In this article you will see how this calendar is used so you can continue making your decision if Xfce 4 is the desktop for you.

Features

The Orage calendar won’t blow you away with features. But it does have a nice set:

• Runs from notification area.
• Import/Export iCal files.
• Alarms.
• View selected date/week.
• Archiving.
• Popup notification for alerts.
• Daily event listing.

Installation

Orage does not automatically install with Xfce. Instead you have to install it manually by following these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “orage” (no quotes).
3. Mark orage for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Once installed you can start Orage by clicking Start > Office > Orage. When you start Orage you might be surprised at the size of the main window (see Figure 1).  Figure 1 shows Orage with the Event Window. Even with both panes, in comparison to  the rest of the desktop, the application takes up little screen real estate. And, if that is still too much for you, you can run Orage from the notification area.

Setup

Figure 2

To set up Orage so it will run in the notification area (or system tray…or systray), you have to open up the Preferences window. To do this click Edit > Preferences. In the Preferences window click on the Display tab and make sure Show in systray is checked (see Figure 2).

There are a few other preferences you might want to take a look at. In the Main Setups tab you can set your Archive threshold. What this will do is automatically archive your calendar when it reaches the set threshold. So if you set your threshold for 3 months, every three months you calendar will archive. If it is set to 0 auto archiving is turned off.

Import/export

One of the features that made me decide to cover this tool is the Import/Export feature. Before I get to far with this, there is not auto-publishing feature for Orage. All of this is done manually. But if you are migrating from one calendar to another, it is helpful.

Figure 3

Orage allows you to Import and Export .ics calendars. This means you can import/export to Google calendars (if you use them). It’s very simple to do. Click File > Exchange Data and then (from the Exchange Data window – see Figure 3) you can import and export your .ics files.

Now you may notice the Foreign files tab in the Exchange window.  This is different than the Importing feature. The import feature actually imports your .ics files into your main Orage calendar file. The Foreign files feature allows you, basically, to add new calendars so that Orage is reading multiple files. This way you don’t have to combine calendars. If you think about it, this would also allow you to share out calendars with other users. What you would have to do is have those other users’ calendar files set as Foreign files and add them from a shared directory. You can set these caledars as read-only if you like.

Final thoughts

Orage is a nice little calendar application. It won’t blow you away with it’s features and tricks, but it will work and work well for you. The ability to import/export ics calendars add “external” calendars is quite nice as is its tiny footprint. If you are looking to use Xfce, you will want to take a look at Orage and consider it as your calendaring application.

Reminder Feed is one of the few services that does not ask the user to register an account before allowing them to use the service. Everything can be done without account registration. The main page of the reminder service displays the form that can be used to create a new reminder.

The only mandatory fields are the title, the start date and the description. Optional fields are the end date, a link and a password. Reminders will be send out daily until the end date is reached if it was specified.

The reminders can be edited at anytime by anyone if no password was specified or by the creator if a password was specified. This could be used to change the message and title to something else.

The service has not been updated in three years but it is still working as intended.

New events can be added easily to the software application. Each event consists of a date, a warning message and notes. The event can be set to repeat every year which is handy for birthdays and other annual events. The warning message will be displayed whenever the program is activated and the note can be displayed by hovering over a small icon next to the message.

The program will start to remind the user 10 days before the event and stop doing so 3 days afterwards. This can be changed in the options for all events or customized for specific events.

The preferences contain options to change the display of the warning messages which includes customization of the colors and fonts. Mini Reminder uses roughly 2.6 Megabytes of computer memory while running which makes it ideal for users who have no other means of keeping track of important events.

It can be used to send reminders and alerts to your phone so that you are reminded about a specific event in the future but it can also be used to send invites or reminders to a bunch of people. The service is currently only available to users that live in the United States of America who can send and receive messages by phone. It is however possible to record a message on the website and send it to individuals that live in the United States which makes it a nice tool for everyone who wants to contact someone in the USA.

A microphone is required to record messages on the website directly. Those messages are saved on the Internet and can be sent to phone numbers later on. Phone numbers can be added manually or taken from so called phone groups that contain a number of saved phone numbers. It would make sense for example to have a family and friends groups in there.

One interesting feature is the RSVP one. RSVP means Répondez s’il vous plaît which means something like Reply Please. Recipients can be asked to reply to the message with a Yes, No or Maybe which comes in handy for invitations or meetings.

Calls can be scheduled but premium messages will always be prioritized over free messages which could mean that the free messages get delayed until the premium calls have been completed.

The main differences between free and premium accounts beside prioritization is the amount of simultaneous calls. Premium accounts can make up to 2000 calls at once while free accounts have a 25 call limit. On the other hand each Premium call costs $0.05.