Grinn Blog

50 Google Calendar Tips

The folks over at VirtualHosting.com sent us their list of 50 tips, tweaks and hacks for making the most of Google Calendar. These include Basic Tips, Scripts, Extensions & Add-Ons, Hacks & Tricks, and Calendar Syncs. It's worth at least a glance to anyone who uses Google Calendar, but where's our Jott to Google Calendar on the list, guys?

Which tip is our favorite? Probably the Display Current Timeline Greasemonkey script:

This simple Greasemonkey script creates a floating red line that displays just where you are during each day so you can keep up to the minute on what appointments are coming up.

Thanks for the tip. Link

Labels: Google, Tips

Daily Link Roundup

ATAX Survival Tool
The MP3 speaker jacket - Although jackets integrating MP3 players are nothing new, this is the first we’ve seen that makes wearers look like they’ve just washed up from a shipwreck.
CES: Big, Bad-Ass Speakers We Wish We Could Afford
Review: Eye Fi 2GB SD Card Wins CES Award For a Good Reason
Nintendo cross-stitches
Tiny Camera Stand Is Flexible, Fits On Your Keychain
Dreamflyer - Personal Flight Simulator Machine
Network Solutions Using Questionable Tactic to Sell More Domain Names - aka DO NOT SEARCH FOR DOMAIN NAMES THROUGH NETWORK SOLUTIONS!
Import Your Hotmail Messages into Gmail
Nintendo Wii Mii-Shaped Chocolates for Valentine's Day - The figures aren't based on your own Mii avatars... Sorry.
~~Steal~~ Download Music From Any Shared iTunes Library with OurTunes
Flyby Of Mercury Coming Up In NASA's Messenger Mission - Exploring some of the last unexplored terrain in the inner solar system at 141 thousand mph!
Video of people from 1 to 100 hitting a drum - Not exactly tech-centric, but rather neat.
Swedish MPs call for legalized file-sharing - Seven Swedish Members of Parliament from the Moderate Party have written a stirring call for the legalization of file-sharing.
CES best of show winners from ZDNet.com

Labels: Audio, Games, Google, Links, Neat Stuff, Space

Daily Link Roundup

Today brings us some gorgeously geeky artwork, a brew baking Bender and (of course) more new neat gadgets from CES.

"Supersonic" Zeppelin-Shaped Theremin by Björn Schülke - Visit the link to his site for more geek-savvy sculptures.
Take Screenshots of Complete Web Pages with Screengrab (Firefox)
CES: LG Watch Phone Prototypes - A watch phone that doesn't suck?
Saitek’s New Cyborg Gaming Keyboard Lets You Assign Colors To Key Zones
CES: Flir's Predator-Vision Security Cam Defends Conference Hall Table
The beer brewing Bender replica - Robots and beer!
Naps Help Your Memory, New Study Suggests
CES: Hands-on with the Philips 'WOW vx' 3D Display - True 3D without the glasses.
CES: Panasonic's Enormous 150" Plasma TV Dwarfs All Competitors
Case holds stun gun and iPod
Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org - The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era of Data Portability - where users can take their data from the websites they use to reuse it elsewhere.
Sceners Threaten to Destroy BitTorrent, “One Step at a Time”
TV star publishes bank details in anti-privacy editorial, gets ripped off

Labels: Downloads, Games, Google, Links, Mobile

Daily Link Roundup

Unless you subscribe to Grinn Blog, you're probably not familiar with our Daily Links feature. This is because it has always been a subscriber-only feature. Daily Links is a list of articles we've felt were noteworthy, but weren't worth blogging ourselves either because they're already so well covered, or simply can't be said anymore about.

But, as a new-year's resolution of sorts, we've decided to make our Daily Links public to everyone who visits the site and have renamed it to the Daily Link Roundup. With that, I bring you today's notable links.

