Say the Time Review

Have you ever been late for an appointment because you spent too much time playing on the computer? Based on my own experience, visual queues (like the reminders in Microsoft Outlook) are fairly easy to dismiss and ignore.

To combat this bad habit, I use a series of audible and visual cues to remind myself of impending events.

What is Say the Time?

Say the Time is a system tray clock replacement with an additional calendar, scheduler, and sound features.

Say the Time Features:

The System Tray Calendar provides quick access to date, time, and appointment information -- all you need to do is hover over the system clock with the mouse pointer.

There are so many times I need to know what day of the week a particular date falls on, and this is a the quickest way I've found to retrieve calendar information. Why Microsoft didn't build this feature into Windows, I'll never know.

Custom Reminders: Ignoring a simple window with appointment information is easy; ignoring a window reading you details about your appointment is much harder.

Say the Time combines audible time announcements with visual reminders, music / .WAV file reminders, and the ability to launch programs at specified intervals.

I personally use TextAloud to record WAV files of my appointment information, and then use Say the Time to play back the audio message shortly before my appointment is due.

Audible Time Announcements: By default, Say the Time audibly announces every quarter hour (or as frequent as 5 minutes). Times are announced by a human-sounding male or female voice preceded by a ding, chimes, or a tick-tock sound.

If there are times when the clock should be silent, Say the Time will schedule a 'silent time', too.

Configurable Clock Color and Text Appearance: The clock's color may be a gradient combination of two colors, a solid color, or a background pattern. Font size, weight, style, and color may also be modified.

I personally don't use the color feature, but I do enjoy being able to modify the clock font.

Conclusion

The Windows system clock may be one of the operating system's most mundane features.

Say the Time brings the clock to life, with appearance customization. More importantly, Say the Time extends clock functionality with useful features designed to help users keep appointments, remember important tasks, and generally remain organized. Knowing when and where my appointment is going to be is certainly more convenient with Say the Time.

Say the Time: Download

Say the Time costs $24.95. 25% of the proceeds from Say the Time will go directly to fund our web site and newsletter.

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