Chandler V1 is officially out.

[kartal]

http://chandlerproject.org/

Chandler V1 is officially out.

    *  CROSS-PLATFORM! Windows Mac OSX Linux

    * Import/Export Calendars and Tasks
    * Subscribe to webcal (.Mac) and ICAL (Google) calendars
    * Sync with CalDAV (Apple iCal 3.x, Lightning) calendars

    * Search
    * Secure your data with a Master Password

 Integrated Calendaring
Manage, preview and add to your Calendar, without having to go to the Calendar

    * Schedule Tasks on your Calendar
    * Turn Reminders into Events on the Calendar
    * Prepare for Meetings by tracking them from the Triage List

Without going to the Calendar...

    * Preview what's on your calendar in the Mini-Cal Preview Pane
    * Create Events from the Quick Entry Bar

Each Collection comes with a Calendar View so you can easily maintain multiple Calendars

Rich Calendaring Features

    * Color-code and Overlay multiple Calendars
    * Recurring events
    * Time zones
    * Alarms
    * Day, Week and Month Views
    * Mini-Calendar with Busybars and Preview Pane

Share your Calendars or Create a Group Calendar

Flexible Organization
Organize information into Multiple Contexts By project, by people, by importance, by status, on your calls list, on your calendar, on your task list, on your spouse's task list...

    * Gather Notes and Events into Collections you define
    * Drag and Drop them into as many Collections as you see fit

    * Triage items in each Collection into NOW-LATER-DONE sections.

    * Easily maintain a Calendar for each Collection

    * Star important Notes and Events
    * Filter your collections to see only Starred Notes and Events

   
Back up and Web Access

    * Access your data from the web thru Chandler Hub
    * Sync Chandler across multiple computers
    * Sync your Apple, Google and Mozilla Calendars

    * Add new items to Chandler from iGoogle
    * Set up Chandler IMAP Folders to download email

Sharing and Collaboration

    * Share collections to:
          o Share your Personal Calendar
          o Maintain a Group Calendar

    *
          o Collaborate on Drafts
          o Maintain Checklists together
          o Brainstorm as a group

    * See who's done what in shared Collections

    * Share Calendars with Apple iCal, Mozilla Cal users
    * Subscribe to Google Calendars

    * Give others access to collections from the web

    * Send Notes and Invitations to others by email...
    * Edit and re-send sent items with Updates

Chandler Desktop is available in:

    * English
    * German by Andreas Beisemann
    * Finnish by Heikki Toivonen
    * French by Philippe Bossut
    * Swedish by Jonas Beckman
    * Coming soon! Portuguese (Brasilian) by Marcelo de Moraes Serpa

[tomos]

just in case - (I obviously got a good idea from the list above but I hadnt known about the programme)

What is Chandler? (Chandler as a Product) Chandler is an open source Note-to-Self Organizer. It features calendaring, task and note management and consists of a desktop application, web application and a free sharing and back-up service called Chandler Hub. Our goal is to serve the way people actually work, independently and together, particularly in small groups, a market segment we believe is underserved. Our belief is that personal and collaborative information work is by nature iterative and that the existing binary Done/Not-Done, Read/Unread, Flagged/Unflagged paradigm in productivity software poorly accommodates the reality of how people work. We are also committed to breaking down technological barriers that prevent effective collaboration. Chandler Desktop and Chandler Server are cross-platform and standards-based because we realize that collaboration can't and shouldn't be trapped within a single system. Chandler Server provides web access to shared information that makes it easy for collaborators to hook into Chandler workflows without having to download the Desktop application.

from
What is Chandler?

[40hz]

Excellent book on the development of Chandler:

Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software

from Amazon.com

In the 80s, Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine attempted to define the story of the development of a minicomputer: from the new science to the business and nascent culture of electronic hardware and software that was characteristic of that time. Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code draws on Kidder's model as it attempts to document the state of software, the Internet, and everything circa 2006 through the lens of Chandler, an as-yet-unfinished software application for the management of personal information.

http://www.amazon.co...ftware/dp/1400082463

[CWuestefeld]

What a disappointment. All that effort, and the result appears to be a pretty good PIM/GTD application. That's a nice result, of course, but lightyears from what was promised, and a waste of a lot of development effort (it took a really long time to get there, and did we need another PIM/GTD app?).

Years ago I was hoping for an Outlook killer. I'd still love to find such a beast. Any sign of one on the horizon?

[kartal]

I just do not understand why they cannot support standard email client features as well? I need to use Thunderbird to accommodate that. Just creates one more layer of softwawre to get things done.

