Friday, February 22, 2008

Bi-Directional iCal/GoogleCal Sync with BusySync!

Over the last couple of years my uses for Google Calendar have increased exponentially. It's an amazing web-app that mimics the looks and functionality of iCal. Personally Google Calendar was god-sent and I've been using it since the initial release back in March of 2006. I store everything in my Google Calendar; school assignments and test dates, work appointments, family gatherings, birthdays, or just things I need to remind me self to do. Even when I got my Macbook in the Fall of 2006 I continued using Google Calendar over iCal because of it's convenience. If I'm ever away from my Macbook and yet I need to know the date and time of a particular appointment, I just pop open a web-browser at a friends house, and log into my Google Calendar. I've done this countless times and can't even start to think of how many times this has saved my butt.

Although I prefer Google Calendar over iCal, there are a few very cool things that you can do thanks to the integration of iCal in Mac OS X. For example, you can schedule events to run tasks, scripts, or even open certain apps. You can also use such apps as Anxiety to create and check off to-do lists extremely easy. Another big reason that I wanted iCal/Google Cal synchronization was for the iPod support. Some day, if I ever get an iPod, I can sync up all of my iCal events on my iPod. This would make things such as looking up appointments on the go so much easier. But even when I do get an iPod I won't ditch my Google Calendar. I highly doubt I'll carry my iPod everywhere I go so having Google Calendar is still an excellent fall-back option. On the other hand there are a lot of Google Calendar-exclusive features that I've grown to love, such as the SMS alerts. With Google Calendar you can setup your Calendar to notify you of events coming up via: SMS (Text Messages)! A practical example of this is for my Birthdays Calendar I have it set to text message me 12 hours in advance of anyone's birthday so I can make arrangements accordingly since I am terrible at remembering birthdays. So clearly, there are pros and cons to both iCal and Google Calendar, and I wanted so badly, to figure out a way to have the best of both worlds. My quest for a good iCal/Google Calendar Sync app started.

The first app that I stumbled upon was Spanning Sync. When I first found it I was so incredibly happy. I had no idea that apps like this even existed, but turns out there's a pretty big demand for such a service. I loved everything about it, loved the icon, I liked the website, but then I saw the price. $25 bucks for a 1 year license, and $65 bucks for a Full Lifetime License. Now personally, I'm the kind of person that hates buying "subscription" licenses. If I'm going to spend money on a piece of software, I want it for the lifetime of the product! However, after reading a little bit more into it, I do understand why the high price. Turns out Spanning Sync uses a Middle Man server to do the communications between your computer (the client) and Google's servers. At first I didn't think this was too bad of an idea, but then I started to wonder about privacy issues of having my personal data on this 3rd party server.

Time went on and I kept putting off Spanning Sync. The price was a little discouraging and the Middle man server was a bummer. I then found gSync. I'm not sure exactly when gSync came out, but I can only assume that with it's lower price tag (about $20 U.S. Dollars) it released solely to compete with Spanning Sync. The cheaper price was much welcomed but I started hearing issues of duplicate events and also Leopard compatibility issues. That was enough to make me hold off even longer.

I then heard about BusySync joining the iCal/Google Cal bi-directional synchronization game. After seeing a very user-friendly video of BusySync being demonstrated at Macworld 2008, I started to get very excited. The first Beta of BusySync 2.0 (first version to integrate Google Cal synchronization) was released on February 8th, 2008. About a week later I went to their site to investigate and learn more about the people behind BusyMac and their product BusySync. I was very surprised to see that the developers (only two of them) had actually made a syncing calendar app back in the days of Mac OS 7. I was impressed! Also two developers meant that this could result in a higher quality finished product. I figure that the less people, the easier the two could collaborate and there wouldn't be as much confusion as their could be in a large development team. Lastly what I liked about BusySync was the fact that, not only was it an iCal/Google Calendar synchronization app, but it also syncs up iCal's across a LAN. This was very exciting, for if someday I get a second Mac, I know I'll want the calendars synced up! I was sold, I finally bit the bullet and purchased a (lifetime!) license and proceeded to download the latest beta.

After now having used BusySync for the past week, I love it! It just seems to work. Setup was so incredibly simple. I like how it's just a little icon that sits in your System Preferences Pane, and not some obnoxious dock or menu icon. It's one of those things that you can just set and forget, and with the icon residing in the Preference Pane, that is exactly what you can do.



