pim

The developers behind MacJournal admit that you can use a traditional word processor or text editor for journaling--but they say that's like Lance Armstrong using a bike from Wal-Mart to race in the Tour de France. Aside from the fact that Armstrong would probably still kick butt on a Wal-Mart bike, they've got a point: MacJournal is one of the best journaling programs available for the Mac, with a huge range of features that are useful whether you're keeping a journal for yourself, taking notes for classes or meetings, organizing random snippets of info, or prepping blog … Read more

Contactizer Pro is designed to help you organize and share all your personal and business contacts and information. This sort of CRM/PIM business software has always lagged behind its PC counterparts, but Contactizer Pro is one of the better choices available for the Mac, with a fairly beefy feature set and a clean, relatively intuitive interface. This app helps you track projects, tasks, and communication (including calls, chats, documents, and faxes, with alarms and follow-ups to invitations), and it also does a good job of integrating with Apple's core apps. During installation, Contactizer Pro syncs up with your … Read more

RunningMan Calendar touts itself as a full-featured, easy-to-use calendar, but after getting our hands on it, we found it to be anything but.

RunningMan Calendar's user interface is, well, clunky. The Help menu on the publisher's Web site does offer some helpful information--for example, the main Help menu will give you a list of what is possible with this calendar--but we found it overall limited in its scope. We got started by clicking on a day in the calendar, hitting the File button, and adding an anniversary. A notepad document popped up with instructions on how to type … Read more

While there are plenty of programs that help manage your daily tasks, many are terribly expensive. EssentialPIM offers a free way stay organized, and we found it to be a fairly effective program.

This freeware heavily mimics the display and functionality of the popular Microsoft Outlook program. This, however, is not a bad thing. In fact, it makes EssentialPIM very intuitive thanks to the toolbar along the left side that allows users to easily cycle through the calendar, to-do list, contacts, notes, and trash. Inputting data into any of these fields is fairly easy. Anyone with prior experience with time … Read more

Bills and Reminders offers users a way to keep track of their bills and debts with a program aimed at those who may forget to pay. While the navigation of the program is a little rocky at first, users will find a competent program that is short on frills.

This program might instantly overwhelm users, as the main screen is composed of a confusing number of spreadsheet-like rows and columns, along with added boxes in a rainbow of colors. Fortunately, users are prompted to go to the product's Web site and take a tutorial to ease any confusion. The … Read more

Notesbrowser attempts to pull several different organizational functions under one roof, and the end result is somewhat overwhelming. Even the publisher notes that there's a learning curve involved, and you have to be prepared to spend some time with the Help file if you want to understand this program.

Notesbrowser begins on the wrong foot with a cluttered interface full of boxes, lists, and text. Users are advised to take several minutes to simply look over the options, because tabs and subcategories are certain to appear out of the background. The program offers ways to manage downloaded music, contacts, … Read more

Things for iPhone is a well-designed, easy-to-use, highly scalable task-management app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it's even better when paired with the Mac desktop app of the same name. Like its desktop counterpart (with which it can sync over Wi-Fi), Things for iPhone offers a clean, intuitive interface based around the popular "Getting Things Done" productivity method. Tasks are collected under Projects (sets of smaller subtasks), Areas (areas of responsibility, such as work or family), and an In-box "waiting area" for unsorted tasks.

Things has a handy Today list (which displays the … Read more

Agenda At Once will keep you on top of all of your appointments, but make sure you pencil in enough time to learn how to navigate the busy user interface.

Regardless of your skill level, this program's user interface is sure to overwhelm you. Toolbar upon toolbar is stacked on top of each other, and unintuitive buttons required us to hover our mouse over each one to learn its function. We were glad to find that the View menu does let you customize the user interface by adding and removing toolbars, but even this requires some investigation before you … Read more

The misleadingly named PIM is an adequate, but uninspiring archiving tool amid a sea of more capable multifunction utilities. However, what this program lacks in features, it makes up for in the power of its compression algorithm. It doesn't offer much in the way of an interface, relying on window menu items or an incomplete set of shortcut keys to access its functions.

PIM delivers on its promise of creating smaller compressed files (compared with a ZIP file), using its proprietary format, and it opened ZIP files as expected. Its minimal options/settings window lets you easily associate the … Read more