08-11-2006, 04:15 PM

I am looking for an OS X app that will serve as a reminder program. In various past OS' I have run I have had programs usually called "remind" or "reminder" etc. that allow you to specify an event, and a set of reminder actions to take on that event. Typically, you run this program as part of your login routine, so that each day as you log in, it can pop up the relevant reminders.

All of the good ones I have used are rule based - they let you specify lots of neat actions via rules like:

Between this date and this date pop up this reminder
Between this date and this date, tell me how many days until this date (plus show my reminder)
Until this data, pop up this reminder
Every second Friday pop up this reminder

Usually, these rules are kept in a user editable text file, or are managed via a GUI rule editor - varies by program.

Does such a beast exist for Mac OS X?

I want to use it issue reminders like:

> Only 25 days left until my sisters birthday on January 25th
> It is payday today
> etc.

Essentially remind me of all important birthdays, anniversaries, etc. for a week or two in advance, as well as poping up a reminder on paydays that it is payday, and so on.

Any such apps out there?

08-11-2006, 04:22 PM

iCal.

08-11-2006, 04:44 PM

man monkey, you beat everyone to the punch all the time. I'd hate to box you, too fast!

08-11-2006, 04:57 PM

Is he this fast, choose master.

08-11-2006, 05:00 PM

Originally Posted by rman

Is he this fast, choose master.

Mt Dew is great yea, but it doesn't work for me.

08-11-2006, 05:06 PM

Sweetness! hella cool.

08-11-2006, 05:19 PM

Nice mt dew ad I use iCal, but man it's got bugs.. it annoys me to no end, but it's integrated with everything so I need to use it over Entourage's calendar/reminders which is superior in my opinion.

08-11-2006, 05:35 PM

iCal will work, Microsoft Entourage will work, and (my personal favorite) the Stickies Widget, though the widget just sorta acts like a list of stuff to do.

08-12-2006, 01:33 PM

Unless I am missing something, iCal won't do what I want - or I haven't figured out how to do it.

For example:
- I want a reminder every day, between next Monday and next Friday, that the following Tuesday is important.
- I want a message every day from now until 3 weeks from now telling me that it is only "x" days until that date 3 weeks from now

How can I make iCal do something like that? It is not obvious to me.

Alternately, if Entourage will do this, could someone be very helpful and illuminate the steps?

01-25-2007, 02:34 PM

My quest for reminder applications has led me many places, including countdown widgets and many other things. Ultimately, as of yesterday, this story has an unexpectedly perfect ending, which I would like to share here, in case others have been on a similar quest.

My initial post in this thread outlined what I was looking for, and described somewhat the open source Linux program called "remind" that did the job perfectly.

I am extremely happy to say that this very same remind program is alive and well on the Mac. No one has done the work to bundle it up as a tidy .dmg file, so you need to do a little work to get it going. However, first things first. See:

http://www.roaringpenguin.com/pengui...roducts/remind

to get the program in source form, and see:

http://www.43folders.com/2005/02/24/...oks-at-remind/

for some basic "how to" information in using it to best effect.

To turn the above source into an executable, you need to have loaded the GNU C compiler and tools from your Mac OS X install DVDs. Assuming you have done that, the usual open source "recipe" for building from source works like a charm:

1/ Uncompress the source file into its own directory
2/ cd into that directory (using Terminal)

3/ Issue the following Terminal commands in sequence:

./configure
make
sudo make install

That's it, you are done. You end up with a program called remind located in /usr/local/bin.

Now for the great part - there is a Dashboard widget that uses the remind program to display its reminder output every time you go into Dashboard. See:

http://nick.vargish.org/software/remindwidget

With the remind program built and the remind widget installed, every time I go into Dashboard, I see all my reminders for the day. I use this to remind me of upcoming birthdays, anniversarys, paydays, and so on, as well as "one of" reminders like "pick up dry cleaning today" and so on.

Click the below thumbnail for an example of what the widget output looks like

I find this program invaluable - if you have been looking for this sort of thing, check out the above. It works wonderfully. If you do try it out and have ANY issues with setting up the remind input file (where you define the things you want to be reminded about) just post here and I will help out.