Life gives us something to remember. Even the least busy of us, along with everyday chores and meetings, have to keep in mind a lot of forthcoming events, personal or cultural: to wish happy birthdays, to congratulate Jewish friends and German colleagues on their national holidays, NBA, NHL, Formula 1 Grand-Prix series…Well, if Julius Caesar lived in the modern world, along with Julian calendar he would certainly introduce Active Desktop Calendar. But as it didn't happen, guys from XemiComputers had to do it. Thanks a lot. History shall never forget it.

Active Desktop Calendar is a calendar, an organizer and a reminder at once. It may reside (may not) on your desktop, and is highly customizable and interactive: double click a note or a date, and edit, adjust or change its looks.

One of the looks possible:

Active Desktop Calendar features notes (organized by dates), tasks (are located at the bottom and represent a list of what you'd like to remember and take into account), and alarms (popping-up reminders). In general, it's a set of convenient, but quite typical features, similar to that of Outlook, or other interactive calendars.

Maybe, 3 other options will make it more attractive. They are: 1. Connection with Outlook 2000 (a bit later – why it might interest you). 2. The opportunity to create or download several layers (different calendars: they might be birthdays, holidays, NHL series, etc. calendars). Then you can combine them by your own wish. 3. And, finally, sharing calendar files with other users of your LAN or Windows system.

First of all, you'll have to fill out a table of notes. By default, when you install and start the program it has only one data layer. It is called Primary and can not be removed.

Double click any day and create/edit a note: define start and end dates, particular time and recurrence pattern: do not forget to take your daughter from the kindergarten on Mondays. MONDAYS are YOUR days. In this very case I would also enable Alarm to remind. By the way, alarm sounds (wav files) are customizable. Which one would you prefer "Daddy, will you take me home, please", or "Darling, hurry up. NOW"?

Library of icons for various occasions in your life are provided. Mind only your lifestyle "supports" such formats. With its help you can also change your calendar looks. Setting like font and color will complete the picture.

Now several words about different layers (calendars), why it's convenient and how to use them. You can easily add more data layers and each one of them is fully capable of keeping notes, alarms and tasks. That is useful when you want to group your data, e.g. put all holidays in one layer, all birthdays in another, all appointments in the third, etc.

On http://www.xemico.com/adc/infocenter/presetfiles.html you can download some calendar files. I chose the US and UK holidays, birthdays of well-known classical music artists, world history dates, and some others. Checking/unchecking them, you define whether their data will be displayed on your desktop or not.

Of course, you've noticed an OUTLOOK Calendar here. First of all, the program supports Outlook 2000 only. Outlook Express (all versions) is not supported.

Active Desktop Calendar can read appointments and tasks directly from Outlook and show them on your desktop. It's the main convenience here, as all other features coincide. You will get all tasks and next seven days of appointments from Outlook's default calendar visible on your desktop together with another information you have in Active Desktop Calendar's data layers. Outlook's data are read-only and kept in a separate layer. You will not be able to relocate, rename or clear data in this special layer. You can only disable it in the list or remove it completely.

When there are several computers in a LAN and each has its own copy of Active Desktop Calendar, users have a possibility to share there data. Shared layers are also read-only calendars for those who haven't created them, of course.

And it's one more situation when you might want more than one layer. When you don't object other users on the LAN see your data, but would like to keep some of them a secret, just create a special data layer to share, and you'll guard your privacy.

In general, if you have to spend at your computer more then two thirds of your working hours, Active Desktop Calendar might be really useful for you. Try it. It has a pleasant design and the "price-quality" correlation is at its best. Of course, it takes our precious time to organize all the notes, tasks and especially looks, but it'll prevent you from saying "I am sorry, I forgot".

Active Desktop Calendar keywords: active desktop calendar, pim, personal information manager, organizer, wallpaper, print, notes, tasks, alarms, contacts, recurring appointments, appointments, address book, data sharing, lan, recurrence, scheduler, icons, xemico, xemicomputers