shahine.com/omar/

I spend a lot of time searching boutique web forums finding the answers to obscure questions.

It's a bit like searching the internet before there was Google (painful).

Enter Twing.

Pretty awesome.

[via lifehacker]

It seemed all great, but then I noticed that not all my events sync. Today for example, Google says I have 3 appointment, but really I have 5.

I found this gem in the help:

I'm using Google Calendar Sync and not all my events are syncing.

If your Microsoft Outlook events aren't being transferred to Google Calendar, check to see if the email address associated with Google Calendar is listed as the organizer or a guest of the event. Currently, Google Calendar Sync requires that you're either the organizer or a guest on an event to sync it properly. For additional details please see the Google Calendar Sync - FAQ in our Help Group.

Check to see if the email address associated with Google Calendar is listed as the organizer or a guest of the event?

What exactly does that mean and how do I ensure that the right email address is listed?

According to the FAQ:

To sync all events between Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar, the email address associated with Google Calendar needs to match the email address associated with Microsoft Outlook. For example, if you're using user1@domain.com with your Outlook Calendar, enter user1@domain.com in the Google Calendar Sync Settings window, and then view your synced events with the Google Calendar associated with your user1@domain.com email address. If you don't yet have Google Calendar set up with your user1@domain.com email address, just visit the Google Calendar homepage and click on "Create a new Google Account."

I have to create a new Google Account just to get all my events synced? Why do some work and not others?

Perhaps I should use OggSync, which doesn't have any of these limitations, and is what my wife uses to sync her Windows Mobile Phone to her Calendar.

For now I've just uninstalled the sync client.

There is a lot you can read about Getting Things Done that's primarily focused on you. How you deal with your email at work and home, how you deal with your stuff etc. Most all software is focused on yourself.

But what about GTD for your family? I've found that one of the most difficult aspects of implementing GTD isn't focused on how you deal with the fire hose at work, but how you deal with the fire hose at home, when you are sharing tasks with some one else (in my case my wife). In this case, my wife knows nothing about GTD and isn't willing to read the book, so in a way, my job is twice as hard.

It gets further complicated when you are raising a small child. It's then that the tasks and appointments that you have together require an extra level of focus. Today's software tools do a poor job of seamless integrating shared artifacts and responsibilities.

I haven't blogged about Productivity or GTD in a while because, frankly, I'm still figuring it out. It's been 4 years ago today that I started the process of learning about, understanding, and implementing GTD.

I've learned a lot in that time, and I've slowly altered behaviors that I continue to refine and improve. I've tried dozens of software programs and tools and find that I'm still not there yet, but I've gotten pretty far down the path of achieving "Mind like water".

Over the next few months I'm planning to write a series of topics focused not on how to implement GTD to get your inbox to zero (cause that's what a lot of the focus is on), but how to achieve a zen like state if you, like me, have a spouse and possibly a child.

Some of the tools are the same for yourself and some one else, but some require a bit more "help". I'll still occasionally write about learning's I've had about GTD at work (most specifically, the mechanism Scott Hanselman uses, called Inbox - CC, or what I call "Inbox - Hold"). Something that I learned while on parental leave.

But I've got a bunch of things that I plan to focus on like how to:

• coordinate appointments
• coordinate tasks
• organize and get rid of paper files
• cut down on your analog junk mail
• manage and share digital photos
• manage a bunch of computers and make sure they are backed up
• store and share passwords, bank account information, insurance policies, etc

and other topics I think of.

I also hope this serves as a way to force me to regularly post to this blog, something I've struggled to do in the past 12 months since our daughter was born.

Anyway, thanks David Allen, for writing your book and starting me down this path.

Google finally released a Calendar Sync add-in for Outlook. I downloaded and installed the software to do a 1 way sync of my Calendar so that my wife can see my availability.

Google did a fantastic job of building something simple "that just works". Unfortunately it only allows for sync of your default calendar and not any other calendars.

There are three options to sync:

• Two Way
• One way to Google from Outlook
• One way from Outlook to Google

I'm using the last one. Then I can share my free busy with my wife.

There is a little tray application that tells you what is going on:

This makes family scheduling great because in addition to that we have the following calendars:

• Family Calendar (all family stuff goes here, including people who visit). My wife and I have read/write access. note: this is just a regular calendar in Google Calendar.
• Omar's TripIt Calendar (so Lora can see all my upcoming travel).
• The In Law's TripIt Calendar (so we can see all our travel from our in-laws)
• few others

Here is a pic illustrating the calendars:

In addition to this I get email reminders a day in advance for all Family stuff, that way I don't miss anything.

