Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
calendars and sub-calendars - overlays - (tags and categories)
Steven Avery:
Now I want to talk about Alarms, which are the critical element of calendars.
I use a free alarm app called Alarmy, which on my Ipad advertises itself as the most annoying, it has a method of increasing volume, and unless you go into some special sleep modes, it will remind me of anything. (There is a professional version, but I don't think it is structurally different.)
The problem is that it is not linked to a calendar, and the only repetition it has is weekly, you can not simply pick a date a month away without it ringing 4-5 times. It is good for meetings in the next week or so, daily reminders (e.g. house alarm), weekly reminders (e.g. Friday garage sales), but it does not do well calendar events like a Hudson River festival two months off. You will have to endure 8 'false alarms',
I'm looking for a loud-annoying pushy iPad-PC alarm that works as part of a calendar setup.
In a pinch, I will take iPad only.
Your thoughts?
Steven
superboyac:
totally with you steven.
I have gone round and round with calendar software over the years (and contact management too, but i'll leave that out for now). Here are my results...
syncing: this is the heart of any calendar decision as i have multiple devices (android, windows, web) and they gotta work good together. so, there was a facebook calendar that i tried to sync with all my other calendars, and it turned out to be literally impossible. none of the big companies are cooperating with each other as far as syncing. facebook, google, outlook, apple...good luck syncing with them all seamlessly. I gave up on facebook...they are SHIT for trying to work with other programs. i dont care what ANY of the tutorials or links out there say. there is NO WAY. go ahead and try. i spend i wont even say how long looking and trying to make things work.
then, i eventually just realized this. outlook has the best calendar features. no other program will do it. whatever it is, you will eventually see that calendar functions in outlook just are better than other software or companies. so you say you dont want a two-step middleman process, but if you want syncing, i would say go with outlook. i use a free account on the web literally just for calendar syncing. i enter calendar details through desktop outlook or mobile usually. one of the things to pay attention to is notifications/reminder features and recurrence features. other programs will screw this up, not outlook.
you can also setup your own calendar like a radicale etc. (I have done this). problem is, none of the self-hosted solutions are very nice. they are difficult to setup (speaking from a non-programmer windows user). again, i have LOTS of notes on all this. so using a free outlook account is still the best for me as far as calendars.
there are a couple of standalone calendar software i have somewhat high praise for. Vueminder, and Calendarscope. i hate calendarscope license policy, it will be expensive in the long run, and vueminder is somewhat bulky but pretty nice. THE PROBLEM is the entry of items...it still is best to do it in outlook for more reasons than im willing to write right now. but VIEWING the items on windows is infinitely better on these two programs. calendarscope is very lightweight and just beautiful interface. vueminder is a bulky bloated app, also pretty beautiful.
then i found another free thing that would overlay calendars with colors on the desktop wallpaper. that was nice, but not as useful as i thought.
then there's mobile/android stuff. i currenlty use digical. not perfect, but best ive found so far. the mobile experience is tolerable at best to me. as long as things sync im ok, and if i can enter things nicely. but nitpicking the beauty or the intricate functionality of it...not great...i have so many suggestions.
Steven Avery:
Thanks superboyac!
And have you any success with making a nice annoying loud tablet Alarms?
CalendarScope is a free 30-day trial, then $30 + $20 for HandySync to get to iPad, or others like Android.
Have you tried this method?
And I own a seven year-old Vueminder license. I doubt it does any easy sync. So we again have a 30-day trial, on a product that is likely the $80 Ultimate version. If that is one-time for the version, without a yearly subscription, it is worth a trial. However, to sync with an iPad it looks like it is based on Google calendar or "Microsoft Exchange and Office 365".. I have a sense that could be messy, since it is two steps to the iPad.
However, you say the plus is VIEWING, after entering from Outlook. Can I justify the cost for that purpose? Maybe I can use my old Vueminder, if I have the 9.x file.
Radicale looks like too much.
In a few minutes I will try to see what Outlook Calendar account I should be using.
superboyac:
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking regarding alarms and tablets...but if its Android, the app i use for alarms is called "Alarm Clock Xtreme".
