So, for example if you have a column called start with the date
you can create new formula column and put the following into the formula field:
DATE_FORMAT(Start,'%b %d %Y %h:%i %p')
that will take the date from column ‘Start’ and convert it according to your formula.
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/func_date_format.asp
The NOW(), CURDATE() can be used in filter as well, there is an example of that here Using DataSets to display Birthday
including the dataset tutorial linked in the first post.