Live Calendar

Sometimes, it’s nice to have your Live and Google calendars (and mail), in the same place. This article will focus on calendars.

If you have Windows 7, you will have the already installed mail application which has the calendar in it. You can use this desktop application if you’re off-line, which is nice. I’ve noticed, though, that the on-line ‘Live’ mail and calendar have more robust and useful features. To view your Gcal in Live Calendar, you must use the web interface, which we’ll call Live Calendar.

For calendaring, the web version of Live Calendar gives you the option to import an associate or friends live calendar. If you use Gmail, you can also import both your gmail account as well as your calendar into the web Live Mail. Here are the steps on importing a Live Calendar into your Google calendar and how to import your Google calendar into your Live Calendar.

I wish it were an easier process, but there are quite a few steps to follow, just print them out or use a dual monitor to follow them closely.The author doesn’t say, but I would think that once the steps are followed and you’ve imported your calendar into Windows Live calendar, it will update automatically.

If you bring your google calendar into your Live calendar, it’s a 1-way sync. So you’ll have to add appointments from your google calendar and they will eventually show up on the Live Calendar. I don’t know how often it refreshes, but you can click on the Goog Calendar and it’ll take you to a page where you can see when it was last refreshed. I didn’t see how to change the refresh schedule though.

Below is a look into the windows live calendar screenshot with instructions on how to share complete calendar details or just your free/busy times. There is a link for importing an ICS  file and RSS feeds.

It’s important to note the differences between subscribing and importing calendars. Here is a great explanation from Microsoft on how it works.

If you import a calendar, you’ve imported data that will not change or update. This is fine if you want to import a German holiday calendar. They don’t change or get updated throughout the year.

If you subscribe to an on-line published calendar, then your calendar will automatically update when the main on-line calendar changes.

Managing calendars is always a challenge – I hope this will help keep you organized.

Here are screenshots of the differences between the Windows Live (web) calendar and the Windows Calendar (desktop client). As I mentioned earlier, the Live Calendar on the web is where you can either subscribe or import calendars.

shot of windows calendar - no share or import options

However, I was on a training call last week and our instructor mentioned she uses the auto-fill feature from the Google tool bar for filling out web forms.  Quickly and effortlessly, the form was filled out with no loss of time or having to stop and look up information.

The download and install took under a minute and I immediately filled out two profiles using the AutoFill function – very easy. You can choose which is the default. You can add a credit card and require a password to access that for web forms. I chose not to do that right now.

Need several ‘identities’ for your web forms – perhaps a business and a personal? No problemo, feel free to make as many profiles as you need.

Of course, the Google Toolbar has many more features. Check them out along with detailed explanations for their uses.

Google makes using the Auto-Fill function of their toolbar even easier by making this very short video.

What are your favorite toolbar features?

Microsoft has updated their tool bar, which I find more useful since I use more of their services. We’ll look at that next week, perhaps along with the Yahoo toolbar.

Google Voice Local Search was launched a few months ago. It is available only in the U.S. and is a free way to get information on local business listings.

Read about it here.

Program 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) into both your home and cell phones for future reference. When you call, an automated voice will answer. Give him your city and state and then you can ask for either a specific business listing or a category, i.e. florists. He will give you the top eight results, asking you to either speak or punch in the number of the one you’re looking for. Then you’ll receive the address of the business and the option to either be connected to the business or have the info texted to your cell phone.

I tried it on a speaker phone and the system heard everything I said the first time. Don’t you find it frustrating to have to repeat yourself to a machine? Give it a go, I think you’ll find it convenient…and best of all – free!

Here are great step-by-step instructions from Microsoft, so I won’t go into that level of detail here. These instructions assume you have WLM (Windows Live Mail) already downloaded to your computer and installed. Windows Live Mail has replaced Outlook Express as a desktop client for those of us using Vista or Windows 7. You can also choose to access your Windows Live or Hotmail from any web browser by going to http://home.live.com and signing in with your Windows Live ID.

Why would you want to bring all your email accounts to one location? Most of us tire of logging into all of our email accounts or keeping multiple browser windows open all day. So using Windows Live Mail or Gmail makes a lot of sense.

