Syncing Multiple Google Calendars to iOS devices

With the complexity of home life increasing - our son grows up and has multiple activities, we all have doctor's appointments, fitness, travel plans, etc... - we have been using shared Google Calendars for a long time. What works well for us is:

• Mom's and Dad's work calendars get uploaded via GoogleCalendarSync
• We use shared Calendars for each child (daughter still too young for one), plus one for the family as a whole and one for 'Home Maintenance' things.
• We also have a calendar for friends/family birthdays (the actual date, not any celebrations, which go into the 'family' calendar)

For some reason, one of the things left out of the configuration efforts when we both started using iPads was syncing those multiple calendars. We easily synced our main calendar and that was it... Life moves fast and sometimes 'good enough' is good enough.

Well, complexity caught up with us and now I needed to find a way to look at these alternative calendars without the hassle of opening the Google Calendar page (via Safari or a HomePage link)... I wanted to see them on the native iOS Calendar app.

It was VERY, VERY easy to do (easier than I thought), but took a little searching.

Short version is: starting from a setup that already has the main Google Calendar synced to the iOS device, just go to https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect and choose the other calendars you wish to see. Next time you iOS calendar app syncs, either they should appear automatically or just refresh the calendar list from the 'Edit' section on the app.

I got this from Google's Help section at CalDAV Calendar Sync - Google Mobile Help. While it talks about setting up the account as CalDAV explicitly, it just worked with the 'regular' GMail account.

This is likely old news for many people, but I was pleasantly surprised. :-)

Instapaper or Read it Later? Both!

As I battle to keep up to date with everything that happens in my industry (IT, specifically security/networking), one of the best tools I use is a 'to read later' application: basic premise is that if you come across something that you think might be interesting but you just don't have the time (or resources) to check it out now, you can mark it for later. Then, when you have moment (yeah, right...), you just go back through your unread list to check them out.

There's a few of these apps out there - Apple actually included the functionality in the latest Safari with iOS 5.0 - but the ones I'm more familiar with are Read it Later and Instapaper. They both have support for tags, multi-platform support and free/paid versions (though Instapaper offers virtually all functionality for free so 'paid' really means donation, which I find totally worth it).

One of the more interesting thing about both of these apps is that they have a stable API so other applications can hook into them. This has led to a variety of applications supporting direct "one-click" integration, allowing things like sending a link to the 'to read later' queue while browsing your Twitter feed or Facebook news, for example.

That - sending off to 'to read' list while browsing Twitter - is primarily how I use this functionality. My preferred Twitter client is 'Oosfora HD' (paid) on the iPad and I'll happily bookmark links for reading later from within that app.

But which one do I use? The answer (as per the title of this entry) is both! Wait, what? Why both? Heresy!
<sarcasm>
As with every other 'battle' in IT (Windows or Mac? Chrome or Firefox? iOS or Android?) there *must* be one choice. Your entire self-worth as an individual is tied to choosing the ONE app that is clearly BETTER.
</sarcasm>

Well,no. One of the benefits of using BOTH apps at the same time is that you can easily curate your collection so that you end up with two distinct 'flavours' of bookmarks to check out and can then review them according to your mood, resources at hand, etc...

As an example, I use 'Instapaper' for industry-related links that I either have to be in the right mindset to review or that I want to take notes into my Personal Knowledge Management system (future blog post...). I use 'Read it Later' for more 'generic' links that I want to check out but not necessarily 'study'.

Why not use one and just tag things instead? Simple answer: the process of tagging something is not well integrated into the other apps I use and frankly just slows down the process. It is a lot easier to just select 'Read it Later' or 'Instapaper' from a pop-up than actually type a tag.

Anyway, I hope this helps others who face similar situations.

iPad - Part 3 of ?

Hi,

I thought I'd do a brief update on how iPad usage has changed over the past few months. As we got more familiar with the device, usage changed a bit.

• I use the iPad every single day as the primary tool for consuming content updates from social networks. I use Osfoora HD as my Twitter client, FeedlerPro as my RSS reader and Friendly as the Facebook client. I still use ReadItLater as the 'catch-all' for content I want to check later. 
• One thing I did is that I purchased the 'Digest' option for ReadItLater. It aggregates links in a magazine-style layout, similar to Flipboard. Very, very nice, well worth the $4.99 or so.
• My routine is such that I am used to a few minutes of iPad screen-time just before going to sleep and a quick check of things in the morning as I wake up. Just a bit compulsive, eh? ;-)
• I use SoundNote, SimpleNote and Evernote to store meeting notes, depending on things like the surrounding environment (recording sound with SoundNote might not be viable) or the need for more permanent storage (Evernote) or something I'll delete after dealing with it (SimpleNote).

