I definitely didn’t realize that tech support forums are apparently now hunting grounds for crazed environmentalists. (And before you immediately stop reading and write me off as one of those conservative freaks, note that by “crazed environmentalists” I mean to say “environmentalists who are crazy,” not “all environmentalists.” I am, myself, an environmentalist.)

I logged on to Get Satisfaction to suggest a feature for Google Calendar (in case you want to know, I was suggesting that it allow you to hide the early morning hours during which nobody schedules appointments and which serve no function other than to take up extra space in my calendar) and rather than the normal kvetches about bugs and missing features, I instead found what you see in the screenshot on the left.

Now, most people would say that this is a good thing–holding corporations accountable, blahblahblah, increasing awareness, so on. But first of all, Google IS doing things to promote sustainability. Each one of the questions in the screenshot that has a green checkmark and an “Answered” under it has a response from a member of the Google team detailing, calmly and rationally, the various pro-environmental policies that Google has. Yet these maniacs continue hawking their agenda on what is obviously a forum for tech support, not politics.

Furthermore, when I see questions like the first one–”Why isn’t Google doing anything about climate change?”–I get extremely annoyed. Why? Because, well, Google ISN’T doing anything about climate change. It’s not producing gas-guzzling SUVs, it doesn’t build factories that belch chemicals into the atmosphere, and it’s not dumping waste into rivers. Google makes and sells online services. Yes, it uses electricity to do so. But so do YOU every time you turn on your computer to use those services. Demanding that Google “do something” about climate change is like demanding that a factory producing refrigerators “do something” about animal cruelty. Say what?

If course, if Google does use some of its money and time to help environmental causes, that’s great. I am 100-percent in support of that. But degrading the company if it doesn’t? That’s a tad bit harsh.

Some of these demands also completely cross the line of what is reasonable to ask of a company in the tech business. One fine gem is titled “Could Eric Schmidt ask Barak Obama to go to Copenhagen?” (Misspelling of Obama’s name theirs, not mine.) Somebody tell me why on God’s good earth the CEO of an internet company should be expected to enter the political domain and make demands of the President of the United States. Somehow, I think Obama will be able to use his position (not to mention experience in politics) to figure out this issue for himself, without the help of a guy who writes search algorithms.

Finally, this is more a question of logistics and rationality than ethics, but why the HELL do we need that many threads that are all about the same thing? I counted an unbelievable 37 threads about environmentalism in the first three pages of the Google Calendar section–that’s out of only 60 threads total!

Although I support environmentalism and sustainability, sometimes it’s really hard to. Because even though rationally and ethically I agree with these principles, the other people who agree with them can be so goddamn annoying sometimes.

Good Morning!

So I’ve been doing a whole lot of this the last few days:

I created a shared calendar with Google Calendar for Aaron and I to share since we have so many events coming up plus about a million tasks to complete for the wedding.

On Thursday, I stopped at Giant Eagle to get some flu medicine and got their salad bar for lunch. I also got some zinc and vitamin c supplements. They DON’T SEEM TO BE WORKING since I’m still sick but it’s cool. This salad was amazing. I love artichokes!

Hmm Wednesday and Thursday otherwise, were pretty uneventful. I was primarily just trying to nurse myself back to health and not go CRAZY sitting around being unproductive. I felt so lazy. Thursday I decided to take a walk because the weather was great and I was feeling better. I walked to Whole Foods, got a few things and then walked back. Bad idea. Once I got home, I felt horrible again. Lame.

Friday morning I went to the doctor’s (no H1N1) though they didn’t even test me… The doctor basically just said, you’ll be fine… I need to find a new doctor. I’m not a fan of this place at all. Anyway, Aaron stopped at my house after work and we went to his house to hang out. We made some split pea soup from a mix and discussed what we might want to do with the house once I move in! Troy Hill! Oh yes. Future home.

I love split pea soup.

Aaron did his dishes:

And I took pictures of myself:

And was not helpful at all:

Check out my future bike! I’m so excited! It’s an old Schwinn and was purchased for $5!

Ring!

I ended up going home around 11:30 last night and went right to bed (after reading a few blogs…) I woke up this morning at 7:30 and realized I felt sick again. AH. Headache. Sweaty. Gross. Hm. I ate oatmeal for breakfast and had some tea and then took an Advil and then took my temperature. Fever again. Hm.

So I’m lying on the couch yet again watching PBS cooking shows. All I wanted to do this weekend was go for a run because the weather is beautiful and perfect but it’s not looking very likely at this point. I’m hoping if I rest this morning, I’ll feel better this afternoon and then be healthy enough to go for a jog tomorrow! Hope hope hope.

Alright have a great Saturday!

As a coworker of mine put it, I recently “stepped into the 21st century” by splurging on the Droid the day after its launch. I’ve been intrigued by the smart phone for some time and would have jumped all over the iPhone but the coverage from AT&T really sucks in my neck of the woods. When they started talking about the Droid on Verizon’s network, I got all giddy and couldn’t wait to get one. Not to mention how much fun it could be writing my own mobile apps. I guess it’s time to dust off my Java books and lube up my copy of Eclipse.

This post, however, is less about technical stuff and more about getting what you want where you want it, and that is calendar and contact synchronization. I’m not saying that this is the only way, or the best way, but I dug around for several hours and tried all sorts of free and demo software and this is what ended up working for me with the least amount of pain.

