What Zapaday does is collect and co-ordinate public calendaring information. They offer public calendars for all sorts of useful public information, such as dates for international affairs, religious holidays, scientific awards, computer game releases, conferences, music festivals and more. As a user, you can both contribute to these calendars and subscribe to the information they provide.

Why Use Zapaday?

While there are public iCal calendars available in many places online, it’s often difficult to find public calendars of information you’d like to subscribe to. When you do find a calendar, it’s uncertain whether the calendar will continue to be edited and updated. Zapaday removes some of this uncertainty because it is so easy for users to submit events and sub-calendars to existing calendars. With many editors and contributors working on the information in each calendar, you can be more certain about its relevance and accuracy.

Join Zapaday

Zapaday is currently in private Alpha, but anyone can register for the waiting list. The first 50 MakeUseOf users to register using the code “MakeUseOf” will be prioritised in the queue and should be able to use Zapaday very shortly.

Subscribe To Calendars

The calendars are all categorised in such a way that it’s easy to browse for topics that suit your needs. For each calendar, you can subscribe to the iCal feed in Google Calendar, Outlook, iCal or whatever service you normally use to subscribe to calendar feeds.

Subscribe To Events

If you’re not interested in subscribing to whole calendars, Zapaday allows users to mark individual events as interesting. While viewing the event, mark as “Show on My Zapaday” and Zapaday will collect these events for you into a calendar just for you. You can then subscribe to this calendar in your normal calendaring software by going to “My Zapaday” and going through the subscription steps.

Editing Calendars & Collaboration

For content creators, Zapaday makes it easy for people to find your calendars. If you’re creating a public calendar in Zapaday, you’re unlikely to find yourself diligently editing a calendar for people who never view the information.

There are editors for each calendar, usually determined by who originally created the calendar. You may apply to edit any given calendar, or you can submit entries to the calendar for approval. If you prefer, you may wish to create a sub-calendar which you can edit yourself. This is ideal for submitting local events to a broader calendar.

For instance, there’s a calendar for Australian Affairs which currently has sub-calendars for “Australian Parliament Agenda” and for “Australia Prime Minister Agenda“. Another appropriate sub-calendar would perhaps be the “South Australian Parliament Agenda” and so on for other states.

It’s up to you whether you choose to create a new sub-calendar or to submit individual events to calendars. Whichever you choose, it’s easy to get involved with Zapaday and sharing useful information with many people who will use it.

More Reading

You might also be keen to read these articles on calendars:

• Google Calendar & Gmail’s New Look: How You Can Preview [News]
• Easily Export Your Facebook Events To Google Calendar [Chrome]
• Integrate Google Calendar Into Your Chrome Browser With Checker Plus

Have you subscribed to any Zapaday calendars? What do you think?

After trying so many different ones, I noticed that I yearned for specific features in a not-too-complicated system, like for example, integration between a calendar app and the task app in question. When it comes to calendar integration, the experience just isn’t completely optimized in Google Calendar and Google Tasks yet (e.g. you can’t view tasks in mobile calendar apps, even though Tasks shows up as a Google Calendar), which is a shame because calendar and task apps should work closely together. I consider this to be pretty much a difficulty brought by Google Calendar’s import/sync issues. GCal usually syncs once a day or less (except for native calendar clients like on the iPhone). If you’ve tried to import a calendar by URL to GCal from, say, Springpad, you will know GCal doesn’t act instantaneously when changes are made.

Thus, in my search for alternative calendar/task list applications, I’ve found two, Coolendar and 1Calendar, that seem to focus a bit more on this integration. Hit the jump to find out more about these two applications.

Coolendar

Besides looking very coolly designed, Coolendar accepts calendar/task entries in plain English, as long as you type the due date or time first, and then the event or task. All undated entries can be sorted in a specific order of your preference, and the ones that have due dates will be listed chronologically in the main list and in the appropriate tabs of either today, tomorrow or this week. Notice that there’s no matrix-like grid for month view. If ordering undated entries according to your own order isn’t enough, you can prioritize tasks by clicking on the red circle to the left of the entry.

