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Keep Your Address Book in Sync With Google

October 26th, 2009 (9:00am) Charles Hamilton 4 Comments

google-macOne of the reasons that I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard was the new ability to sync the Mac OS X Address Book with Gmail’s or Google Apps’ Contacts. This function has been around for a while, but for some reason, it was previously available only to iPhone users.

I really appreciate well-produced synchronization, because I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it is to get right. It seems that software developers can never quite agree on how to organize contact information, so everyone’s databases are different. For a long time, for instance, one of the major makers of financial management software didn’t even create city, state and ZIP/postal code fields, opting instead for an address field where all of that information was run together, making the data very difficult to parse.

So I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Snow Leopard’s “sync with Google” function, especially because I have a fairly large address book, and most of its entries have photos associated with them, something that very few sync solutions even try to support. Read the rest of this entry »

Is It Time to Update Your Operating System?

October 13th, 2009 (7:10am) Charles Hamilton 8 Comments

Mac OS XI spent the weekend updating my Mac to OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard. It went well, thanks to a little planning and a lot of patience. Windows users are facing the decision as to whether and when to upgrade to Windows 7. Here are some questions to consider when you’re faced with an operating system upgrade. Read the rest of this entry »

Work Better With Google Sync for iPhone, Now With Push Gmail

September 23rd, 2009 (7:00am) Darrell Etherington 2 Comments

syncAs I noted over at TheAppleBlog, Google has turned on push for Gmail on the iPhone. That means that your incoming messages will be pushed from the Google servers to your phone, instead of your phone having to call in periodically to check for new mail. It means you’ll be more up-to-date, and your phone will use a lot less of your battery’s power than if you use Apple’s Fetch alternative.

For Gmail users with an iPhone who work from home, this is great news. Often, those of us not plugged in to the corporate world miss out on the little niceties like Exchange information syncing. Google Sync, now that it includes Gmail, offers a great free alternative for those of us who’ve left our office working days behind. And it uses Microsoft Exchange technology to do it. Read the rest of this entry »

Why I Don’t Trust the Cloud

September 19th, 2009 (6:00am) Nancy Nally 26 Comments

Clouds“Cloud computing” has easily replaced “Web 2.0” as the current trendy buzzword. The state of California is even turning to it for government systems. I have to say, however, that I have serious reservations about heavily implementing cloud computing in my own work flow. I believe that cloud computing is the killer app of the future, but the future isn’t quite here yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I do make limited use of cloud computing applications, especially Gmail. But mostly, I don’t feel comfortable putting my entire computing life “in the cloud”. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

Productivity Tip: Learn the Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Tasks

August 24th, 2009 (11:00am) Simon Mackie 3 Comments

Picture 6I really like Google Tasks. It’s free, easy to use, and well integrated with Gmail and Google Calendar, yet it’s flexible enough that it can be adapted for use as part of a Getting Things Done (GTD) system. Unlike many web apps, it has some very handy keyboard shortcuts built in, which can make it much faster to use and give you a real productivity boost. It’s well worth learning these shortcuts, particularly if you use Tasks a lot: Read the rest of this entry »

Gmail Allows Mail and Contact Imports for Older Accounts

August 20th, 2009 (7:00am) Samuel Dean 6 Comments

As announced on the Gmail Blog, the folks at Google have added an important update to Gmail: mail and contact import features for everyone. Somewhat annoyingly, these features were previously available for newly created Gmail accounts, but were not available for the many of us who have had Gmail accounts for some time. Many of us also have old email accounts that were around before Gmail arrived. The importing procedure is easy, although some waiting is required.


Read the rest of this entry »

Custom Gmail Setup: Making the Most of the Screen

August 13th, 2009 (12:00pm) Simon Mackie No Comments

James over at jkOnTheRun has an excellent post describing his custom Gmail setup, which enables him to make the best use of his screen real estate. Like many web workers, James spends a large part of his day working with Gmail — it’s the one app that he has open all day — so customizing his setup helps him to be more productive. James tweaks Gmail’s layout and functionality using Labs features like Multiple Inboxes and Superstars, and by incorporating gadgets for Google Calendar, Google Docs and Remember The Milk. Check out James’ post for extensive details.

reMail: Email Search for the iPhone

August 13th, 2009 (11:00am) Nancy Nally 2 Comments

remail_logoA new iPhone app called reMail gives iPhone users the email archive search functionality available in applications like Gmail and Outlook.  reMail is priced at $4.99 until September 1st ($9.99 after that date). The creator of reMail is Gabor Cselle, who has previously worked on Gmail at Google, and who was the VP Engineering at Xobni, an Outlook add-on which has previously been reviewed at WWD.

The iPhone does have Spotlight search already built-in, but Spotlight has a limitation. It can only search what is stored on your phone. For an email account, this means that it can only search a couple hundred messages, not the account’s entire archives. And how often is the email you are searching for one of the most recent two hundred? In my case, the answer is rarely. Read the rest of this entry »

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