One of these days you'll get organisised, right? Jokes aside, maintaining a calendar of events for work and home is always a bit of a juggle. One calendar might be located on your mobile phone, another one at work, one on your home computer, and probably the most important one stuck to your fridge. iCal can be used to sync all of these different calendars into one and you can even sync other people's schedules. No longer will you forget your partner's birthday, your wedding anniversary, or even your great aunt's birthday bash.

Enter iCal, a free application (now in its third iteration) that comes shipped with Mac OS X Leopard. By default the application is easy to find as it shares a default space on the Apple Dock. If you can't find it, view the applications folder in Finder and click on iCal.

The interface displayed when you first open iCal should look like the above image without the inserted calendar events. On the left pane is the Calendar box that, as the name suggests, lists your different calendars and ones you may subscribe to (we'll get to calendar subscriptions in a minute). To begin with, set up various calendars you think you'll need. By default there is one for work and home, but you may want to add a new one for birthdays and anniversaries, or for your local sporting team. To add a new calendar click on the + button at the bottom of the Calendar column and give it a suitable label.

Adding events to iCal
The main column, which can be viewed by day, week, or month is where you'll add and subtract events in your schedule. We've found using the weekly view is the most intuitive way to look at a calendar, but feel free to set your own view according to personal preference. To add a new event, make sure you've selected a calendar from the left Calendar column then double-click on the time and date the event is set to start. A new box will appear in the colour corresponding to which calendar it is and will allow you to edit the space with a name. For more advanced editing, double click the new event block and more options will be available.

As shown in the image above, you can add in detailed information for each entry and invite people you know to events. You can also give the event a date, set the length of time, add in the location, repeat it for multiple days, give yourself an email reminder before the event, add relevant attachments associated with the event, and add URLs and notes. While this advanced editing is handy, most day-to-day tasks can be used by dragging and dropping and resizing events on the calendar interface.

One of the more useful iCal editing features is creating an alarm, or a set of alarms, to an event. When creating or editing an event choose the type of alarm you want from the drop down menu. iCal will allow you to select email, message, open file, or even run a script as options. As an example, you may want to choose "Open a file" and select a favourite song from your iTunes library to play as an alarm. Stop? Hammer Time? Advanced users may want to choose the "Run a Script" option which can run AppleScripts or Automator functions. This can open up an array of options to use as an alarm, for example, you may want to set a regular script to open a document or application for certain regular meetings. Or, you may want to automatically set an alarm to have MC Hammer play as an alarm for going home at 5.30 every day.

Sometimes organising yourself is only half the battle. If you need to share a calendar event with a friend or work colleague then its easy to share it from iCal. Select the iCal event you want to share and right-click (or Control-click) and select the Mail Event option. The primary email application, usually Apple's Mail, will open and auto-fill an email with the iCal event. You may choose to edit the subject and body of the email and select the recipient(s) of the iCal event. Your friend or colleague who receives the email will see the name, date and time of the event. If the recipients open the attached file and has a calendaring application like Microsoft Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, or another similar application then the event will be automatically added to their schedule.

Add a to-do list
iCal includes a to-do list which can integrate with Apple's Mail program. To insert to-do items, either add them via Apple's Mail program or add them via iCal. The two programs will sync with one another. Inside iCal the panel can be hidden. Click on the tack button on the bottom right of the application to view the pane.

To add a new to-do list item, double click on the right panel, or click on File > Add new to-do item, or use the keyboard shortcut of Command +K. To edit an entry simply double-click the to-do field. If you're one that needs to keep on top of things with reminders, the to-do functionality adds a nifty feature that will send an email, sound an alarm, open a file, or even run a custom script to remind you of important tasks.

Publish and share your calendar
Now that we've set up a basic calendar it's time to share it with your friends, family, and work colleagues. Remember that you should only share personal and company data with trusted friends. With this in mind you can publish your calendar in two ways; firstly, you can use MobileMe, Apple's paid online service that syncs all of your Mac data online and lets you share it to other Macs, Windows PCs, and mobile devices such as the iPhone. While a handy service, it does cost AU$119 for a yearly subscription. Secondly, you can publish your calendar to your own designated server.

While slightly expensive, the MobileMe service is handy because it allows subscribers to log in anywhere in the world via a browser to view (and change) calendars, read and write email, view contacts, add photo galleries, and save files in a personal storage area. With the service, you can view and change your calendar by logging into me.com.

