What is BirthdayScanner X ?

One sentence

BirthdayScanner X creates calendar reminders in iCal/Mozilla/Outlook.. from anniversaries in the Address Book.

concept

More than one sentence

Once a friend asked me to write an app to remind him of birthdays. That seemed easy enough. However, I did not want to reinvent the wheel and do anything Apple already does out of the box.

Apple has provided some pieces:

We have iCal in MacOS X - an integrated reminder service, reminds you flawlessly of upcoming events, even if iCal itself is not running.

We also have Address Book - where I can enter birthdays and other anniversaries for any of my contacts.

The missing link was to bring the anniversaries from the Address Book over to iCal.

Note: there is an inbuilt Birthdays calendar in iCal, but for a number of reasons that one is not very useful.

Here is where BirthdayScanner X comes in:

So all you have to do is to maintain the anniversaries of your friends and relatives in Address Book. Put anything in there, Birthdays, Wedding Days, ... and let BirthdayScanner X pick them up.

Tip: BirthdayScanner X even helps you finding contacts which do not yet have Birthdays in Address Book: Open the Anniversary List, click Missing and you see all contacts with no Birthdays. Double-click will open the Address Book right on that contact.