There are a couple of applications on the Mac that I use almost daily. They are single task apps, that do only one thing. The first is Tea Timer and the second is Alarms. Tea Timer is a Dashboard application. It does one thing it reminds you of things you tend to forget, like your tea is ready or your pizza is done. You can have it send you a Growl notification, a voice alarm or a sound. You can select the background color for Tea Timer. When your ready to use it activate dashboard and chose Tea Timer. To start a countdown click on the time field and enter the hours or minutes or seconds then either hit the play button or enter. When the time is up the Tea Timer alarm will go off. I use this application almost daily.
The second application is Alarms which is a application that sits in your menu bar. If you want to add an event simply tap on the alarm bell and a time line comes down. You can click on a time and manually enter an event. If you enter it at the wrong time simply drag the event to the correct time. If you receive a email or a tweet simply drag it up to to the alarm bell and the time line will drop down and you can drop it into the correct time. If you drop an event into a different day it will add it at the start of the day. (You can choose when you want the day to start and end under Preference.) To move the event to the correct time simply drag it there. Alarms is perfect when you don’t need a full fledge GTD application but you just want a reminder. Alarms can sync with iCal if you want it to.
Both of these applications are for Mac only, if you are a Windows or Linux user what do you use. If you are a Mac user and use something different what is it and why. Tea Timer is a free application. Alarms cost $15.00 and has a 14 day free trial, its available in the App store for $7.99 ( no free trial) . I recommend both of these applications.