As a follow-up to my article on the hidden gems of Apple’s design, and inspired by the comments that you, the readers, left, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the icons of OS X. In a follow-up article I will check out some of the hidden messages and “easter eggs” that Apple has hidden in its icons, but first, I felt it was important to revisit the history of some of these icons that we see on a daily basis.

Icon Garden

Any discussion of Apple’s icon design should begin with a discussion of some of Apple’s most infamous 8-bit icons from its original GUI. Apple used to feature large versions of these in its icon garden at 1 Infinite Loop, however at some point around 1998, Apple removed the icons. Featured amongst the garden were classic icons, such as the eraser, hand, stopwatch, and even Clarus the Dogcow. (Moof!)

Check out how the paint bucket is "filling" the grass with green and the paint brush and pencil have just finished "creating" the flowers.

Whoa! The eraser is erasing the flowers!

Similar Colors

Depending on how cluttered your Dock is, you may or may not have noticed that the most prominent colors chosen by Apple for its icons is from the blue family. This trend was originally favored in Apple’s hardware (the original Bondi blue iMac, for instance). Associated with the sky or the ocean (a la OS X’s original UI codename Aqua), the blue also evokes a sense of stability, trust and calmness. (It really does make the infamous Blue Screen of Death a lot less harsh than if it were red.) It wasn’t until the release of Leopard that Apple shipped with a default desktop background that wasn’t blue.

Evolution of Icons

Some icons in OS X have evolved over time. Occasionally there may be some rhyme and reason to changing icons, such as the inclusion of the video camera for when iChat AV was originally launched, or the major redesign of iMovie between iMovie HD and iMovie ’08.

Other times, icons are seemingly changed sporadically, like the evolution of the iTunes icons. Originally every new version came with a new icon, but even that trend has wavered.

Other applications have also seen different icons with new versions, such as Backup, iDVD, iPhoto and Keynote. Though the Keynote icon has not seen a drastic change since Keynote ’08, the version that ships with iWork ’09 updates the date of the fourth-quarter report on the icon to Q4 2009.

Alternative Uses

Some icons depict their contents, such as the icon for a photo or a typeface. Other icons present users with dynamically updating information, such as the iCal icon which changes to reflect the current date. Other icons “change” by badges that indicate various information (unread emails, download speeds, etc.).

Another example are icons for exported vCards. If you have set them up in Address Book, they will export with their photo in the icon.

With the introduction of Snow Leopard this fall, users will once again begin to find new uses for icons, as the operating system allows users to preview media directly on the icon itself.

Bonus iPhone Icon

If you haven’t had a chance yet to take your iPhone or iPod touch into Starbucks, when you do, you’ll notice a new icon in your iTunes Store app. Specifically the Starbucks icon, and it is the only navbar icon on the device that exists in full color and not the usual masked blue color as typically seen.

Have you noticed any other unique or interesting icon changes or features?

I’ve never been as organized as I currently am with the combination of my MacBook Pro, iPhone and Google Calendar. Sure, before I crossed the line to Apple, I had tried to use Thunderbird (with Lightning’s Calendar plugin) to keep organized, syncing to my Windows Mobile phone, but it was always clunky and slow and not worth the effort when things didn’t “Just Work.” Since tasting the sweet Apple pie, I now have multiple Google calendars shared with my wife and synced to both of our Macs and iPod touch/iPhones with Spanning Sync. We are now totally organized, and it’s awesome.

However, like any data system, it’s a case of garbage in, garbage out. The combination of data corruption and synchronization is one that can wreak total and utter havoc on the most organized of people, rendering us as useless as a fish out of water. To combat the potential of this scenario, the folks over at Spanning Sync have released a public beta of its new utility, Spanning Tools.

Spanning Tools is a preventative maintenance suite, analyzing your critical data, alerting you of potential problems, and allowing you to take the appropriate action to eliminate the threat before it manifests in corruption. Spanning Tools comprises three separate utilities.

Calendar Cleaner

Calendar Cleaner scans your iCal databases looking for duplicate events and those with malformed dates. It strongly suggests backing up your iCal database first — neatly providing the backup and restore functionality within the application.

Contacts Cleaner

Like the Calendar Cleaner, the Contacts Cleaner scans your Address Book for dodgy data in your contacts. It checks for duplicate contacts, duplicate email addresses, contacts with only a single name or a space in a name field (which can cause problems with synchronization). In all cases, you have multiple ways to fix the data (such as using “???” for a blank name, converting to a company contact, removing the space, replacing it with a hyphen, etc). As with Calendar Cleaner, it also has built-in Address Book backup and restore functionality.

Sync Tune-Up

The last utility, Sync Tune-Up, provides a window into Apple’s Sync Services, allowing you to see exactly what applications are registered with the service and have access to your data. This gives you an easy method to disable a rogue application that you think is causing a problem, or that you just don’t use anymore.

Sync Tune-Up also provides some last-resort trouble-shooting options to Reset your sync data if things have stopped working completely.

Great Potential

Spanning Tools has great potential as a preventative maintenance utility with critical organization data. I consider it akin to keeping the chain well-greased on your bicycle. The folks at Spanning Sync haven’t announced if Spanning Tools will be a paid product when the final version is released — but in the meantime, the public preview has worked flawlessly for me by identifying some potential issues and presented suitable fixes. I can sleep a little better at night in knowing my organizational data is solid.

