Tag Archive for 'mac'

Spanning Sync’s new trick

Published by Toph on October 6, 2008 in Technology. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

I’ve written before about what a great piece of software I think Spanning Sync is. They recently upgraded their code base to version 2.0 (which is free for all Spanning Sync owners/subscribers) and gave it a new trick.

Spanning Sync 2.0 Main Screen

Spanning Sync 2.0 Main Screen

Spanning Sync now uses the Google Contacts API to sync your Mac Address Book contacts with the Gmail Contacts section. This not only allows you to back up your contacts to Google, but provides easy access to those vital contacts from Gmail when you are on the go.

Now making this transition wasn’t as easy as the Calendar was, mostly because of the way Gmail deals with contacts, and some base restrictions they have. You aren’t permitted to have two contacts with matching e-mail addresses. Names? No problem. But e-mail addresses are a fatal error. Now I never really used the Google Contacts interface for much before, except for Google Talk. However, as I soon found out, Gmail adds a “suggested contact” for everyone you e-mail from Gmail who isn’t already in your address book. These suggested contacts cause Spanning Sync to spit some Google error goodness at your if you don’t wipe them out first. You will also quickly find your Gtalk contact list a mess too when you try to sync and Spanning Sync tries to figure out which direction to overwrite each contact.

Now this is a great feature, but you should probably take the following steps before starting contact syncing with Spanning Sync:

  1. Stop right now, and back up your contacts. Go. Do it. File>Export>Address Book Archive. If I didn’t do this when I first started playing around with the software, I’d be crying in my soup at all my screwed up contacts. Before going any further, do this.
  2. In your Spanning Sync preferences, switch your sync frequency to Manually. This allows you to safely make all your settings changes without Spanning Sync getting trigger happy. Once you’ve made it past your first sync, it’s safe to set this back to the frequency that works for you.
  3. Remove all your “suggested contacts” and other duplicate entries between your Mac Address Book and Google Contacts, with the exception of your Google Talk contact entries
  4. For your Google Talk contacts, do the opposite. Manually move the information over from your Mac Address Book to Google Contacts, and then wipe the entry out of your Mac Address Book. This ensures the special contact flags that exist on the Google side of things to denote a “Google Talk capable” contact are retained.
  5. If you really want to keep things segregated during that initial sync, go into your Mac Address Book and create two groups: a “Mac Contacts” group, and a “Gmail Contacts” group. Move all your Mac Address Book contacts into the Mac Contacts group, and set the Gmail Contacts group as the destination group in your Spanning Sync preferences. This will allow you to see what is going in what direction. Once you make it through that first sync, it’s easiest to set it back to All Contacts, move the contacts out of those groups, and remove the groups.
    Contact Groups screen in SS 2.0

    Contact Groups screen in SS 2.0

  6. Before hitting that sync button for the first time, you may wish to go back to the Advanced tab in the Spanning Sync preferences and hit Open Log Window. This will let you watch what the software is doing in real time, as well as show you any error messages.
  7. Okay, when you think you’re ready, hold your breath, maybe take ONE MORE backup and hide it away on a USB key, then hit the Sync button. If all goes according to plan, you will shortly have all your contacts in two places.

It’s really cool to have all your vital information available at your fingertips, where ever you are. Hopefully with a little luck, some good backups, and some of my tips here, you’ll be able to fix up your mess of contacts, as I did mine. If you are a Mac user, have contact (or calendar) information, and think it would be nice to have that information while on the go, look no farther than Spanning Sync. It’s a very well written piece of software, and is at a fair price (which is pretty much the polar opposite of some other Mac software *cough*Office2008*cough*). And you can *still* get $5 off on Spanning Sync by clicking this link: http://spanningsync.com/?r=SAUHNN.

Waves

Published by Toph on August 7, 2008 in Technology. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

So it appears I’ve made some more online waves. I got written up in a blog post here, once again about Spanning Sync.

I honestly had no idea that posting that code in my blog could get me that many referrals, and inherently, money. It’s a pretty good program they’ve got going on there, and worth checking out.

Bringing Mac to the World

Published by Toph on March 9, 2008 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I made the plunge last December and purchased my first Macintosh computer from Apple. I had used Apple computers on and off for years at school but was never really *thrilled* with them. However, the biggest factor influencing my decision was the fact that I was sick with Windows. Vista was a huge disappointment for me and every one of my tech-savvy friends that had used it. My desktop computer was unappealing to use, which is a really choking fact with how much money I spent to build that thing.

I ended up buying a 13″ Black MacBook. It is a powerhouse in quite a small package. I got it with the 250GB drive and 2GB of RAM (which I upgraded to 4GB with some after-market OCZ RAM). Right now, it’s essentially the best MacBook I could get of that series.
MacBook Unboxed

I love my Mac. Everything on it just works, without any fussing, diagnosis, etc.. You install a program? You drag it to the Applications Folder. All of it’s files are contained in the .app definition. You want to remove an application? Drag it to the Trash. Delete all an applications preferences and reset it to fresh-installed defaults? Drag it’s contained preferences file to the Trash from inside your Library folder. None of this over complicated registry crap, stored in a HUGE .dat file. I’m interested to see how my Mac will age as far as formatting is concerned. I nearly did this every 6 months to a year on my PC and it was getting tiresome.