That’s where Coolendar distinguishes itself from Google Tasks. The latter displays tasks in either your order or by due date. On the other hand, Coolendar lets you have both, but also lets you view tasks that are due today, tomorrow or this week, which means that if you’re on the iPhone or iPod Touch, you don’t need two separate GCal and GTasks apps. One (the official Coolendar iPhone app) will do.

Since Coolendar has a different philosophy on task or event duration and recurrence, it doesn’t have options to specify these two details. Coolendar believes that you can decide when you get reminded via SMS or Twitter about whether or not you need to reschedule the event for next time. In regards to event duration, Coolendar considers this a poison concept that simply doesn’t work. In these two aspects, Coolendar does work like Google Tasks.

If you want a simple, all-in-one solution to bring together your calendar and your task list, check out Coolendar. All you need to try the service is to sign in with your Google Account as there’s no registration procedure. If you’ve decided that Coolendar totally suits your needs, be sure to download the free iPhone/iPod Touch app. Coolendar developers promise that the Android app is nearing completion, but if you’re still impatient, check out the mobile Coolendar web interface at http://m.coolendar.com/.

1Calendar

1Calendar will look similar to the GCal desktop interface as the former contains a matrix-like grid for a weekly view of events in the center of the application, while to its left lies a sidebar of calendars in different colors.

On the right of the application, you’ll be able to create new tasks, as well as see previously added tasks in all their color-coded glory.

1Calendar differs from GCal in that it can sync Facebook events, as well import timetables from high schools and universities, though there are, of course, plenty of schools that need to get added.

1Calendar’s development seems to still be in its infancy, but its iPhone app (and the Android app probably, too) at least offers an event list view, which I wish most free GTD or task list apps could have.

Though the iPhone app looks simple, this setup is much cleaner and does not involve poking around two different, separate apps, namely the native Calendar app and either Notes or third-party to-do list app.

Overall, these two apps, though still young, are refreshing alternatives to sometimes frustrating to-do list apps that lack integration with calendars.

Do you prefer to have separate apps to view your calendar and tasks, or do you wish to see more integration between your favorite calendar/task list apps? Let us know in the comments also if you know of other similar apps.

Image credit: rdragan79

From any easy way to change sidebar icons to automatically changing your wallpaper image, these apps make it more than easy to get it just the way you want, practically at the click of a button. Also be sure to check out the in-depth review of the popular, cross-platform wallpaper rotation app, Wally.

Refinery

Refinery gives you instant access to tons of tiny little tweaks and changes to your Mac’s appearance.

You can tweak the dock’s appearance or positioning and control window minimization.

You can also easily change your dock by drag and drop icons, dividers, indicators and more to get your dock just the way you want.

You can also download ready made docks to import from Leopard Docks.

With Refinery you can also easily tweak the Desktop icons size, font size, window title style, show hidden files, and more.

Other Finder options include changing the Sidebar icons and Toolbar icons, by dragging and dropping them onto the app.

You can also change the login window background, and system alert icons, also using the drag and drop method.

Any changes that you make can be easily reverted with the click of a button. Refinery is donationware, meaning you can use it for free for as long as you like, but if you find the app handy, you can also show your appreciation with a small donation to the developer.

Wallpaper Wizard Lite

Wallpaper Wizard Lite [App Store link] is available as a free download from the Mac App Store. The free version of the app does come with its limitations – namely you only have access to 100 of the available images. That said, the sets that are available are pretty impressive, divided into the four categories, animals, exotic, cars and nature.

There are several ways you can change your wallpaper using Wallpaper Wizard Lite. There is a mini-wizard where you can randomly shuffle between the available wallpapers, or even automatically change your wallpaper at specific intervals.

Alternatively, you can open up the main window of the program to select the wallpaper yourself.

Upgrading to the paid version gives you the ability to upload your own images, turning Wallpaper Wizard into the ultimate wallpaper manager.

Loginox

Loginox is a great little free app which makes it extremely easy to change the image you see when you’re logging in to your Mac. If you’re bored with the default Leopard Aurora image, you can choose any photo of your liking by dragging onto the Loginox app and hitting Set new login image. If you decide you want to go back to default image, simply select, Reset to default image.

