The iCal challenge

SOHO Organizer's creators felt that they could ask a calendar to do even more. As a calendar, its advantages over iCal may seem minor. SOHO Organizer provides some customized printing options that iCal lacks. The calendar in SOHO Organizer supports a variety of international calendar types; in addition to the standard Gregorian calendar, SOHO Organizer also supports Buddhist, Hebrew, and Islamic calendar formats. And SOHO Organizer's calendar has more display options than iCal has. But you have to step outside the calendar grid to see the most compelling advantages of SOHO Organizer. In an office environment, both iCal and SOHO Organizer calendars can be shared among users, but SOHO Organizer has been designed with more thought to multiuser access.

SOHO Organizer's strength lies principally in the interoperability of its calendar, address book, and SOHO Notes. The SOHO Organizer contacts screen lets you see all events (appointments and tasks) associated with a particular contact, although in iCal you can quickly search the calendar by attendee name to get a similar result. But the real power of SOHO Organizer is the way it works with SOHO Notes. SOHO Organizer provides two ways to write lengthy, free-form memos tied to specific days: the daily journal and daily notes. It seems like one or the other of these could be jettisoned, but Chronos seems to expect that you'll record things like your expenses in the daily notes, and use the journal for more expansive entries. If you're a note-writing kind of person, then the SOHO Organizer suite might be just your thing.

If you're looking for a calendar that's both multiuser and cross-platform, check out Now Software's Now Up-to-Date & Contact, two programs that come as a package. Now Up-to-Date & Contact is basically a souped-up combination of Apple's Address Book and iCal that you can easily share on a network. Unfortunately, Now Up-to-Date & Contact is showing its age. Now Software has been working on a replacement called Nighthawk, which is still in beta at this writing.

Daylite cuts through the clutter with an organizer that combines the power of several programs into one tool.Another homely but capable calendar comes from the open-source folks at Mozilla. Sunbird is pretty basic, and on the Mac, most folks will probably be happier with iCal or another choice. Sunbird can't connect with other Mac programs and services such as Address Book or MobileMe. Sunbird's notifications are limited to on-screen pop-ups, and you can only set one. But Sunbird has one nice trick. It supports add-ons, and if you install the free Provider For Google Calendar add-on, you'll be able to get to your Google calendar from Sunbird, and vice versa; you can then manage your calendars equally well from any location. Also, like iCal, Sunbird is free.

Web-Based Services

If you don't want--or can't afford--to be tied to a single operating system or computer, then you can access similar calendar and organizer functions via your browser with Google and Yahoo calendars. These are most similar to the calendars in iCal, SOHO Organizer, and Sunbird. Both of these online calendars allow you to create multiple calendars, invite guests, and receive notifications.

For people who work on multiple machines, the ability to access your e-mail and calendar from any Internet-connected device makes the online services irresistible. Yahoo's calendar includes a basic to-do list and notetaking feature not found in Google's calendar. Nonetheless, I prefer Google Calendar because I use Google Gmail for my e-mail. Gmail can often recognize that an e-mail message is suggesting an appointment and will offer a quick way to create an event in your calendar. iCal can do something similar, but in iCal you have to hold your mouse over that text. Google Calendar lets you manage multiple color-coded calendars directly from your browser.

Gmail's feature is a bit smarter. I sent myself a test message, inviting myself to a meeting tomorrow, perhaps