calendars

Google is taking another tentative step into personal search, creating a new field trial today for users who want to search across a range of Google products from a single search box.

In August the company created a trial bringing Gmail results to Google searches. Today's trial brings other Google services back to Gmail.

Participants in the trial will first notice a kind of instant-search feel to Gmail search results, as relevant e-mails will begin popping up in the search bar as soon as users start typing. And it won't only be e-mail: The trial lets users search … Read more

I've written before that one of the hardest things about moving to the Mac from Windows was leaving behind the Windows-version of Outlook, in particular its calendar.

I greatly miss two key features: ample space for making notes related to an event and the multiweek view to see events split across two months. Alternatives for the Mac from Apple, Google, and even Microsoft's own Mac-version of Outlook fail to measure up. That's too bad.

Room for notes Let me start with the importance of allowing room for notes within events. When scheduling a meeting or an appointment, … Read more

With iOS 6, app developers will have to get permission to access your personal information. Apps will need permission to access your Location, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders, Photos, and even your Twitter or Facebook account.

The first time an app attempts to access any of your private information, you'll be prompted to grant it access to that information. Should you deny (or approve) the access but later change your mind, you can change it in the Settings app.

Instead of cluttering up the Settings app with option after option, Apple condensed all of the privacy settings and put them in … Read more

My Calendar Mobile is an iOS app with a single aim: to help you remember your friends' birthdays. Its nice design and uncluttered interface won't make it addictive, though -- not even for those who have plenty of birthdays to keep track of.

The app is the iOS version of the very popular Facebook application that reminds its users about their friends' birthdays. While the Facebook interface isn't visible, My Calendar Mobile needs to have access to your friends' birthday information. It can do this by syncing with Facebook or with your Contacts, or you can add birthdays … Read more

Google offers lots of useful, and free, Web tools that you can use from anywhere -- with Internet access being required at only some points to save data to the cloud. The best part about these services is that you can customize many of them to your preferences, like Google Calendar.

Suppose you don't want to load your calendar to the monthly view every time you open it. What if you want to only look at the next two to three days at a time, and not the whole week? If you find yourself resetting your calendar view every … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week readers wrote in with questions on whether an SSD or a larger HDD would be a better option especially for upgrading to Mountain Lion, how to manage calendars locally and on iCloud, managing the recovery HD partition when upgrading to Mountain Lion, and the 32-bit support options for Mountain Lion. We welcome views from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, post them in the comments!

Question: Upgrading to an SSD or a larger HDD? MacFixIt reader … Read more

What started out as a Facebook hackathon project has led to the social network's new-fangled Events page design.

Starting today, Facebook is rolling out its redesigned Events page, which comes with Calendar and List views. Now users can see birthdays, parties, RSVPs, and all other events up to several months in advance of the current date.

Spearheaded by Facebook software engineer Bob Baldwin, who created the homepage Events permalink at an earlier hackathon, the new Events design was fashioned to make it easier for users to organize their events, make plans, and see their friends' birthdays.

"Before a … Read more

Android makes it very easy to add nearly any Google service to the platform, but when it comes to adding various other third-party services, such as an iCloud calendar, there really isn't an easy way of doing it.

If you're already entrenched in iCloud and sharing calendars with family members and colleagues who are using iOS and/or OS X, switching to Google Calendar may not be the easiest thing to do, for all involved. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it won't be seamless for those who aren't switching devices. Thankfully, there'… Read more

A day after it was revealed that LinkedIn was transmitting user data without their knowledge, the business network said it would discontinue the practice.

Mobile security researchers Yair Amit and Adi Sharabani discovered that once enabled by the user, an opt-in feature on the iOS app's calendar automatically transmits users' calendar entries, including passwords and meeting notes, back to LinkedIn servers. The transmission of data, which is not revealed to users, is thought to violate Apple's privacy guidelines, which prohibit apps from collecting and transmitting users' data without their express permission.

A LinkedIn representative explained last night that … Read more