Geeky Info

Google will shortly release an update to their documents and spreadsheets app, otherwise known as google docs. It will allow presentation sharing and callaboration sharing (will be interesting to see how this is implemented).

“Well, we tried to keep it a secret as long as we could, but to be
honest, we’ve been dying to tell you about the bun we’ve got in the
oven. We’ll soon be welcoming a new addition to the Google Docs &
Spreadsheets family: presentations.”

Read more here

ouch!

They say all publicity is good publicity but this has made it to digg.. and I think I wouldn’t like what is going around if I was this developer.

“My RSS newsreader of choice was NewsFire. It’s a great, polished product. Despite a minor annoyance with the trial version, I slapped down my credit-card for a full version of the software around two years ago, and have been incredibly happy with it since. I can’t put my finger on the reason, but whenever I subscribe to feeds in NetNewsWire or Safari RSS I end up with thousands of unread posts in my less-important feeds, but with NewsFire I’m always on top of my subscriptions.:

the registration system for NewsFire is a bit weird. There’s no license key to lose. To activate the full version of the application you just type in your email address, and it gets verified against some central licence server.

This was all well and good until the last time I reinstalled OS X on my MacBook. When it came time to re-register NewsFire, I was told that my email address was not valid. I sent off a quick support mail to NewsFire’s author, David Watanabe, and got the following reply:

While you may now activate your software again, the evidence suggests that you’ve activated your single-user license from a suspiciously wide variety of locations. An explanation would be appreciated. I don’t want to have to presume this is breach of license.”

read the full post here

My google life is continuing:

What with my mail now in gmail, rss feeds in google reader, my calendar in google calendar, and some documents that I want to share in google docs. I even have google notebook up and running. Things are going well.

However, I am having some trouble with my browsers.

Up to this little holiday google project, I was happily using Omniweb which I find is one of the fastest and slickest browsers for the mac around. But, google reader stumbles with some of its ajax sexiness, and so I have started to look around again. I have used Camino in the past and fnd it pretty fast. But I am trying firefox again, after about a year of not using it. Last time I used it on the mac, it seemed bloated and tired but it now seems to be much slicker. And those add-ons… well, I could be here a while playing with all the add-ons.

As I am switching (as part of my living with google attempt), from mail to gmail, this little trick of using mail tags and the redirect function in apple mail to get my emails into gmail.

“One nice thing about Mail is the Redirect feature, which lets you forward mail to a particular address so that it does not appear to have been forwarded from you. The final recipient sees the message just as you did when it arrived in your inbox.

One annoying thing about Mail’s Redirect feature is that it cannot be used on more than one message at a time. You can’t select, say, the entire contents of one mailbox and tell Mail to redirect all those messages to your Gmail account. If you select more than one message, the Redirect menu item is unusable.

For people with the urge to adopt Gmail as their main email client, and shift their mail archives from Mail to Gmail in one fell swoop, this could be more than just annoying; it could be the deal-breaker that prevents them moving at all.

So be thankful for Mail Act-On, because this handy little Mail utility lets you do perform a simple redirect command for as many messages as you wish, with just a few keystrokes. I recently used it to move several months’ worth of email over to my Gmail account, and it worked like a charm. ”

Read the whole post here

Matthew Miller has a interesting review on the Nokia N95 mobile phone.

“It has now been about a week since I have had the Nokia N95 and I think I have had enough time to pass along my experiences with the quality of the hardware to help you make informed decisions regarding the device. I highly recommend that you read several reviews before making a purchase of this magnitude. Also understand that not every unit that comes out of production is the same so the issues that I am going to discuss may not apply to all the devices. Also, some may say that I am being nit-picky, but I just want to give you all the information I have about the device and let you decide if my concerns are trivial.”

Read the whole review here

James over at jkontherun has blogged about using his macbook pro with the waterfield sleeve case.

