Balloon Scheduler ™ is a FREE full featured desktop reminder application that allows you to keep track of important events in a very easy way, so you'll never forget your girlfriend’s birthday, Valentines Day or to download that mp3 file.
KEY FEATURES:
● 100% Freeware – no nasty trial periods or registration codes to worry about.
● No need to forget dates like:
When is spring?
When is autumn?
When is summer?
When is winter?
When is Halloween?
When is Valentines Day?
When is Burns night?
When is Mothers Day?
When is Fathers Day?
When is Thanksgiving?
● Balloon Scheduler ™ can be hidden in system tray for non obtrusive access.
● Balloon Scheduler ™ can be setup to run at start-up, only warning you IF an event is approaching etc.
● Countdown – A countdown to a specific date can be customised in the database.
● Customise your reminder messages easily within the database.
● Balloon Scheduler ™ can be set to ‘switch itself off’ after a predetermined time on start up.
● Balloon Scheduler ™ can be set to ‘switch itself on’ after a predetermined time on start up.
● Simple to use user interface
● Balloon Scheduler ™ can be set to warn you every hour.
● Balloon Scheduler ™ has pre-programmed event dates such as Easter, Valentines day, Halloween, first day of Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Easter Sunday, Burns Night and so on. So you will never forget those dates again. These can of course all be easily added to the database by merely typing in their code word names (no need to remember the exact dates etc).
● British (dd/mm/yyyyy) or USA (mm/dd/yyyyy) date format can be used.
● Customisable for recurring or nonrecurring events. Just tailor your event messages in the database.
More advanced features :
If you wish to get more sophisticated, you can use our “rule based system” within the database thus allowing you to maximise the power of your customisable reminder schedules. Rule based events can be programmed.
DOWNLOAD BALLOON SCHEDULER ™
Click here to download Balloon Scheduler™
RUNNING THE APPLICATION FOR THE FIRST TIME.
Balloon Scheduler ™ has been designed to be as non-obtrusive as possible and hence “sits in the System Tray” as the below picture illustrated:
Balloon Scheduler ™ is non-obtrusive & sits in the System Tray
You can do everything from the system tray by clicking the right mouse button over the icon.
Popup Menu: Right click the mouse pointer over the icon
If you prefer to use a more graphical approach then just double click on the icon to reveal the application window:
If you are running Balloon Scheduler ™ for the first time then you need to setup a couple of things (see Preferences section below).
PREFERENCES USA Date Format
If you are from the USA then you will want to set the date format to (mm/dd/yyyy) . For example the 23rd of March 2007 would be written as 03/23/2007. In order to set up the date format, open the Preferences and click select the “Date Format” check box. The USA date format will be shown in the text box – see screen shot below:
USA Date FormatBritish Date Format (default setting)
The default date format is set to the British (dd/mm/yyyy) format. Thus in the British format, for example, the 23rd of March 2007 would be written: 23/03/2007.
British Date FormatSound Effects
If you want to personalise the application then you can choose to play a “.Wav” sound file every time a balloon alert is triggered. All you have to do is:
1. Open the Preferences and look at the Sound Effect area.
2. Click the check box saying “Play wav file”.
3. Click the “Open wav file” button.
4. Select a wav file of your choice and click “Open”.
5. If you wish, click “Play wav file” to listen to the sound effect that you just selected plays correctly.
6. Click “Save”.
7. Now every time a balloon message is displayed your wav sound file will be played.
Personalise Balloon Scheduler™ with your own sound effects
Select a wav file of your choice
Select saveBalloon warning title
The default Balloon Message Title is set to “B A L L O O N S C H E D U L E R ™”. You can of course change this to say anything you want e.g.
Customise the Balloon Scheduler warning titleDisplay warning message every hour
This is fairly self explanatory. If you wish to have a message displayed every hour (assuming that there is a message to display of course) then click this check box.
Close application on startup after X minutes
Closedown the application automatically after a period of time
This check box can be selected so that, say after 20 minutes (or what ever you specify) of running the application, it shuts itself down permanently and frees up some memory.
Initial time delay X minute(s), before application displays any warnings
The application won’t ‘kick in’ until the application has been running for the selected time. That is to say, if you type say “10” minutes then the application won’t check the database until 10 minutes has passed.
This option is useful for certain situations, for example, AVG Antivirus software may cause problems on startup so by tweaking this value you may get round that kind of obscure problem.
