CalendarBar

CalendarBar is an excellent iCal companion for the Mac. It allows you to have quick access to all your calendar events and To-do's from the menu bar of your Mac.

There is support for notifications, a great graphical user interface and, most importantly, this app couldn't be any easier to use.

Like many people out there, I don't really have a need for a fancy calendar app. I do need something to keep a record of all the stuff that I have to do. And if there's something iCal fails at is letting me check those events easily. Having to launch iCal just to check what is up for today is a waste of time. CalendarBar fixes that problem by putting an icon on the top menu bar. You can configure this icon to show a number with all your upcoming events. If you click the icon, you will see a window that shows all your events for today and the next two weeks from all the calendars that you have set up on iCal. The app will keep the colors of your calendars to make things easier for you. If you click an event, iCal will be launched and the event will be opened.

There is support for Growl, which sends notifications via this app. They look great and can be customized.