Family calendar

How many calendars do you manage for your family? Many people have one for themselves, one for work, one for the spouse, another for the spouse's work calendar, one for each kid, another for an organization you're part of... it can be overwhelming to coordinate these schedules!

Image by pouwerkerk via Flickr

I come to the challenge equipped with my experience as a project manager, where I'm used to juggling multiple schedules. Even so, the calendar offering from Google was a breath of fresh air.

I use Google calendar already for my personal calendar and to see both public performance events for Indyprov and our separate private rehearsal schedule. (Sorry fanboys, no peekies.)

Next on my list was adding my work calendar in to the google calendar I'd created for myself. Google provides 3 options: 2-way, 1-way to Outlook and 1 way to Google. I opted for the 2 way; during the work day, I'm in the Outlook calendar exclusively. I also wanted to make my personal events private on my work calendar; I did want free/busy info to show, but not all the details of doctor's appointments and any other nefarious activities I may schedule. Note, the Google Calendar Sync only works with Outlook(TM) 2003 and 2007. Here's the instructions for syncing outlook to google calendar:

To set up Google Calendar Sync:

1. Make sure you're using a supported operating system and Outlook version.
2. Download Google Calendar Sync (version 0.9.3.5) at http://dl.google.com/googlecalendarsync/GoogleCalendarSync_Installer.exe
3. Once a dialog box appears, click Save File. The downloaded file should open automatically. If it doesn't, manually open it from your browser's download window.
4. Click OK to confirm that you're aware this is an executable file.
5. Read through the Google Calendar Sync Terms of Service, and click I Agree.
6. Follow through the Installation Options and click Install to finish the set-up process.

Facebook calendars can be added to Google calendar by URL too. Unfortunately, the event details aren't provided but at least the time is blocked off. I also eagerly anticipate some kind of sync solution for Yahoo Calendar integrating with Google calendar. Sadly, none seems to be available yet.

After all the setup, I end up with an integrated outlook-google calendar that shows kid(s), spouse, and organization schedules in one place.

Hopefully, in the future there will be an affordable wall mounted electronic calendar which can support family planning. In the meantime, I could holster an ipod touch on the fridge.

How to find contacts on Twitter

A recent tweet caught my attention; a former coworker and fellow tweeter Mike Duff was looking for a way to check to see if any of his outlook contacts were on twitter. It used to be that twitter provided additional tools for doing this, but those have been retired with no reinstatement date in site.

As an alternative, one can use a 5-step process to find out if your outlook contacts are on twitter. This would also theoretically work for any mail program with exportable contacts, such as Apple's Mail program or my beloved Eudora. (YMMV with Pico.)

Step 1: Log into a webmail provider supported by twitter, such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail or MSN. See http://twitter.com/invitations for the list of supported services, which may change over time. If you have an existing account and are comfortable with using it for this purpose, you can use that. Or, you can create a specific account for this purpose only, then delete it when you're done.

Step 2: This varies by webmail provider, but find the contacts area of the service and import your contacts. Based on the service you use, read their directions for exporting a list of contacts from your mail program which is suitable for import for their service.

• For Gmail, the address book is labeled 'Contacts' and they provide an 'Import' function. Google notes "We support importing contacts in the CSV file format (Comma Separated Values). For best results, please use a CSV file produced by Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo!, or Hotmail. For Apple Address Book, there is a useful utility called "A to G".
• For Yahoo, the address book is labeled 'Contacts' as well. Once in the 'Contacts' area, click on 'options' to reveal the 'import contacts' option. Note: yahoo has a new service called ymail , but twitter doesn't seem able to work with ymail today. So this info is strictly for yahoo.com email addresses
• Use another service? Please post the info in the comments to help your fellow twitterers.
  

Step 3: After your import has completed, log in to twitter and go to http://twitter.com/invitations. Log into the webmail service you picked to use in step 1. If you have security concerns in spite of twitter's assertions of righteous behavior in processing your emails, then stop here.

Step 4: As of today, twitter defaults to suggesting that you add everyone from your contact list who is on twitter, and I surely wish they didn't. You can send invites to all your contacts, but I wouldn't recommend it without serious pre-planning. The better use of the tool is to uncheck the 'select all' option and then scroll through the list to determine who you should follow. As a rule of thumb, I skip anyone who has a non personalized id - the mismatched O's in blue on a background of brown. If that argument isn't persuasive enough to get you to reconsider inviting everyone from Aethelred to Zebediah to connect, consider also that your follower/following ratio will look out of whack for a while if you send off a bunch of follower requests as it will take some time for the folks involved to respond. Small batches are better.

Step 5: You're done... for now. Twitter users sign up every hour, so you may want to try again another day! Alternatively, you may prefer to delete the account if you're not comfortable with keeping the webmail account. But if you do keep it, it is easy to check back regularly to see if any more contacts have joined up. Otherwise you'll have to repeat the export-import process.

I'll be looking for you on twitter. Find me there at twitter.com/ejly. Prior twitter tools posts:

• Update twitter with flickr photostream via twitterfeed
• Update twitter with facebook status via twitterfeed
• Twitt(url)y
• Twitpic
  
• Twitter grader
• Tweetstat's Twitter Cloud
  
• Twirvana
  
• Twitter Counter
• Mr. Tweet
• Twitter widget

Thanks @Duffgalleries for the inspiration to write these instructions up.