The Next Google Search Challenger: Blekko
Is That a Projector In Your Pocket, Or... Oh, Shut Up - A blackberry-sized projector.
Holy Hotspot! Mecca Gets Wall-to-Wall Wi-Fi! - Saudi Arabia has set up a mesh WiFi network.
A Little Scary: Nano-Nukes
Belkin Washable Mouse - Cheap, Simple And Cheetos Resistant
25 Skills Every Man Should Know: Your Ultimate DIY Guide
Reuters Tech Week: Robots! - A neat little year-in-review for robotics.
Man Jumps Onto NY Subway Track To Save iPhone - Seriously.
Integrate Gmail and Google Calendar with Enhance Gmail - Greasemonkey script.
Whopper Freakout - (Ghetto Version/NSFW)

Labels: Google, Links, Robotics

Blogger Goes Apeshit

Since sometime yesterday I've had a heck of a time publishing to my blog using Blogger and apparently I'm not the only one. In fact, I'd be surprised if anyone will be able to read this entry since I'm essentially unable to publish!

Blogger allows you to publish your blog to your own server via FTP. In your settings you specify your FTP server, user name, and password and when you hit Publish on their web interface their servers upload the HTML files that make up your blog to your server.

However, since yesterday, FTP upload has been finicky at best. When you attempt to publish, Blogger just sits there displaying the "Publishing..." message you see above. Sometimes it will eventually display a message saying "Your publish is taking longer than expected" but offers no real explanation.

It seems the folks over at Blogger have yet to realize the issue, but the morning is just still young. Perhaps they're over at the Android wing of the building hanging balloons for the SDK release party. This is the part where I normally say, "I'll keep you posted" but I probably will be unable to!

Labels: Bitching, Google

Google's Android vs Apple's iPhone

The web is abuzz with talk of Google's new mobile OS, Android. What I find interesting is the stark contrast between Apple's tyrannical stance against people developing their own apps for the iPhone, and Google's stance that outside apps can only lead to the melioration of their product. Apple has blocked users from developing apps for the iPhone, going as far as causing all outside apps that were developed for the iPhone to be bricked. Google has done quite the opposite. Their new Android mobile operating system not only is designed specifically to allow programmers to produce apps for it easily and is not tied to any specific phone or carrier, but the entire operating system will be made open-source sometime next year!

For those of you guys that missed it, Google today announced that they are in fact not making a cellphone or mobile device, but instead were actually developing an open-source operating system for cellphones and mobile devices. The software is known as Android. C'mon, are you really surprised that a software company developed software and not a device? Here's the scoop on Android:

It's wide-open:

An SDK will be available November 12th.
The OS is free for mobile providers (or anyone else) to put it on their phones. Google plans to make their money off ads displayed to the users of the phone (not sure if it's on the phone itself or simply when browsing Google's pages.)
The OS itself will go open-source sometime next year.

It has been suggested that the design of the phones may be similar to the iPhone (with touch screens and what-not) but I'm guessing the OS's interface will not be tied to one particular navigation or input system.
Google will continue developing mobile versions of its web-based applications such as Google Maps and GMail for those of us with non-Android phones to continue to use.
Google has also announced the Open Handset Alliance: A group of developers, manufacturers and providers to "commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform."
Android-powered phones are not expected to be available until the second half of 2008.

Again, all of this is such a contrast to how Apple has handled outside development on their iPhone. Jobs was quoted as saying, "These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them." And that, "'Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up." People figured out a way to get their own apps on their (own) iPhones, but instead of voiding their warranty (or thanking them for making the iPhone waaaay better), Apple blocked their apps with their latest patch. It has taken a huge public outcry and several lawsuits to get Apple to finally open the iPhone a bit. They've now announced that they'll be releasing a developer kit this February.

As you can see, I'm a little pissed at Apple for locking down the iPhone. It would be a glorious device to develop on, but right now isn't worth the risk of Apple killing any apps one would develop on it. As for me, I'm not holding my breath for iPhone's developer kit release, either. As a developer, why should I settle for semi-open-source when the real thing is right around the corner?

Labels: Apple, Coding, Google, Mobile, Web 3.0

Add to Google Calendar by Talking Into Your Cell

Version 1.2

We recently developed a new web application that allows you to call a number from your cellphone, say something like "Have insurance meeting with Bobby tomorrow at 3pm" and have a new event for exactly that added to your Google Calendar. You can also call that number and say "Get events from 9/21/2007 through 9/25/2007" and it will email you (and text message you if you want) with a list of those events. We do this with (lost of) help from another neat little app we mentioned a while back known as Jott.

