5970 Developed by desktopADvantage the freeware Car Art Inc. Car Art Calendar is pitched as a drop down software calendar and planner from Car Art Inc. that supports the Mac and features automotive artwork of the best car art artists from around the globe. That sounded intriguing to this lifelong car nut and automotive art admirer. I downloaded a copy for a look-see.

Car Art, Inc. Founder Peter Aylett is an automotive design engineer, a past member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and the Industrial Designers Society of America established the company in 2002, with the Website CarDesignerArt.com set up to sell prints online. CarFineArt.com was added when automotive fine artists joined Car Art’s stable, most of them members of the Automotive Fine Arts Society.

Stunningly Beautiful Images

CarArtInc.com showcases a collection of 500 artworks by 67 artists, including several names I've long been familiar with, such as Ken Dallison for his work with Car and Driver magazine and William A. Motta who was Art Director/Art Editor of Road & Track magazine for 40 years. The slideshow on the Car Art main Website is worth a visit in its own right — a sampler of an amazing variety of stunningly beautiful images you probably don't have to be a car freak to appreciate.

The Car Art calendar features a two-mode, full-screen user interface with a three year calendar (2008 through 2010) flanked by a couple of car art cheesecake images, with a thumbnail sampling from the Car Art, Inc. catalogue below that are clickable links to gallery pages featuring the respective artist's bio-sketch and more of his/her work.

An alternate view toggled by clicking on a calendar date reveals a configurable "week-at-a-glance" planner with to-do list. You make entries by clicking on a cell, which opens a little dialog where you can fill in particulars.

Potentially Quite Useful

Mousing over a date on the calendar view shows a summary of the day's configured events. This is potentially quite useful, but while I can't speak for the Windows version, the Mac edition has some bugs that still need squashing.

Worst is that the program proved prone to freezing and/or unexpectedly quitting due to an error (although by times it could also be quite stable), at least on my rig (a unibody MacBook 2.0 running Leopard 10.5.6). Then there are the control and navigation issues. As I mentioned, you toggle the planner pane by clicking on a calendar date, but rarely does the correct week, month and year pop open, making it necessary to manually scroll to the appropriate screen using tiny navigation controls on on the date bar.

Consequently, as much as I like the concept and love the car art images, I can't give this calendar a completely unqualified thumbs-up until those problems are addressed. However it is usable if you're willing to tolerate the degree of non-fatal flakiness I described above, and if you like cars, it's great to look at. There is also no documentation, so I can't say for sure whether I've discovered all of the program's functions and nuances.

Features:

• Stunning Graphics (Really)


• 3-Year Annual View


• Week-At-A-Glance Scheduler


• To Do List


• One Click Viewing Technology


• Manages Daily Appointments


• Mouseover Event Viewing


• Customizable Event Countdown

New in version Version 1.3.12.526:
• Minor fixes and enhancements

System Requirements:
Mac OS X

Platform Support
PPC/Intel

Freeware

desktopADvantage Car Art Calendar can be downloaded for free at:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/30832/car-art-calendar
or here:
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Business/Car-Art-Calendar.shtml

For more information, visit:
http://www.carartinc.com/default.aspx

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