Even though Apple builds great products for the consumer, the company often misses the boat with business users. Snow Leopard stands to make serious inroads with Mac users in wingtips and pinstripes with native support for Microsoft Exchange Server. Mail, iCal, and Address Book will all be updated to talk directly with your Exchange account and in some cases, may work better than Entourage.

The Long & Winding Road

It’s taken a long time to get to this point, but the Mac has a long history of working with Microsoft. I think a little history is interesting here to show how we’ve arrived at Snow Leopard.

The Mac has had Microsoft Office almost from the beginning (Word and Excel for Mac were first released in 1985). Jaguar added LDAP access to Address Book. Panther introduced Windows Printer Sharing and Active Directory support so that you could log into a Windows Domain from a Macintosh. Tiger introduced Exchange accounts in Mail (though with IMAP access only) along with much improved support for Samba and Windows file sharing. The move to Intel gave us virtualization of Windows apps.

Leopard brought Boot Camp, of course, but this did nothing to help integrate Mac OS X itself into a Windows environment. But under the hood some exciting things were happening. The Address Book and Calendar stores were updated to offer better programmatic access and the Sync Services framework was updated. The result was that Mail and iCal were better at sharing data with each other and we got to-do items that were shared between those two apps. iCal was updated to access outside CalDAV accounts and Mail got Notes that (eventually) were able to sync with the iPhone.

The iPhone OS 2.0 firmware update pushed Exchange integration to new heights because Apple chose to license the ActiveSync technology from Microsoft. This put the iPhone on a level playing field with Windows Mobile devices and Outlook when accessing information stored in Exchange.

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard brings all of this together: integrated email, calendar, and address book (with to-do’s and notes) with access to outside accounts and the ActiveSync technology used in the iPhone. In fact, Apple is touting that the Mac will now have out-of-the-box support for “Exchange Server 2007, something that Windows PC’s don’t have.” The requirement to use Exchange Server 2007 might disappoint some that are still on 2003, but it makes good sense when you consider that 2007 has the new Business Logic Layer that provides a consistent view of your mailboxes from any device and takes a lot of work out of writing client software. In fact, Entourage has been testing a beta version that also requires Exchange 2007 in order to take advantage of this technology to make Entourage behave more like Outlook does on a Windows PC.

Entourage?

Personally, I hope for Entourage to die a slow and horrible death. Having been on the support end of things, I have seen how hard it is to make Entourage work reliably. And when it fails? Look out, because all of your email messages, contact info, tasks, calendar items, etc. are stored in one big database file. Lose that file, and you’ve lost everything. And backing it up with Time Machine means you have copied a multigigabyte file to your backup drive every hour.

Recovering from errors in Mail, where each message is an individual file, is much simpler and it works beautifully with Time Machine and Spotlight because of this file structure. I know there are people that like the consolidated view of all information in one application, but I suspect that this preference comes more from force of habit after using Outlook than any real advantage.

So can Mail, iCal, and Address Book replace Entourage? I think so.

Mail

Mail provides access to your Exchange account right along any other IMAP or POP3 accounts. As a Mac user, you get all the cool Mac features like data detectors, Spotlight, and Quick Look. I’m impressed that Quick Look can display previews of Office documents even if you don’t have Microsoft Office for Mac installed on your machine. This might be a good reason to give iWork another look.

Quick Look

iCal

iCal will seamlessly blend your personal local calendars and your Exchange calendars in one view. I liked how the WWDC Keynote demo showed how iCal could intelligently schedule meetings to avoid conflicts, just like Outlook. And of course it’s still integrated with Mail and Address Book so you can see your to-do’s here or in Mail, and you can auto-fill addresses from Exchange.

Address Book

OK, contacts are not very sexy, but I do like how you can access the Global Address List from within any app that can talk to Address Book. That means Mail will auto-complete addresses as you type messages and iCal will auto-complete names as you create meeting invitations. I suppose it might mean that other apps like Delicious Library that integrate with Address Book will let you keep track of DVDs that you loan to people at work, even if they aren’t in your personal contact list. I also like how smart groups can blend your personal address book with the Exchange contacts. Very slick.

The Future of Microsoft Office

I see a big problem coming for the MacBU at Microsoft. One of the primary reasons to purchase the full version of Microsoft Office (the only reason?) was to get Exchange support. Now that Snow Leopard will include Exchange support natively, I suspect a lot of people will choose to purchase the Home & Student Edition, despite the language in the license that prevents you from using it for work-related activities. A decrease in revenue would naturally lead to a decrease in funding for future development. Despite my feelings about Entourage, Office is pretty useful. I hope that Apple pushes them a little hard (iWork updates will help too), but I hope they don’t push so hard that Office is abandoned. I have felt like Entourage has languished along for a few years now and if I don’t get my wish for it to just curl up and die, then maybe we can get a better, more reliable Entourage for people who want to use it.

