calendar

Tasks graduates Gmail Labs; Google Calendar gets experimental

In a move sure to please organizational fanatics, Google has graduated Tasks from Gmail Labs. In and of itself, it's not big news, since anyone's been able to enable the feature inside their own accounts since late 2008. It is, however, the first thing to graduate from Gmail Labs, which is a proving ground for features Google does not think to be ready for prime time.

In a blog post about the promotion, Google made it clear that less popular Labs features may eventually get the axe, however the company has not made a public listing of how … Read more

Google Apps shed beta label

Google Apps have all grown up.

No longer must Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Talk carry the beta tag of shame; they are all now full-fledged members of the Google family of products. Google has been hinting this was coming over the past few months, but is finally ready to make the official announcement along with the news that Fairchild Semiconductor has decided to embrace Google's suite of Web-based office productivity applications.

In truth, it's hard to tell exactly what technical advancements may have prompted the decision to lift the products out of beta. Matt Glotzbach, … Read more

The Calendar

I like the calendar that comes with the Pre. For a few days I was a little irritated that only the time was shown on the home screen (unless the screen was locked, then you saw both the date and the time), but then I realized that the calendar icon in the quick launch bar contains the day. (Insert Homer Simpson "DOH!" here.) … Read more

"Synergy" - Using Email, Calendar and Contacts

I've been mostly pleased with my access to my work and personal email accounts. After setting up my email (my previous blog - LINKTEXTHERE), I was able to dive right into my email. Both my Gmail and Exchange mail started coming right in. From the email interface, it presents each of your email accounts (I have only 2 here). From each email account, you can select 'Favorite' mail folders which will have shortcuts at the top of the screen (I'm just using my inbox's). Additionally, you can click(touch) the arrow next to each account and you'll be presented all of the folders available within that account. It took no additional work on my end, it was able to easily pull in all of my folders from each account. Fully utilizing the Pre's "Synergy", you can have an 'all email' view, displaying email from each account in one view. I've chosen not to see this as I prefer to keep my email seperate.

The email client also renders HTML email very well to my surprise. I've seen a number of phones claiming to be able to view HTML email, especially for Exchange 2007, but I haven't actually been able to view html email in exchange yet. I began to assume my work blocked that ability for some reason. However, full HTML versions of email come through clearly and immediately, and look great, as you can see in the graphics above. Additionally, you can zoom in and out as needed with the "pinching" gestures on the screen. Additionally, replying and forwarding email appears to work flawlessly (yes, this has been an issue on other phones), and includes the original HTML message.

The only complaint that I have about the email is that from the main email screen, where you can scroll through and choose emails to open. Unfortunately, this is really the only thing you can do in this screen. I haven't found an intuitive way to search or sort my email, so if I want to find something specific, I have to scroll and scroll and scroll to try to catch what I'm looking for. I would also love to see a feature where I can 'press and hold' an item (equivalent to right-clicking) to bring up the option to do something with the highlighted message like delete, mark as unread, or something of the sort. Right now, you can only do this by opening the message.

Getting connected on my Pre!

Probably the most important thing to me in any sort of smart phone is connectivity. And not just having a signal, but being able to easily connect to my different mail accounts, and NOT have to worry about my contacts. In the past, trying to manage porting my contacts over from phone to phone every 2 years, all while MS Outlook was becoming my de facto source of my contacts. When I got my first smart phone, a Windows based Motorola Q, my contacts were pulled in directly from my MS Exchange account and I believed I would never have … Read more

Postbox gets extensions

Considering that it's based on Mozilla Thunderbird, it was a bit of a surprise that add-ons weren't available for Postbox when it debuted. That's now been remedied in Postbox beta 13 for Windows and Mac. Given Postbox's emphasis on social-networking technology and Mozilla's own success with add-ons, this move puts the e-mail client in an excellent position to attract more users.

A Webware 100 winner, the list of supported extensions isn't long at the moment, and notably it doesn't include Thunderbird's calendaring tool Lightning. Since Postbox doesn't have its own supported … Read more

Using Mozilla code, Postbox rivals Thunderbird

Using Mozilla's own code, Postbox rivals Thunderbird for alternative desktop e-mail clients. Or at least, it wants to. Make no mistake, Postbox introduces some innovations that Mozilla could learn from. Much as Songbird changes Firefox's tune for audiophiles, Postbox takes desktop e-mail hard toward Web 2.0, with fast links to upload contacts to Facebook and pictures to Picasa.

Click on an e-mail, and the preview pane not only shows the text, but extracts all links, images, other attachments, and contacts into a Compose Sidebar for easy management. From there, you can upload to Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, Delicious, … Read more

Using Mozilla code, Postbox rivals Thunderbird

Clunky interface

RunningMan Calendar touts itself as a full-featured, easy-to-use calendar, but after getting our hands on it, we found it to be anything but.

RunningMan Calendar's user interface is, well, clunky. The Help menu on the publisher's Web site does offer some helpful information--for example, the main Help menu will give you a list of what is possible with this calendar--but we found it overall limited in its scope. We got started by clicking on a day in the calendar, hitting the File button, and adding an anniversary. A notepad document popped up with instructions on how to type … Read more

Effective free calendar

While there are plenty of programs that help manage your daily tasks, many are terribly expensive. EssentialPIM offers a free way stay organized, and we found it to be a fairly effective program.

This freeware heavily mimics the display and functionality of the popular Microsoft Outlook program. This, however, is not a bad thing. In fact, it makes EssentialPIM very intuitive thanks to the toolbar along the left side that allows users to easily cycle through the calendar, to-do list, contacts, notes, and trash. Inputting data into any of these fields is fairly easy. Anyone with prior experience with time … Read more