First, some back story on my situation. I’m an avid Yahoo Mail user and have been for about 10 years. I like Yahoo mail with all it’s Ajax goodness and sleek interface. GMail on the other hand, seems clunky. As a coworker of mine put it, “it looks like something that was designed by programmers”. I have a GMail account to use for all the wonders that Google offers, like analytics and other services. Being that the Droid is heavily integrated with Google, the calendar and contacts functionality on the phone depends on the Google Calendar and GMail Contacts. So now I was faced with the problem – how do I get my events, appointments, reminders and contacts from Yahoo to my phone?

NOTE: I’m running Office 2007 on Windows 7 64bit

How I am Synchronizing Yahoo! Contacts and Calendar with Outlook and GMail

1. First I am doing 2 way synchronization between Yahoo and Outlook for contacts and calendar.  This is very simple using Yahoo’s AutoSync addon for Outlook/Outlook Express.  You can install the bits for this program by first going to Calendar and then clicking the “Sync” link in the top right.  You can also get more info from VersionTracker.  This addon isn’t 100% rock solid and sometimes won’t fire up, but not sure what the circumstances are.  I don’t think it’s officially supported in Windows 7, but it’s been working good enough for now.
2. Now that I have all my Yahoo contacts and calendar entries in Outlook, it’s time to find something to synchronize Outlook to Gmail.  I went into this thinking this would be a simple task, but let’s just say there’s a lot of crap software out there both for free and for pay.  What I ended up using was the addon from Soocial.com, which a contact management service that helps keep your contacts organized.  They offer tools to sync several providers, but the Yahoo sync is only one-way, which is why I am using AutoSync to handle that.  Their GMail sync tool only works for contacts, which leads me to item 3.
3. To keep my outlook calendar synchronized with the GMail calendar, I am using Google’s Calendar Sync Tool.  You may be as surprised as I was to find that Google offers a tool to sync the calendar but not contacts.  I think it has something to do with the Apps Synch product that requires an Enterprise license.
   Note: Google does offer a way to sync iTunes contacts with GMail, but that seemed like a whole other can of worms.

At first I had reservations about putting all my contacts on Soocial.com, but I couldn’t find anything sketchy about them in the public domain.  If you have any knowledge about this service, please share.

So what I’ve ended up with is this:

Yahoo -><- AutoSync –><- Outlook –><- Soocial.com -><- Gmail Contacts
GMail Calendar -><- GMail Calendar Synch –><- Outlook

Now when I add a contact or calendar entry in Outlook or Yahoo, I will see it on my Droid.  Conversely, if I’m on the road and add something in my Droid (Gmail), I’ll see it in Yahoo and Outlook within 90 minutes (configurable).  It not as seamless and I’d like, but it works pretty good for now.  I’ll update the post if things start to get dicey or ifwhen something better comes along.  Based on the number posts and questions on the web regarding this topic, I’m sure this will help at least a couple people trying to mesh into this new fangled era of being constantly connected to the world from your powerful little handset.

医師会会員各位
Googleカレンダーのリマインダー機能を利用し、医師会主催行事等をメーリングリスト(UMINサーバー)で配信しています (2008/2/25 -)。

エントリー「Calendar Information HNMA」
　http://hnma.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/calendar-information-hnma/

[1] 全予定行事をユーザーID未入力で、携帯キャリアまたはパソコンでご覧になる場合 (2008/12/7 -)、
　http: // ****
にアクセスして下さい。

[2] 指定時刻（・・36時間前、12時間前、・・）に届いたメール本文のURLをクリックして、全行事をご覧になる場合、
　ユーザーID “****” パスワード “***” を使用して下さい。
※ Google Apps, Google App Engine などを組み合わせた独自の配信システムで、他のアクセス方法は制限中ですので、ご了承下さい。

エントリー「EasyPIM for JPmobile 利用開始」
　http://hnma.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/easypim-for-jpmobile/
エントリー「Google Apps – Standard Edition利用」
　http://hnma.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/google-apps-standard-edition/

For many of us who rely on Google calendar to regain order in our lives, you’d be interested to add a public holidays calendar of your country. Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Good news is that Google allows you to add holidays of several countries in the world. Bad news is it’s not very accurate with its dates of holidays, at least in the case of Singapore. This is due to the fact that many of our Asian holidays rely on either the Lunar calendar, the Indian Almanac or some other calendar and hence are rather troublesome to update.

Public holidays from Mom
The Ministry of Manpower (Mom) publishes the public holidays on their website and also provides an ICS format which allows us to import it into our calendars (Google calendar, iCal or Outlook). However, this calendar is only available for year 2009. Mom has not yet created an ICS calendar for 2010, perhaps because it does not wish to create confusion by issuing out a calendar before finalising the Deepavali date*.

Problems faced
But there’s another problem. Even if Mom’s calendar does become available for 2010 these calendars are only forecasted annually and you’ll have to delete the previous year’s calendar before importing the new one each time.So now we have two problems, one is that Mom cannot issue out a new ICS calendar until it’s dates are all confirmed to avoid anarchy and the other is that it’s rather troublesome to have to visit Mom at the end of each year just to update our public holidays calendar.

A proposed solution
Here’s a proposed solution for both problems. Mom could create a public calendar to share online. Once we’ve added such a calendar Mom will be able to make changes to the calendar and it will be reflected immediately on our calendars.

Shared Google calendar
If you’re looking for an updated and reliable calendar of our public holidays then fret not, I’ve taken the liberty of manually adding each holiday to a public calendar so we can all share it with ease. I will update this calendar each year and it will appear automatically on your calendar without you having to update or import a new calendar.

Here’s the Singapore Public Holidays Calendar ID: gph69il9dtu6g7tkc5ci6lbbfs@group.calendar.google.com
(copy this address and add it to your Google calendar)

*The Ministry of Manpower has announced that Deepavali (or Dewali, as it is more commonly known around the world) is set at 5 November 2010, but adds a disclaimer that “the date needs to be checked against the Indian Almanac when it is available. Should there be a change in date, the Ministry of Manpower will issue a press release to announce the change.”