The Future of the Mac at Work

I suspect that despite my enthusiasm, the initial support for Exchange in the first release of Snow Leopard is going to blow. I would advise caution about committing to abandoning Entourage, or a large-scale migration from Windows PCs and Outlook in 2009. The bugs, and there will be bugs, will get worked out though, and 2010 could be a very exciting year for the Mac in the business segment.

MobileMe, Apple’s online personal information management (PIM) solution, has withstood quite the controversy. While some of the more fortunate subscribers, like myself, have had only positive experiences, others had to wait several months before syncing worked without reporting cryptic errors or silently failing.

My only gripe was the buggy MobileMe web site. Problems were numerous, such as the page randomly refreshing in the middle of adding a calendar event. Obviously this wasn’t disastrous on its own, but annoying tics add up, and eventually push people to look for alternatives.

Recently, I discovered an offering from Google that challenged the PIM synchronization features of MobileMe and competitors like Microsoft Exchange (what you unfortunately probably use at the office). This new service, Google Sync, offers the same seamless integration between your computer and mobile phone. It’s fast, free, and, most importantly, it works.

Setting it up, as you will soon find out, can be tricky, and takes time, patience, and an understanding of two-way syncing. Unless, that is, you’re starting from a blank slate with no contacts or calendars. However, I assume you already have a digital life, so I will attempt to coach you through transferring your information to Google first. I’m not going to retype all of Google’s own instructions. Instead, I’ll outline shortcuts around the sticky issues I encountered while setting up Sync. Google doesn’t organize its instruction processes well, so hopefully this will save you some time and a few headaches.

Requirements:

• Google account
• Contacts organized in Address Book
• Calendars organized in iCal
• You do not use an Exchange account on your iPhone

Exporting your Address Book Contacts to Google

1. I used a Google-recommended application called A to G to export my contacts as a large CSV file, and then import them into Google Contacts. You can get A to G here.
2. After you created the CSV file on your desktop, go to your Google Contacts page:
   https://google.com/contacts
   Note: For Google Apps users go here:
   https://mail.google.com/a/[domain name]/#contacts
3. Click on “Import”, choose the CSV file on your hard drive, and boom, your contacts are now in Google.

Exporting your iCal calendars to Google

1. Unfortunately, you have to export your iCal calendars one at a time. You can do this by clicking once on a calendar in the CALENDARS area, and selecting File -> Export.



2. Then, go to Google Calendar:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/
   Note: For Google Apps users go here:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/[domain name]/
3. Settings -> Calendars -> Import Calendar
   
4. Click “Choose File” to select the exported calendar on your hard drive. Choose which Google Calendar you want to import the information into. I recommend manually creating calendars in Google Calendar with the same names as your iCal calendars. Then, import the iCal files into their corresponding Google calendars. Repeat for each file you exported from iCal. Your calendars are now on Google.

Let’s recap. Your current contacts and calendars are now on Google. However, that information will never change unless you set up synchronization on your iPhone and Mac(s).

Configuring Google Sync

Warning: This is where you begin changing settings. If you’re a MobileMe user, all of your data is safe with Apple and everything you do here is completely reversible.

It’s easy to temporarily disable MobileMe while you set up Google Sync. Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars, select your MobileMe account from the Accounts list. Switch Contacts and Calendars to their OFF positions. If, in the end, you don’t want to use Google Sync, you can remove the Google Sync account you are about to set up, and switch your MobileMe Contacts and Calendars to their ON positions.

If you sync your Address Book and iCal information via iTunes, you should deselect those options in iTunes and resync your iPhone. The goal here is to clear out your contacts and calendar information on your phone. Again, if you decide to not use Google Sync, you can remove your Google information, select the contacts and calendars checkboxes in iTunes, and sync your iPhone with your computer once more to restore your data.

Now you’re ready to get your iPhone syncing data from Google. Follow these instructions about setting up your iPhone to get that working.

Important Google Apps note #1:
Apps users have to enable Google Sync in your dashboard, which can be done following these instructions.

Important note #2:
If you use more than one calendar, you have to configure that on the iPhone, otherwise only one will appear in the phone’s calendar app. After you’re done with the “Setting up your iPhone” section, go to m.google.com on your iPhone and select Sync. If you’re a Google Apps user, scroll to the bottom to select the “Google Apps User?” link. After logging in you can select which calendars you want to sync to the iPhone (maximum is five currently).

Now, any changes you make in Google Contacts or Google Calendar will be reflected on your iPhone. Also, any changes you make to your iPhone’s contacts or calendar information will be reflected on Google’s corresponding sites. Do you use IMAP for your Gmail account? Then consider yourself 100 percent synced.

If you’re satisfied with using Google’s sites and your iPhone to manage your information, then you’re done. However, if you want your current information to appear in iCal and Address Book, then you have a few more steps:

1. Importing your Google Contacts into Address Book
   This requires setting up built-in Address Book preferences.
2. Importing your Google Calendars into iCal
   This uses software called Collaboration.

Conclusion

Congratulations on making it this far. Hopefully, you’ve successfully set up Google Contacts and Google Calendar with your existing information, and both your iPhone and Mac(s) are now synchronized with Google. You can now make changes to or add contacts and events from any computer or your iPhone, and all without spending a dime. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions!