As we mentioned before, "Simply put, [Jott] allows you to send a short email to anyone in your Jott contacts. Not using a computer, not via BlackBerry, and not exactly by text messaging through your cellphone. The thing that makes Jott unique is that it allows you to simply speak what you want emailed." Jott recently released a new feature called Jott Links that allows you to Jott directly to popular web applications such as Blogger and Twitter. This is all fine and dandy, but the really great thing is that Jott Links has an API! That means we can now develop applications that use Jott without any nasty hacks.

So, we wrote a small application that allows you to work with your Google Calendar using Jott. You do this by either saying something like, "Go to the bar on Friday at 10pm" to add an event or by saying something like, "Get events from monday to wednesday".

How to Set It Up

Let's get started.

Edit: Due to recent changes in Google's authentication you should first log in using this link on Google's site to avoid "Captcha" errors.
Get a Jott account (if you don't already have one.)
Log into your account and click on the Jott Links tab, or click here.
In the "My Links" panel to the right, click on the icon at the bottom that reads, "Developers - Got a custom link to add? Add it here"
Fill in the information on this page as follows:
Link Name: Google Calendar
Setup Url: http://www.grinn.net/jott2gcal
Link Url: http://www.grinn.net/jott2gcal/convert.aspx
If you want, check "Send SMS Response"
Check "I have read and agree to the Terms of Service" (oh... and read them.)
Click Add. This will take you to a screen prompting you for your Google Calendar Login information. This is normally your GMail account and password.
Type your login information into the form. Don't worry, we won't give out your information and it's all encrypted and stuff before being saved on our servers.
Click Save.
Read the little blurb and click the Click Here to Continue link.
Continue reading below for how to use it.

How to Use It
To use the service, all you do is call the Jott number on your phone (1-866-JOTT-123). When the lady says "Who do you wanna Jott?" say "Google Calendar" (or whatever you set the Link Name as in Step 4). She'll confirm what you said. When you hear the beep, you simply say whatever you want added as an event or what date(s) you want to know the events for. I'll explain the syntax for you.

Originally we were going to use the same syntax as Google Calendar's QuickText feature for adding events, mainly because that would be a lot easier than writing our own translator. But, although the QuickText feature is rather "typed English" friendly, it wasn't what was best for "spoken English". So, we wrote our own translator with its own custom syntax:

To add an event:
calendar name calendar, event title on date at time for length

To get a list of events:
get (events for) date (to/through) date calendar name calendar

Examples for adding events:

"Work calendar, Insurance adjustment meeting on Monday at 10pm for 1 hour and 30 minutes."
"Walk the dog for 45 minutes at 5:30 pm on Tuesday."
"TV calendar, watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force at 10pm on Saturday."
"Pick up the car on Friday at 7am."

Examples for getting a list of events:

"Get events for Monday."
"Get events for Tomorrow through Thursday."
"Get events for 4/10/2007 through 4/28/2007."

That's all you really need to know to get started using Jott to Google Calendar. But if you're curious or get stuck, keep reading for additional details on how it works.

Rules for Adding Events:

Everything is optional. You can specify every part such as "Work calendar, Insurance adjustment meeting on Monday at 10pm for 1 hour and 30 minutes" or give just the title such as "Fix the car". Saying just the title will add the event as an all day event for today.
When giving time, speak in hours and minutes. So you could say "Walk the dog for 45 minutes at 5:30 pm on Tuesday" or "TV calendar, watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force at 10pm on Saturday for 4 hours and 30 minutes".
You can't give a length without a time. This is only logical. You can't say you want something to be an hour long if we don't know when it starts.
There are a few shortcuts.

You can use "today", "tomorrow", or "yesterday" instead of "on (date)". So you could say "Pick up the car tomorrow at 7am".
You can use weekday names instead of specific dates (which the app actually prefers) such as "Pick up the car on Friday at 7am". It will schedule your event for the next date that weekday comes around.
You can say "one and a half hours" instead of "one hour and 30 minutes". You can also say "half an hour" or "an hour and 30 minutes" or "an hour and a half" or any such combination.

(Almost) everything can be in any order. With the exception of optionally specifying which calendar to add the event to, you can put the separate "parts" of the Jott in any order you like. For example, you could say "Personal calendar, Go to Michelle's party on Wednesday at 10pm for 3 hours". You could also can say "Personal calendar, on Wednesday go to Michelle's party at 10pm for 3 hours" or "Personal calendar, for 3 hours on Wednesday at 10pm go to Michelle's party" or give the items in any other order.