Your vueminder license will probably not work, unless you got the lifetime option at some point.
I would probably choose calendarscope if it were me. Its the best looking and extremely lightweight. BUT...i dont like their licensing policy and all these additional things like syncing you have to buy...all these you have to renew every year. And like you said, just to make it look good? I don't think its really worth it...it would be like $100 a year. and it might not be so seamless either...for example, outlook doesn't have many colors to choose from for stuff in their calendar items. but vueminder, calendarscope have any color combo you want. how do those colors sync? they don't. so whatever app you use on your phone will show different colors than your computer, and outlook will show different colors altogether. and outlook colors "categories" whereas these other programs can do more than just categories. but again, how do they sync across pc/web/phone? they do not.
so that's why, after over a decade of trying calendar software out, now i'm just entering them in outlook straight. i dont mess around too much with colors. i use "digical" on my phone and the colors are all different on phone, pc, web, etc. i dont care anymore, i cannot control it, and its not worth it.
superboyac:
I'll answer your original question in detail here:
BASIC CALENDAR "OVERLAY" NEED
Talking about single person calendars.
Yet multi sub-categories, like this:
Internet-Radio-TV
Christian Conferences
Financial
Auto
Business
Local Events
Input through Windows mostly.
-Steven Avery (April 03, 2019, 08:15 AM)
--- End quote ---
If you are going to input through windows, i highly recommend inputting directly through outlook. Full paid-for outlook on windows desktop. Why? things like recurrence work better on outlook (especially something that has no end date). Outlook can do multiple calendars, and multiple categories...both will allow you to color it independently. What's the difference? Not much, really. Depends if you want one calendar, multiple categories....or multiple calendars, one category. I suggest multiple calendars, forget categories...why? because the colors you choose for the categories will not transfer to different apps (like android or ios), but you will usually be able to custom color each individual calendar. also, you dont have to worry to choose a category when entering a task...just pick the calendar you want.
EXTRAS
Possible +, not fundamental
shows on iPad (ok, Android too)
groups of people, good for BIZ - (Zoho has that)
integration with email, task, notes etc. (not that important for me, since I am Rightnote and Eudora/TheBat! oriented)
A calendar entry is quick enough to enter. the 3-second saving from a Gmail is not important, since you always tweak them anyway.
-Steven Avery (April 03, 2019, 08:15 AM)
--- End quote ---
any outlook calendar will show up on ipad or android or mobile.
contacts management is a different issue and headache altogether. i can post more later, and i also have several good posts here over the years regarding contacts.
integration...i use the bat also. and rightnote (although i have now moved to onenote almost exclusively). for contacts, i have my own cardav server....the bat cannot sync with it, it has issues. i dont think the bat has good contact/calendar syncing features. it doesnt even have a real calendar.
rightnote has good features, but difficult to make part of this workflow. you must be doing something very specific.
your OVERLAY requirement...
If what you mean is multiple categories/calendars showing on one display with different colors etc., I'd stick to outlook. Use multiple calendars.
ultimately...i would get something like calendarscope or other 3rd party software (like i used to), but only outlook's features are reliable for me, so i use it alone now, and just apps on phones. I VIEW my tasks on outlook on the pc, and on Digical on the phone. Alarms would be something you setup on the phone and should be independent of the app. Outlook or most calendar apps dont have specific ALARM functions....if that's important you probably want yet another 3rd-party pc software or app to do that. That should be fairly easy to find I think.
I'd stay away from committing to suites like EssentialPIM or something. Think about syncing. Facebook events are terrible and will have many many problems syncing with things. It's all been a frustrating experience for something so common, old....i've been doing this for so long. For years, the big three google apple facebook kept fighting and pulling their sync tools away from each other and now none work all that well unless you pay for extra services.
there is one tool i am looking into committing too once again, Mylifeorganized. It has a nice workflow and can do a lot. Not really a true calendar software as it has no calendar view, but has some very interesting features to organizing tasks and integrations.
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