Sc@-tt3r-ed Thoughts

As I usually do occasionally on my phone, I went to the App Store to check for updates. Since the release of iOS 4, one of the main reasons I repeatedly checked for updates was due to the Skype application.
There was  an application for the iPhone called Fring. and in and of itself, is a great app. For a little while, they even supported the Skype protocol, which was exciting. Not too long after its release though, Skype and Fring got into some legal battle, and since then, Fring removed its support for Skype.

Well this morning, my day was made! Skype finally released its iPhone update, which makes Skype iOS 4 compatible. More specifically, allows Skype to be run in the background. I had always wondered what this would mean, for Skype running on the iPhone, when both my cell number AND Skype number are connected to my Google Voice number, the latter of which is the one that I give out to people.

So I decided to do a quick test:

First I opened up Skype and put it in the background, then I called myself on my SkypeOut number. A push notification popped up on my phone with the Skype ringtone, and I was able to pick up the Skype phone call. FTW! I pretty much expected this test to work ok.

The real test, however, was the case where I would receive a phone call on the Google Voice number. I was wondering how my phone would handle this. Well, it was surprisingly good. When I dialed my Google Voice number, my phone’s ringtone actually sounded, the Skype ringtone did not, however, the push notification still popped up for the Skype call, while the cell number was ringing. Granted, the push notification goes behind the dialer window, so I had to reject the cell call, and then click on “Answer” on the Skype notification. At this time, the Skype app was foregrounded, and the Google Voice greeting sounded.

in a couple of instances, when dialing the GV number, the Skype push notification didn’t actually show up, and that may be due to the order in which Google Voice dials, or rather, establishes a connection to my devices. Not really a big deal, and I’m not even sure that there is a way to really make this problem completely disappear. After all, the way I’m using my cell number and the skype number under a Google Voice number is probably not a very common way people will use these services, but in my mind, if the more complex setups work, then, the simpler ones will definitely work.

Recently I have been trying to use Google Chrome as my main browser, just to see how it would compare with Firefox, and surprisingly, I’ve been quite impressed, to the point where I don’t really mind it. There are a few things that are not completely up to par with Chrome, like some websites (forms) not working quite correctly, and some utilities and extensions that I used in Firefox don’t work quite the same in Chrome. Fortunately, the gap is being filled by having most of these utilities that would otherwise be browser-based, convert to being server based (or in the cloud). Most recently, GMAIL’s formatted HTML signatures becoming native within the GMAIL settings, eliminating the need to use an extension from Greasemonkey, or WiseStamp.

I digress regarding the comparison of Google Chrome vs. Firefox, at least for the purposes of this article. What I really wanted to address is a nice feature that I recently just discovered in Chrome, and that is the Address Bar searching, without any added extensions. If you are a Firefox user, this would be quite close to the functionality of the Omnibar extension.

If you do use Chrome on a regular basis, you may already know that typing any terms in the address bar, will perform a search in Google. However, did you know that if you wanted to search elsewhere, there is a whole slew of search engines that can be pointed to straight from the address bar? You can get to it by right clicking on the Address Bar, and selecting: “Edit Search Engines”…

Once you do that, you will get the list:

From here, you can change the search engines that can be used, along with the keywords associated with them. For any search engines that may have overlapping first characters, you just have to type enough letters of the search engine to make it unique, and press tab. For for Wikipedia, I type wik and press tab:

Then type your search query and press enter, and voila, you are in Wikipedia, with the search results.

Pretty slick!

For the past few weeks, I have been pondering the usefulness of the existence of meetings. I’m talking about meetings where you go into a room, and sit for an hour and talk about random stuff, or have an agenda, then end up talking about random stuff anyway, and partially what’s on the agenda.

With every meeting that I’ve been attending, and the hours I feel like I’ve been wasting sitting in meetings that mostly have nothing to do with me, I couldn’t help but ask the question: Isn’t there a better alternative to inviting everyone to a meeting that may not even concern them?

Being very connected online, I can’t help but easily think of Forums, Wikis, Blogs, Sharepoint, Google Wave, etc… to name a few.