WeatherCal may be a one-trick pony, but it is one nice looking pony all the same. This $10 release from Bare Bones Software marries weather data and iCal in a very elegant utility.

In a nutshell, WeatherCal creates calendar events in iCal with the five-day forecast for any location around the world. It starts out by finding the location in your “Me” card in Address Book, but you can add more locations by typing in the city and state or zip code. For locations outside the United States, you use the city and country (or city and province in Canada). Once you’ve added the location to System Preferences, WeatherCal will create a new calendar in iCal for that location and then inserts events for the next five days that show the forecast.

Data is provided by Weather Underground and the calendar events include a link to get more details on the Weather Underground web site.

Weather data is refreshed every hour to keep the forecast up to date.

Pro Tip: When entering a new location, you can also use airport codes.

There is no limit on the number of locations, but there might be a practical limit as iCal seems to have refresh problems with more than 10 calendars or so.

Rich Siegel, founder of Bare Bones Software, said that the idea came from one of their developers, Steve Kalkwarf, who simply had a flash of inspiration to solve a problem of personal interest. They had a look at a prototype around the office and decided that it was actually pretty cool. Rich also said that Weather Underground was great to work with and provided WeatherCal with a worldwide feed so they could address the needs of customers outside the U.S., which was a design goal from the start.

Bare Bones Software took some extra steps to deal with non-English characters like å, ä, and ö. You can type in “Luleå” or “Lulea” (in Sweden) and WeatherCal will find it either way. In my own testing, I found that the Russian text “Нижний Новгород” is not recognized, but the strict English transliteration “Niznij Novgorod” does work. I am used to some other transliteration schemes for Russian, but it’s a quick matter to get used to the way the data is formatted by Weather Underground. Users outside the U.S. will have to learn the English spelling or transliteration for their locations, but since this is essentially a one-time task, I suspect it will not be too onerous. If you have questions about a particular city, you can always go to the wunderground.com and browse through their maps and city listings to see how it is listed there.

There are other solutions for getting weather info on your Mac (dashboard widgets, etc.), but there is a nice practical advantage in having this info in local iCal calendars. Subscription calendars in iCal do not sync to MobileMe, but local calendars do carry over. Because your five day forecast is in a local calendar, WeatherCal provides a way for you to see the weather you are interested in checking on all your desktops, iPhone, iPod touch, and online at me.com.

Another practical reason was outlined by beta tester Jan Moström of Sweden:

Although I have other weather forecast applications on my Mac I tend to use WeatherCal the most … since I already have my calendar open.

The license allows you to install WeatherCal on any Mac that you own, but if you are syncing iCal with MobileMe, it is probably best to install the utility on one machine and let MobileMe sync the iCal data to the other Macs.

Pro Tip: If you are tracking a few locations, in Leopard you can create a Calendar Group (I named mine “WeatherCal”), and place all your forecast calendars in there. That way you can turn all your forecasts on and off with one click.

If you’re a big iCal user, then this utility is a really nice solution to having the weather forecast handy. There is a real benefit to having the weather info right where you schedule outings and activities in iCal. I really like how it is implemented as a local calendar so that it can sync to MobileMe. For $10, WeatherCal solves a particular problem with the polish that one would expect from Bare Bones Software.

If you haven’t noticed, the writers here at TAB like to write about invoicing applications. Some of our recent reviews include Billings, OnTheJob and Involer. But forget all of those other invoicing applications. I just found the one true ring of invoicing and time management: GrandTotal + TimeLog from Media Atelier.

I have been testing this application bundle for the past two weeks ,and I am very impressed with the quality and overall user experience. Because of its integration with Address Book, iCal, MobileMe, and iWork, it really feels like it’s a native app.

GrandTotal

As an invoicing application, GrandTotal has an impressive feature set. Here is a short list of the many things GrandTotal can do:

• The ability to create recurring invoices
• An invoice editor that lets you customize your own layout (using existing templates or creating your own)
• Quotes & account statements
• Flexible tax settings & multiple currency support
• Integration with Address Book and TimeLog
• Catalog for recurring and fixed amount items
• Reminders for due & overdue invoice
• Many export options, including PD

Version 1.2 was released this week and with it came the following new features:

• iPhone application (more below)
• All-new UI for the Preferences dialog box
• Ability to create an invoice with just the Gross total
• Addition of a Recent list to the Overview

As I mentioned, the application is very easy to use. Let’s take a look at the main UI (items are intentionally blurred to protect the innocent):

GrandTotal Overview Tab – Recent/Open Invoices

GrandTotal Preferences – TimeLog Integration

TimeLog

As a time-tracking application, TimeLog’s feature set is also very impressive. Here is a short list:

• Uses iCal calendars and calculates the time spent on projects. You can assign clients to your projects from the Address Book. Your timesheets are then synced with MobileMe, ensuring they are current no matter which Mac you use.
• There is a menu item that lets you manage your time easily. You can start and stop the Timer with just one click.
• TimeLog can track the applications you use and then display the usage in the TimeLine. One caveat here is that it tracks everything you do. The developer does not have blacklist functionality yet, but he is working on it.
• Export your timesheet to Pages or Numbers — this is great for sharing your data with others prior to sending out an invoice.
• Integrates with GrandTotal — all of your timesheet data is easily available in GrandTotal for quick processing of invoices.