To publish your calendar for all to see using MobileMe click on the Calendar tab on the top navigation bar > Publish. Select MobileMe from the drop down box, select the items you want to share and press Publish. A dialog box will appear with a web address that people can use to subscribe to your calendar (it should end in .ics) and a URL where users can find your calendar on the web. Be sure to jot these down or click on email to send the addresses to friends, family, or work colleagues.

If you don't have a MobileMe account, you can still publish your calendar. Select Private Server from the drop down box and insert your server's details. This will create an .ics file on the selected server which others can import to their calendar application to keep track of your events.

Subscribing to Calendars
Now that you can publish your calendar you may want to keep on top of what your friends, work colleagues, or social group is up to. From the top navigation bar click on Calendar > Subscribe. A dialog box will appear and you should enter the URL of the calendar you want to subscribe to. If you don't have one handy here is an example:

webcal://ical.mac.com/ical/Australian32Holidays.ics

As the name in the URL suggests you've now subscribed to add in all of the Australian public holidays to your calendar. To find more public calendars visit Apple's list at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/.

Syncing Calendars
If you're one to use multiple computers and a mobile phone then you probably want to sync them all together. The easiest way to currently do this with iCal is to subscribe to MobileMe. As we've previously mentioned this will sync your data on your Mac, PC, and mobile devices. To do this simply log in to your MobileMe account on any of these platforms. If you own multiple Macs you can sync the desktop apps together and if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch then you'll enjoy the tight integration with the MobileMe service.

While that is the easy way, it's not the only way. Here are some of the most common ways you'll want to sync your calendar:

Google Calendar — log in to your Google Calendar account and go to Settings. Navigate to the Calendar tab and make sure you are sharing the calendar you want to sync with. Click on Edit and navigate to the Calendar Details tab. Scroll down and click on the green iCal tab. Copy this address, open up iCal, and insert the web address given to the Subscribe option as explained above. Now all of your Google Calendar events can show up in iCal.

Mobile Device — the easiest way to do this is to have a MobileMe account and browse to your mobile phone's browser. However, if you don't have this at your disposal then you can get updates sent to you via email on your mobile.

You'll need to have email enabled on your phone for this to work. Add your mobile phone email address to your contact details in the Address Book application. Open Address book and choose Show My Card from the Card menu. Click on the + sign next to email and choose Custom from the pop-up menu. Give this address a label such as "Mobile" and enter the email address for your mobile phone. Now you should receive an email for events which have enabled an email reminder.

Sync Entourage — Microsoft's Entourage email client is the only client that properly integrates with Microsoft's Exchange servers which are used in many enterprises. However, Entourage does have a nifty feature to sync your data. To view your work items on your Entourage email client go to Preferences and scroll down to the Sync Services option. From this screen you will be able to sync your calendar, tasks, and contacts with those on your Mac. Simply select the check boxes you want to share and press OK. While it is annoying that iCal and Apple's mail cannot support Microsoft's enterprise messaging services directly this is the next best thing.

Build your own syncing service — if you're a bit of a propeller head and don't mind getting down and dirty with web servers and scripting then you may want to try installing dotMac, an open source replacement for .Mac services. The server-side software will allow you to synchronise iCal, Address Book, notes and other data on a web server of your choice. The plus side of this is that you avoid the annual fee from Apple and the kudos of setting up your own data synchronising service. The downside is that it can be a bit of an effort to get up and running and might be more hassle than its worth.

While some of these later tips are starting to get complicated remember to keep your schedules simple. While there are quite a few third-party software applications that will claim to synchronise your calendars, we recommend using a trial copy of the software to see if it works as advertised before shelling out your money.

If you don't synchronise iCal with an online service or use a regular back up service then its a good idea to save your data manually. Simply click on File > Back up iCal. A prompt screen will ask where you want to save this file. Give the folder an appropriate name that you'll remember and save it on an external drive or save it to your desktop and email the file to yourself as a back-up.

All of these tips can be useful, but make sure you don't spend more time managing your calendar services than you are managing tasks in your life. If you can, we recommend consolidating your services to keep your schedule on track. In fact, if things get too complicated, don't forget that you can easily click on File > Print in iCal and stick your calendar back on the fridge!