Rules for Getting Events:

Say "get". If your message starts out with the words "get" it will be assumed that you wish to retrieve your list of events. If you want add an event where the title begins with "get", just specify the calendar as well. For example, "TV calendar, get ready for some football on Monday" will add an event, while "get events for Monday" will return next Monday's events.
Say one or two dates. If you just give one date like, "Get tomorrow" or "get April 28, 2008" you will be messaged with all the events for that one day. If you say two dates you will be messaged with all the events from the first date through the last date (inclusively) like, "Get events for April 3rd, 2008 through April 10th, 2008".
Optionally, say a calendar. If you want to get events on any calendar other than your default (the first calendar you created) all you have to say is "calendar name calendar" at the end. For example, if you have a calendar called Personal that you wanted to get today and tomorrow's events for, you would say "Get events for today and tomorrow, Personal calendar".
Anything else is ignored. Anything other than "get", the date(s), and the calendar is ignored. This allows you to phrase your request just about any way you want. You could say "Get all events from today until December 25th, 2007, Work calendar" or simply "Get today December 25th, 2007, Work calendar" - it doesn't matter. The only exception is that it is assumed that anything between the last date and the word "calendar" will be the name of your calendar.

Detailed Explanation

calendar name
Jott to Google Calendar knows all of the calendars you subscribe to. You can add to or list events from any of your calendars by saying "[calendar name] calendar". When adding events, if you don't have access to add events to the specified calendar or if you don't specify a calendar it will add the event to your default calendar (the first calendar you added to Google Calendar). You can list events from any of your subscribed calendars. If the calendar you specify isn't found or you don't specify a calendar, the events from your default calendar will be messaged to you.

Examples:
Work calendar, Purchase new widgets for office floor on Thurday.
Get events for 10/5/2007 through 10/10/2007, Work calendar.

event title
Your event title is what will appear as the text for that event. It can contain any text, including reserved words (such as on, at, or for). For the most part you don't have to worry about this mixing up Jott to Google Calendar. It'll know what you mean.

date
When adding an event, the date portion is what day you want the event to occur on. When retrieving a list of events, you'll specify either a single date that you wish to list the events for, or two dates if you want to retrieve a list of events spanning multiple days. There's several ways you can specify the date:

By saying the weekday: "Wednesday", "Friday", etc. This will indicate events for the following Wednesday or Friday, respectively.
By saying any of the supported shortcuts: You can use "today", "tomorrow", or "yesterday" instead of "on (date)". So you could say "Pick up the car tomorrow at 7am" or "Buy groceries on your way home from work today at 6:30pm" or "Get events for today and tomorrow".
By saying the date itself: "four twenty-eight, 2008" or "April 28th, 2008" will work for representing 4/28/2008.

Currently, multi-day or repeating events are not supported for adding events.

time
You can give the time in any standard numeration such as "10:30 am" or "4:45 pm". If you don't specify AM or PM Jott to Google Calendar will try and guess what you meant. For example, if you say, "Pick nose today at 3" it will assume you mean 3pm. However, it's assumptions may not be correct (maybe you want to pick your nose at 3am) so it's still suggested to specify AM or PM in your times. Military time has limited support.

Example: Pick up breakfast tomorrow at five-thirty am

length
The length specifies how long your event should last. It can be specified in just about any reasonable way imaginable. The best way is to give it in hours and minutes such as "
2 hours, 30 minutes", "2 hours", or "45 minutes". You can also say stuff like "one and a half hours", "half an hour", "an hour and 30 minutes" or "an hour and a half". You can't say "for all day". Instead just say "all day" like "Spend time with Aunt Anna-Carolyn on Wednesday all day".

Example: Personal calendar, sell soul on eBay on Thursday at 6pm for 45 minutes.

Thanks for checking this thing out. It's a work in progress but hopefully it will help make your life easier. Please feel free to leave us a comment if you have any suggestions or to let us know how it works for you!

