Anti-Social

Someone was asking me yesterday about social networks. And what with the constant stream of emails and posts about facebook, twitter, et al, I figured I may as well chime in on my stance. No. Just no. My feelings on social networks and web 2.0 in general strongly mirror Derek’s, who said it so well, … Continue reading Anti-Social

London Calling

So we’re sitting at an internet cafe in London, because so far, the city kindof hates me. We asked the friendly concierge(s) at our Oxford hotel and the Oxford-London bus guy where to get off to get the tube to Paddington station. They sent us about 8 tube stations too far away, when the bus … Continue reading London Calling

Helpful

Here’s one for the geeks. Know what would be really cool? If I could select an option on search engines that would automatically sort results based on geographic relevance. For instance: I need some information on community and career resources in Prince George. If I select that little box, a tool runs to grab my … Continue reading Helpful

Vonage Gets It!

When you consolidate two households into one, there are inevitably a few things you end up with duplicates of. Microwaves are a big one – and impossible to get rid of (seriously, does anyone want a free microwave?) since most people seem to have one. Another is services – I cancelled my internet service and … Continue reading Vonage Gets It!

Match-Stuck

While I think it would be pretty great to get a free multimedia phone, I’ve been firmly pushed into the same camp as Darren and Boris on their hatred of the Matchstick annoyance factor. I was contacted very early on with the Matchstick promotion. I received a comment on my “about” page way back on … Continue reading Match-Stuck

The Missing Sync

**If you’re just here looking for Palm –> Yahoo Calendar Syncing instructions – scroll down, they’re just past the jump**

I’m a bit of a freak for organization, and I’ve been managing my calendar for the past few years from a semi-ancient Sony Clie (Palm OS 4.0), and using the Palm Desktop on each of my three computers, since the Hotsync software doesn’t seem to be compatible with Outlook 2003, and I use Outlook Express (sans calendar) at work.

Obviously I’m sick of that solution, as it’s clunky, requires me to carry my Sync cable around to each computer, and Palm Desktop lacks any semblance of functionality outside of “this event occurs at this time, would you like a reminder or not?”

I figured I’d start using Google’s pretty calendar application instead. Or so I thought.

The people at Palm seem to be the only ones who use their particular format of calendaring (.dba) which doesn’t import into Outlook or GCal. I couldn’t find any sort of conversion tool to make it a .csv – Excel was worse than useless – and I figured I’d have to either use the Palm Desktop forever, or manually enter every appointment I have in the future and go through the year of events to re-enter every birthday, anniversary and other recurring entry I’ve ever made.

I just don’t have that kind of time. Who does?

Thankfully, after an hour or so of searching for solutions I discovered that the good people at Yahoo have partnered up with those at Intellisync (whose product version I have doesn’t work with Outlook 2003 or Google) so that those using the Palm OS can one-click sync their PDA’s to the online Yahoo calender!

Enter the chorus of angels from on high, etc., hallelujah and amen.

I can’t believe nobody else did this.

Unfortunately most people in my life are Googleholics, using gmail, gcal and gchat. While I’m sure I could export the yahoo.csv into gcal, I’d really REALLY love it if Google also stepped up and started offering support for syncing directly from my Palm PDA into their calendar.

In the meantime, I suppose you’ll find me on yahoo – peechie1980. See you there!
Continue reading “The Missing Sync”