TimeLog Main Window

iPhone App

New to version 1.2 of GrandTotal is an iPhone app that lets you review your invoices while on-the-go. The best part? It’s free.

In the app, you can view Overdue, Due and Open invoices. You then click the invoices to see the full details as well as the contact information of the client. The client information is “hot” in that it will take you to your address book contact entry so that you can call/email/text them. A nice feature to have would be to re-send any outstanding invoices via the iPhone app.

The one requirement in using the iPhone app is that you must have a MobileMe account to sync your GrandTotal data. Otherwise, the app doesn’t work (which will be a deal breaker for some).

GrandTotal iPhone App Main Screen

GrandTotal iPhone App Invoice Detail Screen

Conclusion

The tag-team of these two products provides a pretty powerful punch in managing your time as well as your billing. The user interface for both GrandTotal and TimeLog is exceptional and makes it pretty easy to get set up for your small business.

Further, you now have iPhone integration so that you can review your invoices and their current standing with your customers. This way, it’s just a quick call away for asking the question: “Is the payment on it’s way out?”

However, are these two apps the best out there? Have we reached invoicing nirvana? Well, I would say it’s pretty close — if you don’t mind a few items:

1. The price. Compared to the competition, which averages about $40, to purchase both GrandTotal and TimeLog be prepared to spend about $75.
2. iCal integration is excellent, although there is a big caveat. I would discourage you from using any existing calendars as TimeLog changes the data to existing iCal meeting entries.
3. Application management. In the competitive space, both Billings and OnTheJob contain the majority of features in one, rather than two applications.

At the end of the day, you can overcome these issues if you want to have the most full-featured time management and invoicing products on the market.

The developer says that more is on the horizon. Maybe an iPhone app for TimeLog? Possible integration with accounting applications? Stay tuned. One thing is for sure, based upon what we have with GrandTotal and TimeLog, we can only continue to expect great things in the future from Media Atelier.

One of the perplexing limitations about MobileMe is its inability to sync birthdays in iCal to the iPhone and iPod touch. As you may already know, iCal can take birthdays from Address Book and add them into a special “Birthdays” calendar, which is really a subscription calendar.

But while the latest updates to MobileMe now allow for the syncing of subscription calendars from your Mac to MobileMe, their events are not pushed to iPhone and iPod touch. Apple’s explanation is this:

When syncing subscribed calendars to MobileMe, the calendar information and settings for the calendar is synced, but all of the downloaded events are not. This is done to help streamline the syncing process with MobileMe, as it prevents syncing redundant information to other computers with an Internet connection.

Duh.

To get around this limitation, you can disable over-the-air syncing, and sync Calendar events via iTunes instead. But that defeats the purpose of paying for MobileMe’s push abilities. The other way is to export the Birthdays calendar that iCal has created and re-import it back into iCal as local calendar events. These birthdays and anniversary events will then be synced with MobileMe and, subsequently, pushed to the iPhone Calendar app. The problem is, you will have to do that every time you add a birthday to a contact in the Address Book.

Well, I’m happy to tell you that there is finally a solution that requires little to no effort on your part.

Dates to iCal 2 is a small application for OS X Leopard that reads birthdays and anniversaries from Address Book and writes them as regular calendar events into iCal. It does this automatically in the background; set it once and forget about it.

In setting up Dates to iCal 2, you can customize in various ways how it should create events.

You can choose to add either birthdays or anniversaries, or both, and specify only a certain group of contacts.

You can customize the way event titles will be written, such as adding the age of a contact to his or her birthday event. To me, this feature alone is worth the price of the application.

And one very powerful aspect of Dates to iCal 2 is the many ways it can remind you of upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. You can set up to five alarms for an event, useful if you want, say, to be reminded each of the five days leading up to a birthday or anniversary. It can even send a reminder email to any of the email addresses in the Me card in your Mac.

Dates to iCal 2 costs £3 (approximately USD $4.50) for a single license. Until Apple improves MobileMe, I highly recommend this well-designed and useful gem.

Calendars have come a long way from the days of a pocket diary, with software able to manage your schedule and information much more reliable and accessible. iCal for OS X is the bundled calendar application, and works surprisingly well. It appears simple on the surface, but packs a wide range of different features and functionality.

This article will walk you through iCal from first opening the app, to having a diary filled with important events, recurring appointments, alarms, attachments, and attendees.

Getting Started

The first step is to open iCal for the first time from your applications folder. You’ll be presented with a window which looks something like this:

Before getting started, you might want to change a few preferences to match the way in which you work. Click iCal > Preferences in the menu bar to review the options available. You’re able to change the days per week, starting day of a week, default alarms for events and a whole range of other options. Once you’re happy with the settings chosen, close the preferences window and we’ll get started adding a few calendars and events.

iCal Views

There are three main viewing modes which can be used within iCal; Day, Week and Month. The month view can be seen above, here’s what to expect when viewing by day or week.

