Tag: Google

Multiple Calendars – For People That Do (And Are Mobile)

Maybe it’s because I’m what would be regarded as a ‘power user’ – but I find calendars on my phone and online with Google very, very useful. What is a seemingly simple tool is enabled and ready to make magical things happen.

A discussion that I raised with one of my BBM groups today was a question: Will BlackBerry 10 support multiple calendars? This is and always has been a big deal for me. Although I found myself explaining to one member why it is important. I hadn’t really considered that those who don’t use calendars wouldn’t see the benefits of multiple and shared calendars.

Read on to find out how amazing multiple shared calendars are. Continue reading Multiple Calendars – For People That Do (And Are Mobile)

Google+ Finally Appears for Google Apps Users!

I don’t know if it’s around the web at the moment. But Google+ is finally available for users who have Google+ email addresses,

This means that Google Profiles has finally been enabled for the same users and domains, so we should be seeing some more interoperability between Google related sites.

I only noticed that it was available because the web mail interface had a new look available that matches a number of profiled sites.

Google Down! World Stops!

Well, it’s been going on for about an hour now. Google Mail appears to be having problems. The logon page is slow, logging in times out. Active sessions are broken.

I’ll mark this day in my calendar.

This has also affected Google Apps mail systems, including the educational packages that I’ve set some clients up with.

Will we ever recover? Will the world care? What impact will this have on the global economy?

Only time will tell.

BlackBerry Update

Well, the BlackBerry is coming along nicely. I’m gradually getting it to work the way I want it to work.

So far, the cool bits are:

  • Google Maps uses either GPRS or GPS (you can connect a GPS receiver with Bluetooth)
  • Yahoo! Messenger works off the bat and can stay connected at all times. Never miss an IM again.
  • Google Sync syncs up with phone with my online calendar – finally a computer-less way to do this!
  • Impressive battery life. Even though I have been caning the phone with online and Bluetooth as well as loads of phone calls – it breezes through the day without any problems.
  • The Pearl is noticeably smaller than the N80 and the Razr. This goes against my reputation of having a brick-like phone.

There are some other neat things as well. I had some trouble transferring contact data from my N80 to the BlackBerry, but after some experimentation I found a way to do it that didn’t require a computer. It was somewhat tedious having over 100 contacts though.

I still want to get an IM program installed that will use MSN, as some of my business contacts use this. This will tie in with Yahoo! and Google Talk nicely and round it all off.

The built-in browser is a bit useless, so I’ve installed Opera Mini which can render pages properly when the browser gets stuck. I often find myself flitting between the two though, as Opera doesn’t seem to handle downloads properly.

The only downer is that the BB Pearl doesn’t seem to connect to Ubuntu properly through USB – and the Bluetooth connection is a real pain in the arse. This is probably going to make any kind of synchronisation very difficult – to nigh on impossible. There are the Linux Barry tools in development, which have some way of backing up data and things – but I haven’t had the chance to have a play with these yet.

All in all – the experience is going well, and I’m hoping that I can import my MSN contacts into Google Talk soon. Unfortunately to do that, I need to update our company domain SRV records which is opening another can of worms…

A little late in the day to start whacking

I happened to be watching Dave Gorman’s Googlewhacking Adventure last night. It was a re-run on the Paramount channel from a couple of years ago.

Going into work this morning I got chatting to the lads about the whole concept. I’d never heard of it myself, but Steve said he had. After a quick verification of the rules we went to work, and we were awful!

I gave up after about 30 minutes, we went and had lunch, and then I went to get on with other jobs. The terrible thing about Googlewhacking is that it is extremely addictive and a totally pointless way of wasting time. So when 4 of us are there trying to think of words we could use with philanthropist, important work failed to get completed.

It was while I was ordering some electrical kit, Nick had the Eureka moment and sent me this text message:

Nick wins skyboarding toast

Quite what skyboarding has to do with toast I don’t know. But credit where credit is due, Nick had found a way around the wordlists that plague the internet and destroy your whack results. Skyboarding isn’t a very common word but is listed at answers.com, which Google uses for definitions and to confirm that the words are correct spellings.

So armed with this knowledge Steve slapped in another Googlewhack! There was me in my car losing on the Googlewhack thing! And it’s poker tonight! I knew that I had to make sure that I had at least one Googlewhack to use tonight.

I hit a few Googlewhacks using oddly common words with skyboarding, but I wasn’t getting a pure Googlewhack. As far as the rules were concerned, I’d hit a Googlewhack with a number of searches, but results were omitted.

Oh, no! I have to have it saying results 1 to 1 of 1 at the top. If it doesn’t – I just don’t give a damn.

Skyboarding badgering was out because of this. But, skyboarding LEMONS came through.

And now I’ve got it on my site – as soon as Google realises this, that’s another Googlewhack gone. I feel quite happy – although I think that it’s fair to say all hail Nick who came up with skyboarding.

What a hero.