Let’s take a look at the features, benefits, and limits of each:

Windows Live

• Supports 3 types of servers for importing mail accounts
  • POP (typical of most personal email account users. If you have an ISP mail account (like Cox), that will be a POP account
  • IMAP – these servers let you work with mail without downloading them to your computer first. If you want to import your Gmail account into Windows Live, you’ll first need to change your Gmail settings to enable IMAP. There is a link to these instructions in the WLM link above.
  • SMTP – this server handles outgoing mail only and works with POP3 or IMAP incoming servers
• About upgrading to Windows Live Mail from Outlook Express (I’ve duplicated this information below) “Windows Live Mail is the successor to Microsoft Outlook Express 6, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail desktop Beta. If you have Microsoft Outlook Express 6, Windows Mail, or Windows Live Mail desktop Beta installed on your computer, when you install Windows Live Mail, all of your existing accounts, settings, and e-mail messages are automatically imported into Windows Live Mail. Any contacts in your Microsoft Windows address book (A list of contacts, that contains the names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of each of your contacts. If you’re signed in with a Windows Live ID, Windows Live Mail uses the contacts list associated with your Windows Live ID.) are also imported when you install Windows Live Mail.You can’t create Microsoft Outlook Express e-mail identities (A method used in Outlook Express that allows multiple people sharing the same computer to keep their e-mail separate. Identities aren’t used in Windows Live Mail.) in Windows Live Mail. Instead, to protect each user’s e-mail with a password, create a separate Windows user account and password for each person who wants to use Windows Live Mail on the computer. If you upgrade to Windows Live Mail from an Outlook Express account that contains multiple e-mail identities, you can import the e-mail messages and account information from the identities by clicking Identities on the Windows Live Mail File menu.”
• If you have multiple accounts, each is separated into its own folder to keep them separated
• If you import your Gmail account, you’ll be prompted to choose which folders/labels you want to be able to see. This is nice if all you will still use your Gmail web access from time to time and just want to see your inbox from within Windows Live.
• easily export your email messages or your entire folder to your hard drive to back up your mail.
• the only popular web based email account that won’t work with this is Yahoo. If you upgrade to their premium ($20/yr) service, then it’ll basically be a POP account and you can import into WLM.
• You can work in offline mode with your mail.
• No easy way to import Outlook mail into Windows Live Mail-strange, but true. I’ve seen some give advice to export your Outlook into Outlook Express and then import it into Windows Live. I think this would work, but now it’s hard to find Outlook Express.
• You can send mail from one of your imported addresses (a Gmail account, for example). Just click the drop down to the right of the ‘To’ box to select which account.

Gmail

For all the hype and buzz around Gmail, Hotmail & Live Mail still have more users than Gmail. But Gmail is a powerful and useful mail client. Multitudes are flocking to it, leaving Microsoft Outlook behind. I’ve had a Gmail account for several years and have recommended clients get one to alleviate access problems – especially when travelling. It’s reassuring and convenient to know you can get to your email from anywhere.

I find the Gmail web interface cluttered and quite frankly, ugly. Yes, I have changed my theme and I still don’t like my user experience. If you want the convenience of Gmail and the comforting interface of Outlook, here’s how you can import, view and manage your Gmail from Outlook.  Some features, benefits and limits of bringing your mail accounts into Gmail:

• With Gmail, you can work with your mail offline – you’ll need to go to the ‘Settings’ tab and click on ‘use offline’. You’ll be prompted to download ‘Gears’ in order to do this.
• People rave about the ability to filter and label email. With filters (accessed from ‘Settings’, you follow the ‘create filter’ guidelines to sort your incoming mail into particular folders. For people with huge amounts of incoming mail, this is valuable. Labels are really folders and you can make as many labels as you wish and file your mail into them.
• Ability to import Outlook mail into Gmail (difficult to do with Windows Live)
• Gmail supports the same type servers as WLM. You’ll just need to have all your settings handy during the process (this is usually the sticky point-sometimes you don’t know a server setting or remember a password).
• Gmail does not import Yahoo mail either – unless it’s the premium Yahoo Mail.
• There are ways to backup your Gmail, but it’s not an easy File>Export process as in WLM. We’re not covering it here, but it’s certainly something to address. If you’re using Gmail for business, what would you do if there was an extended outage? Very rarely, accounts have been deleted by mistake. You need a backup plan!
• You can respond to messages from within Gmail using one of your imported addresses. You can set up a default, but then you’ll need to remember to use the drop down to select which address you want before sending.

Conclusion

Comparing the lists, it seems both programs share many of the same features. With Gmail, you can import your Outlook mail, but it’s very difficult with WLM. It’s easy to export and backup your WLM folders and messages, however, it’s not as easy with Gmail. Both can be used off-line. Rules can be set up to filter mail with both.

