Unusual online calendars?

February 25, 2009 10:36 PM

Are there any calendar apps that break the 30-days-at-a-time mold?

The standard online 30-days-at-a-time calendar isn't really serving my needs as well as it could. I want something that helps me keep track of imminent stuff and further away stuff, at the same time, in a visually coherent way. Apps like Google Calendar slice stuff up into months, so stuff only tends to appear on my radar when it's less than a month away. It's a bit jarring, and doesn't encourage longer-term thinking.

(For instance, I obviously want to see what things I'm doing over the coming month. But I also might be moving to a new city in the Autumn, so I kind of want to see that steadily approaching from "distant" to "next week." Or be able to zoom out and see that I don't have that much going on in July, so I should make some plans for then. Somewhat secondarily, another neat feature would be if I could create "fuzzy events" - so a deadline that's 60 days away requiring 40 hours of work is painted in faintly, but as time passes it becomes more "glaring.")

In my mind's eye I'm seeing something a bit like the timeline view in Garageband, where I can smoothly zoom down into detail of a single bar and then out to see the structure of the whole song. Perhaps even with different tracks for "fun" and "work" and "chores" and stuff...

So basically, I'm looking for any kind of unconventional, unusual or innovative calendar app that transcends the one-month-at-a-time GUI, either online or for OS X. Whatcha got for me?*

*I don't have any special demands in terms of syncing with other devices, combining with other people's calendars, etc.

posted by so_necessary to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Scrybe looks pretty cool. They have a fairly compelling seven minute video outlining key features. I might give it a go. There's a pretty enthusiastic write-up over at My Uninstalled Life. Oh, and just to make any visitor evn more keen, you might have to wait for an invite.

Currently, I'm a Google Calendar user. I also use Google Mail. Firefox has a great add-on called GMailAgenda which combines gMail and gCal, putting Google Calendar in a sidebar and listing all your events into the (user-defined) infinite future. That might be a way to go.

HipCal? My Home Point? Both have "try before you sign up" offers.
posted by roryks at 12:57 AM on February 26

Oops - my apologies. Scratch My Home Point - I didn't notice that it was a paid-for calendar.
posted by roryks at 1:01 AM on February 26

EssentialPIM has a calendar which, in the monthly view, shows the current month and one to two weeks into the following month, and allows quick scrolling into future months using the PgDn key. Its basic product is freeware.

Your "fuzzy events" feature is not found anywhere that I know of.
posted by yclipse at 4:47 AM on February 26

(didn't catch the OS X criterion)
posted by yclipse at 4:51 AM on February 26

Eon might suit you. It has a number of views, one of which is a timeline that can extend N days forward. This is taking data out of iCal, so it's not self-contained.

I've been using Organized together with Amnesty Browser to keep a calendar on my desktop; this is a widget that lets me show a list of upcoming iCal events over the next N days; it will show up to 2 month's-worth of events in that list. I only show a few day's-worth, but in any case, I find that having it always in view is very handy.
posted by adamrice at 7:02 AM on February 26