Downshift: The Second Gear Weblog

Things have been relatively quiet around Second Gear HQ, but that is only because we have been hard at work on building the next great version of Today. After what seems like forever, Today 2.0 is now available!

Today 2.0 was our opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start from a blank canvas. We reimagined the user interface to be lighter, brighter and infinitely more usable. We also rewired everything under the hood to absolutely fly on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Oh, and we finally went 64-bit.

We also took the opportunity to adjust how events and tasks are created in Today. It didn’t make much sense to keep the windows attached to the main Today window as sheets. With 2.0, you can now create as many new event/task windows as you desire. Even better, you can assign global hot keys to the action so that you’re just a keystroke away from adding a new event to your calendar.

We hope you enjoy this new release. I am genuinely proud of how it turned out and couldn’t imagine going back to the old version. Check it out and let us know what you think!

The folks at BusyMac just released a public beta of BusyCal, their new iCal replacement that adds support for live weather forecasts, graphics, recurring todos and more. What’s great about BusyCal is that it is fully compatible with iCal still, and any event or task you create in the application will automatically sync back to iCal, and subsequently to Today.

If you’ve been looking for a more powerful calendaring solution than what iCal offers today, be sure to check out BusyCal.

It is hard to believe that it has already been a year since we announced the release of our flagship product, Today. Since that initial release, we have done 14 minor and point releases that have added the features you’ve requested.

I opened up Today 1.0 this morning just to reminisce and I can say I’m quite proud of how the little guy is growing up. There is some great stuff happening with Today for the next major release. Stay tuned!

Today is a great way to see what’s on your daily schedule of events and tasks, but with WeatherCal, a new utility from Bare Bones, it can also be an instant way to see what the forecast is.

WeatherCal creates a new calendar in iCal that has the daily forecast as an all day event in iCal and subsequently Today.

This is such an ingenious use of iCal that I can’t believe no one thought of it until now. Great job, Bare Bones!

As a software developer myself, I built Today to help me easily keep track of ship dates, outside meetings and my daily life. With that in mind, I’m happy to announce that all members of the Mac Developer Network can now receive 20% off of Today just for being a member. See the members area on the site for instructions on how to claim this discount.

If you are a Mac OS X or iPhone developer, you should do yourself a favor and join the MDN to gain access to the plethora of knowledge it holds. Who knows. Maybe you will hear me on a future podcast!

I’m sure many of you were also waiting in line today to grab your iPhone 3G. I picked one up this morning and am very pleased with the speed improvements of 3G network and (for the most part) the applications that are available on the AppStore.

The thing I am most excited about, however, is MobileMe. Apple’s .Mac replacement makes it incredibly easy to automatically push email, contact and calendaring information to and from the iPhone without having to rely on syncing. This is a great feature for Today users!

Let me give you an example.

This afternoon at lunch I making plans for a meeting for drinks later in the day with a friend. I entered the information into my iPhone, which was now set up to automatically sync calendaring data with MobileMe. When I got back to my desk an hour later, I popped open Today and the new event was automatically in the list: no sync required on my part.

Thanks to the hardworking MobileMe team at Apple for such a great tool. It’s well worth my $99 a year.

Today was recently reviewed on Mac software site MacApper. As part of the review, we did a giveaway where the entry requirements was to suggest features you’d like to see in Today. By far the biggest request was the ability to use the application with Google Calendar.

This is actually already possible! Spanning Sync is an excellent utility that can automatically sync your Google Calendar data with iCal and Today. Here’s a quick tutorial to show you how.

• In iCal, create calendars with the same names as each calendar you have created in Google Calendar. We will use these to sync data between Google Calendar and iCal.
• Download and install Spanning Sync from their Web site. Spanning Sync is a $25 a year subscription or 1-time $65 payment for a lifetime of updates.
• Launch the Spanning Sync preference pane and authenticate with your Google account. This will enable the sync settings window as you can see below.
• For each Google Calendar you want to sync, match it up with it’s corresponding iCal calendar.

• Set your syncing frequency to every hour.
• Press the Sync button. It may take a while to get all your data synchronized between the two services depending on how long you’ve been using Google Calendar.
• Once everything is synced, what you see in Google Calendar will also be in Today. Any changes you make on Google will also be pushed directly to Today each time Spanning Sync runs.

Spanning Sync is a great application for those that want the power and convenience of Google Calendar, but still want to enjoy some of the luxuries of using iCal and applications like Today. If you have any other tips or tricks on how you’re using Today, please do share them with us!

Today uses the same task storage engine as iCal, Apple Mail and any other application that takes advantage of a new framework in Mac OS X Leopard called CalendarStore. This makes it easy to integrate Today’s task functionality with your favorite GTD applications such as OmniFocus or Things.

I’ll show you how I’m using OmniFocus along with Today to have an outside view of my OmniFocus tasks.

1. Open iCal and create a few calendars that will hold your tasks. This is optional, but I have a lot of contexts and they didn’t all perfectly fit in my “Work” and “Personal” calendars. For instance, I setup an “Outside World” calendar that has any of my frequently visited places that I’ve set as contexts.
2. Open OmniFocus’s Preferences window and go to the Sync pane. On the left you’ll see your iCal calendars. On the right will be your unsynchronized contexts.

1. Drag any context that you want to be synced to iCal to the calendar you want it to synchronize to. In my case, I’m only syncing my most important, non-work related tasks over. Usually this is things like errands, bills and phone calls I need to make.
2. Go to the File menu in OmniFocus and select “Synchronize With iCal.” The tasks will automatically be filtered into your Today window’s task pane. It will also pass any task that was already in iCal to your OmniFocus inbox so you can keep them organized as well.

A similar workflow is possible in other applications, so if you have a favorite application you’re syncing with Today, let me know in the comments!

In a few weeks, the most hardcore of the Apple faithful, the developers, will be descending upon San Francisco for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple recently released the full schedule of sessions that will be taking place during the session. Using a mix of Today and Adrian Kosmaczewski’s WWDC iCal creator you can have a quick way to see what sessions you plan to be at each day.

Here’s how.

1. Download the iPhone, Mac and IT calendars from Adrian’s site and open them in iCal.
2. Edit them as necessary to only show the events you want to head to.
3. When WWDC week arrives, you can quickly pop open Today to see your schedule as you head from session to session. Couldn’t be easier!

If you’re going to be at WWDC, be sure to come up and say hello. I’ll be the guy wearing the Second Gear t-shirt.