Crave

I miss my PalmPilot. Not so much the way it kept breaking every 12 months, but the effortless way it synchronized my to-do lists with Outlook.

Ever since trading my Palm-powered Centro for my iPhone, I've lived without a decent task-management solution. That's because, for better or worse, I'm entrenched in Outlook, and the iPhone can't sync with the program's task list (eye roll).

For a while there I was reasonably happy with Chapura's KeyTasks, a decent enough task manager that delivered the "missing sync" between iPhone and Outlook. But wouldn't you know

The Microsoft Office 2010 beta was released Wednesday, and though there aren't many major changes from the Technical Preview from July, there are some new features and enhancements worthy of note. This post will focus on the changes to the beta, but if you want a larger overview of new features across all the applications, check out our rundown of the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview.

Outlook is the cornerstone of many companies' communications and daily schedules, and as such received a lot of enhancements in Office 2010. In the beta version, Microsoft has added even more ways to connect with coworkers and contacts. The new Outlook Social Connector is an added information pane that gives you more info about everyday contacts. Once set up, you'll be able to view pictures of contacts (even in large cc lists), previous conversations, attachments shared, meetings attended, and much more. Though not complete in the beta, Microsoft says the Outlook Social Connector will soon be able to connect with social Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, so you can follow status updates and more all in one location.

The Office 2010 Technical Preview introduced the Back Stage view, an enhanced File menu (accessed from the Office Icon tab) that lets you manage your documents, set permissions, and share your projects with colleagues. In the beta version Microsoft has decided to return to calling it the File menu, but with all the functionality and flexibility of Back Stage. They also have made it possible to access all the other tabs in the Ribbon, which were previously inaccessible in the Technical Preview, so you can get to the information you want quickly without the added step of exiting Back Stage.

Microsoft Outlook search extension Xobni (Windows) gets a new extension of its own this week: Twitter.

Best known for speedily hunting down e-mail contacts and conversations in Microsoft Outlook, Xobni also has a social networking aspect. It includes photos courtesy of Facebook, phone numbers via Skype, Yahoo Mail, LinkedIn profile information, corporate information from Hoover's, and now, a Twitter stream.

Click on the Twitter icon in the contact view to see a list of recent tweets. Icons below get you started on a reply, retweet, or new post. You can also follow, unfollow, and view the person's profile. more

Despite ongoing problems in the company as a whole, Sony's electronics division is looking on the bright side when it comes to the all-important winter retail season.

Looking ahead to the holidays, Sony Electronics' Executive Vice President Mike Fasulo said Tuesday at a small media gathering in San Francisco that the gadget maker is hopeful about better sales this year than last.

"I'm cautiously optimistic about (holiday retail sales). Though I'm cautious about saying I'm cautiously optimistic," he said. Among retailers that sell Sony products, there's also "some notion this will be a better holiday than the previous year."

Sales of consumer electronics sunk 26 percent in the 2008 holiday season, according to one survey.

Fasulo's remarks came on a day filled with announcements from Sony, both on the electronics side, and the video game division, Sony Computer Entertainment America. Although it's only August, the company, like many in its industry, is already gearing up to introduce the products it hopes shoppers will snap up before they head back to school, as well as for holiday gifts.

Sony Electronics introduced a new line of home audio equipment Tuesday, called Altus, that it developed in partnership with Best Buy, though other retailers will eventually offer it too. Altus receivers, speakers, and iPod docks are aimed at a less tech-savvy audience, with minimal setup required.

If you followed the steps in my post from August on merging your Outlook and Gmail contacts, you may have ended up with duplicates in your contact lists. Microsoft's advice for deleting duplicate contacts is to sort them by the date modified, Ctrl-select the ones you want to remove, and press delete.

The problem is, the duplicate entries probably aren't identical, so you're almost certain to delete some data along with the dupe. What you need is a way to merge the information in the duplicate contacts. There's no such feature in Outlook, but if you're willing to spend $30, you can make short work of your extraneous Outlook entries by running 4Team's Duplicate Killer for Outlook.

The program deletes or merges duplicate e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks, and notes in addition to contacts. I tested the program with Outlook 2007 but, according to the vendor, it works with Outlook 2000, XP, and 2003 as well. The new version, 3, is said to work with "Microsoft Exchange type folders including public folders," according to the vendor's Web site, but I ran it on a standalone Outlook installation.

more

Do you love the "ding-ding" sound of a service station bell, triggered by driving over a pneumatic hose. Milton Alberstadt of Houston, Texas, certainly does--he makes his living selling them at Milton's Bells.

But he's also a geek, so he has rigged an interface on his PC that is triggered by incoming e-mail rules in Outlook to ring one of his bells. The "merger of the Internet and petrolania," he says.

Milton sells all the distinctly analog parts you need to do the same (bells, hose, y-splitters, and so on.) but you'll have to cajole him by e-mail