I’ve been wanting to make the leap to Google calendar for a few months. It’s so wonderful to have your electronic life in one little organized space and Google is making it possible. Here’s what I did to make the break from my organization’s use of Outlook Calendar–which by the way, has a lousy web interface. Now I can view all my personal and work appointments from home or via text messages on demand through Google Calendar. The best part is that I can send events to short code GVENTS and they are added to G-cal automatically.

Like I said, the thing that has kept me from taking the plunge is that I’m tethered to Outlook Calendar because of work events. Now they are echoed to G-cal when I get invited to something so I can just add personal events to Gcal and all my stuff stays in one, internet/mobile phone accessible place. Here’s how I did it:

1. Set up a rule in Outlook that forwards all emails that are calendar invitations or updates. This rule sends those messages to my Gmail account.
2. Set up a rule in Gmail that immediately archives any messages with the conspicuous text in it. For me, it was the time zone stamp from Outlook. It might be different for you. This step just keeps my gmail inbox clean and makes sure the process is invisible to me.
3. Set up your preferences in Google calendar to automatically add invitations to your calendar.

Depending on how much use your calendar gets already, your mileage may vary. Since my calendar is brand new, this basic set up is perfect for me. And I’m not sure how meeting updates will process in G-cal, but as of today, it’s pretty sweet. I’ll post an update soon.

technorati tags: google, ical, outlook, lifehacks, calendar

Popularity: 10% [?]

Sorry for the re-post. I think it’s a pretty practical tool, though, so if you’re in Colorado Springs, this one is for you.

You’ll need to be using Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed.
Once you get the little monkey on the bottom of your browser window, you’re ready for step 2. Download this little file and open it using the Firefox “file - open file” command.

Now when you browse books at Amazon, Firefox will work behind the scenes and build a little link at the top of the page of each book listing. Clicking on the link will take you to the ppld.org search page for that book. If it’s available, you can check it out instead of buying it. Yea.

technorati tags: greasemonkey, library, amazon

Popularity: 9% [?]

Someone at Taco Bell figured out that I would like my tacos more if they didn’t try to upsell me in the drive-thru. Brilliant! For years, I’ve been annoyed by lackluster salespeople/drive-thru attendants repeating the same old: “Welcome to Taco Bell, would you like to try our new Rancho Fajita Squid Wrap?” or whatever they were trying to move at the time. I’d always say either “no” and wait for a response or I’d just order what I came for. It makes me annoyed just typing about it.

Well, for the past few months, at least here locally, they simply say “Welcome to Taco Bell. How are you today?” Ahhh… Tension diffused. I reply, “Great, thanks! How are you?” Once, the late night guy said, “What do you think, man? I work at Taco Bell.”

It’s a great example of a company starting to see things from my point of view. An example of thinking “What would our customer want?” and not “how can we get as much out of our customers as possible without driving them away?”

Popularity: 9% [?]