Setting up Google Calendar synchronization was super easy as well. All you have to do is go to the BusySync settings in the Preference Pane, and then click on the "Google" tab.



You then enter your gmail username, your password, check if you want to use SSL or not, and then the interval in which you want BusySync to communicate with the Google Calendar Servers to see if there are updates.



Once you have that done simply check the Calendars that you want to sync with your iCal and it does the rest for you.



One really nice thing about BusySync is their "Log" tab. This shows you all the activity that BusySync is doing. This is a great tool if you're curious on how BusySync works and will be a great troubleshooting tool if I do happen to run into some issues (which I haven't yet!).



Another nice thing is the "Reset" tab. This gives you restoration options and the ability to completely reset all BusySync options and remove all Calendar subscriptions. I have not needed to use these since I've had a very enjoyable experience so far, but definitely a comforting feeling knowing that these features exist.



I had only one issue initially and it's so tiny that you're probably going to laugh. At first I saw no way of just plain registering the app right off the back. I already bought a single license for the app and was all excited to right away register it since I can be rather stingy (see: broke) and tend to lean towards freeware/open-source software. Right after installing the app I was notified that it was a trial and that i had 14 days or whatever and then I'd have to register. I searched a bit and did not see a simple "Register Me!" button. Well anyways, a few days after using BusySync a new beta (2.0b4) released. After installing it I was very excited to see a simple "Register..." button located right on the main page! This was my only issue of BusySync and I'm very happy that this was "fixed" (if you could really call it that) so quickly!

Overall I am more than happy with this app. This was the missing piece to my Google web-apps-loving, Mac OS X-using life. This is incredibly nerdy to say, but I can honestly say that I can now sleep better at night. I've spent a lot of time trying to find comparative reviews of gSync and SpanningSync and could not find much. I took a gamble with this very new to the scene app and I've had such a great experience. If these guys can make an app, that is so early in it's beta stages, work this well, they've got to have some mad programming skills.

Just wanted to write this short little review for anyone who is also wondering which iCal/Google Calendar sync app to use, this one definitely gets my recommendation.


UPDATE: Please note that BusySync is still in Beta and your experiences may not be as painless as mine was, especially if you're migrating from another app such as SpanningSync or gSync. If you know anything about me you know that I constantly backup my important data and some might say it's to an excessive, obsessive level. But anyways just wanted to drop a tip to all of you and show you a post which explains the easiest way that I've stumbled upon to backup your Google Calendars! The post actually explains how to them import these calendars into iCal, but ignore this if you are thinking about setting up a Bi-directional Syncing App since this would just be a redundant and dead (see: static) copy of your calendars since it would lack the actual "Syncing" functionality. Hope this helps some of you out!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The Format War Officially Over?

Ladies and gentleman, it looks like Blu-Ray has finally won the High-Definition format war. According to this engadget post Toshiba, who was one of the pioneers of the HD-DVD format, is expected to discontinue the production of HD-DVDs and players in as early as the next coming weeks. This is great news for anyone who was holding off just a tiny bit more in order to see what was going to happen. This plus the Writer's Strike being over, has made for a pretty eventful week!

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

A few Useful Environment Variables for Windows.

Lately I've been doing a fair bit of scripting. I made several scripts for the Overseas Fair in order to make my life easier, when doing repetitive tasks such as, clearing Mozilla update Cache out and modifying C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. Sure these aren't very challenging tasks by any means, actually most only require a few clicks and to type a few lines of code, but this can get very annoying if done over and over and over.

At work I've made scripts for app deployment, backup, checking logs, synchronizing files, pinging computers, and scheduling automated tasks such as Spybot to run once a week. One of the easiest ways to make these scripts general and not have to hard-code in many different cases is to use environment variables.

I've compiled a short list of environment variables that work with Windows XP, and I assume that most of these will work with Vista as well, but have not yet tested them out.

%APPDATA% - Returns the current user's Application Data folder path. This is really useful if you simply want to navigate to the current users "Application Data" folder, without having to turn on "show hidden files and folders."

%USERPROFILE% - Returns the current user's home directory path. Again incredibly helpful for scripting and/or simply navigating around. Use this in conjunction with the "Windows Logo + R" tip and type "%USERPROFILE%" to quickly open the home directory in a windows explorer window.

%COMPUTERNAME% - This one is pretty explanatory, but it returns the computer's name. This is extremely helpful when creating special case scripts that you only want running on a certain list of computers. You can implement IF-statements, to add logic to the scripts.

