Headline, Observations »

This is a picture I captured on a train a while ago. My apologies for the fuzziness. For the benefit of those who don’t understand what’s on the poster, it says, “The cure to Cancer/Aids now exists”. An Ayurvedic Hospital called “Lavanya Kayakalap Anushandhan Kendra” purports to have the cure to cancer and AIDS. Funny I didn’t catch that in the news lately. They even have a website for your benefit.

Featured, Technology/Science »

One of the best things about Google’s service is the fact that most of them are nicely integrated with each other. Google Calendar is no exception. It meshes really nicely with Google’s GMail. Surprisingly, despite being an online application, I’ve found it to perform better than mainstream desktop apps like Windows Calendar.

Now Google Calendar is a pretty powerful tool. You can use it to create custom events (such as repeating events, shared events, etc) without having to spend much time trying to figure out how to do it. Anyone who has tried creating custom events in other programs will appreciate Google Calendar’s simple yet powerful approach to calendaring.

Here’s a run-through of how I put up my semester’s time-table on Google Calendar and then synced it back with Windows Calendar (You know- for all those times when you don’t have internet access)-

• Go to Google Calendar and create a new account. If you already have a GMail account, you should find the direct link to your Calendar at the top of the GMail page.

• Use the ‘Add button’ on the left to create a new calendar. Give it a creative name, like ‘College calendar’. There are other options on the page which we won’t concern ourselves with for the time being.

• Now with this particular calendar selected, create a new event using the link to the left.

• We’ll call this subject DSP-ANC (My subject and professor code. Give it a name you’ll understand and remember). Fill in the appropriate date and time. In the “Repeats” drop down box, select “Weekly”.

• In the “Range” section, under “until” select the date your term ends. Mine ends in October.

• In the options section, you could have Google send you a reminder. Via SMS even. I’d suggest disabling this unless you want a reminder before every lecture for the entire semester.

• Hit the save button.

Now repeat the above procedure till you’ve covered all your subjects. Once you’re done, select the week view (upper-right), sit back, and admire your new calendar.

To sync this with your Windows calendar, go to Settings> Calendar Settings> Calendars> “College Calendar” (or whatever creative name you’ve given to it). Under “Calendar Details” scroll down to Private address and select ICAL. In the pop-up, click on the link and download the file that appears (basic.ics). In Windows Calendar, go to File> Import> (Folder where you downloaded the file)> basic.ics. And voila! You’re done. (These instructions are for Windows Calendar in Vista- other systems and apps should have similar instructions).

Now you can go share the calendar with your class by going to Settings> Calendars> “Name of your calendar”> Share this calendar> Make this calendar public. Go back to “Calendar Details”, scroll to the bottom of the page, and under “Calendar address” select “HTML”. Copy the hyperlink that pops up and send it to everyone in your class. If you have a blog or a website, you could use the Configuration tool to generate an iFrame that you could paste to a page on your blog. Like this

Happy Calendaring.

(If you have any problems viewing the images above, right click> “view image” to see the image in its entirety)

P.S. To add SMS reminders to your Google Calendar (which can be really handy at times), go to Settings> Mobile Setup. Follow the instructions there. You’ll need to enter your phone number, after which Google will send you a verification code. Put that verification code in the field provided in Google Calendar, and you’re done.