It seems to me if you like the Google culture and all of the things that accompany Gmail (calendaring, contacts, plus access to new software that Google develops, then go with Gmail. If you like and already use Microsoft products, then it might make sense to go with Windows Live Mail as it integrates well with other Microsoft products and services.

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.

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.

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.

New With Google Calendar

• offline access to gain read-only access to your calendar, just go to any page on your calendar and click the ‘offline’ button at the top. You’ll be prompted to download and install Google Gears and then you can configure all or just one of your Google calendars for off-line access.
• Attach documents to Google calendar. This is a nice feature – activate by going to the ‘Labs’ section and enabling and saving. Then open or initiate your meeting/appointment, click ‘Attachment’ and add any Google doc (limited to Google docs only).

• Snooze reminders on your desktop. This is a Google Talk download that will put reminders that you can snooze on your desktop.
• Google 1-way (Google to Outlook), 1-way (Outlook to Google), or 2-way (Both calendars synced to the same appointments) sync. This one’s been around for awhile, but it was on the ‘New’ page. This feature is the most popular with Outlook users. There will be a download for this feature as well. I’m not using it now, but I have in the past and it’s a great tool, especially when working with a client. You are able to get web access to their calendar to add events, appointments, etc. and they will sync with the client’s Outlook calendar.
• Sports calendars – add game schedules from your favorite team(s). Find this feature near the top of your calendar page.

Google’s calendar documentation says it will sync with Outlook 2003 or 2007 and with Mozilla’s Sunbird and Apple’s iCal. If you have Windows Live Calendar, you can import an .ics file from Google. It’s a bit convoluted, but you first go to your Google calendar, export your calendar as an .ics file, extract it and then import the file with the .ics extension into your Windows Live calendar.

If you don’t want to use the sync program from Google, you could export your calendar events from Outlook to a .csv file and import them into Google. To do this, have Outlook open and go to File>import/export>export to file>comma separated values (Windows) and then you’ll choose your calendar to export. Then it’s simple to go to Google and get to your Calendar Settings page and click on the import button, find your file and bring it in. You will be able to select a date range during this process.

You can perform the reverse as well – export your Google Calendar and bring those appointments into Outlook.

If you’re wondering about contacts syncing between Outlook and Google, this is available from Google in their premium ‘Google Apps’ product. You can still import your contacts. You can still import and export contacts between Google and Outlook, they just won’t be synced.

Plaxo Calendar Changes

I wrote awhile back about Plaxo’s features and benefits. Since then, some changes have been made. They are now requiring a ‘premium subscription’ at $60/year for something they used to do for free. That is the syncing of appointments and contacts between Outlook and Plaxo calendars. The premium feature also includes syncing of tasks and finding and eliminating duplicate contacts.

Plaxo still offers their ‘Sync Points’ for the below apps for free. To get to Sync Points, sign in to Plaxo and to either your calendar or address book and look for the Sync Points at the bottom of your screen. Click the radio button and follow the instructions.

I really don’t hear about a whole lot of people signing up for Plaxo accounts anymore and I rarely get invitations. It seems that people with an account keep them open, but really don’t do a lot with them. With Ping.fm and other aggregators around, it’s easy to keep Plaxo in our circle of social networking.

Google Apps is $50/year and seems to be a better deal of the two paid services as Google is always coming out with new things, most of which are free.

What do you use to keep your contacts and appointments organized? Please leave a comment.

I visited the website and signed up to get the very special invitation from Google. It arrived a couple of weeks ago, so I began the process of searching through a list for the perfect number that would resonate with me and the world (ha ha).

So now I’ve got my number and am wondering what the heck I’m going to do with it. What will it do for me or other small business owners?

The Google site has lots of great videos and FAQs to assist, but I turn to tech bloggers I respect to get their take and some practical applications. This time, I chose TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington because I heard he quit the iPhone because Apple/ATT won’t allow the Google Voice App to be downloaded and used on iPhones. If he put his iPhone down for Google Voice, there must be something to it.

Please read his great article. He addresses probably the biggest concern – I don’t want to lose my number! Google will be rolling out number portability later this year. That solves that problem. The next concern is that when I place a call, I want my ported number to show up, not the Google Voice number. They have addressed that as well (on the mobile side), with apps that have already been released for the Android and Blackberry.

