Provides: Calendar and Contact Manager Developer:Power On
Software Requirements: Version 4.0.3 is for Mac OS OS
8.6-9.2.x.
New is Version 4.1 which is for OS X 10.1 Retail Price: $144.95 full boxed product, $119.95 for
downloaded product, $49.95 for downloaded upgrade. Availability:Out
now Available at the
Applelinks Store
The Mac world was relieved when Power On Software bought
the rights to Now Up-To-Date and Now Contact. These were
good products, but they were close to being abandoned and
Power On Software had already demonstrated a strong
commitment to the Mac with their Action product line (once
Now Utilities, also from Now Software).
But after some 6 years, it had been quite some time since
the last upgrade. With version 4, NUTD&NC was almost
more of a design change than a knock-down competitive new
product. However, the excellent news is that several months
after the release of version 4, we now have version 4.1: the
OS X version. It (mostly) doesn't disappoint. (Note: the
Aqua interface has white edges that, when captured on a
screen, can get lost on white pages. I have placed borders
on the images for visual assistance--they should not be seen
as an error of the Aqua interface by Power On Software.)
If you purchased version 4 and have been using it in OS
9, simply download the new version 4.1 for free and reapply
your serial number (the one supplied for version 4) and you
now have the OS X version. If you have an occasion to go
back and forth between OS 9 and X, no problem, you simply
use the same data files as you use version 4.0.x in OS 9 and
version 4.1 in OS X.
The focus group for these products is busy people who
need to chop their day into small quantum bits.That's not
saying that if your life isn't constantly busy you don't
need, or can't use this product, it just means you have to
weed your way through all the buttons and bells to do the
simple things that it also does quite well.
One of the many ways to view a calendar is a standard
month view, and a variation on this is to also have the
weekends visible as well as upcoming/past months. Simple
clicks can add/remove many different viewing combinations.
The icons across the top of a page are aided by pop-up
names. This is good as it is not necessarily easy to guess
what each icon is for. Regrettably not all the icons on all
the windows have pop-up names and this should be addressed.
Wish list #1: Insure that all icons on all windows
have pop-up names.
One can shift to past or future months by clicking on the
two arrow heads (just above the Sunday in the picture
above), and from wherever you are one can easily return to
the day's date by clicking on the red square in between the
two arrow heads. Unfortunately, if you want to go backward
or forward by years, you have to click on the annual
calendar view (just below the green grow button in the Apple
window control). This gives you a twelve-month view and with
the two arrows provided on that view, one can go forward or
backward by years. Then, once in the year you want, you can
click on the specific month you desire to view. This is a
silly way to navigate by years.
Wish list #2: Place two arrow heads outside of the
existing arrow heads and those advance or retreat years.
The inner arrow heads remain for months.
Wish list #3: To the right of the arrow heads, place
a drop down menu of years. If you want to jump to the
year 2023, you just drop and drag to that year and
BAM--your there.
As seen in the far right of the larger view of the icons
above (at 70% of the original size), there is an icon that
can let you set the preferences to different calendar
customization and save them. This is for such things as the
size of text, banners, colors, etc. Ironically, none of
these preferences are located in NUTD's Preferences. I spent
a lot of time in the preferences trying to find out how to
customize the appearance in the calendar. Turns out that the
preferences for customizing the calendar view weren't in the
Preferences, it was on the calendar itself. Generally I like
redundancy, and here is a good place and reason for such
redundancy. On the other hand, I don't care for irrelevancy:
notice the icon to the right of the New Appointment; it's to
schedule meetings with others on an Intranet or the like. I
am unlikely to need and/or use this, so its presence on the
icon bar is a waste for me.
Wish list #4: Add the ability to change/set the
layout preferences to the programs General Preferences.
Wish list #5: Let users have the ability to remove or
add the various icons (and their respective functions)
from or to the icon bar.
There are nine different types of "Events" one can place
on a calendar day (New Appointment, New Meeting, New To-Do,
New Call, New Undated, New Special, New Holiday, New Banner,
and New Sticky Note). Although there are some subtle
differences between what the different entry windows offer,
most of them are amazingly similar, making learning them
that much easier. Notice the mouse arrow in the picture
below pointing to a drop-down menu. This drop-down menu
allows one to select any of the event types once an event
window has been called up. Interestingly, only 5 of the
events have key commands, so it is good that once in an
Event window, you can select which of the Event types you
want. But beware: if you call up an Event window and then
dismiss it, the Event will be logged into the calendar and
you have to manually delete the Event.
Wish list #6: That a "Cancel" button be added to
Event windows to eliminate the need to manually remove a
non-desired event.
Now Contact
One of the main features with NUTD is its interaction
with Now Contact (NC). The left-most button on either
program's main window calls up the other program. Otherwise,
if you (for example) click on the 2nd icon from the left
above (in the picture above this text ) (the magnifying
glass on the folder) it asks you to type in a name of the
person you want to contact and if there are multiple people
with that name (Bill, Smith, etc.) it shows complete
listings of their name so you can select which one you want.
