, Windows, Charged, Business, Office |