Archive for Google
Sync Outlook and Google Contacts
Posted by: | CommentsThere is the handy Google calendar sync download that will do a 1 or 2-way calendar sync, but it doesn’t handle syncing contacts. I thought Google or Microsoft would address this limitation, but I’ve found that WebGear has stepped in to offer the free GO Contact Sync that does the job very nicely with many options from which to choose.
This open source program is hosted at Sourceforge, a reliable source for innovative and free software. GO Contact Sync supports categories, so if you have set up groups of categories, it will find and keep them categorized. If you use contact photos, it will sync those too. However, if you have different photos for the same contact, it will not do a sync.
The best thing are the number of sync options available.
Sync options from the website…
- Merge Prompt: This will ask you which contact to overwrite if both have been updated.
- Merge Outlook Wins: If both contacts have been updated, the Google contact will be overwritten.
- Merge Google Wins: If both contacts have been updated, the Outlook contact will be overwritten.
- Outlook To Google Only: Only updates Google contacts based on Outlook contacts.
- Google To Outlook Only: Only updates Outlook contacts based on Google contacts.
Once the program is installed, you’ll have an icon in the system tray. Here you can click to sync your contacts on the fly. However, you can choose during the setup process how often to sync, or to sync upon startup.
I just found this program and haven’t decided if I’ll use it yet since I have different sets of contacts in my Outlook and Google contacts and I’m not sure if I want to merge them or not. The program is in beta, so they do say to use at your own risk! It’s always good to do a backup before trying something new.
Free Google Mail, Calendar & Docs Training
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, we talked about the extensive, free training resources available for learning Microsoft Office. We highlighted the new Ribbon Hero interactive, game-style training.
This week, we’ll focus on Google mail, calendar and docs and where to go to find training for these popular programs.
I signed up for gmail about three years ago and have my mail coming into my Outlook where I prefer to manage it. I’ve also used Google’s flexibility to have it pull email in from some of my POP accounts. It’s great to have the ability to see my mail accounts either while traveling or from the familiarity of Outlook.
Google mail, calendar and contacts are all accessible from your gmail screen. The Google calendar is especially popular and powerful – mainly with people who own smart phones because it’s easy to load to their phones and it can be synced with Outlook, Windows Live, Plaxo and I think with the Mac platform as well (not a Mac person).
After Gmail came Google Docs. A free and very stripped down version of Microsoft Office (in my opinion). Google’s also made it easy to collaborate and share documents rather than email them around. Microsoft similarly has a way to both upload and share documents. You can read my article about it here.
Back to our focus on finding some free training for Google mail and docs. The University of Minnesota evidently uses Gmail campus-wide because they’ve published extensive help resources accessible to anyone.
Their Google learning site contains on-line lessons, instructional videos, downloadable study/instructional guides and a searchable repository that seem very complete.
If you’ve ever been puzzled or curious about all the things you can do with Google Mail, Calendar or Apps, the basics as well as some advanced material is covered. Additionally, Google has an extensive support site as well.
Google Mail and Docs have become quite popular with small businesses, students and people who don’t want to pay for mail and office applications. There is the issue of backup and accessibility of our email, calendar events and documents. There are ways to access mail off-line (not sure about documents). The privacy/security issue seems to pop up as well. If you’re a person who stores credit card numbers, insurance policy numbers, etc. on your local machine, how will you feel about it being in the cloud? Maybe not so secure? Something to think about. Google is free, useful and accessible, but for me, I enjoy the Microsoft familiarity. They are also coming out with cloud apps and the ability to work and compute virtually. We’ll talk more about that with another column.
Google Voice-Keep Your Original Number
Posted by: | CommentsGoogle Voice made some attractive changes announced in their blog October 26th. Until now, those of us lucky enough to receive an invitation had to make a difficult choice to change our number over to our Google number—or not.
This week, Google said they recognize how difficult it is for some to give up their numbers, so they’ve been able to tweak the technology to allow people to keep their original number and keep these GV features:
- free voicemail transcription (delivered to your email address)
- ability to do an on-line search of transcribed voicemail
- customized greetings for different callers
- SMS and email notifications
- low-priced international calling
If you decide to make your GV number your only number, you also get these features:
- ability to use your Google Voice number to reach you on all your phones
- SMS via email
- call screening
- call recording
- conference calling (up to 6 people)
- call block
Here’s a chart from Google that gives a side by side of the above for easier comparison.
The big appeal of Google Voice for many of us is the ability to use one number that we can program to reach us from all of the phone numbers we use. We don’t get that if we keep our original number.
Having the ability to import my contacts, assign groups to them, record a specific greeting for business, personal and family groups is both efficient and professional. I can further direct GV how to handle a specific group or person’s calls at a certain time of day. For instance, I would program GV to send all my family calls to all of my numbers so I wouldn’t miss them. I would program my business group to ring only certain phones at designated times of the day.
Here’s a short video that quickly explains the benefits of Google Voicemail.
Having It Both Ways
I’ve got a Google Voice number—and I still have my mobile and home numbers because I didn’t want to be too hasty in eliminating numbers I’ve had for a long time.
Why not use both numbers. I’ve decided that’s what I’ll do for now. I can give my GV number out for certain purposes/circumstances and enjoy the ability to program instructions for specific groups or callers.
If I go out of town, I can choose to forward my mobile and home numbers to my GV number and have the ability to handle all my calls in a specific manner. Any voicemails will be transcribed and emailed to me for easy review and retrieval.
I’m not using my Google Voice number very much yet, but it’s nice knowing it’s there and on the few occasions I have, it’s such a timesaver to get voicemails emailed to me instantly. The transcription isn’t perfect, but enough so I can recognize who called.
One thing I haven’t gotten to work is the free SMS. It’s my understanding that if I use GV SMS, charges wouldn’t apply. However, after using it exclusively for several days, I checked my on-line T-mobile account and they were still being counted in there. I will check out the Google Voice Help Forums more to see if I can get an answer there.
