Tag: Google Apps

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.

Getting Around the Sync Error: Google Outlook Sync Tool

I’ve been working with a client to migrate their email systems to Google Apps Premier, as most folks’ emails are being kept on their personal computers and there is a good chance of losing a chunk of work amongst other things.

The task for me was to personally help with uploading all of the disparate systems up to Google Mail, Calendar and Docs. We’ll also be moving some wiki content onto Sites over time but the main issue right now is that we need to get those emails up!

The Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook tool is pretty good at getting everything working with Outlook directly, as well as uploading your existing emails.

Set up is straight-forward, but sometimes an error crops up that is commented in the forums and in the known issues page.

I found that the “Sync Errors” folder that is created doesn’t actually get synchronised. The easy fix is to either upload the folder with the Email Uploader tool, or simply create a label with the same name in Google Apps Mail. Once done, sync should continue to work.

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…