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Google Calendar Sync is a new Google utility that synchronizes your Google Calendar with your Outlook Calendar. You have to install and run the synchronization software on the windows computer where Outlook is installed, and then you can specify how frequently you want the syncs to occur, and in which direction.

Here’s how to get started:

• Download & install the executable (663 KB).
• In the settings window that appears after installation, enter your email and password and select from the sync options (like frequency and information flow), and hit Save.
• You will now find an icon in your Windows system tray; when events are syncing, you’ll see two green arrows.

It may be a case of more style over substance, but for people switching from Microsoft Office to Google Docs, the change to the editing tool bar will help smooth the transition. No major new features have been added in the update (at least none that I’ve noticed), but the new tool bar does feel more comfortable, and brings the task of editing text in Google Documents closer to what I’m used to when editing blog posts, and posting on modern bulletin boards.

This follows an update last week that allows you to crate a form to fill out to enter data into a spread sheet rather than entering it in field by field. Google has a long way to go to match the feature set that Microsoft Office offers, but they are slowly adding the features that most people use. It won’t belong before average people will be able to move to Google Docs and not miss much of anything… and gain collaboration features that you don’t get with Office, unless you have an enterprise IT department behind you.

Google has released a new version of Google Apps called “Team Edition” that at a functional level, is essentially the same as the Basic version of Google Apps. The same word processor, spreadsheet, instant messaging, calendaring, and start page, but no email. What is different is that the “Team Edition” allows people in organizations that have not adopted Google Mail for their enterprise or organizational email system, to use the other Google Applications collaboratively. Not only that, but individuals in the organization can sign up one by one without central IT’s blessing or support. This makes it much easier for ad-hoc groups to use Google Applications without jumping through organizational hoops and bureaucracy.

All users need to do is go to the Google Apps “Team Edition” page, and sign up with their corporate email address. A confirmation email is then sent back to the person’s email address and then they are on the system. Once registered you can see who else from the organization has signed up, and you can begin collaborating right away (apparently I am the first UVic.ca individual to sign up). It looks like Google is hoping that pressure from users will encourage organizations to adopt Google Apps officially, and from Google’s perspective, hopefully adopt the premium paid version.

This Google screen cast gives a few more details.

I had an interesting experience at the end of the day yesterday. One of my Law Library colleagues looking quite distressed came into my office and said, “I think I just lost a VERY important file.” My response was, “no problem! Worst case we can restore it from backup.” That’s always my response when someone says they’ve lost a file - it usually calms them down and reassures them. She followed up by saying, “I just created the file today. Will it have been backed up yet?” Her face dropped when I said no. Our backups only happen at night, so a file created today would not yet be backed up.

So I started looking for the file. Sure enough, she had deleted it from the file server, so it didn’t go into her recycle bin. I tried doing a windows search (she’s running Vista Business Edition), and could only find a link to it in favorites, but not the file or a temporary file. Lastly I tried doing a Google Desktop search as we have it indexing her computer and her file share. It thought it found the file, but the link was dead (because the file had been deleted), but we could look at the full unformatted text of the file with the preview option. So we copied the text from the preview, and pasted it into a new Word document. I had one relieved customer. She had to reformat the document, but it saved her hours of work writing it from scratch.

So… Google Desktop is not only a great desktop search tool, but it can also help restore deleted files that have not yet been backed up!

Do you think online prenatal classes are a good idea? If you or your spouse were expecting, would you consider an online class as an alternative or supplement to a face to face class?

My wife Heather is a Prenatal Class Teacher and a Doula. She has put an enormous amount of time (at least it seems like it to me), putting together materials and activities for her prenatal classes. Recently she has started to allow her clients to customize their classes to meet their specific needs (or as I think, address their specific fears) through a form on her website. This seems to be a hit, combined with the one on one teaching she does.

Recently I suggested that she might want to put her lessons online, and let people access her lessons for free, and pay for the web site and her time by using Google Adsense. We currently have Google Ads on the birth stories she has written for each of our children. We typically get about 700 page views per day, and average $1.40 in ad revenue per day. While not a lot of money, it is amazing that over the past year she has earned over $500 from the birth stories. This has more than paid for her time in writing them (although as she would be quick to point out, money was the furthest thing from her mind when she wrote them up).

So… Online birth classes with text, pictures, video and some interactive elements like quizzes. There would also be a question / comment feature so you could ask questions on the lesson pages so that Heather and/or others could respond to the question. Again, what do you think? Would you or your spouse go to a site like this to check it out? Just post your comments at the bottom of the blog post. Thanks!

Want to make your own map with custom pins showing important locations (important to you in any case). How about custom directions? Look no further than Google’s "My Maps". All you need is a Google account, and then surf on over to Google Maps, and click on to "My Maps" (you’ll be prompted to sign on if you are not already).

You can just have fun playing around with the maps, or possibly do something more useful:

• You can send people directions to a party or event.
• Give conference attendees directions to hotels, restaurants, or other places of interest.
• Want to create a Sight seeing tour? Now’s your chance.
• Plot Crime rate statistics.
• Identify Neighborhood watch homes.
• Paper Route delivery (or non-delivery) map.
• Cool photo album, with pins put in where the pictures were taken.