Disclaimer: As this calendar is based on the Ministry’s website, please note that the 5 Nov 2010 is still the tentative date for Deepavali until further updates become available. This is not an official calendar of Singapore’s pubic holidays and is in no way affiliated to the Ministry of Manpower. If you choose to add this public calendar you do so at your own discretion and understand that we cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies.

You never thought of that,… or maybe you’re scared of that. What does google know about you? You can say that there are at least 2 types of info google picks up about us: the information we tell him/give him, and the information we don’t, but it is our behaviour online.

What do we tell google about ourselves?

• A good way to tell google about yourself is your google profile, that is: contact info, about you, the blogs you write, websites you work for, any links related to you, where you have been on the earth, the sidewiki, your picassa albums picture flow, etc.
• Google dashboard – google picks up from online the services you use and centralizes them, allowing you to change your personal data in these accounts: the blogger account, calendar, the contacts, google docs, gmail, iGoogle, orkut, picasa, the profile, google reader, google talk, google voice, google voice, and your web history – your history/items in these services.
• whatever you put online about yourself and is searchable, starting from a website, a blog, twitter, a profile page, a network, a forum, etc. Or what the others say about you.

What we don’t tell google about ourselves, but he knows/picks up/learns about us

• our web searches and web history, our preferences – if or even if not we’re logged into our google account. He records this and then personalizes your results according to what you last time visited – he “learns” you….
• your emails tell google what kind of adds to display, depending on the words you have in the emails; the same with the google chat: google picks the words/people you talk to/about the most…. your preferences…
• your google docs tell google about you, your preferences, your collaboration, your friends, your trends, and it offers you an unlimited space where you can put your docs online;
• if in the States, your google voice – the transcribed conversations, google taps into them…. – not harmfully, “do no evil” being their motto;
• all the google services you use, whether on the desktop or online, tell google a little about yourself. You may not know that much about your preferences, but google learns from you, adapts, serves you what you want…. Maybe you use google docs, gmail, google calendar, google desktop(nice, useful, customizable, gadgets), igoogle, google chat, youtube, picasa, google notebook, google maps, google earth, the google search engine + various versions of it, google checkout, google analytics, google trends, google toolbar, etc(a list can be here).

Uhm… these articles are supposed to be short…. yet this one is interesting: google offers more and more free products, “free versions of the existing commercial products/softwares in the market“, and we gladly use them(they are free, they are online, you just need… a browser! By us using them, giving feedback, or even without it, google learns of our behavior, our personality, preferences, etc… Guess what: even if we don’t use the google products/services, by indexing the web, google finds you/about you wherever you are! Even on facebook, even with your secret profile, he finds you in your friends’ friends list! Same on twitter. So why not be open about it all and create your profile, “feed” google with the information you think is relevant about you…

Should we be scared about that? I honestly don’t know. What I know is that it is getting more intense – addictive – interesting. With google wave, with the other startups that have such cool features that we use & then google buys them,… I don’t know….

تقويم Google يعتبر ثورة حقيقية لتنظيم أعمالك وضبط مواعيدك بطريقة سلسة جداً، وبمجرد اعتيادك على التقويم لن تتمكن من دونه أبداً، بالنسبة لي جعلت صفحتي الرئيسية هي تقويم Google بحيث أتمكن من ادخال مواعيدي ومشاهدة ما أجندتي مباشرة.

يذكر أن تقويم Google يستطيع تنبيهك بالمواعيد بأكثر من طريقة، سوءا عن طريق البريد الالكتروني، او عن طريق رسائل الـ SMS إلى جوالك [محظور على سوريا].

الآن للدخول إلى صفحة التقويم اتجه مباشرة من خلال الصفحة الرئيسية لـ Google واختر تقويم Google أو اضغط هنا.

في البداية سيكون شكل التقويم افتراضياً مخصص للأسبوع، بالطبع تستطيع تعديل وتخصيص التقويم ليناسب احتياجاتك، وذلك بالضغط على إعدادات التقويم في أعلى يسار الشاشة.

لاحظ امكانية اضافة التقويم الهجري، كما يمنك طباعة الشهر لانشاء روزنامة خاصة بك تحتوي على جميع الأحداث التي ترغب بها

الآن وضمن صفحة الاعدادات لديك أربعة ألسنة “عام“، “تقاويم“، “إعداد الجوال“، “الميزات الاختبارية“، لنبدأ بالعام:

في باب “عام” لديك العديد من الخيارات الواضحة، من اللغة إلى البلد، إلى التوقيت، إلى تنسيق التاريخ، كما يمكنك تحديد متى يبدأ الأسبوع وطبعاً تحديد العرض الافتراضي والمفضل هنا هو الشهر، أمّا العرض المخصص، فهو تحديد عرض مخصص لك، كأنك تعرض فقط ثلاثة أيام أو 15 يوم القادمة.

بالنسبة للتقويم البديل، يمكنك اضافة التقويم الهجري، وفقاً للكويت أو السعودية أو التقويم الهجرية القياسي، كما يمكنك تحديد التقويم الصيني، حيث يعرض لك جانب كل يوم ما يقابله بالتقويم البديل.

ننتقل الآن إلى لسان “التقاويم“، وهنا لدينا ثلاث ألسنة أيضاً، “تفاصيل التقويم“، و “مشاركة هذا التقويم“، و “التذكيرات“.

