Do you use Gmail or Google Apps for your email? If so, you might want to check out the Windows program iContact. iContact gives you desktop access to all your Gmail/Google Apps contacts.
Google Calendar is a great, if not the best available tool to share calendars. However, it’s tedious to edit and keep track of it via the web interface. In saving time, integration is your best friend.
Naturally, there is a vast amount of addons and tools to sync, integrate and simply work more efficiently with Google Calendar. For example you can sync it with mobile devices like the Blackberry or iPhone using GoogleSync. Then you can add Google Calendar to Gmail with several different Greasemonkey scripts. Now I will explain how to add it to Thunderbird.
We all sure do love our online file-sharing services. It’s one of those things which we cannot live without. How is life sustainable if I’m not able to send my freshly snapped, high-resolution photos of my brand new BlackBook to all my friends? If you’re not familiar with the most popular online file-sharing services, I’d suggest you start here.
Now, I’m only going to cover the services with desktop clients for Mac. Luckily, most are also available for Windows.
One cool thing about Macs is that most of their applications interrelate and communicate with each other out of the box. Information bounces across multiple applications seamlessly. Data from Mail can be sent to iCal and Address Book without raising an eyebrow, as I have written in a previous article. Many Mac users embrace this feature but I’m sure that as newbies to OS X, you might not be familiar with this newly-attained ability.
The availability of desktop calendars like MS Outlook Calendar and iCal and free online calendars like Google Calendar have certainly made managing schedules quick and easy. However when it comes to sharing and syncing calendars, there are still not many good solutions available which are free and convenient to work with. It’s not an easy task to share your calendars with friends, especially if you have a lot of them and they use different types of calendar applications.
Enter Calgoo, a suite of calendar apps which offers an excellent free solution to syncing and sharing calendars across different platforms. Apart from offering its own calendar software, it offers Calgoo Connect and Calgoo Hub which are meant for syncing and sharing calendars respectively.
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The rise of blogs and easily publishable content created a need for the ability to track it, hence the creation of Really Simple Syndicate Feeds or RSS for short.
These ’special programs’ and ‘filtered displays’ consist of either:
This week on the show I take a look at the new iTunes app store, ways to raise money online, how to install Windows on your Mac for free — sort of, how to work well with others online and how to schedule and manage messages. My guest this week is Make Use Of author Abhijeet Mukherjee and we chat a bit about some of his posts on Make Use Of and his own blog, Jeetblog.com
I’d love to hear from you. Send me your MP3 files containing comments about the show, reviews of your favourite websites or just general chitchat. I’ll choose a few to play on the show each week. Send them to podcast [at] makeuseof [dot] com.
This week on the podcast I’m talking to Jerry Kidd, one of Make Use Of’s newest writers, about a great tool to help you sell your home online. I’m also looking at some Make Use Of articles about Bit torrent, bookmarklets, and syncing. Plus, a first look at the latest Twitter clone, identi.ca.
I’d love to hear from you. Send me your MP3 files containing comments about the show, reviews of your favourite websites or just general chitchat. I’ll choose a few to play on the show each week. Send them to podcast [at] makeuseof [dot] com.
Some time back I wrote an article on Syncplicity. First off let me start off by making clear the cheers/boos system that I used as some people have asked about it.
So the cheers/boos system worked like this: A feature that I liked and/or worked as claimed on the Syncplicity site was given a cheer, a feature on which I saw a potential room for improvement was given a boo. The score at the end of each bullet point represented the cumulative score which means that the total of cheers and boos up till that point. I apologize if you found it hard to comprehend. (damn the cumulative system! From next time I will not be using cumulative scores).
DoubleTwist is a Windows-only desktop application which liberates your media from the Digital Rights Management (DRM) labels and lets you share it with your friends and also synchronizes it with various other devices including external devices such as Blackberry, Nokia N Series and Sony Ericsson Walkman Series phones. It can also convert the songs in your iTunes library and lets you share them with ease. Plus it also works on video.
With the unexpected news that Google was dropping its Browser Sync Firefox addon, attention is now turning to Mozilla Labs’ “Weave” project.
Weave is also a Firefox add-on and its purpose is to allow you to backup your Firefox settings such as your bookmarks, history, passwords, customizations and preferences and then sync them with the Mozilla servers so that you can access them from anywhere that allows you to access the internet. Obviously this data is encrypted so that it’s securely stored.
Quickly: What is the most important component of your computer? Is it the monitor? No, you can replace it. The graphics card? No, you can live without it. Oh what then?
It’s your data!
Think about it. No matter what kind of a user you are, data is always of prime importance. Now the obvious question, do you back up your data?
“oh um.. Actually I.. NO”.
That’s the scenario with most users.
Let’s take a look at Syncplicity - another excellent backup software. Not only it backs up your data, but it also keeps it synchronized across multiple computers and also allows you to share data with your friends.
We all love our USB drives, don’t we? You should probably be using some portable apps on your USB drive – if not, check out our huge list of portable applications for your USB drive here.
In this post, I want to cover a few apps that will make managing your USB drive easier. In essence, I’ll talk about tools that can be used to make things easier if you’ve got a USB drive – not about apps that work from your drive.
So here we go - five applications to make things easier if you’re using a USB thumb drive.
Microsoft has just begun a new service called Live Mesh which is receiving a lot of positive buzz online. Read on to find out exactly what Live Mesh is and also to find out how to get an invitation to get in!
What is Live Mesh?
Windows Live Mesh is a powerful service which combines cloud computing and online storage with file synchronisation and remote desktop access. Potentially a wide variety of devices will be supported such as Macs and mobile phones. So you can access and synchronize your files between several computers and mobile devices.
