Productive Organizer

The Apple iPhone 4S presentation was largely a disappointment for a lot of folks, but for me the highlight was SIRI, the personal digital voice assistant.

Voice recognition is not something new. Google’s Android have this in their Android to replace text input or carry out search.

But Apple’s presentation looks really neat. Apparently I found out that SIRI exist as a startup before Apple decided to integrate this into their OS after buying over. 

But can Android do something similar as well?

1. It integrates narration of incoming text messages when put into a narration mode. Android has that too but its not integrated this way.
2. Replies to text message through voice. Android is not integrated this way yet.
3. Switches application context from text messaging to music playlist through voice command.
4. Understands that you are currently in an application context and continues to be in that application context.

Till today Android have VLingo which does the same thing. It is free over at Android Market and well rated.[Get it here]

SIRI actually marries 2 concepts

1. Instead of text commands to invoke switching between apps, it users voice. For text command apps on the desktop do take a look at Google Calendar’s Quick Add Feature [illustration here]
2. SIRI maintains a set of voice commands. These voice commands could be 5 different voice sets to bring you to a single application context such as Reminders or Calendar, as we bring it up differently.
3. SIRI then marries this with your own variable data input.
4. The second powerful concept is the AI to recognize voice and translate to data or commands better than the competitors

Why SIRI is better than Android’s current offering is the AI portion is really well worked out.

1. SIRI started off in 2003 as CALO, a DARPA funded project with 300 researchers. It has 8 years of development and a lot of money invested. Basically Apple is now bring a really advance voice to text and text to voice AI system to the mainstream consumers.
2. The system will clarify after voice input to make sure you send or input something according to what you want.
3. The conversion from units or time zones is going to be a very big feature.
4. Integration with Wolfram Alpha as well.

The question now is that as Asians, not all of us have English names. In past voice recognition systems this have been a problem.

Will SIRI be a racist application? We will only find out when we get hold of one and try it.

The next question is: How is Microsoft and Google’s technology in this voice recognition area? Will they be able to compete?

Introduction

I gotta give a shout out to Dominique from CalenGoo for facilitating this review. I would say out of all the intriguing software on the app store CalenGoo interest me the most.

I am big on planning and scheduling in a Getting Things Done kind of way and i make use of Google Calendar as my main calendar so it is natural that i would make it a criteria in choosing my GTD device.

In this review i would break down why this would rock more than the native Google Calendar sync and where it will not be that good in.

Why you would want to sync your calendar to google

Ubiquitous Calendar Assess

A good reason other than Appigo ToDo that sways me to the iPod Touch 2G was due to its ability to sync google calendars and contacts via exchange protocol from Google  to my iPod Touch.This means that you can assess to your events and schedule offline, you don’t need  a constant internet connection.

What this means also is that you make your google calendar your base where you house your events and schedule. If you are using an iPhone your calendar synchronize with it. If you are using an Android phone your Android phone calendar gets synchronize with it.

When you get home or in the office and want a better view of your calendar, you can view the same events and schedule from your desktop internet browser.

Auto-Backup of Calendar via web synchronization aka Offline Mode

Remember those windows mobile days where you need to put your windows mobile phone into a cradle and sync your contacts and calendars to your desktop through ActiveSync? Well in web 2.0 you don’t have to rely on that any more.

Offline mode for iPhone,Android and Adobe Air for desktop allows you to assess your calendars when you do not have an internet connection and automatically or manually synchronize your events and schedules when you have one.

In each device the application will make use of the local database in your iPhone. If there is an internet connection, the application will invoke a sync request to sync your data with the web database. What this means is that should you lose your phone, you will still have assess to your data as it is last sync this morning to the web.

Thus for this concept to work well your software must periodically poll to see if you have an internet connection, if it has, it will sync it.

Through iPhone Exchange services you are able to sync your calendar to google and will periodically update. It works very well and i am satisfied with it.

Continue after the break for review of CalenGoo with screenshots

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Here is a great guide to take you through an option to sync Google Calendar to outlook using Google Calendar Sync.

ometimes I wish that dates were the things that only grew on palms. But alas, it stares back at us from calendars too. Apart from the walls, we have them everywhere…online, offline, iPhones et.al. And with all that comes the task of managing them. It seems such a chore at first, but the payoffs if we can keep at it with discipline, is a more organized life.

Which are your two favorite calendar apps? I hope its Microsoft Outlook on the desktop and Google Calendar on the web; because this is what the post is all about. Both are full blown calendar utilities and adopting any one decidedly makes our life a whole lot easier.

But what if you decide to use both, like I do? One reason is that both have their own features and also I like to store my my plans in two places (offline and online) for all time access. As I said before, maintaining one is a chore…two could be a headache. Thankfully no, because there are some ways we can sync Outlook with Google Calendar.

The Little But Handy Outlook/Google Calendar Sync

A 684KB tool from Google takes away the pain of keeping both calendars updated. Google Calendar Sync works with Outlook 2003/2007 on Windows XP and Windows Vista. The utility not only allows us to sync Microsoft Outlook calendar events with Google Calendar, it also allows us to set the direction of flow (1-way or 2-way). Also we can specify the sync frequency by giving a time interval.

Google recommends deciding on the calendar which will act as the source and the one that will be the sink. The source will be the main calendar and contain most of the information. It’s better to clear the other calendar of all events and start with a clean slate.

Now, let’s install and sync. Close Outlook if it’s running. Installation is clear cut and simple.

[Continue reading at MakeUseOf >>]

This is part of my current productivity setup. Everyone wishes that they are able to check their calendars and i feel this is a an important part of your productivity and GTD setup.

Therefore my setup is to synchronize my ipod touch’s calendar and contacts with google calendar and contacts.

That means that on desktop i can check it on my 19″ or 10″ screen and on the go, without internet connection i check it on my ipod touch.

The same goes for my contacts. Google tends to be the most open standard.

However, that is not the end of the story as it only sync one calendar and chances are you have numerous calendar. What you need to do is to configure @ m.google.com/sync to set up which calendar to sync.

Thanks to Download Squad here, I don’t have to explain that much. Do note that if you want to sync to gmail this does not do it.You will need a separate sync option under your iphone or ipod touch to do that. So that means you have one sync profile for your contacts,calendar and one for your gmail.

As it turns out, it is possible to subscribe to sub-calendars, but it’s not immediately obvious how to do so. The same holds true on the iPhone.

If you’ve attempted to synchronize your Google Calendar to your iPhone only to be disappointed that it only allows you to synchronize one calendar, you’ll be happy to discover that although it’s somewhat hidden, there is a way to synchronize multiple calendars.

Once you configure your iPhone to synchronize with your Google account using your phone’s Exchange functionality, you should have your contacts and primary calendar items synchronizing. To then choose what other calendars to display, use the instructions given on this page. They will instruct you to visit m.google.com/sync on your phone, which gives you the option to set some sync settings.

[Read more at download squad here >>]