Connected Well

Sync is hard.

I’ve never used any synchonization software that gets it right all the time. However, I am pretty pleased with Google’s Sync program, launched nearly 2.5 years ago, now part of their suite of mobile apps for smartphones, including BlackBerrys.

Google Sync for BlackBerry

Every once in a while, my calendars get out of sync, and I need to delete and reset my BlackBerry. Normally, you can reset the sync by:

• Go to Google Sync on the phone (either find the app icon, or scroll to the top of the BlackBerry-button menu while looking at your calendar.
• In Google Sync, click the BlackBerry button*.
• In the menu, choose “Options”
• In the options screen, click the BlackBerry button* again.
• In the menu, choose “Reset Calendar Sync”.

This action removes all the synchronized events on your calendar. Then you can re-sync again to get everything pulled back down from Google Calendar to your device.

However, the last time I did this, I also corrupted something, so my BlackBerry’s “default calendar” had a duplicate set of events from my Google Calendar. This isn’t bad, jut really annoying. I also had recurring events that don’t exist anymore, that I was having to manually delete. Not productive

To solve this problem, I had to take more drastic measures. Follow along:

• First, I synchronized my calendar manually from the BlackBerry, ensuring that it succeeded.
• Next, I followed the instructions above to Reset my synchronized calendar, removing it from the device. Note that I did NOT resync at the end of the reset.
• Then, I connected my BlackBerry to my computer and saved a full backup.
• Next, following instructions from this BlackBerry Forums post, I removed ALL of the calendar events on my BlackBerry.
• Finally, I went back to the BlackBerry, launched Sync, and did a manual sync (BlackBerry Button* > Sync), ensuring it was successful.
• This removed the offending calendar(s) and now my calendar information is an exact copy of what’s online in my Google Calendar.

For simplicity, I am copying the instructions from the BlackBerry forum and inserting them, below, with links to screenshots:

If you are having errors in your Calendar or Address Book on your BlackBerry, and you wish to delete the entire Calendar (or Address Book) database on your BlackBerry, follow the directions below. Make certain you have a good copy of your Calendar or Contacts elsewhere, as this procedure will complete delete ALL Calendar entries and/or Address Book entries on your BlackBerry.

1. Open Desktop Manager on your PC.

2. Open up Backup/Restore > Advanced.

3. From Advanced you’ll see a split pane screen. The left pane is what is going to be backed up from your device and the right is a list of the currently existing databases.

3. Highlight on the right side your Address Book database (or your Calendar database) and click the arrow in the middle pointing to the left. This will copy the information over and prepare it for back-up.

4. Once the back-up has completed, hit the Clear button at the bottom to erase and clean out the entire address book database (or Calendar database).

5. After it’s finished, it will ask you if you want to save the back-up you’ve created, say yes and check the device to make sure the address book (or calendar) has been properly cleared out. Now, resync the necessary contact information and you should be set to go.

* The BlackBerry button is the “Menu” key on your berry.  It looks like

api Help, Tools, mobile Apps, blackberry, error, fix, google, google_calendar, gsync, Help, sync, Tools

Anagram may have launched one of the most valuable killer apps for blackberry in a long time.

More than a year ago, I mentioned Anagram as one of the little apps I can not live without and, as a hyper cheapskate recessionist, the desktop app is well worth the registration fee.

But, from the looks of things, Anagram has launched a FREE blackberry version to go along with their other versions that integrate with Salesforce, Outlook, Gmail, Google Calendar, NetSuite, Jigsaw, Palm Desktop and Tablet PC.

Hit the link and you have to punch in your bb email address and you’ll get an OTA link for download. It integrates right into the blackberry menu and allows you to select and then save contact information in email signatures or off web-pages, text messages or any other text field, and then have it import right into your address book or calendar, etc.

One quick tip: It looks like you need to COPY the text first, then “Capture with Anagram” for it to pull correctly.

Way to go Anagram.

This little tool is so valuable, I only wish I was actually paid to talk about them .

api Apps, Tools, mobile anagram, Apps, contact, contact_management, cool, CRM, must_have, textual, Tools

This is a test of using Google Docs to Liveblog…

7/22/08 10:07 AM
On The Google Docs Blog, I found an interesting guest blog post by Amit Agarwal, “a professional technology blogger at Digital Inspiration and an exceptionally creative Docs user” who wrote about using Google Docs to liveblog and event.I don’t find myself liveblogging very much… mostly, twitter is where I keep short/simple updates, but I thought I would try this out.

