Category: Google

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Google Tips & How To's

Add Facebook Events to Google Calendar, 2 Simple Steps

I just discovered the most amazing, useful mashup. You can automatically add your Facebook events to your Google calendar! This way whenever you accept an event invite it shows up on your google calendar, with all the details! It just takes 2 simple steps.

  1. Pull up your facebook events page, click the “Export Events” link at the top. That brings up a little dialogue box with a URL. Copy that URL.fbevent.png
  2. Open your Google calendar settings page. Click the “Calendars” tab, under “other calendars” click “add calendar, click the “Add By URL” tab. You’ll be presented with a form that’s able to accept the URL you just copied from Facebook!

Voila!
You’ll now see your Facebook events in Google calendar. Thusly, minimizing the amount of websites you have to open to figure out when you have time to visit your mother.

Categories
Google

Google + Double Click = Kittens?

Google announce their acquisition of doubleclick over 3 months ago. I having been wondering how long it would take for Google to actually start doing something with it.

This morning I logged in to my DFP (that’s “DART For Publishers”, or “DoubleClick Advertising, Reporting and Targetting For Publishers” – what a wonky acronym) account to put up some ads for work. I noticed two new things that I assume are are a sign that Google has started to take over DoubleClick’s tool development: 1) A new more friendly logo 2) a new menu item called “dfp dashboard beta.”

I love betas! So I open the dashboard. It looks fairly AJAX-ey, web 2.0-ish, vaguely reminiscent of the Google Analytics dashboard. The DFP dashboard (DFPD??) had a limited number of options, the only one that really seemed promising was the “widget catalogue.” The widget catalogue contains about half a dozen widgets related to the DFP product and two rather intriguing widgets. A sudoku widget – seems a little strange to have a game in a productivity tool. And something called “kitty” – a widget that displays pictures of cute cats.

Take a look at Kitty In Action[PIC].

Yup, that’s right folks, I knew this merger couldn’t be all evil. Apparently Google + DoubleClick = Kitty.

Only, I thought Google was a dog only employer.

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From The Archives Google Review Websites

IM, OS and Pirates, Oh My

Google Talk

If you haven’t already heard Google released Google Talk Beta on Wednesday, Google’s answer to AIM and MSN. As a nerd I feel it’s somehow my duty to talk about google even though I’m sure this has already been “blogged” about 10,000 times since Wednesday. Wired has already written a review. My two cents: the classic google simplistic design is sheer brilliance as always, I couldn’t be happier with Google’s choice to to use the jabber protocol – open protocols are where it’s at – fo shizzle, voice sound quality is superb – the use of cellphone style connect quality bars is brilliant, i hope they implement file transfers soon, multi-chat is overrated – i hope they don’t include it, tabbed chats would be nice. That’s a quick rundown of my thoughts on gTalk. Next up, windows Vista…

Asta la Vista

I installed Windows Vista Beta 1 (legally obtained, I assure you) the other day. I am definitely unimpressed. Granted I didn’t take a super close look at it. I’m convinced that Vista is going to be to XP what ME was to 98, especially at the rate they’re removing features. The main features I noticed where silly GUI ‘improvements.’ I suppose GUIs are what desktop OSes are all about. But the Vista GUIs features fall into to categories 1) ripping off Mac OS X, 2) stupid/pointless. blah….i can’t talk about this any longer

Pirates of the Spanish Main

I recently moved in close proximity to a Geek Games Store. While waiting for my bus the other day I noticed an interesting looking game in the window, Pirates of the Spanish Main. The publisher is calling it “world’s first constructible strategy game.” It’s essentially a miniatures game, wrapped in the facade of a collectable card game. You purchase the game in packs of cards which punch out like paper dolls. The cards consist of ship pieces, crew members, islands and treasure. The empty cards can then be used for in game measurement, all measurements are in S or L (short or long side of the card), pretty brilliant. The rules are dead simple and the ships are fun to build. So in conclusion, add me to your gtalk list and buy yourself some Pirates! cards i need someone to play with. (cards are water and wine proof btw)

PS. Check out A List Apart 4.0, interesting layout.

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From The Archives Google Site News

Notres Langues Nous Trompent

Gmaps. It’s taken google too bring satellite imagery to the geek masses. I recall mapquest using microsoft’s terraserver maps a few years ago. Evidently that didn’t pan out, at present I can’t seem to find a satellite map anywhere on mapquest. Gmaps is a blog compiling interesting sites as seen by “google’s” satellite.

Two minor site improvements.
First, I’ve fixed a bug in the comments form and increased the textbox size – now you can see what you’re typing as you’re typing it.
Second, I’ve added a couple of links. If you’d like your site linked please email me. As you’ll note by the third link, i’ve jumped on the www. deprecation bandwagon. I added some url rewrite to my .htaccess file causing all traffic headed for www.ohryan.ca to be silently redirected to ohryan.ca. Essentially, the no-www movement feels that www. is no longer relevant and completely redundant. Check the website for further info. No it’s not chaining myself to old growth timbers, but it’s something.