Finally, I share my iPad with family members a lot more now... :-)

• My wife still uses it rarely - she has her trusty (but long in the tooth) Sony eReader - but she enjoys a quick game of FlightControl HD.
• My son (just shy of 6 years old) really took to several of the games on the iPad - Angry Birds, Angry Birds Season, Dots Free and now Puppet Pals HD.
• I have loaded several "educational" apps for him and  he enjoys using them every now and then: "Stories", "KidCalc", "Sight Words" and "Kindergarten" are a few of them.

All in all, nicely integrated into our home life. I followed the iPad2 launch and I am curious about it as a possible replacement for my wife's Sony eReader. We'll see...

iPad - part 2 of ?

So, continuing my iPad usage adventures...

I've talked about my usage of the iPad as an e-reader and as a limited Web browser. On to other things...

• Study / Research - I am an avid mindmapper - I've been using this tool/concept/methodology since 2001 in all areas of life and will write about it soon - and I was looking forward to using my iPad for mind mapping as well. There are several mindmapping apps, but iThoughtsHD is what I chose and use on a nearly daily basis. My main use of mindmapping is that I use iThoughtsHD on the iPad to capture notes/concepts as I absorb them being presented elsewhere - from watching Khan Academy videos on my iPhone to listening to podcasts or sitting on a meeting. It works extremely well and I can easily upload the maps I create to my PC(s) using Dropbox. iThoughtsHD also supports saving on native MindManager format, so I can easily incorporate the results in my other personal tools.

• Chess - I try to be mindful of not frittering time away playing games - I think there's WAAY too much interesting content to be absorbed to just spend time on games - but I do find myself playing a fair bit of chess on the iPad - tChess Pro is what I use the most. I'm really just a low-mid level amateur on the game, so no deep insights into other apps other than to say that tChessPro has a fantastic interface and that even my 5-year-old son loves to "play chess on Daddy's book"...

• On the topic of chess, I also rely on a "Home screen bookmark" (basically a Web bookmark that shows up as a regular icon on the OS) to take me to RedHotPawn.com, where I play correspondence chess on a regular basis. The RHP people are savvy enough to have an iPhone/iPad version of their site that shows up beautifully and invites gameplay... Recommended!

OK, iPad usage to continue on another post! I hope this is useful to people.

iPad - part 1 of ?

While I usually behave and not spend too much on expensive toys, I caved in and got an iPad back in late June. My rationale/excuse - I wanted/needed an e-book reader. I ended up buying the non-3G 32G model after calling a few local AppleStores to track inventory. This post is a summary of my experience with the device so far.

I'll break the content down into several posts - no sense writing a novel in one sitting. If there's any specific question people have, feel free to ask.

People mention the iPad is heavier than expected and glares a bit too much. I agree, but these are not terrible issues I can't deal with - I usually read indoors and I rest the iPad against something.

As an e-book reader, I loved it. The combination of supporting multiple applications - including Kindle, Kobo, GoodReader (PDFs) and others - means I can read pretty much any ebook format I come across. Getting content onto the device is quite easy: some apps support "over-the-air" transport such as Kindle and Kobo. Others integrate beautifully with DropBox, so uploading a file is just a matter of dropping into DropBox on my PC. Not to mention that one can upload EPUB books via iTunes as well. Bottom line: if one is comfortable around manipulating files on a PC, getting content into the iPad is pretty darn easy.

Actually reading the content is also a joy. The primary reading I do is technical - networking, security, IT in general - and the iPad renders technical diagrams/presentations beautifully. The flexibility of screen rotations, zooming in and out, searching, etc... make it an ideal platform for reading and stuying, in my opinion.

As for other uses, I find myself doing a lot more browsing with it than I thought I would. The lack of Flash support is annoying, but not show-stopping. My primary workaround for accessing Flash content is to mark it with the incredible "Read it Later" service and then check out the content later on my PC. Not perfect, but works out pretty well.

OK, I'll continue on another post later.