The Mac has also matured very recently into a platform that caters to computer “Power Users” and IT Professionals like myself. I know I’ve fallen in love with the fact that I have a built-in command line terminal to run applications and functions directly in line with the operating system. Also, the ability to run most *nix utilities out there is a huge bonus and especially in my line of work using linux at work. Having immediate and built-in access to platforms like SVN and SSH is just amazing.

Now my Mac works for me because I needed a laptop with a mobility factor. This was my big reason for making the call to get the 13″ MacBook over the 15″+ MacBook Pro. I found the right Mac for me.

Now lets say for a second I wasn’t looking for a mobile laptop, but rather a desktop. What are my options, Apple? There is the MacMini which is a very tiny marvel, but it’s not exactly a powerhouse and it isn’t much better than a laptop as far as expandability and upgradability. Next up in their desktop line is the iMac. Now this one has the power levels I’m looking for, but again it doesn’t offer much in expandability and it locks you down to built in components like the slot loading SuperDrive and the built-in display. Lastly, we have the top of the Mac desktop line, the MacPro. Now this thing has all the expandability that a techie could be looking for, and it has way more power than most people need. However, the downside is the power comes at a price.. $3200 for their base model + Apple Protection Plan. Add in $700 for their smallest monitor, and that is nearly 4 grand. This makes it prohibitive for many users, including myself.

So what does Apple need? They need a mid-range tower, with similar hardware specs to an iMac, but in the tower form factor like the MacPro. It may take some sales away from their beloved iMac line, but it would also warm up many types of computer users to the idea of moving to a Mac, including my market segment, the IT Professional.

I know I’d be a lot more inclined to buy a Mac desktop if I was able to slap in an extra SATA drive or two, swap out the video card, or even choose my own monitor. These aren’t functions that your regular home users would need to do, but that a guy like me would do and may need to do in a blink to his desktop PC. I know these factors would also play into Steve Jobs’ current strategy to cater more to the business and enterprise market — businesses like to be able to taylor an have more modular equipment that they can pay for only what they need in a particular business situation, and be able to change that in a snap. “Oh, you need a bigger monitor? No problem. More storage space? Done.”

I think it would be a very, VERY good move for Apple to develop a mid-range tower like this. With the gem that is Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) and the lemon that is Vista, now is the time to hammer into that IT Professional market segment.

Once you go Mac, you never go back. And I have no plans to.

The godsend of Spanning Sync

Published by Toph on March 1, 2008 in Reviews and Technology. 7 Comments Tags: , , , .

So upon moving from my Windows Platform over to my Mac, I had to figure out a new way to do e-mail and calendar. I have had a Google account for some time, and have used the Google Calendar on and off for the last 6 months. The big issue was always synchronization. I like having a good web client, which Google has, but need to have mobile and desktop access to it as well. Between my Mac and my new Blackberry, my calendaring problems are solved!

On the Mac side of things, I’m using iCal and Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync was the first ever application I bought for my Mac, and I don’t regret it in the slightest. I bought the lifetime subscription for it for a mere $65 and it has already done so much for me. It was very simple to install (as most MacOS applications, it was a simple integrated installer), and all it required me to do is sign in with my Google account information and choose the local calendar it should sync the remote calendar down to. Done!
SpanningSync screenshot

It pulled down my whole Google Calendar with no sync issues. All the funky repeat events, exceptions, everything. I have been using it for about two months now and only had one sync issue, related to the 10.5.2 upgrade, but by the time I had installed it, Spanning Sync already had instructions on what to do to correct the issue and remove the duplicate events.

It is a solid shareware application, and has very good support from the developers. They have been gaining steady support and have steadily developed a repore with Apple in getting iCal bugs reported and resolved.

Honestly, this piece of software is a bargain at the $25/year price, and a STEAL at $65 for lifetime updates. It keeps the lovely web client in sync with the beautiful Apple desktop client. And right now, you can get a $5 discount by clicking this special link: http://spanningsync.com/?r=SAUHNN or using discount coupon code “SAUHNN”. It’s just that easy.

Now I could have stopped there, or used the data now in Apple Sync Services to manually sync stuff over USB, but Google had a better idea. They have developed an application called “Google Sync for Mobile” which is an application built for the BlackBerry. This application enables over-the-air (OTA) syncing of your Google Calendar down to your Blackberry calendar. It’s the next best thing to having a BES server. It runs in the background and syncs your Blackberry’s calendar to your Google Calendar at a defined interval.

So now I have the total solution — a calendar that stays in sync with my online web client, by offline desktop client, and my semi-online mobile client. It’s pretty sweet. If only the rest of my life was so perfectly organized!

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