Lora gets email reminders 1 week in advance for all my travel, so she is aware of things with enough time to plan.

Very cool stuff.

Helps a lot with "Mind like water".

A few weeks ago I replaced my Thinkpad T60 with a Thinkpad X61T. My reasons were:

• I want something smaller
• See bullet #1

I got tired of lugging around a 14 inch screen even though the T60 was the best laptop I've owned in many years.

Lenovo X61T

I was looking for something small that had a high resolution screen, and that only left a X61T for consideration (I was only looking at Lenovo laptops). The regular X61 has a 1024 x 768 screen and Homey don't play that!

I have to say, using a Tablet again is fun. There are some features in Vista (flicks) that I helped the team with over 2 years ago (I was an early tester using the flicks stuff on XP). It's nice to see them in the product.

Anyway, I very much like my X61T. There are a couple of things I don't like:

1. The screen has some weird coating that is impossible to clean
2. The resolution is high for a 12 inch screen (1400 x 1050)
3. It only has VGA out on the docking station and laptop. I plan to fix this with this gadget I just ordered.

But there is a lot to like. 4GB of RAM, 1.6 ghz Core 2 duo, 1GB of Intel Turbo Memory (flash memory for my hard disk allowing for Vista ReadyDrive).

I really like this laptop, and shortly thereafter I got to play with a MacBook Air that I bought for my Dad to replace his ancient Sony Vaio with cracked screen.

MacBook Air

When the details of the MacBook Air were unveiled at Macworld I was like "Bleh". Not for me. Steve just fixed one set of trade offs and created a new set of problems.

However, unpacking, holding and using a MacBook Air will change anyone's mind.

This product is special, it's so ridiculously light it reminded me of getting my first iPod nano... You just experience disbelief that this thing is a laptop.

However, the MacBook Air is not for me. The first thing I did was install Vista on it and get it all set up. Within an hour I saw a bluescreen. That was the only one for a few days, but lets just say this thing is a bit temperamental about waking from sleep, running on a battery, using the DVD drive and so on.

If the MacBook Air survives (I'm not sure it will, it could end up like the G4 Cube), v2 will certainly be the version worth getting.

I'd also like to see a higher rez screen. The laptop is quite large even though it's very thin.

Lenovo X300

Yummy. This meets every need I have in a laptop except 2

• VGA only video
• SSD only drive option

SSD is not worth the sacrifice yet. I hope they offer an old skool drive like Apple and help bring the price point down.

I've very excited about this laptop though...

Oh, it even has special feet.

Amazon finally has the new Soft Cover Moleskine Notebooks in stock!

As I mentioned a few days ago Comcast said they would upgrade me to Blast by the 29th of Feb.

A Picture says a thousand words:

Before

After

note: at first I didn't see this upload speed. It turned out that the Gamerfuel setting on my D-Link DGL-4100 was restricting my upload speed. I fixed that by manually setting my upload speed:

Since the day I installed Vista on my laptop I have had nothing but unexplained problems with docking and connecting to a projector. Additionally, my Media Center with an Intel Graphics card would also have problems when it would reboot or login and my plasma was off.

I experienced:

• Random changes in resolution from my setting to 1024 x 768 or 800 x 600
• Changes in resolution when my laptop would awake from sleep
• Changes in resolution when docking my laptop

If you go and read about Transient Multimon Manager (TMM) you will learn that you aren't supposed to have any of these problems.

On my old Thinkpad T60 these problems eventually went away when I installed the Lenovo custom ATI driver. However, now I have a Thinkpad X61T which has an Intel GMA graphics chip, similar to the one in my Media Center.

The problems on my Media Center went away when I upgraded to a nVidia card.

However, my laptop is still foobard.

If you read about TMM you will find such promises as:

Transient Multimon Manager (TMM) is a Microsoft Windows Vista operating system feature targeted at improving the user experience of connecting and disconnecting displays, particularly for the mobile user. Currently, although the Microsoft Windows operating system notifies the user of most hardware devices when it arrives, it does not do this consistently for displays. Windows is not aware of the arrival or removal of a display on a desktop system, and the user must manually set up and configure the display through the Windows display control panel or an IHV display UI. On a mobile system, the experience often involves cryptic function keys, a variety of user interface, and possibly reboots. It is particularly inconvenient with a transient display, a display that comes and goes, which is also unfortunately the most common scenario for mobile users.

