Google Calendar

I just checked out Google Calendar, and I really like it.  I think that Google could easily challenge Microsoft for the market of enterprise calendaring systems.  (One reason that I don't like Exchange is because that it is implemented on top of email protocols.  This causes problems especially when using a client other than Outlook.)

There are two related features that I would love to see from Google Caledar.

1. Being able to subscribe to a ics caledar file.  With this, from Google Calendar, you would be able to collorborate with people using iCal and Mozilla Calendar and Sunbird.  (With the Mozilla products, you could also modify the calendar in Google Calendar.)  I just found this setting.


2. Being able to export an ics file from Google Calendar.  This would allow you to import the calendar into those calendar programs.  (With iCal, you would be able to use iSync to sync the calendar with your phones/PDAs) I just saw this post that mentions that this is already there.

Update:  Since now the two things that I thought we missing, are there. I am definitely going to use this.  I hope now that companies will start using this as their corporate calendaring systems.

[via TechCrunch]

Technorati Tags: Calendar, Google, Google Calendar, iCal, Sunbird

TuneBase FM for iPod

I wanted to get a temporary solution to listen to my iPod in our Odyssey.  This was only a temporary solution, because what I really want is an integrated dock.  Then I would be able to listen to the music on the stereo, and play the videos on the LCD screen. 

That in itself would not be a hard thing to do.  You could take the iPod universal dock, and wire the audio to the line-in on the stereo.  And then run the s-video to the LCD screen.  But this is is not the ideal situation.  I would want to get a headunit that would be able to switch between audio and video sources, and be able to direct the audio from the different sources to the speakers or the headphones in back.

OS X's vnc server

Today, I wanted to finish copying all of our music files to our Mac mini.  I wanted to watch some TV while I was doing this, so I wanted to use VNC to control the Mac mini.  Apple has a built in VNC server, and here are some instructions on how to set it up.

One thing that I found out is that the built-in VNC server doesn't support any of the efficient encodings.  It looks like it only supports the Raw encoding.  On my mini that has it display set to 1920 x 1080i with Millions of colors, it is too slow, even on my home network. 

I am now using OSXvnc.  It supports all known encodings, except Ultra.  Now I can control my Mac Mini, without it being dreadfully slow.

Technorati Tags: OSXvnc, vnc

Spam Cube Review

David Pogue did a review of the Spam Cube, for the New York Times.  Even though it says that it works with any Operating System, only Windows PCs running Outlook can train the collective Bayesian database.

I still don't know how it handles POPS and IMAPS.  Also, I think that it is deceptive that they state that they filter the mail in gmail.  This will only work if you use the pop3 access to gmail.

[via Engadget]

Technorati Tags: spam, Spam Cube

Netgear Wall-Plugged Ethernet Bridge

I wanted to move the Airport Express back to the office to use it as a print server.  In order to do that, I needed to find a different solution to bring a network drop down to the living room.  I decided to go with the Netgear Wall-Plugged Ethernet Bridge.

The ethernet bridge is very easy to use.  You connect on of the to modules into an outlet near a router, and plug an ethernet cable into it.  Then you plug the other one into an outlet where you need a network drop.

Mac mini

Yesterday, I set up the Mac mini as a media center PC.  I love this thing.  The FrontRow interface is beautiful.  There are some nice touches that I just love.

1. Before you select a video, a preview of it shows on the left side of the screen


2. Being able to view content on another computer is really nices as I have my podcasts subscribed on my laptop, but I can still view them on the mini.

missing piece in vcard implementation

We just moved, and I wanted to use Mac OS X's Address Book's "Send Updates" feature to send the updated information to my contact list.  What this feature does is send a vcard in an email to the recipients. 

I got a lot of responses from this email, mainly stating that they received an empty email.  I then sent the contact information again, with a text representation of that vcard.

This shouldn't be this hard. Email programs don't gracefully handle vcard attachments, and they should  In general, contact managers handle vcards well, they can import and export to this format.