Desktop Calendar

Desktop Calendar isn’t so much a wallpaper manager, as much as it gives you a quick and easy way to place a calendar over your wallpaper. The app is far from feature rich, but it gets the job done.

After downloading and launching the app, it displays a calendar on your desktop.

To move or alter the size of the calendar, hit the Desktop Calendar menu in the status bar and select Enter Layout Mode or use the shortcut Command-M.

Wlppr

Wlppr harnesses the power of Wlppr.com, a wallpaper repository updated on a daily basis. Sitting quietly in your status bar, upon launching, you can set the app to launch at startup and automatically change your wallpaper for you on a daily basis.

Desktopple Basic

While not as robust as the pro version of the app, Desktopple Basic is definitely a useful app if you want a quick and easy way to clear your desktop. Unlike Desktoday, rather than physically move the icons into an folder, Desktopple Basic temporarily hides them much like Camouflage.

One drawback we noticed to using Desktopple is that if you use a gesture shortcut to show the desktop, Desktopple has no effect. Desktopple Basic is donationware, meaning like Refinery, you can show your appreciation with a small donation.

Do you have any tips or tricks on how to tweak your Mac’s desktop appearance for free? Let us know in the comments.

The virtual daily planner is divided into five sections, Daily Tasks, Master Tasks, Compass, Goals and Mission. Even if you don’t have a need for all sections, you can get a great deal out of this nifty little app that is impressively available for free through the Mac App Store, and could easily replace the  native Mac calendar app, iCal.

Opus Domini gives you a more fun and visually appealing way to handle your schedule, as it is made to look exactly like a physical daily planner, which you can leaf through. The way it is laid out, it transforms itself into a useful tool which you can use to stay organised, and on top of both your daily and over all work tasks.

Automatically Syncs with iCal

If you’ve already got your entire calendar plugged into iCal, making the transition to Opus Domini is easy because it automatically syncs with the native Mac app. There is no need to do anything on your part – it automatically pulls in your appointments and events from all of your calendars, and performs a two-way sync with your default calendar. This is also useful for anyone who uses iCal to take their calendar on the go with them on their smartphone.

Calendar Display Options

With iCal you can take a look at your upcoming schedule by month, by day or by week. Opus Domini outdoes iCal by adding a 5 day planner and a weekend planner.

Task List

With Opus Domini, your task list is front and centre, whereas with iCal it’s little more than a side bar with a list of ToDo items, to which you ocan assign due dates, priority and an alarm to remind you when a task is due. There are two separate Opus Domini task lists. The first is a task list that is viewable by date. Click on any given date, and you will see your scheduled tasks, next to a calendar of scheduled appointments for that day.

The second task list is a Master List. This is useful for keeping a separate list of ongoing tasks that don’t have a specific due date.

With Opus Domini, while there is no alarm feature, you can mark tasks as being in progress, delegated or scheduled. You can also easily reschedule all tasks for another date by ‘forwarding’ them.

Another easy way to assign a due date to a task is by dragging and droppoing tasks onto the calendar above the task list. Overdue tasks are highlighted in red.

If you use your planner for reminders, iCal is the better option for you. If you use your planner as a way to give you a broader picture of what your tasks are, how they are being handled, and to keep you on track, Opus Domini will definitely be more appealing.

Notes & Weather

Opus Domini has a few extra features that makes it a more visually appealing and more well rounded app to use instead of iCal. Next to the daily tasks, you have a blank page in which you can write notes, as well as add images using the drag and drop method.

Above the notes, you can keep track of the weather in any given city, setting it up in the preferences. There is, however, a small glitch with the weather feature, as it displays the temperature in Fahrenheit only, despite there being the choice between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Compass

The Compass is another interesting feature that Opus Domini offers users, but it won’t necessarily appeal to just about anyone. It allows users to document Physical, Social, Mental or Spiritual items on a list, and track their progress.

Here you can record tasks or goals aimed at bettering yourself in any given way. You can also add your own categories to the Compass.

Goals & Mission

If you’re interested in the bigger picture, you can also use Opus Domnini to keep a record of your goals, and how they are progressing.

In addition, you can set down your mission statement, vision and values, to remind yourself of the driving force behind your work.