So what is stopping us from moving to a solution that is much more efficient, productive, and potentially more fun? I think for the most part, it relies on 2 factors:

1- The person who is considered the leader within a department, the one who calls the meetings, and create their agendas.

2- The willingness (or unwillingness) of the participants to get involved in online forums.

I am not by any means suggesting that meetings shouldn’t exist. I think that direct human interaction is quite crucial, and there are situations where it is more beneficial to meet face to face to discuss a topic than to do it via technology means. For instance:

- Having a brainstorming session about a very specific topic could be beneficial with a whiteboard and participants to whom it may be relevant.

- Meeting in person to discuss a particularly heated topic online, which would be more productive at this point to discuss in person.

- In the absence of adoption of IM or corporate chat rooms as an acceptable method of communication, a meeting would be beneficial to have a quick decision about a particular issue or topic. Though, in my opinion, this point can be easily resolved with the chat room option.

So, why am I suggesting less meetings and more online collaboration? well, there are a few reasons:

1- A meeting is very likely to exclude quite a few attendees in its topics. Though, it’s understandable that sometimes, only a couple of items within the meeting could be relevant to a particular attendee. In an online collaboration system, people can feel free to skip on items that do not concern them, and concentrate on the items of interest. This will save the individuals potentially wasted time, and allow them to have more focused contribution on topics of interest to them.

2- An online collaboration system would allow potentials attendees to read, participate and contribute within their own timeline. (within reason of course, to maintain business continuity). This means, no more wasting time trying to find common times for meetings, scheduling, and bumping other priorities around to accommodate a “more important” meeting.

3- An online collaboration tool would allow the meetings to be, well, self-recorded, this will eliminate the job of the person whose sole purpose in the meeting is to “keep meeting minutes”, which, in most meeting, that person isn’t even there, and therefore, a lot of the data simply evaporates right after the meeting.

4- Unless notes are being taken (see point #3), a meeting is not and will not be searchable. Re-visiting action items, plans, or brainstorming ideas, will be hard, or relying solely on the participant capacity to recall what was discussed.

I’m sure there are tons of other reasons to prefer online collaboration over actual meetings, as I’m also sure that there will be tons of people who will disagree with me on this whole topic.

Whatever the case may be, I’m interested in hearing what you have to say about this. Am I going overboard with boycotting our currently useless meeting habits?

If you have a Google account of any sort, you are likely using one of Google’s many services.

One of the issues always talked about regarding Google, is how much data they have on you. Of course, there are things like your “Web History” that you can check out. But if you use Picasa, Google Docs, Gmail, Gmail Contact, Google Voice, etc … there is quite a lot of additional information that Google has about you.

Today as I was looking at my account settings, I found an interesting link, which I had never seen before, and that is your Data Dashboard. If you go to this link while logged in to your Google account, you will see a list of all the services, and an overview of what data you have stored in each of these applications. Quite enlightening, in my opinion. As a matter of fact, by looking there, I found out that I had some files scattered in some Google services that I once tried, like Google Sketchup, and never deleted its content. Imagine what more you may be able to find if you go through this exhaustive list of services, you may be surprised.

Give it a shot and see how much of “you” Google owns.

The question of calendar syncing has been quite a big one on the forums on the net. I was also one that has a problem figuring out how to sync all my calendars, and I kept doing more research and experimentation until I finally found perfect solution that seems to work across the board. That is what you’re here for right?

Alright, in this blog entry, I’m going to try to give as much detail as I can based on the scenario that I have in my calendars, as I think my situation covers in part or in all, most other people’s situations. From these different steps, you can take any part you want, and apply it to your particular setup to get what you need.

So let’s get started. I’m going to describe everything based on the setup that I currently have running. This involves: iCal, gCAL, Outlook, and 3rd party calendars, including shared Google calendars, and Tungle meeting organizer.  Now before we continue, let me put in a warning before starting:

The process you’re about to see requires performing major surgery on your calendars. There is no scripting, or crazy techy stuff involved, but you have to be methodical to make this whole thing work.

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