USB flash drives, memory sticks, etc. normally come preformatted as FAT (FAT16). This has four main advantages and one big disadvantage.

FOR:

• FAT16 is quicker than FAT32 or NTFS for writing files to the drive.
• The number of read/writes is less than NTFS for any given set of files actions.*
• Data loss is less likely when unplugged without using “Safe Removal” ** (more…)

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What Is It?

Google Calendar Sync provides the functionality that I have wanted for sometime in being able to synchronise a web based calendar with MS Outlook and synchronising Outlook over different computers and hand held devices. Sure there are commercial "paid for" products on the market for synchronising Outlook and some freeware products that will partially do what is required or just import from Outlook but nothing that could synchronise both ways or optionally in only one direction. (i.e. either from Outlook or to Outlook).  The testing I have carried out so far has shown a couple of problems that I have not been able to resolve which may be the Google Calendar Sync program or Outlook. At work we have had some problems with the the corporate Outlook/Exchange Server setup which has resulted in appointments disappearing among other things, so I may have some "corrupted" appointments sitting in my Outlook installations. This post is not intended to be a full review but an explanation of my finding through the installation and initial testing process. I will, however, use the basic review layout and headings that you will be familiar with.

Why Would You Want It?

Having a single master calendar makes sense  and one that you can access from anywhere you have a web connection is ideal for people who need to use a single appointment system system for home and work. The ability to synchronise the master calendar with appointment systems used at home and work as well as mobile devices such a phones and PDAs really is essential for many of us. The icing on the cake is two way synchronisation so you can update the master calendar with appointments entered on one of your other devices.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Synchronises Google Calendar with Microsoft Outlook
• Options for two way or one way Synchronisation

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Firstly Apologies

Apologies to my regular readers who visited the site in the last couple of days, particularly those of you expecting the report on my testing of Google Calendar Sync. Those of you who visited may have noticed some problems with the page layout and missing icons or pictures. What turned out to be a relatively small file in one of the server directories caused me huge problems.

The Problem

I could not access the blog through the Admin interface which is used to manage the blog in all sorts of ways. Posting, managing comments, setting options, adding and removing plugins which provide additional functions, etc. So although readers were seeing minor problems their were major ones behind the scenes. As I though it was a plugin that I had recently added that streamlined the use of the admin interface I started there but had to work through the server file interface rather than the blog admin interface. Anyway, having moved files to temporary folders, deleted files, checked file permissions and done all sorts of other things one of my Google searches turned up an obscure solution. Which pointed me in the right direction. To cut a long story short there was an .htaccess file in the plugins directory with 4 lines in it that was the cause of the problem. I renamed this and hey-presto I had access to the admin panel again .

All then I had to do then was put back together everything as it was before, one step at a time and checking each step in case on of the plugins was creating the rogue file. This took a very long time

In retrospect I should have resorted to installing the last site backup but hey you live and learn .

The Happy Event

My first grandson was born yesterday (I already have two granddaughters). They light up my life.

Other Relevant Posts

GTD – Getting Things Done

News – Google Calendar Sync Released – Sync with Outlook & More

10 Ways to Save & Protect Your Data – Even files You Just Saved or Text You Just Typed

Technorati Tags: Freeware, Getting Things Done, Google, GTD, Impartial Review, Independent Review, Outlook, Pro Reviewer, ProReviewer, Utilities, Windows, Windows XP, Backup

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OK it makes for a good headline but the lack of posting is not entirely due to testing Google Calendar Sync (See News – Google Calendar Sync Released – Sync with Outlook & More). Small events have conspired to eat up the small amount of time I have free in the working week for blogging.

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Google have released a new free PC based utility to synchronize your Google Calendar with MS Outlook and vice versa if you wish.

I wrote in a recent post – GTD – Getting Things Done

At present I am constrained by the need to use MS Outlook at work so I really need some freeware utilities that can intelligently exchange data with Outlook.

This seems to be a very significant step in the right direction but is not a complete solution as yet.

I picked up on this at the Downloadsquad blog in the post – Synchronize Google Calendar and Outlook with Google Calendar Sync so I followed the link over to Google Calendar Help where the download link is, grabbed the file and installed it.

All went smoothly and up popped the options screen which I duly filled in. Then disappointment, it only works with Outlook 2003 and 2007.

So I left the following comment at Downloadsquad and will follow up with testing on my home PC later.

3-06-2008 @ 8:01AM

Barry Cleave said…

Great step forward!
In a post on my blog on 5 Feb 08 (GTD – Getting Things Done) I said:

“At present I am constrained by the need to use MS Outlook at work so I really need some freeware utilities that can intelligently exchange data with Outlook.” I am sure this applies to lots of other people.

Unfortunately we are still using Outlook 2000 at work and the Google Sync utility only works with 2003 and 2007. We also sit behind a firewall and proxy so I wonder if this will also be an issue (Anyone know the answer to that?) Anyway I shall certainly use it at home but will still have to rely on Activesync and my mobile phone to sync my work calendar

Regards

Barry
http://proreviewer.com

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What Does It Do – The Essentials?