Windows Vista is committed to addressing this problem through the Transient Multimon Manager (TMM), which enables the automatic detection and setup of displays as they are attached and removed. Furthermore, TMM persists the user's settings on a per-display basis when possible, so that users can move between multiple displays at ease. The goal is to enable users to work with displays in the same stress-free, Plug and Play fashion as with most other peripheral devices today, and alleviate the frustrations of using multiple monitors.

Umm, am I missing something? I am constantly frustrated about this and as far as I can tell, even with Vista SP1, this is still an area that is rife with bugs.

Is it the driver's fault? Generally Intel does excellent work... but I'm starting to wonder... when will connecting a laptop to a display be truly seamless?

There is really no excuse for my laptop not getting this 100% right after it gets to know my monitor (they are on a first name basis) and the 5 or so projectors I use every week.

Anyway, to disable TMM you need to:

1. Press the Windows Key and type "Task Scheduler"
2. Navigate to Microsoft\Windows\MobilePC
3. Right Click on TMM
4. Select Disable

now reboot.

One nice side effect of this is that your laptop will wake from sleep a few seconds faster.

As of yet I can't figure out what feature I am missing, as everything "just works".

Comcast is upgrading all customers on their Performance Plus plan (8 MBits down / 768 KBps up) to Comcast Blast (16 MBits down / 2 MBits up) by the end of Feb.

I just upgraded from slow poke cable modem (6 MBits down / 368 KBps up) a few weeks ago so this upgrade is very welcome!

I'll post a new pic when I'm upgraded.

I'm now running Vista SP1 everywhere. The best thing about Vista SP1 is that there is a bug fix to Windows Imaging Component (WIC) that addresses an issue with photos on network drives. Under Vista meta data changes to files (like keywords and ratings) would take 30 seconds to 1 minute to get written per file.

This was incredibly annoying for me since I store > 20 GB of photos on a Windows File Server and utilize numerous Vista computers to manage that library. With Vista it was unusable to manage meta data.

I'm extremely happy that the Vista folks took this bug fix for SP1. It now means I can use Windows Live Photo Gallery to manage my keywords and ratings again.

Data Loss? Been there, done that.

Windows Live ID hijacked? Replace Windows Live ID with Google or Yahoo ID.

What do you do when some one:

1. hacks into your account
2. changes your password
3. changes your secret question
4. changes your "alternate email address"
5. changes all your profile information
6. sets up mail forwarding to another account
7. Turn on the exclusive junk filter (deleting all your email)
8. Deletes your life (email, contacts etc)

That is what I found this evening. I believe that some one managed to issue a password reset command to my account and then somehow logged in and reset my password essentially owning my data.

How did they do this? Like this for example.

Not sure how this happened to me since my Hotmail password is strong, secure, unique etc.

But right now I am totally and uterly hosed.

Luckily I have my email offline (Outlook Connector).

But I feel like crying.

The amount of personal information in my email account. Just think about what is archived "in the cloud" under the username and password of a single network.

Now thing of how you would feel if you found out that some one else had all that information. Just think about that for a second. What do you have in the cloud? What kind of personal information is up there?

Lucky for me I could make some phone calls and get my account access restored. But I am feeling extremely vulnerable right now.

update: my account just got hijacked again, minutes ago. Also so did my GMail account.

I have no idea WTF is going on here. I have only used one computer this entire time.

Also the attacker changed my First and Last name in passport to:

"hey omar i can access all your email

you omars@micro dont paly with me aigne"

Finally got an email from Mozy support, but it was too late to fix my problem and as such I've given up on waiting 2 weeks for my data to be uploaded again.

Also, the Carbonite CEO left a comment in my Mozy post. I like that, it shows me that their company is alive. Whenever I post about Wesabe the folks there are always on top of things answering customer questions and concerns in my comments section.

Anyway, David Friend let me know about a recent upgrade Carbonite made that now makes it competitive with Mozy. They now have:

• Support for your own private key (yay!)
• 3 months of file change history (yay!)
• Scheduling of backups

These are all features that Mozy had a leg up on.

Also, they have revamped the Carbonite UX to be much easier to use and nice to look at.

I'm back using Carbonite and I feel better about it already.