That contact information is then placed in the box below the
word "Remind:" in the picture above. If you double-click
that information, you get a new window with all that
persons, contact info and if you double-click that, you get
the original data file from NC.
It is fairly easy to import data from other contact
managers and any program that can export its data in a tab
delineated text file. It took about 3.5 seconds to import
some 1600 records from a text file previously exported from
FileMaker Pro.
In the above view, on the left one can see a screen shot
of the list of fields I was exporting from FileMaker Pro.
You don't need to do this, but I did find it helpful. On the
right is the Import Setup window from NC. As you can see, on
the left of this view you can view actual data, on the right
you set the field names. The two arrows on the lower left
let you scroll through your data to insure the placement of
the fields. The fields on the right half can be dragged up
and down to coordinate the fields and data. Checking or un
checking the field allows or prevents the data from being
imported. The process is fairly straight forward and works
well. [Note: all personal data in this article have been
smudged to protect privacy.]
Once the data is collected, the main window of Now
Contact is a collection of lists:
As in NUTD, one can control what and how items are
displayed by the display preferences in the upper right (not
in the general Preferences). You can add or remove the
various columns, change the font type & sizes, etc.
Also, by clicking on any column, one can force a sort for
any found set. You can also sort on (up to) two columns.
By double-clicking on any name one obtains the "Standard
View for looking at an entry's data:
As in NUTD, there are a plethora of icons, some of which
you may always use, others, seldom if ever. And, just as
with NUTD, you set the preferences for what you see on the
screen with the icon on the far right, NOT with the standard
program's preferences. My wish lists for NUTD hold true in
NC. At least Power On Software is consistent.
If you have your computer connected to a modem on the
same line as your phone, you can click on the icon next to a
phone number and NC will call the number for you. If you are
on the internet and click on the icon next to an e-mail,
your e-mail program will open a new letter with the e-mail
address ready to go. If an entry has a URL, clicking on the
icon next to it will bring up your browser and onto that
selected site. From a found set, one can click on the
"quick-merge icon and all the data will be exported so you
can use the merge mail feature in MS Word. These two
programs do try to provide complete interaction for your
entire computer.
Most of this works quite well, but there are a few
options offered that would be great if they worked, but
their failure is not of Power On Software's fault. There is
a feature called "Web Services..." that when you have an
individual selected, you can ostensibly find their e-mail
address, phone number, restaurants near that person (by the
zip code), etc. The success or failure of any of these
options is limited to what the web has to offer. That is,
Power On Software links the information from that contact
person to various web sites that can provide the
information, if the information is there to be found. I
couldn't obtain any of my information off the web from this
feature, so don't have high hopes on this. Hopefully, this
will improve as the web sites that do this improve.
As I worked with NC (and NUTD for that matter), I found
the items that you can work within the Preferences rather
strange. For example, as you see in the above picture,
bottom right. There is a place for keywords. When you click
on the word "Keyword," you get a drop down menu to select
keywords. You can also select "Edit" and bring up a window
to add to the keywords. (Keywords are used for searches. So
for example, you could tag a variety of your friends and
co-workers as woodworkers. Then, if you wanted to contact
all your woodworkers, you could do a search on this keyword
and you now have a found set to work with.) In the
Preferences for NC, one of the selections shows the Default
Keywords. One cannot add or delete keywords to this list.
All one can do is place checks to keywords for default
placement on imports of new people.
These complaints notwithstanding, there are cool things
here as well: You can merge a found group of people to
create a "QuickMerge" with Microsoft Word. (I don't know
whether this will work with Word X at this point in time,
but my speculation is that it will.) Similarly, you can
create an email group. There are a tremendous variety of
actions that can be "dragged dropped." Even dragging a
single (or a group) of entries onto the desktop provides a
tab-delineated text file of the fields data. From any
person's listing, you can quickly place an "Event" in the
calendar in NUTD.
There are so many of "cool things" that these two
programs can do. So many so that reading, or at least
skimming through the manual is a good idea. If you download
the programs from Power On's web site, you can purchase a
paper version of the software for $15--not a bad price and a
good offering from Power On Software. Alternatively, one can
download a pdf version of the 354 page manual which is
completely cross-linked so that clicking on any part of the
Table of Contents, you are hyperlinked to that section.
There is no Index in the pdf version, but with Acrobat's
Find, an Index is not all that necessary.
The big disappointment with this release is that Palm
Syncing must be done in OS 9. However, this is not Power On
Software's fault, but rather it is caused by Palm Computers
not yet creating the Palm HotSync for OS X. I can only
assume that once it is, NUTD and NC will share full
functionality--I recommend checking with the
Power
On Software's web site for updates on this software.
In short, Now Contact and Now Up-To-Date remain the main
contact manager programs for the Mac. The interface is
somewhat confusing as options one should be able to adjust
you find you can't in the locations you think you
should--like in the Preferences.
Now that the hard work of transferring the program to OS
X is complete, I'd like to see some work done on the
interface for the next version. My wish lists are out there.
___________
Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.
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