ضمن “تفاصيل التقويم“، افتراضياً سيكون لديك تقويم باسم بريدك الالكتروني، اضغط عليه لتعديل الاعدادات الخاصة به، الآن ضمن صفحة الاعدادات الخاصة بهذا التقويم، حدد اسماً مميزاً لهذا التقويم، وضع وصفاً له، بالاضافة إلى تحديد مكان هذا التقويم، [الوصف والمكان مفيدين فقط في حالة جعلت التقويم عام].

قم بـ تعيين المنطقة الزمنية للتقويم، وإذا أردت دمج هذا التقويم مع موقعك يمكنك أخذ الكود من المربع المتاح لك، كما يمكنك تخصيص هذا الكود بالضغط على “تخصيص اللون والحجم والخيارات الأخرى“.

الآن إلى الجزء المهم، وهو عنوان هذا التقويم، لاحظ لديك خانتين، وهما “عنوان التقويم” و “العنوان الخاص“:

“عنوان التقويم” هو العنوان الذي عليك تقديمه للآخرين في حال مشاركة التقويم، أمّا “العنوان الخاص” فهو العنوان الذي يضمن الوصول للتقويم سواء شاركته أم لم تشاركه ومن المفضل تقديم “عنوان التقويم” وليس “العنوان الخاص“.

لاحظ وجود ثلاث مستطيلات ملونة، الأول بالأزرق وهو عنوان التقويم كـ HTML يعني يفتح لك التقويم وكأنك تتصفح صفحة ويب عادية، يمكنك حفظها بالمفضلة، الأخضر وهو ICAL هو عنوان التقويم الخاص باستيراد التقويم أو تصديره، مثلاً إذا كنت تريد دمج تقويم آخر مع تقويمك فأنت بحاجة لهذا العنوان.

الأحمر وهو عنوان المزامنة XML، متوافق مع RSS، وهو عنوان بث الأحداث مباشرة، يمكنك قراءة هذه الأحداث عبر قارىء RSS، مثل Google Reader.

لننتقل لآن لخانة “مشاركة هذا التقويم“، ومن خلال الاعدادات المتاحة يمكنك جعل هذا التقويم متاح ويمكنك دعوة أشخاص عبر البريد الالكتروني ليشاركوا في قراءة أو تغيير واضافة الأحداث، أو ادارة المشاركة بالاضافة لما سبق.

أمّا في صفحة التذكيرات، حدد الطريقة التي تريد تنبيهك إلى مواعيد افتراضياً، علماً أن التنبيه بواسطة الهاتف الجوال معطلة في سوريا، بسبب الحظر التقني المفروض على سوريا من Google.

الآن احفظ الاعدادات ولنبدأ بتسجيل أو موعد لك، يمكنك تسجيل الموعد بالضغط مباشرة على أي يوم تريد، أو باختيار انشاء حدث من أعلى يمين الشاشة، ضع تفاصيل هذا الحدث، ضمن كل خانة مطلوبة، واحفظه.

تسجيل الأحداث هنا يكون ضمن تقويمك الافتراضي، يمكنك انشاء تقويم آخر خاص بك،  ويمكنك تلوين كل تقويم بلون خاص مميز لتتمكن من تمييز الأحداث، كما يمكنك اخفاء تفاصيل التقويم وذلك بالضغط على اسمه ضمن صندوق “تقاويمي“، لاحظ اختفاء لونه وعند الضغط مجدداً يعود محاط باللون.

الآن لنفرض أنّك تريد استيراد تقويم نشاطات حلب إلى حسابك بحيث يظهر لديك ضمن صندوق منفصل يدعى بـ “تقاويم أخرى“، لفعل ذلك اتجه إلى صندوق تقاويم أخرى.

اضافة تقويم باستخدام عنوان URL

اضغط على السهم الجانبي واختر اضافة تقويم باستخدام عنوان URL.

أدخل العنوان التالي في الصندوق الذي سيظهر، مع تحديد خانة “هل تريد تمكين الوصول بشكل عام؟”.

http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/8hta58m9k4abomdkatbb4sm86s%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

سيظهر لديك التقويم بشكل مستقل كتقويم آخر، اذهب إلى اعدادات هذا التقويم لتحديد طريقة تنبيهك عبر البريد الالكتروني للأحداث القادمة، أو لالغاء اشتراكك بالتقويم فقط اتجه إلى اعدادات التقويم واضغط الغاء الاشتراك، يذكر أنّ تقويم “نشاطات حلب” هو بالتعاون مع مجموعة Event of Alep على فيسبوك.

كما يمكنك بنفس الطريقة اضافة تقويم ذاكرة جولانية التي ترصد أحداث مهمة في تاريخ الجولان السوري المحتل وذلك باضافة تقويم باستخدام عنوان URL ثم انسخ والصق هذا العنوان:

http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/70vcit2n17io6c3g9jd19su18s%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

الجدير ذكره أنّ الحدث المظلل بلون كامل يعني أن الحدث لا توقيت له فهو يشمل اليوم كله، أمّا الغير مظلل فله توقيت يكون مكتوب بجانبه.

بكلّ ودّ مع التحية.

Google Calendar is a robust tool for managing and sharing events.  It’s completely free, and anyone who can copy and paste can create an account and drop an embedded calendar on to their site within a few short minutes.  With these advantages, it’s no surprise Google Calendar has quickly become the leading online events calendar publishing tool.

It might not be the right option for you, however, depending on your site’s intended audience and purpose.

There are three major disadvantages to using Google Calendar to publish your online events calendar:  search engine optmization issues, appearance considerations, and accessibility problems.