%USERNAME% - Returns the current username that is logged in. Just like the %COMPUTERNAME% variable, the username variable comes in good use when making special cases to allow scripts to run only if a particular user or users are logged in.

%DATE% - Returns the current Date (example of output: Tue 02/05/2008).

%TIME% - Returns the current Time (in 24 hour format).

%HOMEDRIVE% - Returns the Driver letter that the current logged in user's home directory resides on. (in most cases this will be C:).

%WINDIR% - Returns the location of the WINDOWS directory (such as C:\WINDOWS). These last two are great for making sure your scripts are generalized and not so specific, that they don't function correctly if thrown into an environment where the WINDOWS drive is actually D: or E: and so on.

Most of these I knew from previous scripting and Windows XP experience, but a few I just found out about thanks to this post.

Hopefully some of these you didn't know and hopefully you can put these to good use sometime.

Friday, February 1, 2008

A few Windows Tips and Keyboard Commands.

This week + weekend marks Career Service's 32nd Annual Overseas Recruiting Fair and I've been back and forth all week helping maintain the technical parts of it. To say the least it's been quite a headache, the computers don't really seem to be cooperating. We found a few write-ups on the internet about changing a value in the Registry to "3" to keep the computers always on and not go to sleep, but unfortunately about half of them have been doing this properly. However the tech part of the fair hasn't been a complete nightmare. My scripts to temporarily block Teachers from the database system, and then revert back worked seamless and I've really enjoyed the new information that I gained from creating such scripts. Another plus is that I have acquired a few new tips and keyboard commands that I find incredibly productive.

First keyboard command that I'm starting to use religiously was actually shown to me by Dale. "Windows Symbol + R" prompts you with a "Run" window. From here you can quickly open up something like cmd.exe, which I opened probably a million times over the last few days.

Another thing that I learned is the fact that you can open a folder location from this. For instance, say I wanted to check the current "hosts" file to see what is being blocked, I simply push "Windows Symbol + R" to open a Run window, and then type "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\". This is much quicker than using the mouse to go to My Computer, then clicking on C:\ then clicking on WINDOWS, then system32, etc., etc., you get the idea. This is is very similar to why I love Terminal in unix/linux/Mac OS X because you can very quickly just cd into any directory. Though you can cd in cmd.exe, you don't get the convenience that you get in *nix/Mac OS X. For example, in Mac OS X, I can simply enter the command "open ~/Documents/School" and it will open the School folder. Unfortunately Windows' cmd.exe does not have this open command, but I do also like this "Run" alternative.

Another keyboard command that I like a great deal, and use along with the tip stated above is the "Ctrl + W" keyboard command. In Mac OS X this is an amazingly powerful and extremely quick command. It essentially closes the current in focus window/tab. For instance, say I have 5 Safari windows open. Say I'm done reading the article I'm currently looking at and just want to close the window, but I don't want to completely quit out of Safari because I have more items in my Google Reader. Simply push "Apple + W" and it will close the current Window. This also works with Tabs in Safari. Say you have a 20 tabs open and you're done with that page, simply push "Apple + W" and Safari closes out the current tab. As far as I know, it works with just about every App on Mac that I've come across. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about Windows. It seems to work in most apps but not all. Still the fact is it works with Windows Explorer windows. Personally this makes the "Run" technique a million times better because you can simply open, view the contents of any folder you want and then close it all without touching your mouse. Obviously this comes in handy when you are doing a lot of repetitive tasks such as the ones I was doing yesterday.

This last one I've always known about, but always seem to forget the exact syntax. After doing at the fair probably more than any other command, I don't think I'll ever forget it but just feel like posting it for kicks. It is a very powerful command, especially when you're working in an environment where the computers are incredibly locked down and you don't want to deal with logging off, then logging on to an administrative account, then logging off, and logging back on, over and over. So without further a due the "runas" command is as follows:

runas /u:administrator "cmd.exe"

Obviously, change "administrator" to whatever user you want, though administrator maybe what you want. And lastly change "cmd.exe" to any command you want to do. You'll then be prompted for the administrative (or username that you choose) password and then should be good to go.

Tip: If you do happen to get an error saying "... is not a valid Win32 application." such as when attempting to "runas" compmgmt.msc (the Computer Managment window), or desk.cpl (the Display Properties window) simply do the "runas" command and run "taskmgr". From here you can then go to "File," and then "New Task," and type "compmgmt.msc" or "desk.cpl".