Week view shows you a clearer breakdown of each day:

And viewing by day makes a complicated schedule much easier to make sense of:

Dealing With Calendars

Within iCal, you are able to run several ‘Calendars’. These would commonly represent different projects or areas of your life. These are a few of the calendars I have running:

You can have as many or as few as needed, and adding a new calendar is simple. Click the ‘plus’ icon towards the lower left of the iCal window to add a new calendar (or hold Shift whilst pressing it to add a new group/folder). Once added, right click the new calendar and select ‘Get Info’ to bring up an options window:

Here, you can alter the color of the calendar, or ‘publish’ the calendar through MobileMe — this is a more complicated step, which you probably won’t need to explore at first.

Dealing With Events

Once a few calendars are in place, you’ll need to enter your events/appointments. To do so, right click on the appropriate day, then select ‘New Event’. Type a name, then double click the event. This will bring up a window similar to the following:

A number of options are available within the new event window:

• Location: Enter the place where you’ll be meeting
• All-day: If it’s an all day event, select this option to let iCal know
• From/To: You can enter the start and end time (or days, for an all-day event)
• Repeat: This allows you to schedule an event to re-occur at a set interval (every day, week, month, year, or a custom schedule). It works brilliant for birthdays, or regular bill payments etc
• Calendar: Here, select the appropriate calendar for the event
• Alarm: I’ve covered these various options below
• Attendees: Again, these are covered below
• Attachments: You can add files and documents to a calendar event so you have all the information you need at hand

Alarms

There are several different ways to be notified of an event:

All the different notification methods can be set to occur either at the time of the event, or a set period before. The first two cause a reminder to pop up on your screen with the details of the event, or you can perform more complex actions such as automatically sending an email, or running a file/script.

Attendees

iCal has fairly robust built-in support for dealing with attendees. Integration with Address Book means that sending invitations to attend is simple. Emails are sent to request the person’s attendance, to which they can reply in the way which best suits them. iCal will show a question mark next to the invitee’s name until they respond:

To Do Lists

If you have a list of tasks which need completing, but don’t have a set day or time, you can use iCal’s To Do feature. Clicking the ‘Push Pin’ icon in the lower right corner of the window will display the list of current To Do lists. Adding a new one is as simple as right clicking and selecting ‘New To Do’.

In the same way as calendar events, To Dos are assigned to a particular calendar. Priorities of High, Medium and Low can be assigned to automatically rank tasks in their order of importance:

Time Zones

The final feature to be mentioned is that of automatic time zone support. Clicking ‘Enable Time Zone Support’ in the preference window as outlined at the beginning will add the following text to the upper right of the iCal window (obviously varying depending upon your time zone):

Now, when scheduling meetings you are able to note the time zone in which it will occur. iCal will factor in the difference between your current location and automatically ensure that you’re notified about the meeting at the right time.

If you’d like to add an event which is independent of any time zone, you can select the ‘Floating’ option when adding a new entry.

Conclusion

When first opening iCal, it doesn’t seem like a particularly powerful or complicated application. However, as you start to enter calendars, events and to dos, it becomes clear that it can offer a comprehensive solution to managing your schedule.

I hope that this article has provided a good overview of the iCal basics. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment!

Syncing Google Calendar with iCal just got a whole lot easier thanks to a new setup tool released by Google called Calaboration. Calaboration is a Google Code project that allows you to add calendars to iCal with a simple point and click interface, a process that used to take quite a bit more digging.

Before this tool was released, adding a calendar involved copying and pasting the private xml address from your primary calendar to iCal. Adding more than one calendar required you to modify a long URL, adding your email address at the right spot, a step most users were probably not likely to do.

In my tests, new calendar entries from iCal to Google appeared online almost instantly, with iCal syncing the changes as soon as they were made. Updates made from Google were synced down to iCal on the next refresh. The default refresh rate for the calendars is every five minutes, customizable in the iCal preferences under “Accounts.”

One annoyance that I’ve found with the setup is that when clicking on the calendar to create a new event, you must have the calendar that you want the event to be a part of highlighted in the left column. Normally, I’d expect to be able to customize the calendar using the drop down menu in the event creation dialog. A small annoyance, and one that I expect will be fixed in future updates.

Google shows again that they are serious about their Mac development, and make it that much easier to switch to their services. Now… where’s that Chrome for Mac?

That mosaic screen saver of your iPhoto pictures may look groovy, but it’s really not doing anything to help your work flow. How about a screen saver that displays all your iCal appointments instead?

PocketMac, the geniuses behind the app that lets you sync your BlackBerry and Mac, has released iCalScreenSaver. This fully configurable app lets you display your iCal appointments as a screen saver that kicks in whenever you’re not using your computer.

Once installed, iCalScreenSaver is accessed via System Preferences. You can choose the background color, which calendars you want displayed, and whether you want only the public events visible.

Obviously, this app isn’t something you’d probably need for your laptop, or even a desktop you use for work. (After all, since you’re probably not at your desk when the screen saver comes on, an onscreen calendar is of little use.) It’s a great tool, though, for letting your coworkers know where you are or when you’ll be back. 

iCalScreenSaver would also make a terrific screen saver for the family iMac in the living room. Create a “family” calendar that displays soccer practice, school holidays, and even chore reminders for the kids (“6:00: Set the table for dinner”).