Google Calendar and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How do you get more people to come to your site?  If you find yourself asking that question often, Google Calendar is probably not for you.  The best, most tried and true method for attracting users to your website is to provide them with relevant, high quality content, and lots of it.  If you are slogging away, building a reputation for your blog or online community, inputting all of your events into Google Calendar and publishing them on Google’s servers is a huge step backward.

If you use a PHP-based calendar hosted on your own site, users who search for keywords and phrases contained within one of your calendar entries will find their way directly to your site.  If  your site is a good resource for this type of information, these visitors will come back.  If you are in the business of selling advertising on your site or use your website to raise awareness of your organization, product or company, more visitors improves your bottom line.

If you use a Google Calendar, users who search for these same keywords and phrases may be directed to other sites which aggregate Google Calendar feeds, to your stand-alone calendar at Google, or never find your events at all.

SEO considerations should never drive content.   However,  the way that content is presented and how it is stored should always be done with an eye toward how you expect your users to discover it.  Simply dropping an embedded Google Calendar into your website works great for a well-established site with little competition, and/or in a situation where spreading the word about individual events is more important than sending people to your site, specifically.   (Like, say,  the official website of a city.)

If you depend on search engine traffic to build your readership, look for a calendar solution that is hosted on your own site, preferably within your existing content management system.

Google Calendar Appearance Customization Issues

Google Calendar’s default design style is nice enough, but can’t be customized beyond a few very minor tweaks.  If you design or develop sites  for other people, chances are they won’t like to hear that.  This is the default look for an embedded calendar (sized down a bit):

As you can see, it’s nice enough.  The rounded corners and blue color scheme, however, are not optional.  We also have no control over fonts and spacing.

Here it is again in “Agenda”  view.

Google allows a few minor customizations, such as changing the background color at the top, adding an outside border, toggling on and off some of the labels and tabs, and resizing the whole calendar.

If your site design is harmonious with Google’s, this may all work out just fine.  However, if you use a warm color palette or a very different style of typography it may stick out like  a sore thumb.  If your client insists on a specific style guide, an embedded Google Calendar may not work for you at all.

Google Calendar and Accessibility

As of this writing Google does not appear to have written a VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) for Google Calendar. This is a shame, because the VPAT authoring process would doubtless highlight a few serious accessibility concerns with this often-used product.

Google has made some inroads into the development of decent alternatives for the visually impaired, for those who have their own Google Calendar accounts and are logged in to the system.  For example, this view allows a user to read their calendar in a screen reader friendly simple XHTML format.   A screenshot for those of you who don’t have Google Calendar accounts:

Of course, this view doesn’t include all of the bells and whistles.  To provide a more advanced experience for the visually appeared, Google has developed an ARIA-enhanced version of Google Calendar.

Once again, in order to access these features a user must have their own Google Calendar account and be logged in.  In other words, if you are using Google Calendar to publish an events calendar to your website, the casual visitor will not have access to these features.

Embedded calendars (the kind you copy and paste into your site) use iframes, which are not accessible to many screen readers.  To work around this, it is possible to use the calendar’s RSS feed to publish a text-only version of the calendar.  In order to do so, however,  you need to do some customizations to the feed in order to get it to publish in the correct chronological order, rather than by date of event publication.  This post at “Helen’s Nerdy Blog” has some great step by step instructions, but you have to understand how to draft the necessary code to get it to work, and you have to be comfortable using an outside feed generation service.  All of this amounts to a lot of extra work for what should be a simple calendar sharing option.

Given all of these limitations you might be surprised to read that I have still utilized Google Calendar in my site designs, and would do so again given the right set of circumstances.  Is Google Calendar right for your site?  It depends.  Take into account the SEO downside, lack of customization options, and accessibility problems and weigh these factors against the product’s popularity, ease of use, and well thought out features (such as a robust repeating events function) and choose wisely.

Sembra molto semplice, in realtà non lo è. Sto preparando un articolo con tutti i problemi che ho riscontrato con questo smartphone, oggi cerco di chiarire le idee su come sincronizzare i contatti, le email e il calendario con Gmail e Google Calendar.

Se si utilizzano tutti e due, e si vogliono avere sempre sincronizzi (i nuovi appuntamenti/email creati al pc o dal telefono finiranno nell’altro apparecchio e viceversa, purché connessi ad Internet ovviamente!), basta seguire questa guida (solo in inglese) passo passo preparata da Google:

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740&topic=14252

Da notare che NON bisogna scegliere “Google Gmail”, ma Microsoft Exchange perché il servizio funzioni bene!

Attenzione! Se sono stati configurati più calendari (ad esempio “lavoro”, “casa” ecc), occorre fare dell’altro per visualizzarli.

Bisogna andare nel calendario di iPhone e per ogni calendario aggiuntivo:

1. Impostazioni -> e-mail,contatti,calendari
2. Aggiungi account -> Altra > Aggiungi account CalDAV
3. Come server scrivere: www.google.com
4. Come nome utente e password usiamo quelli dell’account Gmail
5. Come descrizione il nome del calendario secondario

Se invece si possiede solo un account email della grande G, la guida passo passo è qui:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=it&answer=77702

stavolta in italiano.

Le ho provato entrambe, e funzionano, anche con l’ultimo firmware 3.1.2.

A breve per dei commenti su iPhone 3G!

Before we moved I had a pretty organized schedule that worked well for us. When we moved that schedule got set aside and never made it’s way back into our lives. As a result I have been feeling very disorganized lately and I don’t feel that I’m accomplishing anywhere near as much as I should. Once I got out of the habit of sticking to my schedule it became easy to say that I would get to it later and give in to being tired or not feeling well. Well, later never seemed to come. So now I really need to make an effort to get myself back on a schedule. My blog and my household have been suffering and it needs to stop. This is my big goal for the week since I feel it is the most important to keeping my sanity.

