Brain Sucker Productions has released Background Calendar. The new utility permanently displays a calendar on a useris desktop, and can even be used with customized desktop pictures and patterns. Using Background Calendar, users will always have instant access to dates and appointments. According to Brain Sucker Productions:

St. John Morrison and Brain-Sucker Productions are pleased to announce a new utility for the Macintosh: "Background Calendar." It displays a calendar as part of the ever-present desktop picture, and has numerous settings to personalize the result. Itis best used along with the standard Stickies, with which you can mark the desktop calendar just like you would a paper calendar with real Post-It? notes.

What is Background Calendar?

Everyone needs a calendar. Not everyone needs a scheduling program. Background Calendar is a low-impact, easy-to-use solution for most needs. It has a lot of options, but once you like the way it looks, you donit have to fiddle with it any more.

A lot of your computer experience is based on real artifacts. A word processoris measurement bar looks like a typewriteris margin slider. A database program may have a display like a Rolodex. To discard a document, we put it in the trash. This technique frees us from having to learn different ways of doing things when weire using a computer; itis good sound cognitive psychology.

Itis hard to beat a paper calendar for ease of use. All you have to do is hang it up where youill see it when you need it, and remember to flip the page every month. You can write on it and check it easily to see what events you have coming up in the next two days, this day next week-- whatever. By comparison, scheduling programs require learning, have little to do with the way we use these existing artifacts, and must be specially launched-- they arenit always available. It is with this in mind that I wrote Background Calendar.

The Desktop Picture is available at all times. Sure, it may be blocked by windows, but there are easy ways to get rid of them momentarily. So, Background Calendar is like a paper calendar: itis always available. If you have more than one screen, itis particularly handy to set it up on one of them which is left relatively uncluttered.

Writing on it? Easy. We have another real-world artifact called the "Post-It? Note." On the Macintosh, they exist as "Stickies." So: Why not use them as little "reminders" on a "calendar?"

When run, Background Calendar will generate a calendar for the current month, with whatever options you have selected-- such as outlining the current date, applying colors, leaving margins, drawing on top of an existing desktop picture, and so forth-- and then sets the desktop picture of your preferred monitor to the result. Youill always have a current calendar at your fingertips!

Background Calendar is available for US$10. You can find more information at the Brain Sucker Productions web site.