“I have been loving the 17″ MacBook Pro since it arrived at Mobile Tech Manor
and it has a warm spot (literally) on my desk where it’s performing
well as a complete desktop replacement.  The screen is to die for and
the speed of the Core 2 Duo processors is flat out quick.  While my
intention is not to use it as a mobile device too much due to its size
and weight now that I have the Waterfield SleeveCase I have begun venturing outdoors with the MBP in tow.  I took it to a Geek Gathering last weekend in Houston where my wife used it to blog from the coffee shop
where the meeting took place.  She even posted about the Mac experience
on her blog.  I am now taking it occasionally myself to coffee shops
when I need to do some serious writing and the Waterfield case makes
that very easy to do.  Read on for my impressions of the SleeveCase and
some photos of the Mac encased.”

His feelings on the macbook pro seem to be positive.. runs fast, screen
good but as I am considering getting a macbook pro the comment about
the heat is concerning. I love my  macbook and it portable utopia - but there are times I yearn for more disk space, more grunt and a better screen and graphics card (wow). But, the heat comments keep making me wary of upgrading. I wouldn’t get the 17″ but the 15.4″: maybe the heat is better in the lower spec one?

Read more of James observations here

Powered by ScribeFire.

A great post over at lifehacker about google calendar.

I particularly am interested in this hint on using google calendar for resource scheduling.

“GCal can even help you schedule the use of inanimate objects, like the office projector or meeting space. Using GCal’s Auto-accept invitations feature, any invite to the Conference Room A calendar that doesn’t conflict with another meeting will automatically get entered. Cool!

“

read more here

P.S I am discovering some wonderful information in the comments as well, so don’t miss out on reading that!

I have got a case of the google bug quite bad!

I am experimenting with moving most of my computing life over the google online apps.

Why? Well, a number of reasons. One, I am on annual leave and I enjoy this type of stuff - playing with new applications and the like and two, the advantage of google applications is that I can seamlessly use them from either my macbook or my mac mini. Ofcourse, I also get the benefit of having access to them from any computer that I am using.

But I also think the big advantage of using google applications is that they make sharing date really easy.

So, I have created a google category and you can follow along in my journey if you like.

The intended move of applications is as follows:

1. apple mail to gmail.
I have used gmail before I got my mac and now after one year of using mail, I think I can say that I know it pretty well. Gmail biggest advantage is that it just works but more on the later.

2. netnewswire to google reader

3. word/excel to google docs
Well, not completely I don’t expect. But, it is nice to be able to store and share docs with people easily. The integration with gmail is also slick.

4. Google maps
Because they are cool!

5. Google personalised home page.
I am not convinced of the worth of this one, but I am giving it a go.

6. Google notebook
This is nice but I don’t like that I can’t use it with Omniweb. I am giving firefox a go but gee it is slow after Omniweb and Camino.

7. Google Calendar.
Oh I so want this one to work well! It make sharing my calendar/events with others so easily. Adding events from gmail is a breeze. But, I am concerned about syncing with my treo 750 - so, I am on the hunt for a solution there.

More soon as I can continue to play…

I am quite taken by google calendar and so I am looking for a way to sync my treo 750 with my google calendar.
For good measure, it would be nice to also have ical synced as well, although this is not critical.

This product looks interesting…

”
Carry your Google Calendar in your pocket! GCalSync is an
open source application that lets you do a two-way
synchronization between Google Calendar and
your phone’s built-in calendar. Download events to your phone, or add an event on your phone
and upload it to Google Calendar.”

read more here

MacApper has a nice review of the latest kid on the blog of mac gtd applications. They point out that iGTD overcomes the problems some mac gtd apps have in doing the pda sync stuff correctly.. they talk about perfect sync from a treo - so, maybe this is worth giving a go.

“

There are several main components that are common throughout each
GTD app, iGTD included. These consist of projects and related tasks,
contexts, and other features such as start and due dates or priorities.
iGTD has them all.

There are a few really nice things I like about iGTD. First off,
with a nice set of keyboard shortcuts, the interface is conducive to
typers like myself. You can flip through the four main views of
contexts, projects, incomplete tasks, and complete tasks by using ⌘1
through ⌘4. iGTD also has impressive support for Quicksilver.”

Read more here