Here’s my to do list for this week:

• Create a New Schedule - Tonight I am working on getting my new schedule setup in Google Calendar. For the rest of this week I am going to work on sticking with it. Next week I will see if it needs any adjusting.
• Organize The “Chaos Corner” in the Kitchen- That corner has been driving me crazy since we moved in. This week I WILL take care of that corner. The Chaos must stop now.
• Inventory The Freezer – I still didn’t get to this last week. Since I plan on doing my monthly Costco run next weekend I need to take care of this. I don’t want to over buy some stuff and not buy enough of others. We don’t live that close to Costco anymore so I’m forcing myself to only go once a month.
• Take Some Time to Relax - I think I’ll be keeping this one on the list every week. It’s important for me to take the time to relax so I’m keeping it on here as a reminder.

To see more To Do Tuesday posts, head over to Crazy Adventures in Parenting.

First impressions:
Bluetooth – as my new Android is currently my secondary device but I’m using it for my calendar along with Google Calendar, having just entered a new appointment on the Android, I hoped to have been able to send the calendar event via Bluetooth to my Blackberry (my primary device). Unfortunately, in the calendar I could find the send option, Oh well!
GPS Reciever – seems to be very receptive, picked up 10 satellites in my home town  Thought that with past GPSs, I only ever picked up 6-8 satellites….
Keyboard – a useful way of entering numbers from the QWERTY keypad, is to touch your finger on the letter, then slide it down; e.g. for a ‘1’, touch on ‘Q’ and slide down.
Memory Card – a nice surprise to get a 2GB MicroSD card :-) and a nice slip case in the box.
Synchronisation – beware, if you set the ‘Auto Sync’ to be automatic: 1) Google Mail, 2) Calendar, & 3) Contacts, it does use data and a big drain on the battery throughout a relatively short space of time. I now only turn this on when I connect to my WLAN.
Touch Responsiveness – holding the ‘Pulse’ in your hand is fine, BUT unless I’m imagining it when I’ve tried to operate the ‘Pulse’ on a desk or in a car mount (ok, a good safety feature here!), the touch responsiveness seems to be almost inoperable!
Weather Forecast – a very nice feature of using the Android Calendar ‘In-Sync’ with Google Calendar is that you can have a four day weather forecast inserted listed with ‘all day’ events , showing your selected town and the predicted high/low temperatures in degrees ‘C’ or ‘F’. Also in the Google Calendar on your PC it shows a little pictorial, e.g. sun, cloud, rain etc.

Once you have created your Google apps account you can build a lot of things using  Google mail, Google docs and Google calendar.

I started doing this and learned a lot; trial and error.

However, I would have been better off planning things out a bit more using a Mind Map rather than playing around with headings, images, logos, etc.

We’re now less than a day form the release of Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” (just to be clear, that’s version 9-point-one-zero, not nine-point-one) and now that I’m finally caught up with my news feeds (thanks in no small part to the great work by Antoine Pairet and Andrew Starr-Bochicchio on resolving Bug #460462 for evolution-rss I am back to using Evo for my news feeds) I’ve got some links to pass along. I won’t post links for all 62 articles I flagged as wanting to blog, but I will share a number of links that could be of direct assistance in deciding whether to hold onto Ubuntu 9.04 (or even Ubuntu 8.04 LTS if that’s what you’re using).

• Chenthill Palanisamy: Evolution 2.28.0 released!! I already mentioned some nice updates in Evo and Chenthill wrote a post on Planet GNOME that gives some more info on how Evo has been improved. Shane Fagan has another important post on backing up your Evolution data. You are going to perform a backup before you upgrade. Right?
• Fabián Rodríguez: (Almost) risk-free Karmic testing. Fabián has some very nice information on putting Ubuntu onto a USB flash drive rather than on a disk. I know some of you may be looking for just that kind of info.
• Leandro Gómez: Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 CD labels. Anyone can burn a disk and write on it with a Sharpie to label it, but do you really need to do that? Leandro has 25 pieces of artwork for labels you can use to make your home-burnt disks look even nicer. It could be just what you need to help make the perfect gift for family and friends this coming holiday season. If those aren’t your cup of espresso Ubuntu Geek has compiled a listing of other designs.
• Musings on maintaining Ubuntu: Caveats for audio in Ubuntu Karmic Beta. Granted, some of this info may be a smidge outdated now, but it has some info you may want to have as you look at the upgrade. This is a big part of why some of us recommend testing the new version with either a LiveCD (or a USB drive) before committing to the update. That way you can get an idea of any gotchas you may have coming your way. There is one thing that’s started bugging me about the upgrade, and that’s the loss of a perfectly useful volume controller and replacing it with a Sound Preferences dialog that is nowhere as usable as it was in Ubuntu 9.04.
• Alan Lord: Another Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Review. Alan has a nice review of Ubuntu 9.10 with a lot of screenshots so you can get a better look at how things look in the newest version.
• Martin Owens: Ubuntu’s Minimum Requirements. While not about the new release, Martin has a very nice look at exactly what kind of hardware you need to run Ubuntu. Bryan Quigley takes it a step further and compares it with the minimum memory requirements of some other operating systems. You should also check out Martin’s piece on The BBC Ubuntu Experiment.
• Benedict Stein: How to use Google Calendar in Evolution. Ben’s got just the info you need if you want to merge your gCalendar with your local calendar. It’s now even easier than it used to be. And if you use an encrypted home directory then you absolutely have to read another of Ben’s posts.
• David E. Cruz Avalos: Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. Want more specifics? Want more screenshots? David may have just the post you’re looking for.
• Ubuntu Geek: Nice themes for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) users. I don’t know anyone who gets a single desktop theme and never changes it. Hell, not even I do that, although I do tend to come back to the Mac4Lin themes before long. Ubuntu Geek has also found some other great themes and makes it easy to get them.
• Collin Pruitt: Advice on Downloading Ubuntu Karmic. I definitely wanted to save the best for last. If you think about snagging a disk image on Thursday you could be in for a looong wait. Colin has the key to bypassing the lag that will be created by everyone trying to get it at once. And no, it’s not “wait a day or three.”

