Apple’s update of their .Mac online presence and syncing software has received numerous critiques since it’s launch earlier this month. People have struggled with the service being up and lost mail. I struggled with getting it to work for a few days until I stumbled across a solution in the forums that even the Apple techs didn’t have me try. Since then things have been pretty smooth with the exception of calendars.
Gregory Tarnoff Photography & Design
Madison | Milwaukee
Archive for the ‘Downloads’ Category
Me Time – My Experience So Far With MobileMe
July 30th, 2008, posted in Computers, Downloads, iPhoneLaunch of Firefox 3…and the unfortunate death of Firebug
June 19th, 2008, posted in Computers, Downloads, Standards, Web DesignIf you haven’t been paying attention to the interwebs lately, this has been a big week for the browser wars. Opera 9.5 launched as well as Firefox 3. I have been a fan of Firefox for a long time and recently have become a huge fan of the extension Firebug for it.
In my current work environment we are building Java web applications and while I can and do run them locally, it can take a while to put the build up, take it down, modify it and put it back up. Since most of my work is front end focused I spend a lot of time in Firebug testing things before taking the build down to update.
When Firefox 3 launched on Tuesday, I diligently downloaded and installed it. I played around with it a little and saw that Firebug wasn’t updated for it yet. So I packed it away and pulled out Firefox 2 and got back to work. Then I started having tabbing issues. I have had to restart my PC three times because my tab button on my keyboard stops working in Firefox 2. Additionally, if I am in Firebug’s CSS live editing window and highlight a property it automatically deletes the property when I tab out. Becoming increasingly frustrated I dug around and saw they now have Firebug updated for Firefox 3 but in a beta format (although is it beta 3). so like a good little boy, I installed the new extension and booted Firefox 2 back up.
One of the beautiful things about Firebug is the ability to turn on and off various properties. However in the new beta on Firefox 3 this is causing the entire browser to crash. So here I come Firefox 2, wait what is this…the new beta is incompatible with Firefox 2 BUT deletes the old version on install. Come on guys, if you are going to not be functional, you can at least not touch my previous install.
By the way, what is with Firefox 3 not importing all my bookmarks from Firefox 2 on install? It captured my IE and Opera ones, but ignored the ones I actually use.
Short Listed for Schmap.com California Edition
April 29th, 2008, posted in Computers, Downloads, Landscape, Photography, Portfolio, Web Design
I just received a notification from Schmap.com saying they want to use my Cleveland National Forest image for an upcoming edition of the application. The terms look ok even though there is no pay. They do link to my Flickr account and only use a thumbnail, so I will use the publicity.
Almost True Google Calendar and Outlook Sync
March 10th, 2008, posted in Computers, Downloads, Project ManagementLast week I wrote about how Google had released a tool to sync your Outlook and Google calendars. I had some concerns:
- It only syncs Outlook events I schedule, so all the meetings that people set up that I need to attend I still have to manually sync.
- It only syncs the primary Google calendar.
Well it looks like issue number one no longer exists. I am not really clear if this an update or just a case of poor documentation, but looking around today I found out how to make this work. Item number two on this page explains it in detail but the short is this:
- You must first associate your Outlook email address (this is my corporate address) with your Google account.
- When setting up the syncing program on your Windows machine, enter this address as the one to sync AND NOT your Google Gmail address as you would think.
- Run sync. This will add all of your Outlook appointments that you either organized or are a guest on to your Google Calendar. It will also pull down all your appointments on your Google Calendar primary calendar and place them in your Outlook calendar.
While still lacking in the ability to sync multiple calendars from Google to Outlook or to add to Google those meetings set up on a distribution group, this is much closer to the holy grail and accomplishes what I was trying to do. I now have the ability to automatically sync my work calendar (in Outlook) to Google which I then use the iCal subscription URL to import to my Mac’s calendar and sync to my iPhone. Now I have my complete calendar (with a few minor exceptions) on my phone (my true goal) and accessible via the web if I don’t have my phone (Google Calendar).