Opus Domini is only available for download through the Mac App Store, and so you have to be running Snow Leopard in order to install it.

Would you ditch iCal in favour of Opus Domini? What do you think of its features? Let us know in the comments.

** Update 26 March 2011 ** At the time of writing, this app was free of charge. It is now a paid app, costing $4.99.

Famundo is an online calendar solution designed for families of up to four adults and two kids. While its central feature is the calendar, it offers additional perks, such as lists, to-dos, vaults for private notes or files, and a lot more. It makes a great alternative to Google Calendar for families because it was designed to be used with different levels of access in mind, e.g. family, parents, adults, and friend.

The membership for families is free. It comes with up to 250MB file storage. The ad-free PLUS membership plan currently offers SSL Security and up to 2GB of file storage. Outlook sync support, a Facebook and an iGoogle app are being planned and will be available to PLUS members in the future.

Before you start I should mention that Famundo has some issues with Google Chrome. Firefox or Internet Explorer are recommended.

1. Family Homepage

This is the first place you are taken to after signing up. It’s the Dashboard and it provides an overview of your connections, upcoming events, and latest news from your network, i.e. recent changes. Unfortunately, you cannot edit this page.

2. Calendar Setup

What convinced me that Famundo was a great solution for families is its ease of use.

First of all, it is very simple to set up multiple calendars in custom categories via the Options menu in the top right of the calendar. Each calendar is color-coded, so that different calendar items are easily identified. To see the color codes, make sure you’re in single person rather than family view; the selection can be made in the top left corner of the Calendar page.

Secondly, adding new events to the calendar is very intuitive. You simply move to the respective calendar view (day, week, month) and drag the mouse across the hours or days to block off time for the new event. Next, you fill in the details under Quick Add in the sidebar to the left. To edit, copy, or delete an item, you can click on it and select the respective action.

3. Friends

Up to 6 people can administer a page on Famundo. However, you can share your page with the public or an indefinite number of friends or other families that also have pages on Famundo. This feature is great if you frequently plan activities with a network of people, for example car-pools, day trips, or other group activities.

4. Address Book, Photos, Blogs, Messages & Files

If your entire network is on Famundo and if you’re extremely social, these features may be valuable. Personally, I find that they are just too much. It’s easier to use dedicated services, such as email or Facebook for collecting addresses and sending messages, Flickr for sharing photos, WordPress for blogs, and Dropbox for file sharing. However, I must say that the Photos section is very well designed.

5. Lists and To-Dos

These sections are handy to remind everyone of their duties and collectively create lists, for example for the weekly meals or shopping. To-Do items come with due dates and reminders, and can be set to repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Items on a list can be checked off separately and when the list has been completed, it moves to the respective category.

6. Vaults

A vault is a private area, where you can share files or lists and provide access to the different levels of people in your Famundo network. This is a great place to store gift lists.

If you’re not yet convinced, you can test the calendar and all of its features by using one of the dummy logins, for example as Mike Doe.

What do you think, does this calendar do families and their network justice? Which other features would you like to see if any?

If you don’t have a colour printer, or are looking for something as simple as it gets, take a look at these 10 suggestions on where you can get printable calendars online.

12 Page Calendars

Noise To Signal

Cartoonist Rob Cottingham is sharing a 2011 wall calendar that can be downloaded from SlideShare or his website. Social media addicts will appreciate the humour taken from Rob’s cartoon strip, Noise to Signal.

My Owl Barn

My Owl Barn has released a gorgeous 12 page calendar filled with owl related images from various artists. With 30 images to choose from, you can also determine the exact order they’ll appear in, or download their ready-made calendar.

Doodle Calendar

Creative Mamma has put out a free printable Doodle Calendar for 2011.

Big Huge Labs

If you’d rather use your own images, Big Huge Labs make it easy to use your own pictures from Flickr, Facebook, or your computer.

Alice Cantrell

Another beautifully artistic calendar can be downloaded from Alice Cantrell’s website. The calendar includes lunar phases, and comes with a cover and band, making it possible to gift the calendar.

Blog Guide Book

Blog Guide Book have an illustrated calendar available for download for free. It’s a huge 243MB file but definitely worth the download.