If you want to check out an Ubuntu 9.10 Release Party you can check out the list of confirmed parties on the Ubuntu Wiki. Due to some scheduling issues the party for the Boston area, organized by the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo Team, will be held on the 7th of November.

Google Android Calendar In-Sync with Google Calendar
As I’ve recently blogged, I yesterday picked up my new Google Android ‘T-Mobile Pulse’ and what I hoped for, I’ve just had confirmed! I’ve had an iGoogle account for a year or so, GoogleMail, noticed the online Calendar etc but never really used it. That is until now……
I have discovered that I can add Calendar appointments on to my ‘Android’ and add Calendar appointments online to ‘Google Calendar’; then with a couple of clicks, your Calendar data is sync’ed in both directions.
Also, keep your ‘Contacts’ In-Sync between your Android & online with Google too!
This earns

Et av verktøyene jeg bruker mest i min jobb, er Google Reader (GR heretter, sånn for enkelhets skyld). For oss som overvåker nettet som en del av jobben ved hjelp av RSS-abonnementer, finnes det mange tekniske løsninger, men GR er en enkel og god løsning.

GR er et veldig godt verktøy for samling, organisering og deling av feedene man har gående på nyheter, blogger og så videre. Vi anbefaler ofte GR til våre kunder og når vi er ute og holder kurs og foredrag, men opplever også at mange ikke vet hva det er eller hvordan man skal bruke det. Derfor tenkte jeg å lage en aldri så liten bruksanvisning, Google Reader steg for steg.

Det første man må gjøre for å komme i gang med GR, er å opprette en Gmail-konto, hvis man ikke har det allerede. Når det er gjort, ser man at det også har dukket opp en del tilleggstjenester. Disse ligger i lenkeform øverst til venstre på siden:

Utsnitt av min Gmail-side. Den er rosa, men det trenger ikke din å være.

Øverst til venstre ser vi at vi også har fått Google Calendar, Documents og Reader (Google Leser hvis man velger seg norsk). Kalenderen og Docs er også veldig gode verktøy, da de, som alt annet her, både kan deles og er tilgjengelige fra en hvilken som helst maskin som er koblet til internett. Men det er altså GR vi skal fokusere på her.

Hvis du for eksempel er interessert i å følge med på alt som sies om traktorer i norske aviser, går du til din favorittsøkemotor (Google, Bing eller Kvasir eller andre) og søker opp ordet der. Når du har gjort det, kopierer du URL-en (nettstedsadressen), og går inn på GR-siden din igjen. Der finner du en knapp hvor det står “Add a subscription”. Klikk på den knappen, og lim inn URL-en i boksen som kommer opp. Trykk enter, og voila! Du har ditt første abonnement. Hvis du vil ha søk gående på flere ord, gjentar du bedriften. Nå begynner siden din å se omtrent slik ut (bortsett fra søkeordene):

I menyen til venstre, under Subscriptions, får du listen over søkeordene du har lagt inn. Hvis de står med uthevet skrift, betyr det at de inneholder elementer som ikke er lest. Jeg har i tillegg laget en mappe som heter “nyhetsfeed”, hvor jeg har sortert inn de søkene som hører hjemme her. Slike mapper lager du under “settings”, som du finner øverst til høyre på siden.

I det store bildet midt på siden, får du en smakebit på hva treffene dine inneholder. Også her indikerer uthevet skrift at elementet ikke er lest. For å se hele siden slik den fremstår i det opprinnelige mediet, klikker du bare på overskriften. Nederst på hvert element finner du også en rekke valgmuligheter for hva du kan gjøre med det, utover å lese det. Her kan du for eksempel merke innlegg med en stjerne, og på den måten finne tilbake til det senere (i rubrikken Starred Items). Du kan også dele de mest interessante innleggene med andre GR-brukere i ditt nettverk. Det kommer opp i listen “People you follow” i spalten til venstre på siden (illustrert på bildet med Sermos egen frjohnsen).

Slik fungerer altså Google Reader. Det er som sagt et svært nyttig verktøy når man har behov for å følge med på flere temaer og flere steder, noe man jo sjelden har tid til. Og skulle det være noe mer du lurte på om RSS og overvåkning, vil jeg anbefale deg å ta en ørliten titt på CommonCrafts RSS in plain English.

Lykke til!

In Part 2 of the mini series, I have decided to postpone my enthusiasm for Android apps (until Part 3) and write down a few more ‘useful’ tips I have found out.

• Deleting multiple contacts – To delete multiple contacts, with reference to the official HTC Hero manual (Pg 70), navigate to the main ‘People’ list, press the Menu button, then select ‘Delete contacts’, which will allow you to select multiple contacts to delete.

• Deleting all contacts (from Google Contacts sync) – One of the first things I did with my Hero was to login to my Google account. This resulted in almost everything being imported – including all the contacts I have ever emailed.   To make a fresh start, select ‘Settings’ then ‘Applications’, ‘Manage Applications’ then ‘Contacts Storage’ and select ‘Clear data’. Please bear in mind this deletes all your contacts.