SCHEDULER DATABASE
Screenshot of empty scheduler database
The database can be open in three ways:
(1) Click the right mouse button over the Balloon Scheduler Icon in the system tray and select ‘open date scheduler database’
(2)Double click the Balloon Scheduler Icon in the system tray to reveal the application. Then click the ‘open database icon’ on the application
(3) Double click the Balloon Scheduler Icon in the system tray to reveal the application. Then click the right mouse button over the application window and select ‘open date scheduler database’
Resize Database Screen:
You can resize the Database screen by simply dragging the column widths to where you want them. Also if you want a full screen view then double click the title bar or click the maximise button at the top right corner of the window.
Entering information in the database:
In order to keep track of important events such as Birthdays, Easter Sunday Mother’s Days etc, you need to enter the information into the database. This is very easy to do as the following examples illustrate:
EXAMPLES:
Date Format (USA or British)
As mentioned above, if you are from the USA then you will want to set the date format to (mm/dd/yyyy) . For example the 23rd of March 2007 would be written as 03/23/2007. In order to set up the date format, open the Preferences and click select the “Date Format” check box. The default date format is set to the British (dd/mm/yyyy) format. Thus in the British format, for example, the 23rd of March 2007 would be written: 23/03/2007.
Example 1: Birthday Reminder (simple form)
Your friend’s birthday in on the 25th of November. You wish to have at lease 2 weeks warning before the date is reached.
If you are using the USA date format (i.e. mm/dd/yyyy) rather than the British date format (i.e. dd/mm/yyyy) then you need to set this in the Preferences section (see Preferences section).
The below example used the British date format (dd/mm/yyyy):
Screenshot of Database
Once you have entered the information into the database, simply click save (top right icon).
Thus, you would see the following messages (depending on the date today):
If today’s date is the 11th of November 2007
If today’s date is the 23rd of November 2007
If today’s date is the 25th of November 20071. @DAYS@ will be replaced by the number of days between today’s date and the target date.
2. @AGE@ will be replaced with the difference between today’s date and the target date i.e. the number of years between the two dates.
Example 2: Birthday Reminder (new message displayed on Target date)
Your friend’s birthday in on the 25th of November. You wish to have at lease 2 weeks warning before the date is reached. When the date is reached you want to display a different warning message displaying, for example, his new age etc:
Here is a breakdown of what this means:
There are essentially three parts to this.
(1) The Green section indicated the message that will be displayed 2 weeks BEFORE the 19th of August.
(2) The unhighlighted symbol is used to separate the two messages parts (green and yellow parts).
(3) The Yellow section indicates the message to be displayed ON the 19th of August only.
New message displayed, if today’s date is the target date (25th of November 2007) 
If today’s date was 11 November 2007Example 4: Valentines Reminder (new message displayed on Target date)
Note: In the UK / USA occurs on the 14th of February. In Brazil it occurs on the 12th of June.
Thus if today’s date was 11 November 2007, then there would be 95 days until Valentines Day in the UK and 214 days until Valentines Day in Brazil:
If today’s date was 11 November 2007If today’s date was the 14th of February 2008 then we would get the following message:
If today’s date was the 14th of February 2008If today’s date was the 12 of June 2008, then we would get the following message:
If today’s date was the 12 of June 2008
In 2008, Easter Sunday will fall on 23 March. Thus if today’s date was 11 November 2007, then there would be 133 days until Easter: 
If today’s date was 11 NovemberExample 6: Father’s Day Reminder
In 2008, Father’s Day will fall on the 15th of June (i.e. 3rd Sunday of June). Thus if today’s date was 11 November 2007, then there would be 217 days until Father’s Day:
If today’s date was 11 November 2007On the 15th of June 2008, we would see the following message:
If today’s date was 15th of June 2008Example 7: Mother’s Day Reminder (Note: Mothers day in the UK and the USA are different)
* Note: Mother’s day in the UK occurs exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday. In the USA, Mother’s day occurs on the second Sunday of May.
In the UK, Mother’s Day will fall on the 2nd of March 2008. Thus if today’s date was 11 November 2007, then there would be 112 days until Mother’s Day in the UK:
In the USA, Mother’s Day will fall on the 11th of May 2008. Thus if today’s date was 11 November 2007, then there would be 182 days until Mother’s Day.
If today’s date was 11th of November 2007If today’s date was the 2nd March 2008, then we would get the following message:
If today’s date was the 2nd March 2008If today’s date was the 11th May 2008, then we would get the following message:
If today’s date was the 11th May 2008 Example 8: Thanksgiving Reminder (Note: Thanksgiving in the USA and Canada occur at different dates so you can specify which one you want)
Thus if today’s date was 11 November 2007, then there would be 337 days until Thanksgiving in Canada and 11 days until Thanksgiving in the USA:
If today’s date was 11 November 2007Note: In the USA, Thanksgiving occurs on the fourth Thursday of November. Canadian Thanksgiving occurs on the Second Monday of October.