Families without kids might use iCalScreenSaver to keep track of TV shows they plan to watch or weekend activities they plan to check out, college students might use it to display class schedules so roommates know how long they’ll have the dorm room to themselves. 

For screenshots and a video of iCalScreenSaver in action, check out the download page. It only costs $9.95, a small price to pay to have your appointments available at a glance.

The iPhone is indeed a wonderful little device and, for some of us, a game-changer in terms of managing our digital lives from the palm of our hands. There are, however, some essential features that Apple neglected to implement.

Regular GMail and Google Calendar users will have noticed the glaring lack of a Calendar synchronization option, making the native iPhone calendar app somewhat less useful.

All is not lost though! Enter NuevaSync, a web-service that enables two-way synchronization between your Google Calendar and the iPhone Calendar app. NuevaSync is secure, easy to use and painless to set-up…and most notably, it’s totally free.

So, it’s time to grab your gear and follow this ten minute guide to setting up NuevaSync. You’ll need your computer, a Google Account and your iPhone, with the latest firmware update. And by the way, iPod touch users can also get in on the syncing fun.

TAB Disclaimer: Before we begin, it’s worth noting that NuevaSync is still in beta, so if it all goes a little Steve-Jobs-circa-1985 (i.e. everything goes wrong and stops working), it’s not our fault. Nevertheless, the service has worked smoothly for us since sign-up and we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

1. To start, you’ll need to create a fresh account on NuevaSync. Before you make the account, plug your touch or iPhone in, boot up iTunes and run a quick sync to make sure you’re all backed up (it’s good practice and will make you feel all warm inside). While the device is backing up, go create your NuevaSync account on this page.
2. Now that you’ve got a new account, visit the configuration page. You’ll notice that there are four options on this page — Calendar, Contacts, E-mail, Tasks. We’re just syncing our Google Calendar today, so ignore the others. It’s also worth noting that the clever folks at NuevaSync still haven’t implemented Mail sync for the iPhone/touch, this feature is in development though.
3. Click change to the right of Calendar and, on the resulting page, click the Google button then click the Change button. By doing this, we’re basically telling NuevaSync that we’d like to sync our Google Calendar with their service. NuevaSync will tell you that your changes have been saved. Clicking through to the next page will take you through the service setup options. When prompted for your Google Account ID, enter your GMail address and then click Request Account Access. If you’re not logged in to your Google Account, you’ll be sent to the standard Google log-in screen before continuing.
4. Once you’re logged in, you’ll be presented with the standard Google Access Request page. If you’re super-security conscious, read the blurb, once you’re all done, click Grant Access. This tells Google that you’re happy for them to send your Calendar info to NuevaSync (and vice-versa). Back on the Status and Setup page, you’ll see that there’s a big red light next to Calendar – this is a good thing, you’re halfway home and it’s time to grab your iPhone.
5. We’re now going to add NuevaSync as an account on your iPhone. NuevaSync works using the Exchange options on your iPhone. Open up Settings on your iPhone, then go through to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars page. Select Add Account and then tap Microsoft Exchange.
6. For your e-mail address, enter the same one you used for your NuevaSync registration. NuevaSync has mentioned that your device might warn about a certificate being invalid. This isn’t NuevaSync’s certificate, so it’s no reason to be concerned. It’s actually Apple’s auto-config feature trying to guess the appropriate server name based on your info. For your Username and Password, enter your NuevaSync account details. Finally, enter a Description. For instance I use, “Olly’s Calendar”. Now tap Next.
7. You should see a quick message stating Verifying Exchange account information. Incidentally, we got an error message doing this the first time and the service still worked. If that happens and it all goes a little pear-shaped, don’t worry, there are some trouble-shooting tips at the end of this guide.
8. When the Exchange account verification process has finished, a new field will pop-up called Server. Enter www.nuevasync.com and then tap Next. On the resulting page, turn off Mail and Contacts – we only want to sync the calendar today. Then just tap Save and we’re almost done.
9. The final step is to turn off Time Zone Support. So back on the Mail, Contacts, Calendars settings page, scroll to the bottom and then tap Time Zone Support. Then switch Time Zone Support to Off and exit.
10. We’re all done! You’ll want to test and make sure that everything works — make sure your WiFi or 3G connection is enabled and then open the Calendar App on your iPhone or touch. It should auto-update and, if you’ve got stuff in your Google Calendar, you should see it here.  Try adding something to your Calendar and then go check if it appears on your computer’s Google Calendar (and vice-versa too, so add something to your Google Calendar and then go open the Calendar app to see if it appears there).

If everything is working, it’s time to celebrate. Organise a party to celebrate how wonderful NuevaSync is, add said party to your Google Calendar schedule and then watch it magically synchronise with your iPhone.

Troubleshooting Tips

Maybe there was a problem in the setup process or maybe everything ran smoothly but it’s just not working. Whatever the issue, here are a few tips to ensure you get yourself synchronised:

1. Make sure you’re only syncing Calendar. Remember that Mail doesn’t work. You can try Contacts, but we haven’t given that a go yet (and this guide only covers Google Calendar synchronization).
2. NuevaSync have a well-written Troubleshooting page. Visit it here and see if that solves your problem.
3. If all else fails, drop NuevaSync an e-mail. They’re a helpful bunch, very friendly and surprisingly prompt: support@nuevasync.com

In the last week, two major flaws have been reported, one in downloading .ICS (iCal) files, and one in Safari’s carpet-bombing problems. Now, Microsoft is reportedly getting in on the warnings to Apple.