Blue Ant Studio

Blue Ant Studio have made it a tradition to release a free 12 page calendar every year, and 2011 is no exception. The 2011 Calendar is available on Flickr.

One Page Calendars

Compact Calendar

See the entire year at a glance with David Sheah’s Compact Calendar. If you want to keep yourself particularly organised, glue the calendar to a lined sheet of paper to neatly jot down your notes.

Grafish Design

Possibly the smallest calendar you’ll ever find, Grafish Design’s aptly named Small Calendar is a wallet sized 4.4×7.6 cm.

Yasmina Moya

Available in Spanish on Flickr, Yasmina Moya is offering a set of 4 interesting one page calendars with black and white photography.

If you’d like to put together your own one page calendar with a personalised photo try Yearly Calendar Maker.

Monitor Strip

Craft Meister’s 2011 Monitor Strip Calendars are perfect for sticking above your computer monitor. They are available in a variety of colours and sizes.

Bunny Calendar

A great option for kids, the printable Bunny Colouring Calendar will give your children the opportunity to colour in their own calendar.

Bookmark Calendar

These free printable bookmark calendars measure just 1/2×7 inches and are available in English and Spanish. The text on the bookmarks and the title are editable.

3D & DIY Calendars

Clovered

For the more artistically inclined, Clovered is offering three free printable calendars. The first, a pop-up calendar will take a bit of effort on your part but the end result is perfect for parents who want a cute calendar their kids will appreciate.

For something a little simpler, you could also try the P The Reindeer Boy calendar.

And lastly, their printable Pocket Calendar is the easiest option available.

Dodecahedron Cube Calendar

Put your paper folding skills to the test with Craft Meister’s Dodecahedron Cube Calendar. The calendar is available in a variety of colours.

Accordion Calendar

Paper Foldable’s Accordion Calendar is available for download here. The PDF doesn’t come with any instructions so you’re pretty much on your own figuring out how to put it together.

Mini Laundry Calendar

Using a combination of wire, miniature clothes pegs and linen paper, you can put together one of the cutest DIY calendars for 2011, the Mini Laundry Calendar.

Journals & Diaries

Wisdom Journal

The Wisdom Journal is a planner and calendar rolled into one. With one page for each month, you will find a space to fill out a mission statement, a 3 to 5 year plan, a 6 month plan, and a one month plan, along with a calendar. It also features a two sheet weekly planner, and detailed task list.

2011 Diary

If you’d rather have a diary for the entire year, there is an A5 diary available for download as a Word document here. With the cost and paper involved in printing out this kind of diary, it may just be easier to purchase a planner or diary from any stationery store.

Have you already downloaded your free printable calendar for 2011? Let us know where you got it in the comments.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Publishing and subscribing to iCal feeds allows you to watch other people’s calendars relative to your schedule. You can use it to coordinate between co-workers, friends and family, or to keep on top of tour dates and important happenings in your area.

Sadly, iCal requires one of two things to publish one of your own calendars; a premium MobileMe subscription or a server with rather specific Mac OS X CalDAV software. Today we’re going to look at two workarounds to publish a calendar using a free online service, or even your own regular server space.

1. Publish iCal Calendars Using Box.net

Box.net is a free personal storage service, much like the acclaimed Dropbox. You can sign up for the free, ‘Lite’ account, which will give you 1GB of storage and a 25MB file size limit; more than enough for a calendar or two. As you probably guessed, Box.net has CalDAV support and will carry our publications without much ado.

You can choose to publish a single calendar, or a whole calendar group, in which case the individual components will be merged. Right-click a calendar or group, and select Publish. Select ‘A private server‘ from the drop-down list and enter

https://www.box.net/dav

as the base URL, with your credentials below. Check the first box to automatically publish any changes made to the calendar and create an active feed. The other checkboxes are optional depending on your personal preferences.

To subscribe, go to Calendar -> Subscribe… in iCal, and enter

http://www.box.net/dav/filename.ics

as the URL. Remember what you called the calendar in the publish dialog? That’s our filename (Home.ics in our example above). That’s it!

