Archive for the 'Google' Category

Android is a recently-announced, open source mobile-phone operating system and development platform from Google. The Android software stack could be installed on any number of handsets, from various cell providers around the world. I’ll take a first look at Android, with an Eclipse project and an Android plug-in, to create and debug a simple Hello World application.

Syncing iPhone Calendar with Google Calendar on OS X is easier due to Apple iCal. iTunes supports calendar sync only with Outlook in a Windows environment. This tip will take a look at bi-directional sync options, 2 of which are completely free, to keep iPhone calendar in sync with Google Calendar.

GrandCentral takes all of your individual phone numbers, and provides you with a single new number, which forwards to all of your existing phones.

I’ll leave the in-depth overview of each feature to the GrandCentral site. They’ve done a great job of organizing the multitudes of fun things you can do. Rather than repeat it word-for-word, I’ll focus on the real-world, practical side of GrandCentral.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to create a calendar of events that you’d like to share with others, specifically users of Apple’s iCal, Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook.

My winter basketball league recently released the schedules on their web site. We like the web site, but it’d be nice to be able to view the events (each game) in our own calendar applications.

Google Video Player lets you download and watch videos in full high-resolution quality instead of the low quality streamed video available at video.google.com. Videos that contain detailed visual information (like application demos or code samples) must be viewed in their native resolution to discern fine details. This player combined with downloaded video solves the problem of “fuzzy” (but fast) streamed video available online. Google makes a downloadable player for Windows and Mac (though I didn’t test this).

In all the years I’ve used Gmail, I don’t think I’ve ever “accidently” hit a button that I didn’t want to. This is because Gmail seems to have intentionally made certain buttons wider than others.

Gmail users know that Google has included some of the best usability features into it’s email software. This brief article discusses an overlooked usability feature of Gmail. When composing a message in Gmail, you’ll notice three buttons along the top - one for “Send,” “Save Now,” and “Discard.” Notice how they’re placed directly next to each other.

Google Calendar allows you to use SMS, to remotely interact with your calendar.

This is extremely handy for when you are away from the computer, and/or an internet connection, and you need to either check your events for the day, or add future events for another day.

If you use text messages a lot on your mobile phone, you can easily interact with you calendar:

• Check today’s events.
• Check tomorrow’s events.

Google Notebook is a very versatile organizational tool. Combine that with an amazingly smooth interface, and you have an application that’s very fun to use. Notebooks’ ability to quickly gather your ideas, thoughts, or notes is what makes it useful. However, the interface is what makes it the best.

So what can Notebook do?

I’ve found that Notebook is useful for two main things:

Google Calendar was released many weeks ago, and now that we’ve had the opportunity to use it on a daily basis, we are ready to make note of some of our early observations.

This article will cover some “Pros” and “Cons” of using Google Calendar, noticed by Pain in the Tech writers.

Gmail allows users to set up custom “From:” addresses, for outgoing email.

If you’re not using Gmail, you’re missing out on a great feature, which helps manage multiple email accounts, all in one spot.

This means that you can manage all of your external email accounts from within Gmail. And with Gmail’s generous storage space, you probably won’t run out of room anytime soon.

After you set-up your external email accounts to work with Gmail, you’re able to select which “From:” address you’d like to use, for each outgoing email message.

You can include as many as you’d like.