If you browse the internet on a regular basis (and which Make Use Of reader doesn’t?), it doesn’t take long to stack up a big list of website URL’s that you will want to check up on later. The default bookmarking feature in the Firefox browser only takes you so far, so let’s take a look at some ways to better organize your growing bookmark collection, whether it’s synchronizing with another computer or just accessing the links a little bit easier.
1. Foxmarks : The Add-on Multiple Computer Users Can’t Live Without
Not so long ago MUO author Dave posted an article on How to control Windows Mobile Phone from the Desktop, today I want to show you how to synchronize your phone with your loved one.
Due to my career and title as “The Admin”, when I am at home the wife expects nothing less than technology perfection, and being an admin I like to be in control of things. I hate outsourcing anything I can do myself; specifically running my own email server, ftp site and such.
Why use other peoples services when you don’t have to? Good Question!
A program called DropBox has recently entered public beta and has been making the rounds on networks like Digg and Reddit. I’ve been a private beta member since January and have been using it pretty heavily in my daily processes - and it has worked absolutely wonderfully. Dropbox is currently available for Windows and MacOS X, and we are told that an Ubuntu or Linux client is in the works.
I recently interviewed the Founder of Dropbox, Drew Houston, to answer some questions I had about the service. You can read the interview below, after my short review of the service.
iTunes is not the best or even one of the faster music players out there but it is definitely one of the most popular ones. If you’re using iTunes as your primary music player then here are some addons to improve your iTunes experience. On the other hand, if your iPod is the only reason you keeping it then check out some equally good alternatives in our iPod Tools roundup.
(1) iTunes Sync - Sync iTunes with other MP3 players
Want to have identical browser settings on every one of your PCs ? How about keeping documents on your office and home PCs synchronized? For these and several other ways to sync your data read further. Enjoy!
1. Google Browser Sync - Sync Browser Bookmarks, History, Settings, etc. between diff. PCs
Google Browser Sync is a Firefox extension from Google that can auto synchronize your browser bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across multiple computers. It even lets you restore open browser tabs and windows across different machines so you can always pickup from where you left. It’s completely automated, all you need to do is to install it on all computers that you use on a regular basis.
2. SyncToy - Synchronize Files Between PC and USB Thumbdrive
Got a USB Pen Drive? They’re great for backups. Do you carry files across in USB drives? It might sometimes be exhausting to copy files and folders to and from your hard drive and USB Stick. There’s an easy way to sync files between your hard disk and USB Flash Drive. Here’s how:
2. Run SyncToy from the Start Menu
3. You’ll now have to create a Folder Pair
4. Choose a Left Folder (this is a folder on your PC’s hard disk) and a Right Folder (this points to your removable USB Pen Drive)
We have covered ways to backup emails, wordpress blogs, Firefox settings, computer files …. all but mobile phones. So it’s time to introduce some services to backup your mobile phone, i.e. contacts list, calendar entries, text mesages, browser bookmarks, phone settings, notes etc. As usual, all listed services are free or come with a dececnt free account option.
(1) Mobical - Simple and straightforward over-the-air mobile backup and restore service to automatically backup mobile address book, calendar, settings, bookmarks and notes online. Mobical supports pretty much all modern handsets and can be accessed from any web-enabled device. You can edit contacts, add appointments, and save notes online and it will sync added changes with your handset. Similarly, all on-phone edits will be synced with the web copy. Simple and convenient.
I have a mountain of things listed on my Remember The Milk “to-do” list - among them include achieving world peace, eradicating hunger and poverty, finding a cure for cancer and backing up my PC files. Last week I finally got around to backing up my PC files (the rest will have to wait a while longer unfortunately).
It’s always a good idea to keep a secure backup copy of your important documents online. Sooner or later your disk will crash, it’s not about if but more like when. So, unless you have an external drive, online backup is a must. Although there are plenty of file storage services out there, only a few offer reliable storage and backup service for sensitive data. So here you go …
Mozy - The easiest online backup solution so far. Just install it on your Mac or PC, specify which files it should backup, and let it do the work. No need to worry, it will automatically keep backup files up-to-date and synchronized. You can also access and download any/all of your backup files from other computers.
Microsoft as a company is not usually associated with cool and free products. In that sense, Google is way ahead, it has Gmail, Google Reader, Calendar, Google Docs and dozens of other useful services. Nonetheless, there are a bunch of FREE Microsoft tools that are definitely worth a look. While some of them are yet to be released, others have been around for a a while.
(1) HealthVault
Service that many US families should find really useful. In simple terms, HealthVault is an online safebox for all your medical records. It’s not just a storage place to keep medical history but also to share records with doctors, place to where medical documents can be faxed and auto-archived, and lots more.
Finally my hunt is over. Aibek, the main author of MakeUseOf told me when I first started being a guest writer that there is a “free version for everything”. So I sought out to replace any of the desktop applications that I used with free (and preferably open source) desktop only programs.
I don’t feel ashamed that I had paid for these programs since they did provide useful services to me until recently. Now I know better. Here are the results (please note I tried several other options before deciding on these applications):
(1) Office Software
Here you go, free and easy-to-setup screen-sharing and remote-access tools. There are several ways you can benefit from these apps: (1) Remote-Control: Help out your friend or mom with PC problems remotely, (2) Screen-Sharing: Collaborate on running programs and documents with friends. (3) Remote-Access: Access your PC files from work, school, etc.
Screen-Sharing and Remote-Collaboration Apps
1. CrossLoop - secure, easy-to-setup, screen-sharing application for your Windows desktop.
