Been playing round with making things talk to each other all day, so thought i’d do a bit of a geek post. Those of you readers interested in social justice and human rights, feel free to ignore, right about now! The geeks amongst us read on!
Background
I’m a self-confessed Microsoft geek with a Microsoft Surface (bought from Portland on holiday, see earlier holiday blog post for the disaster story where Microsoft swooped in and made me a smiley happy girl again) I also have a Samsung ATIV (Windows Phone 8) (Thanks 2Degrees Mobile for the awesome deal!) However, having said all that, and also having had a hotmail (yes I know it is Outlook.com now) since the mid-90s, I am also a bit of a Google fan. I have three different Google Apps accounts (on three different domains) added when Google Apps was still free. Although, I guess if I get another domain I’d really have to think twice about it as it is no longer free 😦
Anyway, the following is a story about making large corporations talk to each other nicely.
(There are sub-sections to this post, as it is a geek post. I feel that it is necessary. Also, if there isn’t enough detail below, feel free to comment or tweet me!)
Microsoft Surface and Google Calendar
So, I’ve been using the Surface as a bit of a glorified email and web device. Apart from making the Calendar app a bit bigger on the screen, I didn’t really pay it much attention. After all, I’ve always got my phone on me, right? Well, today, I spent some time sorting out Dylan’s calendar and sharing it with the man and myself so that the little man’s appointments don’t clutter up our calendar unnecessarily. (yea, I’m one of *those* moms) Then thought, well, I really should be able to see it on the Surface, right? Turns out that Surface doesn’t like Google Calendar, and that it isn’t even an option at all! However, it is an easy fix. Go to Outlook.com, go to Calendar, and click on the Import button on the top. Click on Subscribe to the left and paste in the iCal Public URL from Google! Voila! all done! Only gripe? (Is Microsoft reading this?) the colours that you set in the Browser on your PC doesn’t come down to the Surface, I don’t know how it picks the colours, but the two calendars are very similar on my Surface now. Oh well.
WordPress (the dotcom not the dotorg) & Google
OK, this one is well documented on WordPress’ site, but I feel I should clarify for n00bs like myself. If you purchase your own domain and point it to a WordPress.com hosted blog, then obviously you need to host your actual email data elsewhere. I haven’t figured out how to do this to a free gmail account yet, so luckily when I wanted to do this (a few years ago) Google Apps was still free. I set up Google Apps for Business for both domains (seperately) and then set it all up. If you don’t want to check several email addresses you can use gmail’s internal functions to either forward it all, or simply use the POP/IMAP options into an email client of some kind.
Facebook Calendar in Google
Another one for my obsession of “keeping everything in one place”. I keep getting invited to events on Facebook, and then after accepting that I will go, double book myself because I only check my google apps calendar. (yea I know, I’m *such* a social butterfly) So, another easy fix, you can just import the Facebook calendar into Google. In fact, while writing this, I just discovered Facebook has made it even easier! Just go to the Events listing, click on the little cog on the top right and click on Export. I happen to have my Google Calendar open at the same time, and it just popped into the window and asked me if I wanted to Open Facebook Events Calendar. Neato!
Transferring Emails between two Gmail accounts
Ok, this one isn’t talking between two corporations. Just between two accounts. And also scarily easy! Install Thunderbird. That is it. 🙂 Use the IMAP option, import both accounts, copy and drag to your heart’s content!
Vivian Chandra 