John Maisey

UPDATED: Dates to iCal and MobileMe beta

John M — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:47:55 +0000

UPDATED: A couple of weeks after writing this a user of Dates to iCal wrote to tell me that Dates to iCal is now working with the MobileMe beta.

Apple have recently opened up their MobileMe beta and I have had reports that Dates to iCal is not working with the new beta version of MobileMe that uses CalDAV. ~~I'm working on this and hope to have a solution as soon as possible.~~ See below how to use Dates to iCal with the MobileMe beta.

iCal Dupe Deleter

John M — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:09:27 +0000

Remove duplicate events from iCal calendars

iCal Dupe Deleter is a straight-forward application to aid the removal of duplicate events and todos in iCal under OSX Leopard and later.

Version 1.1 of iCal Dupe Deleter is many times faster than version 1.0. it gives the user more control over its operation.

Easily switch to login window

John M — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:10:32 +0000

A while ago I came back to my home computer to find I had not logged out and things not as I left them. There were files on the Desktop with names like 'sdfgasfgafasz' and things moved or disappeared. It took this happening a couple of times before I connected it to my my three year old daughter and resolved to do something about it.

In OSX there are many ways ways to protect your login when you leave the computer, logging out, using a screen saver with a password etc. These all tend to have a shortcut (like ⌘⇧Q to log out of the current user or hot corners) but none of these quite fitted my usage.

Dates to iCal

John M — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:11:35 +0000

Don't forget another anniversary

Dates to iCal 2 is a replacement for Apple's birthday calendar for iCal in OSX 10.5 and later. It has a range of features to allow the user to choose what, and what not, to sync to iCal from Address Book.

As well as automatically syncing birthday dates from Address Book, Dates to iCal 2 can sync anniversary and custom dates. It can set up to five alarms for each date in iCal and can also set different alarms for birthdays and anniversaries. It allows the option of only syncing from one Address Book group. This application also allows for the titles of the events sent to iCal to be modified to the user's preference.

List Events and Todos of Calendars

John M — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:23:41 +0000

I like how Applescript allows for quick solutions to what otherwise would be tricky problems to solve. Take the total number of events in an iCal calendar, this is a question asked recently on Apple Discussions. Counting them by hand would be a bore (especially with 40,000), but with Applescript it's as easy as:

tell application "iCal" to count events of calendars
(gives the result of 1279 currently for me.)

iCal Reply Checker

John M — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:01:25 +0000

Control of invite replies in iCal

iCal Reply Checker is an add-in to iCal for Mac OSX 10.6, 10.5 and 10.4 that gives the user options for how replies to meeting invites that are sent with Mail are dealt with.

This application allows the option to block some, all or none of the out-going meeting event related emails sent with Mail. It also gives the option to edit the message in Mail before sending.

Older Scripts

John M — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:49:23 +0000

Applescripts I have written that others may be interested in.

These are mainly to do with Apple iCal, Mail and Address Book. All are free to download, but if you use any of these scripts regularly I'd appreciate a donation. Also, I'd love to hear any feedback you have on these.

YAI

John M — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:13:33 +0000

Outlook Meeting Invite Translator

PLEASE NOTE YAI is not compatible with OSX 10.6, Snow Leopard and I have no current plans to develop this software to run in OSX 10.6.

YAI (You Are Invited) is a plug-in for Apple Mail in OSX 10.4 and OSX 10.5 that translates and transfers Outlook, Google Calendar, Zimbra and Exchange style meeting invitations to iCal. It corrects many incompatibilities between Microsoft Exchange style meeting invites and what iCal can understand.