TaskSwitchXP provides an alternative way to switch tasks using alt-tab. Described as “an advanced task management utility that picks up where the standard Windows Alt+Tab switcher leaves off” by the developers ntwind software. Quoting them more fully adequately describes the essentials of the program:

TaskSwitchXP is an advanced task management utility that picks up where the standard Windows Alt+Tab switcher leaves off. It provides the same functionality, and adds visual styles to the dialog and also enhances it by displaying thumbnail preview of the application that will be switched to.

TaskSwitchXP also has a powerful process and window management capability that allows you quickly to close/minimize applications and their groups. The unique capabilities of TaskSwitchXP make it useful for tracking down multitudinous windows, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

Summary:

• Provides preview snapshots of all running windows (alt-tab)
• Designed for XP with XP visual styles
• Allows for windows management (minimise, cascade, etc)
• Can select groups of windows
• Multilingual
• Process/task management capabilities
• Can be set to run automatically at Startup

Pros: What’s Good?

• Freeware

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Leo, the developer, sent me the following email answering some of the points I raised in the review. He has kindly given me permission to reproduce his comments (Thanks Leo!)

The bullet points in the email are my comments in the review and Leo’s replies are in blue.

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Tonight I am working on moving the My Free Review blog to Pro Reviewer and so far (touch wood) it’s going far more easily than I expected. I spent a lot of yesterday reading up about transferring blog domains and there seemed to be quite a lot involved, particularly in changing the MySQL database. Much to my amazement everything seems to be happening fairly automatically. Maybe this is a result of the fact that I have “parked” the new domain in the same home directory with my web host. This leaves myfreereview.com as the principal domain and proreviewer.com pointing to it.

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What Does it Do – The Essentials?

There are several websites offering an online web service, one that I have used recently to create the “Favicon” for this website is at RealWorld Graphics. This is a quick way of creating a basic icon (*.ico) file. You can select colours and draw your own icon of you can upload a picture for it to interpret into an icon. I am not saying that this is the best available website for icon creation, but I have tried a couple of others and I found this one easy to use and smooth in its operation. (Any suggestions for better web based applications will be gratefully received in the comments!) (more…)

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I am sure that in the same way as many other new bloggers have done, I have been thinking hard about the name and content of my blog over the last couple of weeks. Probably the hardest decision to make was about the blog name. What has become clear to me very quickly was that “My Free Review” has no immediate impact for anyone searching for content with Google, Yahoo or any of the other major search engines. The same lack of impact would also effect users of StumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg, etc. While every blog on “how to increase Traffic” to a blog always says content is King, that’s no good if you don’t have anyone to read it! Reading articles on changing the domain name for a blog, made it clear that the longer I left it the more the impact of the change would be. Not only are there lots of changes to make to the blog database, but there are also major effects on search engine and other rankings. So yesterday I spent several hours trying to come up with a new name that could be tied into a domain name as well.

I started by thinking of names that would have the right combination of simplicity, memorability, and authority. A name that people could identify with for the type of content but had the right sound to it, catchy without being trivial. Words in the frame included tech, techno, expert, xpert, review, pro and even (in desperation) geek. I wanted to avoid using a domain name with any of the “modifiers” suggested by the domain name sellers like GoDaddy such as adding THE, NEW, BEST, MY or OFFICIAL at the beginning of the domain name or ONLINE, HOME, SITE, LIVE, BLOG to the end. Not only do these often look lame but they also lengthen the name and potentially make it less memorable.

The other big influence on my choice of name was that I wanted to have wider variety of content than reviews and hoped to reflect that in the name. So, you ask, why have I ended up with proreviewer.com! Simply, after several hours of researching available names, apart from a couple that were available at “premium rates” ranging from $500 to $5000, I couldn’t find any name that fitted the above set of criteria. Even when extending my list of acceptable words most of the others I tried were not available or just didn’t work for me. There were also a couple of names that I could have used but were within a letter of another blog name and with content in a similar area. So I ended up with a shortlist of 5 names and with the help of family and friends (a focus group of 3!) whittled this down to a final 2. Even choosing to include proreviewer in the list, which was close to exiting names and tied back to reviews, was difficult, but in the end it was considered the best we could come up with.

As you can see, the new name has become a major compromise. It still reflects an area that is more narrow than the intended blog content but I will just have to live with that and The need to have something that sounded authoritative and was in the right area to reflect at least some of the content was important and I am sure that Darren Rowse’s excellent and highly successful site, problogger.com had an influence on my final decision.

Other Relevant Posts

Why I Decided to Write this Blog

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P.S. Just visited Problogger to check spelling of Darren’s surname and coincidentally there is this post:

Six Defining Moments of a ProBlogger

which I thought was quite appropriate as I see changing this blog name as a defining moment in my blogging life.

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P.P.S. I think it will take a couple of weeks for me to make all the internal WordPress changes so don’t be surprised that “My Free Review” (myfreereview) will appear in various links and other places for a while.

Technorati Tags: ProReviewer, My Free Review, Problogger, Domain Name