So let’s say the porting of your mobile number to your Google Voice number has happened and you are lucky enough to own one of the supported mobile handsets that accept the Google Voice App – what next? Let’s look at features…

Google Voice Features

• You’ll have a single number that can/will ring to your home, work, mobile or any other number you own—depending on how you set it up.
• Ability to block any number you wish (think of the possibilities here)
• Set up personalized vmx greetings by group or individual
• Screen callers leaving you a vmx – pick it up if you wish
• Granular settings—you control (via your Google Voice account on the web), how calls from either a group you designate or a single person is handled. You are able to set controls so that your friends calls are automatically routed to all your numbers because you don’t want to miss their calls – right? On the flip side, you can also set your phone to have certain calls go directly to your voicemail at at certain times of the day(co-workers after hours calls??).
• Voicemail—you can set controls so any voicemails you receive on your mobile are transcribed and sent to you either via email or text message, then read it at your leisure. What a timesaver! The transcribed calls are all held in your Google account on-line and are searchable and tagable.
• Conference Calls—have up to 6 people on a conference call—and you can record the call too.
• Call Record –record calls and save them online.
  

Try to wrap your head around this – with your Google Voice number, you will never have to be held captive again by a phone company.Whatever phone you have in your hand can be used as your phone.

I’ve yet to dive in to my Google contacts to set all the controls and instructions, but Paul Stamatiou has and has some great screen shots and shows the multitude of possibilities at your fingertips.

For you Palm Pre users, looks like there is an unofficial app out there for you. Read Lifehacker’s article for more information.

Blackberry, Android and other mobile users can get the app you need as well.

There’s a lot of positive buzz about Google Voice and many are getting their numbers, but from what I’ve read, people are waiting for the number portability feature to start implementing.

For business owners, it is a great convenience and the service is free – at least for now. Our phones are our lifelines and helps us produce revenue. Do we want to trust it to Google—be it for privacy, security, reliability reasons? What do you think?

Gmail

If you’re a Gmail user, the option is available to you to add  up to five POP & IMAP accounts. So that means no internet accounts (such as Windows Live or Yahoo). Windows Live has this feature, but not Gmail. Anybody know why not? If you’re looking to consolidate your email accounts into one place, let’s look at Gmail.

Here’s a list from Google of supported IMAP & POP clients for easy reference.

IMAP

POP

It’s a pretty easy process to consolidate your IMAP & POP accounts into Gmail. After you’re logged into Gmail, click on the ‘Settings’ button at the top right and then click on ‘Accounts’. Then you’ll see

At this point you can click on the learn more button and be able to read some FAQ and other instructions from the Google help site. If you’re ready, then click on the ‘add a mail account you own link and follow the prompts to enter in your POP & password settings. Google sends an email to that account in order to verify you truly do own it.  Below are some settings you can specify for that particular account.

Gmail instantly goes to work pulling your emails into the Gmail interface. You’ll notice that Google has color coded each of your email accounts to help you keep the emails sorted out visually. Of course you can apply labels (filters) to emails coming in and have them go to a different folder (or label), if you like. If I did that, I’d forget to check it!

Advantages

• Your emails are now ‘in the cloud’ and you’re able to access them from any computer. This is appealing for those of us with POP accounts as we’re usually limited to accessing those emails from one computer
• Unlimited storage – well, almost. Outlook will crash if your account gets to 4GB and will probably act sluggish long before that point. Gmail has an 8GB allowance – more than most of us will need.
• If you keep your life on your email (receipts, conversations, attachments, etc.), it’s a great storage space and easily searchable
• Gmail does allow off-line access now. Consult my earlier posting to activate this feature

Disadvantages

• What about back-up? Gmail doesn’t have a backup feature (see note below)
• Internet outages/overloads/attacks If something like this happens, you won’t be able to send & receive emails
• Trust factor. You have to have a lot of trust and faith in Google that they will keep your data safe, private and instantly available

To have a backup of your email, you could keep your Outlook running and have your mail flowing in there and simply make periodic backups.

It seems like there are lots of advances with email, calendar and contact collaboration. However, we’re not quite there yet with having everything we want. Until that day comes, we will continue to cobble solutions to fit our needs.

After doing the research for this post and the Windows Live Mail post, it seems that Windows Live will at least let you integrate both types of mail accounts. If you have an experience or solution that’s worked for you, please share it.

Addendum 8-13-09

After writing this article, I found someone HAS come up with a way to back-up Gmail. You may want to read about it first at Lifehacker as there are many comments that may be helpful to you before you decide to use it.