Long ago I wrote about how I had outsourced my online backup to Carbonite. Things were going great till one day I updated the meta data in my Windows Media Library of music and that resulted in modifications to 100 GB of data.

Well imagine my horror when I was noticing that my Internet connection would be held hostage for the next few weeks as Carbonite proceeded to re-upload my music collection.

That was when I switched to Mozy. I have been very happy with Mozy as they offered the following benefits over Carbonite:

• Block Level file backups (only changed portions of the file are uploaded, so if you modify meta data in a file, only a small amount of the file is uploaded.
• Up to 30 days of change history for a file
• Better shell integration
• Better behaved client application

Well, that was until a week ago. I received an email from Mozy that I would have to upgrade to the latest version of their software. So I did that. That was when it stopped working and I got some cryptic message that oem.dll could not be loaded. So I did what any geek would do:

1. re-install
2. uninstall
3. install (this resulted in me having to start from scratch with my settings and whatnot)

but now I was left with a error code "AccountError4" that took me to a support page that said "Email support@mozy.com".

Well I did that on Monday, and again on Wednesday. I have not heard back at all.

Now normally this would be no big deal, except, what if something really bad happened?

Anyway, getting tired of waiting I took the drastic measure of deleing my machine from Mozy and starting over thinking this would fix things quickly. Normally when you delete a machine account and then backup right a way, Mozy quickly scans your drive, then looks at the info that is backed up and realizes it's already there.

Not this time, for some reason it's starting from scratch backing up all my data as if it were not on the server. This will take a few weeks of course.

So, this leaves me not so happy about the situation. Since I switched to Mozy, Carbonite has added Block level backup. This was a big deal so I'm thinking of switching back to Carbonite. At least when I was using them their support was top-notch.

EMC's acquisition of Mozy has not made things much better IMHO.

Amazon Associates is a neat program where bloggers and others who link to items in Amazon can get a referral fee when that item is purchased and shipped.

The referral fee on items varies from 4% to something higher like Kindle where it's 10% ($40 per Kindle). That's a pretty good way to make money.

I receive my Amazon referral credits in the form of Amazon.com Gift Certificates which I promptly spend myself on things on my wish list.

Some years I make lots of money, and some years very little. Much of it depends on how much gadgetry I buy and review on my blog, and how many people purchase that stuff. Also Amazon doesn't always carry/sell things I buy and review so of course I don't get any referral credit for that.

Anyway, I always wondered what happened if I bought something accidentally from Amazon from my referral link. The thing is when you go to amazon.com from a referral link they set a cookie and thing you purchase during the session is also credited to your referral.

I've always been under the assumption that it's a violation of their TOU to purchase things for yourself AND get a referral credit. Right?

Well, I assumed this was based on some honor system. The good news is that they actually deduct the referral from your credits if you buy the item for yourself. So if you do accidentally order something with your referral cookie set, they automatically detect this and in the end it all works out.

So there you go. No need to worry about accidentally buying something using your associate id.

Having now seen the new stuff and drooled on my keyboard here are my thoughts on the new Apple stuff.

Apple TV

• Buying One, the 160GB. This will come out of my cable bill .
• I wish I could rent TV shows. I mean who wants to own a TV Show? I just started watching the Office on Netflix Watch Now and it's awesome. With Hulu, Netflix and others I'd love to be able to watch TV shows for free from my couch.
• This isn't going to replace Netflix anytime soon

MacBook Air

I was ready to buy this sight unseen, but now that I've read about it here are the drawbacks I see:

• 4200 rpm drive is kinda a bummer. This would bring Vista to its knees. The SSD drive is too small and too expensive
• 2 GB is acceptable but 3 GB would be better
• No Ethernet is a bummer, this comes in handy
• I expected some mobile broadband thing with a name like "MacBook Air"
• No user replaceable battery? Laptop batteries usually tank after a year (300 or so charge cycles). Spending $1800 on something that needs to be tossed out and replaced every year is an expensive proposition
• Will all this stuff work with Bootcamp? I haven't seen any info that Bootcamp will support the new features like gestures etc.
• One USB port kinda sucks.

I bet if I saw and held a MacBook Air in person though I'd probably be $1800 poorer. I wonder how long before I break down and order one. I strongly suspect v2 of the hardware will address many of the existing shortcomings.

Overall though, a nice set of announcements. Apple continues to become more and more relevant in a dynamic market.