We've all had the problem: Life's too full of events and meetings, and our memory can't keep up with it all. So we forget a meeting, a budget deadline, or dinner plans with a friend, and we pay the price for it. iAlarm can help solve the problem.

Simple-to-use reminder program iAlarm can notify you about events, deadlines, meetings, tasks, and appointments, via your PC or Google Calendar. By using the capabilities of Google Calendar, you can then have those alarms sent to your cell phone via text messaging--and to e-mail accounts, where you can access them from any PC or Mac you use to check your e-mail

Creating a new alarm is exceptionally easy to do. Fill in the date, time, alarm type (occasion, anniversary, meeting, task, and so on) and whether it repeats. Then give it a title and description. That's all it takes. At the appointed time, a reminder screen pops up on your PC. You can "snooze" the alarm or dismiss it.

You can use iAlarm by itself, but it's most useful if you use it in concert with a Google Calendar account. If you have one, log in via iAlarm before you create an alarm. Then, when you create an alarm, iAlarm will show the alarm in Google Calendar. The alarm may not be apparent at first; you'll have to make sure to display the iAlarm calendar in Google Calendar, just as you would a co-worker's calendar, holiday calendar, or some such.. Once you see the alarm in Google Calendar, you can set up how you want Google Calendar to notify you, via text message, e-mail, and so on.

There's only one drawback to iAlarm: At $30 (and even on sale for $10 at the time this review posted), it's not cheap. Although it's useful because it can work as a standalone alarm program, and it's a handy front-end for creating alarms for Google Calendar, those features may not be enough to justify the price. Given that you can use Google Calendar by itself to create reminders, iAlarm may not be worth the price for you.

--Preston Gralla