TMO Quick Tip - iCal: Better Birthday Syncing

by , 7:30 AM EDT, July 2nd, 2008

Address Book does a fine job of making sure your contact's birthdays show up in iCal, but apparently that's not good enough for TMO's Editor-at-Large Bryan Chaffin. Since I can't stand to hear Bryan whine, I found the beefed-up birthday syncing he's looking for, and it's called Dates to iCal 2.

Dates to iCal 2 is an application that synchronizes birthdays, anniversaries and other recurring events with iCal. It's better that Address Book's birthday sync feature because it gives you, and Bryan, far more control over synced events -- including the ability to set up to five alarms per event and the ability to assign events to specific calendars.

Dates to iCal: Uber control over Address Book birthdays and anniversaries.

To use Dates to iCal 2, just launch the application, set the alarms for your recurring events -- complete with email notifications if you like -- and then click the Activate button. Go ahead and quit Dates to iCal 2 because it does its magic in the background and needs to be running only when you are making changes to your synced event settings.

Dates to iCal 2 costs £3 (about US$5.98) and is available for download at John Maisey's Web site.

Jeff Gamet is TMO's Morning Editor and Reviews Editor. He lectures, teaches and speaks on Mac OS X and design-related topics, and is the author of The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X from Peachpit Press.

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