[fenixproductions]

I feel disappointed. I've expected little more than that

What happened to code optimisation these days? Over 100MB from HDD taken just for PIM application?
Also: I know that I don't have the newest PC (2.01 GHz CPU, dual core, 2GB RAM) but response time for this app simply kills me. IIRC Inkscape is written in Python too and is more usable. Is it some kind of joke or what?

[sri]

Chandler: What went wrong

Despite some innovations in brings to the category, it has not delivered on the promise. Here's where it fails:

          o Whether you're working in the Chandler web app or using a desktop client, you enter to dos, appointments and notes in a single entry field, then add detail. But the devil is in these details, and you will get tired very quickly of the slow interface for entering calendar items.

          o While Chandler lets you triage your items into Now, Later and Done buckets, this is rudimentary task management at best and will leave practitioners of David Allen's Getting Things Done wondering where the rest of the application is.

          o Chandler's big selling point--seamless Web app/desktop synchronization and backup--works as advertised (although it did not work for me out of the box), but a competitor, the free but commercial Evernote, offers superior features, like picture and sound recording, and Web-based OCR of images stored.

          o Chandler organizes your information into collections, but unlike say Google shared calendars, there's no way on the Chandler Hub to discover collections others want to publicize.

[superboyac]

Weird, I don't see what all the fuss is about this program.  All this hype and effort and it probably won't be able to do half of what SQLNotes does, which I might add, is a one man effort.

[kartal]

Well, Chandler is not just a pim thou. If you have chandler server or server account you can sync your data with any chandler server. It also has web interface that works on the server which makes it very mobile.

On the otherhand as far as note taking and data management goes, it is nowhere near Sqlnotes that is for sure.

[40hz]

Well, Chandler is not just a pim thou.

-kartal (August 14, 2008, 11:15 AM)

Despite reading Dreaming in Code and trying the previous version of the software, I'm still a little confused as to what exactly Chandler is supposed to be about.

It kind of reminded me of Lotus Notes, which was very powerful and flexible - but conceptually hard for me to get my head around. Was it primarily a database wedded to an e-mail paradigm, a groupware tool, or what?

Am I alone in just "not getting" Chandler?

[kartal]

I think that they wanted to create something very simple that could be used for basic groupware, gtd, adress book and note taking. To certain degree I think it achieves it.

As I mentioned before thou  I just do not understand why they have not turned this thing into a real email client as well. It has major email functions but it only supports imap with special folders. In my view that was a very dumb desicion.

[fenixproductions]

2kartal
AFAIR they wanted to create real Outlook (and Exchange Server) alternative but they didn't. The only thing to say is that they did something original. For now everyone is kicking the dead horse :-o.

Read also:
http://whydoeseveryt...kapors-chandler.html

[PPLandry]

Well, Chandler is not just a pim thou. If you have chandler server or server account you can sync your data with any chandler server. It also has web interface that works on the server which makes it very mobile.

On the otherhand as far as note taking and data management goes, it is nowhere near Sqlnotes that is for sure.

-kartal (August 14, 2008, 11:15 AM)

Chandler 1.0 does appear to be downer, not because of the end result, but because of the anticipation, the huge effort and (over) design that was put into it.

As for SQLNotes, it is not just a PIM either. In a few months, you'll be able to put your database on a web server and have remote access / group sharing. This combined with the soon to be implemented portability, will enable anyone to have access to group info using nothing but a USB thumb drive (and an Internet café of course!)

p.s. I guess this was a bit of thread hijacking. Let's get back to Chandler...

[superboyac]

All I was saying is that I see a lot of similarities between Chandler and SQLNotes (especially if you include planned features), and i'm much more impressed by what Pierre's done this last year than all this buildup for Chandler for several years now.

[TucknDar]

Very strange how this app could turn out so... ordinary. Can't say I've been following it, but I was on the lookout for a PIM a couple of years ago and read about Chandler, which sounded very promising. And then this... Installed it, then uninstalled it. Too bad since apparently it's been developed for so long

[kartal]

I so hate being negative about things that people spend time to make it especially when they do not charge you anything for it I wish that this was also a real email client. I think that it would have been picked up by people quicker. At this point it is like a mutant software that just does not fit any category.

[Darwin]

I've not yet looked myself, but I've been waiting for Chandler to "arrive"... by sounds of things it is a disappointment. My understanding of the original objective was the same as fenixproductions' - I thought they were after replacing Outlook and Exchange (OK, providing a free and powerful alternative to them, anyway). Pity.