• Troubleshooting – Syncing the HTC Hero calendar with Google Calendar – Events in my Google Calendar are automatically displayed by my Hero. However, I could never see the events I added on the HTC Hero online. It turns out the simple trick – as pointed out by TeaLeaf – is to select the relevant ‘Google’ calendar at the top when you first add the event via your Hero (and not My Calendar) so that the next time you login to your Google Calendar – hey presto!

One thing I have to give credit to Orange UK for is that, at a superficial user level at least, they have given the user (me) what seems to be the ‘full’ HTC Hero Android experience with this phone.  To put this comment into context, my last phone – the LG ViewTY – had so many Orange UK customisations, the interface barely resembled what everyone else was reviewing!

The ROM, alas, is not the latest version released (I am told and have read that it improves the speed of the phone and the camera quality) which is strange, given that the ROM Upgrade for Orange (2.73.61.5) came out on 18th September 2009, and I only got my phone last week.

I have noticed the odd freeze, so maybe a ROM upgrade is due at some point. I will cover my attempt at upgrading the ROM in a future post. It will be a landmark first attempt for mildly techie me, so fingers crossed. The installation instructions look quite bewildering!

There’s more to Google Calendar (GCal) (s goog) than meets the eye. At first glance, it seems no different from the printed desktop calendars that used to dominate employee desks. You input your tasks, appointments, and other commitments on their designated dates and refer to the calendar every day. The difference is that with Google Calendar, even the smallest tweak can change it from a simple list of appointments to a comprehensive business tool. Here are some ideas you can start with.

Customize Your Calendar

Like most apps, GCal isn’t “one size fits all”. You can customize several elements to make the calendar fit your needs. Here are some settings you can change:

• Custom views. By default, GCal gives you the following views: Day, Week, and Month. The day and week views can be too short for some, while the month view can be too long for others. You can create a custom calendar view by going to Settings > Custom View and select anything from two days to four weeks.
• Multiple timezones. Since most web workers have professional contacts all over the globe, it might be a good idea to include multiple timezones in your calendar. Just remember that you need to use the Day or Week views to see the timezones compared side-by-side.
• Aesthetics. Apart from the color of each calendar you set up, you can’t really change much of the visuals within GCal itself. Here are some alternative ways to change the calendar’s look and layout:
  • Helvetical. For a minimalist calendar design, you can install Ad Taylor’s Helvetical user script which gives GCal a simpler, cleaner look. If you’re working with a small monitor or a netbook, keep in mind that the large Helvetical header may lessen your usable screen area.
  • Better GCal. This add-on by Gina Trapani is handy for netbook users, as it allows you to collapse the header and the right sidebar, which is handy if you want to install some GCal gadgets but can’t afford to have them hog your screen. It also comes with a sleek gray skin for your GCal interface. I can’t seem to get some of the other features to work, though.

Use Your Calendar as a To-do List

This may seem like common sense — after all, many people use Google Calendar to record their tasks. But my approach helps to keep me organized and gives me a sense of accomplishment.

I created a new calendar and named it “Done”. Whenever I’m finished with an item on my list, I simply transfer it to the “Done” calendar. This calendar is hidden, so if I do all my assigned tasks for the day, my agenda for the day becomes clear and empty, giving me the same feeling of accomplishment when I achieve Inbox Zero.

To add a bit of fun, I uploaded a background image so that when my schedule clears, I can see the word “Done!” for that day (see screenshot below).You can upload your own image for this purpose via Settings > General > Calendar Background.

Use GCal an an Appointment Scheduler

It’s easy to book appointments with Google Calendar if your clients and colleagues have Google accounts, but what if they don’t? Some third-party tools can help:

• Darrell reviewed ScheduleOnce a few months ago, and the Firefox add-on can be found here.
• Earlier this month, Simon brought our attention to the Setster widget, which you can set up on your web site for appointment booking. You can integrate this with your Google Calendar.

Use GCal For Invoicing

If you want to use Google Calendar for invoicing, you can do so with Google Calendar Invoice Creator, a free Adobe Air (s adbe) application. To see how it works, check out the review and tutorial that Thursday wrote. gTime is a similar application, but you only need your web browser to use it.

GCal + Google Docs + Gmail = Collaboration

Apart from just scheduling meetings, you can also use a combination of GCal, Google Docs and Gmail for minimalist project management. The calendar sharing option makes this possible.

Here’s an example: When there’s a new design project for my team, I add a new event on our shared calendar and invite them all to it. I’ve enabled the “Attach Google Docs” feature from Google Calendar Labs, so I have the option of adding a design brief that everyone can refer to (see screenshot below). Unlike using Google Docs by itself, this allows you to attach group-wide email reminders and deadlines to your files. Just remember to share both the calendar and the file.

Also, if you need to add a calendar item while reading your email, simply click on the “More Actions” button, then “Create Event”. Gmail Labs also has Google Calendar and Google Docs gadgets for your sidebar if you need to refer to them often in one interface.

Integrating these three apps isn’t necessary if you already have existing, more robust collaboration software. But if your team is hesitant to use new tools or if you can’t afford to pay extra fees, this simple freebie approach is worth a try.

Search for Past Events

The search function is Google Calendar’s simplest and most overlooked feature. It comes in handy if you want to know the last time you did something, whether it’s a maintenance task for your car, cleaning up your hard drive, or sending greeting cards to your clients. Google’s own Matt Cutts uses this feature to keep track of his haircuts.

How do you use Google Calendar? Do you customize it in any way to suit your needs?