Calendar Magic is not a new program, it is at version 17.7 now and its history can be traced back to 1995. Its interface is not the most elegant but that doesn’t detract from what it offers.

Some of its features follow but there is more and playing with the program indeed reveals lots more.

Quick Notes for holding text. 15 numbered sheets are available which can be renamed to more descriptive titles.

Reminders. Three types are available, one which defines a repeatable day and month alarm. A second that lets the user pick things like every first Sunday of the month and lastly a third type to set alarms for day(s) of the month.

A reaction timer and stop watch (See Time menu)

A ‘This is your life’ feature (see Dates menu) which provides a lot information about any birth date.

Gregorian and 30 other calendars from the likes of Persian Astronomical to Baha’i and more. These can be viewed in ‘dual’ or ‘comparison’ mode to compare days with the Gregorian. Additionally a date conversion tool to show what any date would be in other calenders. Also a ‘number of days between’ calculator.

A list of holidays or ‘observed’ days for many countries.

Several ‘Planning Calendars’ that lay out dates in a way useful to bankers, teachers and others.

Solar and lunar phase and eclipse data for any year up to the year 3000. Sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset for many locations.

World clock to show up to 12 world times together. Many more current local times including distance calculations.

A rather comprehensive unit converter. Many calculators (scientific, fraction, statistic, Body Mass Index, Ovulation and others) in the Utilities menu.

Discovering Calendar Magic’s features is a fun exercise. Virtually every screen can be printed and Calendar Magic should run on all Windows versions going back to Windows 95.

UK’s Kalender is a no frills program that is a calendar, to do list and event reminder in one. It presents a list view for to do items independent of events that can be entered into the calendar which itself is available in week, fortnight, month and year views.

UK’s Kalender minimizes into the system tray to always be available for reminders and their associated popups. These alarms also have a snooze function. Events can have templates – complete with icon and color choices – and categories associated with them and UK’s Kalender supports recurring and multiday events. Tool tips, when hovering over events, show the complete event information.

Double clicking inside any day or in the to do list triggers the window to enter the details of an event and choose its looks, start date, end date, alarm settings and for the to do list also its priority setting. Both the to do list and calendar events also support attachments which will be opened or executed with the event and therefore turn UK’s Kalender into an automatic task scheduler.

UK’s Kalender has a useful search and filter function to pin down specific events, it can do text back ups and export to a comma separated value (*.CSV) file or an HTML file. It supports holiday information via additional downloads. It runs on Windows 98SE up to Windows 7.

Organize your life! Never forget a birthday or anniversary ever again!

Desktop Calendar is a relatively simple and potentially useful almost 2.5MB download that overlays a calendar on any desktop. It can be thought of a semi-dynamic calendar, that is the calendar is certainly not a static image but on the other hand the reminders are restricted to annual events in the freeware version of the program. Having said that setting one time reminders is of course possible, just leave the ‘Every Year’ checkbox unchecked when adding it. The said reminders are set by right clicking on a date and choosing Edit, then filling the text area presented.

The program has more settings to control its looks than anything else. Background color of calendars is configurable as are today and other days’ text colors. The format of the month and time shown is configurable as well. The placement and size of the calendar can also be changed as can the style of the notification when hovering over a day (that contains an event). The author has also provided wallpaper packs to be used in conjunction with Desktop Calendar. Using the Wallpaper tab of the settings one can check to choose and enable the packs and choose a small or full screen preview, using the slider for the former and the preview button for the latter. Strangely there is no clear way to stop the full screen preview as it cycles through each month’s wallpaper, however the preview happens in the ‘background’ (pun intended) and doesn’t disrupt other tasks.

Desktop Calendar is one not so new tool for enhancing the desktop. It does have one very useful added capability, it is possible export (and import) data and settings to either a .dat, .txt, or .csv format. It runs on Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP and NT. Many screenshots are available on the author’s site.