7/22/08 10:15 AM
My very first realization of how this is working is that, apparently, the Movable Type API that Wordpress uses doesn’t seem to support having a TITLE for the post. I even added a title in Wordpress, hoping it would just *keep* the title… but it doesn’t

7/22/08 10:19 AM
I can enter images, though…

… and tables!

7/22/08 10:24 AM
As Amit says in his post, “Control M” gets you current date and time. Clicking on the comment text allows you the option of “insert comment text into document”, so it it visible. That’s how I am getting the timestamps here.

7/22/08 10:25 AM
Finally, I am uploading images of this document as it has been evolving:

api Tools, Uncategorized, mashups blogging, google, google_docs, hints, ideas, liveblogging, publishing, Tools, tricks

Here are some very easy ways to make audio recordings. If you have other suggestions, please comment!

Local computer-based:

• Windows Sound Recorder: I am sure there are equivalents in Mac & Linux, but in Windows, find your Programs > Accessories > Entertainment menu, and you should find “Sound Recorder”. This little program records and saves WAV files.
• Audacity: This might be overkill, but if you want to edit your audio, this is the tool. Free and Open Source. Get it from Sourceforge.

Web-Based:

• Seesmic: The new social website allows you to record both audio and video and then send it to someone as a link (they’ll need to watch it online). FWIW, I use Seesmic bundled with the Disqus comment system to allow people to reply to blog posts with audio/video. If you leave a comment on this very blog-post, it will allow you to “Record Video Comment”. Check it out at Seesmic.com
• Utterz: This is very similar to Seesmic. Seems to have some more controls and privacy, but in my experience with it, I had a tough time getting it done. Benefits to Utterz:
  • Call from your PHONE
  • Send pics, video, text by EMAIL too
  • Better privacy options than Seesmic (I think)

Phone-Based:

• Utterz: Just repeating the last entry here.  Utterz lets you call from your phone.
• GrandCentral: Lucky enough to have a grandcentral account?  Set your account on “Send everything to voicemail” and call yourself… the message will come back to you as an MP3.
• Other Voicemail-to-email services: Come to think of it, Vonage or anybody else who emails you a voicemail recording is just as good…
• Cinch: Matt Reinbold told me about this one.  Cinch is drop-dead easy:
  • Simply CALL 646-200-0000 (six four six, two million) from a phone and follow the prompts.
  • It beeps at you and your voicemail-trained mouth will start talking.
  • Hangup when you’re done, and Cinch will save the recording as an MP3 file and save it as a downloadable file from a custom URL: http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/1112223333 where the numbers are the phone number you called from.
  • Paranoid about your number being shown?  Just go to Cinch’s website and register your number with a vanity name (like, um, your name) and then the URL will match.

All-in-all, just use what works.  The cool thing about Cinch is, you could literally broadcast a podcast from that service just by dialing the number and talking… it does the rest!

Rahhb Social Networking, Tools audio, podcasting, recording, Tools

I don’t have any idea why this was launched nearly a month ago and I am just finding it, but I think Facebook Chat is a pretty cool idea… and NOT because it’s “CHAT”.

Nevermind that TechCrunch somehow knew about Facebook Chat and I didn’t… must have been that day twitter was down..

First a few screenshots:

The first shows my facebook homepage, with a new “toolbar” along the bottom and a notifications window that pops up:

The second screenshot is a closeup of the status box, showing 9 online friends… 3 active, and 6 idle… and their statuses:

End of the day, I like this tool simply because its providing a drop-dead simple way to:

• Touch in with people simply
• Find out what’s happening in my network
• Communicate with people as-needed in the same place I find them (it is inefficient to use one tool to locate someone and then another tool to communicate with them when you find them!)

I don’t know if FB CHAT has additional features, but I would like it to:

• Integrate with my existing IM client… let me be online via FB chat or another IM tool, and let people find me through their own vector of accessing it.
• Integrate with twitter… or at least FacebookMobile. send me a FB chat and DM it to my twitter client or FB registered cell phone.

Rahhb Social Networking, Tools awareness, chat, communication, facebook, facebook chat, FB, IM, location, Social Networking, status, Tools