Some of the features that could come in handy depending how how you want to use the system:

• Maps can be made public or private.
• You can draw lines on the map (sometimes the routes it suggests, just aren’t right!).
• You can embed pictures or videos in the pop-outs from pins.
• Email your maps to friends.
• Embed maps in a web page.

Lastly, here is a map of my neighborhood in Victoria, BC., complete with all the important locations to our family. Enjoy!

I’ve been using Google Documents lately for some of my writing, and the one thing I love about it is that it makes it so easy to do real time collaboration on a document. It doesn’t matter where the other person is pyhsically located. It doesn’t matter what software they have on their computer. The only thing they need is a web browser and an Internet connection and you’re in business. You type something in, and the other person on their computer sees what you’re typing, and can do their editing. It also has basic version control built in so that you can go back and see what edits other people have made over the life of the document. Very handy!

On the negative side, the default font size is a little bit small, and when you cut and past text from other web sites into the document it typically keeps the formatting, and sometimes make a mess of the document. You can change the formatting to try to make the document formatting consistent, but very occasionally the pasted text won’t conform and stays with it’s original formatting no matter what you do. A small thing, but it can be annoying when you’re trying to get a document to look nice.

Up until now the big show stopper for me from an academic perspective has been the lack of foot notes or end notes. When writing something to be published in academic circles, foot notes, or at least end notes, are essential. I like to cite my sources, and with Google Docs it has been impossible to do foot notes, and difficult to do end notes.

The solution came to me the other day. I’ve been using Google Notebook to clip interesting text and images that I want to use in my research (Notebook is a great tool for capturing and organizing research). Why not just hyperlink from my document to the text I clipped in my Google notebook as the citation? The Google Notebook clipping has a link to the original resource I grabbed the information from, so you are taken directly to the quotation, and have access to the original document. I’m sure that in formal academic circles this might not be sufficient (for now at least), but for the informal, practical research that I typically engage in this is perfect.

1. Everything gets cited.
2. If the original source that I’m citing disappears, people can still see my source in the copy of it I’ve made in Google Notebook.
3. I can still collaborate very easily with other people on the document, in real time if I need to.

What I’m really excited about is the next version of Firefox that will have a built in framework for "off line" applications. I’d love to be able to use Google documents (as well as other on-line applications) on my laptop when I’m not able to be connected to a network (like on an airplane)…

A couple of years ago while attending a conference, I heard a wonderful presentation by Clay Shirky entitled "Ontology is Overrated." Clay talked about how the categorization scheme (or ontology) that libraries use, is basically a 300 year old hack that allowed allowed libraries to warehouse large numbers of books, and find those books relatively quickly and easily. On the surface this sounds like a great system (and historically speaking it was), except that some books do not fit neatly into just one category. As well, some categories created years ago by librarians do not make much sense in our current day and age (Marxism and its several sub categories are a good example of this).

For kids in K-12, it makes no sense to go to a library for research for the following reasons:

1. The number of resources on the Internet typically dwarfs what is available in the school or local public library.
2. It is more convenient to do the research at the same place they are writing their paper - in front of a computer.

I can’t begin to tell you how big a factor #2 is. Not only is the Internet widely perceived as having more information (I won’t get into a discussion about reliability here), but it is undoubtedly more convenient. Kids arriving a university are going to have to be trained how to use libraries effectively. University libraries have a big advantage over K-12 libraries in that they have access to large numbers of paid databases and journals not available on the Internet (or at school and public libraries for that matter). They need to effectively communicate this fact to new undergraduates, and train them how to access that information in order to stay relevant.

I highly recommend listening to this presentation… It is engaging and thought provoking. Here is a link to a web page where you can play the audio directly from the web page. As well, here is a link to a down-loadable mp3 file. Enjoy!

I found an excellent article a few weeks ago, that outlines things people should do if they want to improve the Google ranking of their web site. You can read the full article by Danny Wall here. For those of you who don’t want to read all four pages, here is the executive summary:

1. Get a Blog! But don’t just just do product posts. Blog about interesting things related to your products and industry you’re in. Put links to Digg & Delicious on your blog.
2. Use YouTube to your advantage. Sponsor a contest for the "best" or "funniest" video related to your product or service, and offer a prize or two. Let other people be creative. Then let people vote on them. If the videos are good enough, viral marketing will kick in and you’ll get more than your money’s worth in advertising and web traffic.
3. Use press releases to announce things your company is doing. Make sure each press release has a web link back to your web site (PRWeb is recommended by the author of the article).
4. Be worthy of other people linking to you. If you have nothing interesting or good to offer, who will want to link to you? "It is only by being worthy that you’ll get to the top of Google."

If you’ve spent some time playing around in Google Earth, you’ve probably noticed the 3 Dimensional buildings in major US cities. The 3D buildings are drawn using a free Google program called Google Skechup. It is a very easy to use CAD program that reminded me of my days in grade 8 when I was took my first drafting class. It is a lot of fun to play with.

Google has announced a contest where the team that creates the best 3D version of their university or college campus with sketchup wins a trip to Google headquarters in Mountain View California. Very cool. I just wish I was back in College. I’ll see if my Son wants to do his school, and submit it. As a 9 year old he might be able to impress the judges even if his "campus" is a little smaller then most.

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