Updates

10/08/07:

Upgraded the Google Calendar API to the new version (1.1).
Updated error reporting on the configuration page to be more friendly and more easily noticed.
BUG FIX: People were experiencing an issue when using Jott to Google Calendar in a different timezone than where our server resides (EST.) Google Calendar would add your event when it would occur in EST instead of when you said. For example, if you were in CST and you added an event to your calendar using Jott2GCal for 12pm, it would instead add that event onto your calendar at 11am. There actually wasn't even a way (that I know of) to correct this issue before the new Google Calendar API came out a few days ago, and the way we fixed it is a bit of a hack, but should work for now until Google comes out with something to specifically address this issue.
BUG FIX: If you had never used Google Calendar, an error would occur when attempting to set up your account with Jott to Google Calendar. Now a more friendly message with instructions is displayed.

10/06/07:

You no longer have to say AM or PM for your times, but it's still suggested. If you don't specify AM or PM Jott to Google Calendar will try and guess what you meant. For example, if you say, "Pick nose today at 3" it will assume you mean 3pm. However, it's assumptions may not be correct (maybe you want to pick your nose at 3am) so it's still suggested to specify AM or PM in your times.
BUG FIX: I don't know why anyone was doing this, but an error was thrown if someone tried to access convert.aspx using a Jott Link that wasn't registered with our site. Now it just tells them they need to register first.
BUG FIX: From the start we've experienced the occasional connectivity issue with Google's servers. When this happens, Jott2GCal will retry a number of times before giving up. It seems we still sometimes don't retry enough, so we increased the number of times it retries and increased the amount of time it waits between retries.

09/26/07:
- Updated the Jott to Google Calendar translation algorithm so your items (for the most part) no longer have to be in a specific order. You still need to say your calendar name at the beginning of the Jott, but you can say the rest of the message in any order you please. For example, you previously would have to say "Personal calendar, Go to Michelle's party on Wednesday at 10pm for 3 hours". Now, if you like, you can say "Personal calendar, on Wednesday go to Michelle's party at 10pm for 3 hours" or "Personal calendar, for 3 hours on Wednesday at 10pm go to Michelle's party" or give the items in any other order. This greatly simplifies the syntax of the thing and makes it more natural to use.
- Optimized the response messages when adding a new entry for SMS. Now when you add an entry it just says "Jott Added to Google Calendar: [Your Jott]".
- If an error occurs when we think you are attempting to "get" your messages, it will now try and add a new event using your text instead of just returning an error.
- FIX: Sometimes when you say "O'Clock" as in 10:00, Jott spells out "O'Clock". We now expect this and handle it appropriately.
09/21/07:
- Added "get" functionality. Now not only can you add to your Google Calendar, you can retrieve a list of events by saying things like "Get events on next monday", "Get events from 9/21/2007 through 10/31/2007", "Get events for tomorrow" or simply "Get wednesday through friday". A list of events will be sent to your email and cellphone via SMS (if selected when configuring your Jott Link.)
- Enhanced error reporting. Now all errors will be handled and when an error occurs, our development team will be immediately notified.

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Labels: Google, Jott, jott2gcal, Mobile, Neat Stuff, Web 2.0

Like a Cheese and Tech Sandwich Without the Cheese or Bread

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Beer and Microsoft

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Tail Communicators and Wheelchairs

Monday, April 07, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of accodians and Street Views

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of TV Stands and Hulus

Monday, March 10, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Bloxes and Codes

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Dual Sync Outlook and GCal

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Mints and Soaps

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Webcams and Androids

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Emoticons and Comcasts

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Buzzes and Flexi-Bendys

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Hostings and LEDS

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of DreamSparks and Camcorders

Friday, February 15, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of MacGyvers and Kijijis

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of LinkBunches and Postcrossings

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of 404's and Snaps

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Crates and Players

Friday, February 08, 2008

Daliy Link Roundup of Home Theaters and Sharks with Laser beams on their heads

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Converters and Seedpeers

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of BodiBeats and Disruptions

Friday, February 01, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Yahoos and Internet Radios

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Daliy Link Roundup of iPod Translators and Phantom Mice

Friday, January 25, 2008

Daily Link Roundup of Micro-Printing and Digital Clouds

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Daily Link Roundup

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Daily Link Roundup

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

50 Google Calendar Tips

Friday, January 11, 2008

Daily Link Roundup

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Daily Link Roundup

Friday, January 04, 2008

Daily Link Roundup

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Top 5 Articles of 2007

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Blogger Goes Apeshit

Monday, November 05, 2007

Google's Android vs Apple's iPhone

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Add to Google Calendar by Talking Into Your Cell

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