Basically, Tim Rains, Microsoft’s security guy, says that “Safari…cannot be configured to obtain the user’s permission before it downloads a resource.” That means that some hacker could create a website that would automatically download and “litter the user’s desktop” with boatloads of files. Microsoft is taking the role of bigger brother and saying, “Do not follow our lead!”

This is all, of course, in response to Apple’s pushing of Safari on Windows iTunes’ users. Naturally, Microsoft does not like other companies that try to take or steal market share away from Internet Explorer, the world’s safest browser.

[Via InformationWeek]

The upgrade to Leopard has improved more than just the OS – it made Mail, in my opinion, much more usable.

One of the best features is the data detection in the mouse pointer. Running your mouse over a date produces a small drop-down arrow that gives you the option to add it to iCal. The menu for addresses offers to find them in GoogleMaps, and names offer to add to Address Book, or show the Address Book entry, if one already exists.

The date feature can even recognize fuzzy dates, like ‘Wednesday after next’ and add them to iCal, complete with time, if that was included in the email. This effectively brings the link between Mail and iCal full circle, with the other half being reminder emails from iCal.

It’s got its flaws, sadly. For starters, it’s convinced that there is someone named “Rhode Island” who keeps emailing me and who desperately needs to be added to my address book. And, of course, it doesn’t do this in all parts of the OS. But the rest – it’s the little things that keep many Mac users using it, as opposed to the various other flavors of *nixy systems or even, gasp, Windows. This is a very elegant little thing.

As I understand it, iTunes for Windows allows you to sync your iPod – or more importantly (these days) your iPhone – with Outlook for contacts and calendar items. That seems well and good for Windows users I suppose, but not so for my co-worker and his new iPhone. (Unfortunately for him I’m a bigger Apple nerd than he, and the phrase, “Can I see your iPhone?” has become an old joke very quickly…)

You see my friend and I work in a place – like many, many places – that uses Microsoft’s Exchange server for email, thus Outlook is the tool of choice for email, contacts, calendars, etc. The issue my co-worker faces is that he syncs his iPhone with his Mac at home, not his work PC. Thus, his work-based calendar items (which don’t exactly translate on the poor IMAP/Exchange integration) aren’t loaded onto his iPhone. (And between you and me, He misses enough meetings as it is…) So what to do?

As most of my friends do when they have an Apple related question, he came bugging me (which was only fair given the love affair I’ve had with his iPhone). I should mention also that he’s a senior engineer (hence the missed skipped meetings) and doesn’t like to do a lot of ‘heavy lifting’, so the process of exporting a CSV from Outlook each day to mangle into iCal was out of the question – Can you blame him?

So we did some digging. Finally, we came to a solution in the form of Plaxo. Plaxo is the plugin for Outlook that many of you may have gotten invites to a few years back when it came on the scene, and all your co-workers and friends wanted you to jump off a bridge join up too. Well in its current manifestation it’s a much more full-featured (and free!) plugin, which in the Beta 3.0 version rocks a pretty slick web-based hub. This web-hub acts as a one-stop-shop for all your calendar and contact needs (as well as much more) and imports from Outlook of course. But the real magic comes in to play with the ability to sync several different services to this one-stop web-hub. iCal, Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and on and on and on can all share their info to the website, which syncs it between all the sources, in effect unifying your contacts and scheduled appearances. Brilliant!

So now you’ve got Plaxo keeping all parties up to date – a new item in iCal updates to Plaxo, which then updates to Outlook (and Google Calendar, and Yahoo, and so on) and vis versa. So no matter where a new item is added, all apps from end to end get the memo. Thus, the end game of getting Outlook calendar items onto a Mac-based/sync’d iPhone is a success.

A footnote to this, is that obviously those appointments are only made available to the iPhone when a sync to iTunes (and in turn, iCal) is performed. As Plaxo plays so nicely with all these other services, Google Calendar (which got a nice iPhone/Safari makeover) for instance, is updated on the fly and immediately available for calendar updates in between hard syncs with the Mac!

So there you have it. All you Mac and iPhone users stuck trying to integrate with the world of Microsoft can hopefully get on a little easier now. Many thanks to my buddy for letting me spend so much quality time with his iPhone, and having a fun and interesting story to show for it. Hopefully he doesn’t pummel me for all the slacker references…

As I’ve been typing this, the thought occurred that it may be possible to sync the iPhone with multiple iTunes – hence grabbing Outlook calendar entries from a Windows-based iTunes, and syncing music and everything else from an OS X-based iTunes. Does anyone know if that’s possible? If you’ve got a different (more elegant?) solution to the problem, lets hear it!

Today Apple’s iCal application turns the rip old age of five.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the iCal application ican stays a constant “July 17″ which, not surprisingly, also happens to be the day it was released to the masses (ie. its birth).

iCal is currently at version 2.0.5 with a fairly major update coming when Leopard is released next decade.

Hat tip: TUAW