Example 9: Monthly Occurring Event
If you have a monthly occurring event that takes place such as having to remember to pay your mortgage then you can set this up very easily in the Scheduler Database. For example, say you have to pay your mortgage on the 22nd of every month and you wish to have 7 days warning then you would do the following:
i.e. all that needs to be done is set the month and years to 0.
More Examples:
Here is a list of the other pre-programmed date shortcut code words. They can be used in the same was as the examples above.
DATE SHORTCUT CODE WORDS:
SPRINGNORTHERN
For the Northern hemisphere:
Spring occurs on the 1st of March.
SUMMERNORTHERN
For the Northern hemisphere:
Summer occurs on the 1st of June.
AUTUMNNORTHERN
For the Northern hemisphere:
Autumn occurs on the 1st of September.
WINTERNORTHERN
For the Northern hemisphere:
Winter occurs on the 1st of December.
SUMMERSOUTHERN
For the Southern hemisphere:
Summer occurs on the 1st of December.
AUTUMNSOUTHERN
For the Southern hemisphere:
Autumn occurs on the 1st of March.
WINTERSOUTHERN
For the Southern hemisphere:
Winter occurs on the 1st of June.
SPRINGSOUTHERN
For the Southern hemisphere:
Spring occurs on the 1st of September.
HALLOWEEN
Halloween occurs on the 31st of October
VALENTINE
Valentines Day occurs on the 14th of February in the UK/USA/Canada etc
VALENTINEBRAZIL
Valentines Day occurs on the 12th of June in Brazil.
BURNSNIGHT
Burns Night occurs on 25th of January
EASTER
Easter Sunday is the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon date
MOTHERSDAYUK
Mother’s Day in the UK occurs exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday
MOTHERSDAYUSA
Mother’s Day in the USA and Canada occurs on the second Sunday of May.
FATHERSDAY
Father’s Day occurs on the 3rd Sunday of June.
THANKSGIVING
Thanksgiving occurs on the fourth Thursday of November in the USA.
THANKSGIVINGCANADA
Thanksgiving occurs on the Second Monday of October in Canada.
If you wish for Balloon Scheduler to run every time you switch on your PC then you need to do take the following simple steps:
1. Click the Microsoft Start button at the bottom left hand side of the screen:
2. Click, “All Programs” :
3. Find the Balloon Scheduler program from the menu:
4. Right click here over the file name (see picture) and hit “Create Shortcut”:
5. A short cut file will now be shown on the menu (see screenshot below):
6. Drag this shortcut file (called here in the above screenshot “Balloon Scheduler (2)”) to the following directory: C:\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup in Windows 95, 98, or ME, or at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup in Windows XP. However, it may be at a different location on your computer. You can view the Startup folder in Windows Explorer by clicking the appropriate link (immediately above) if you have used the default; or you can view it by clicking Start Programs StartUp. In Win98 or Millennium, or if Internet Explorer 4 or later is installed, you can edit this directly in the Start Menu, by right clicking on the item you want modify or remove. In Win95 (pre-IE4), the most efficient way to edit it is with Windows Explorer. In Win98 or Millennium, you also can suspend the action of individual startup programs by launching MSCONFIG, clicking the Startup tab, and unchecking the box of any startup items you want to suspend. You can freely delete any items in this folder without risking modifying or damaging any existing programs, because everything in this folder is a shortcut. (It doesn’t have to be). NOTE: There may be an additional Startup folder on your Win 9x computer if multiple users were implemented. This is usually located at C:\Windows\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. Don’t forget to check this one! Similarly, in Windows XP. there normally is an additional Startup folder for each user account. These are found by going to C:\Documents and Settings, clicking the folder for the particular user name, and navigating down through Start Menu and Programs folders to the individual Startup folder. For more information see: http://www.aumha.org/a/loads.php
7. Now that the shortcut file is in the Startup directory, the next time you switch on your PC and load windows, Balloon Scheduler ™ will automatically run.
UNINSTALL BALLOON SCHEDULER™
In order to uninstall Balloon Scheduler™ all you have to do is:
1. Go to the Control Panel
2. Click Add or Remove Programs
3. Select Balloon Scheduler
4. Click uninstall
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Balloon Scheduler™ was developed for Windows XP however is should work on all other versions of Windows.
TROUBLESHOOTING
If you encounter any problems with Balloon Scheduler™ then please email me at BalloonScheduler@Hotmail.co.uk