2. Using Regular Server Space

If you want to keep complete control over your calendar files, or don’t feel like signing up for yet another account, you can use regular server space as well; the same you would use for, say, a WordPress installment. Since these servers generally don’t have calDAV, it’s a little more complicated though. This tutorial requires a Google Calendar account.

First, right-click a single calendar or calendar group and select Publish. Publishing a group will not preserve the individual calendars, but instead merge its components into one single calendar.

Give your calendar a recognizable name and select ‘A private server’ from the drop-down menu. You want to use your server’s FTP address as the base URL, suffixed with www/ to put the calendar in the website root directory. For the sake of keeping organized, you might want to put your calendar in another folder (e.g. ical) instead of the root. This optional folder needs to exist before we can publish our calendar, so you’ll have to create it using your web server’s file manager. Your FTP credentials will need to be entered below.

Check the first box to automatically publish any changes made to the calendar and create an active feed. The other checkboxes are optional depending on your personal preferences.

Sign in to Google Calendar. If you don’t have a Google account yet, sign up for one now. At the bottom of the left sidebar, under Other calendars, select Add -> Add by URL.

This is where you enter the URL to your iCal publication; Google Calendars doesn’t really care if the server supports CalDAV and will pull in the calendar anyway. Note that – compared to your base publication URL – the actual URL is prefixed with http instead of ftp, and misses the www/ insertion. Remember how we called our calendar? That’s our filename.ics .

The calendar will now exist in Google Calendar. From here on, it’s as easy as synchronizing your Google Calendar account with iCal. Go to iCal -> Preferences -> Accounts -> “+” and enter your Google credentials. If you’ve got multiple calendars in Google Calendar, you’ll have to enable them under the Delegation tab.

What do you use your calendar subscriptions for? Tell us in the comments below!

By synchronizing iCal with Google Calendar, you can bring your calendar to the cloud, use it across computers, and even sync it with your Android OS smartphone.

Synchronizing iCal and Google Calendar

Synchronizing these two is surprisingly easy. If you weren’t already using it, first make sure you’ve got a Google Calendar account – or simply a Google or Gmail account. Log in to Google Calendar to verify.

The sync setup is simple and will only take a few seconds. Fire up iCal and go to iCal -> Preferences (Command + comma) -> Accounts and add a new account. Enter your Google credentials, and you’re done.

You’ve now got two calendar groups in the iCal sidebar. Calendars, the default group, only boasts locally-hosted calendars. For the purpose of Google Calendar synchronization, we can consider these to be semi-static, as they will not be synchronized or even visible in Google Calendar.

You’ll also notice the appearance of a new group. This group, named after your Google account, will host your Google calendars, and display them between your iCal calendars.

Synchronizing with Multiple Gmail Calendars

Because the iCal calendars are not synced with Google Calendar, they aren’t visible online or on your Android phone. For that purpose, it might be better to delete the default calendars and switch to synced Google calendars altogether.

You can sync multiple calendars with a single Google Calendar account, but not from within iCal. Instead, log in to Google Calendar, and go to Settings -> Calendar Settings -> Calendars and select Create new calendar, as shown in the screenshot below. You can create as many as you like, to replace the default calendars.

Alternatively, you can sync the calendars from multiple Google and Google apps accounts in iCal, but unless you’ve got reason to maintain calendars from multiple Google accounts, there’s no good reason to do so.

Synchronizing with Multiple iCal Computers

You can sync a single Google Calendar account with multiple iCal computers. Doing so not only allows you to synchronize your Google calendars from multiple computers, but will keep those computers mutually updated. Changes from one computer will be transferred to your Google calendar, and from there on to all the other computers.

EXTRA: Google Notifier

iCal isn’t the only way to bring Google Calendar to your desktop. The official Google Notifier application, also available for Windows, integrates both Gmail and Calendar in the Mac OS X notification area. You can of course, disable one of these two.

Although iCal is the perfect desktop calendar authoring application, Google Notifier is perfect if all you need is to keep a close eye on your calendar. Depending on your iCal settings, you can use iCal for calendar management, and Google Notifier for your notifications.

Do you know any other Google Calendar and iCal synchronization tips and tricks? Let us know in the comments section below.