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Murphy has a few random Google things to pass along: Using Quick Add with Google Calendar on your iPhone or iPod touch. An alternative to the default iPhone Google Reader page. And a Google Calendar shortcut he hadn’t noticed until recently.
Quick Add - Google Calendar - iPhone
If for some reason you’re not using Google Sync to update the native calendar application on your iPhone this might be of interest. You can’t use Google Sync if you’re already using MS ActiveSync for something else, like connecting to Exchange at your office. And even if you do use Google Sync with your iPhone, the native Apple calendar application doesn’t have a feature like Google’s Quick Add.
Chances are you end up at http://www.google.com/m when you access Google on your iPhone. If you access the calendar from this site there’s an option to create new appointments, but no Quick Add. So where is it?
Amazon iPod Nano: $133
Just point your iPhone to http://www.google.com/calendar/m where you’ll get a list view of your upcoming appointments. And at the bottom - a Quick Add field. Bookmark the page and you’re all set.
Google Reader on iPhone
Murphy finds the http://www.google.com/m page a little slow to load. Especially if you’ve bookmarked it on its Reader tab. Like the calendar, there’s an alternative view for the Reader that makes it easy to focus in on particular feeds and quickly mark them as read. It seems to load faster for Murphy. Open http://www.google.com/reader/m on your iPhone. You’ll get a list of items to read, and links to specific subscriptions and tags. The link http://www.google.com/reader/m/subscriptions will show you all the feeds you’re subscribed to along with an unread-count. Dig down into any feed and bookmark it for fast access in the future. The Mark All As Read link is easy to tap, and helps you keep up with your feeds.
Murphy uses the built-in Safari feed display too, but it doesn’t provide a mechanism to mark items as read.
Google Calendar Shortcut
While looking at monthly view in a Google Calendar on a Macbook Murphy dragged two fingers across the main calendar and found it scrolled through the months. Dragging on the mini-navigation calendar scrolled very quickly. Very convenient.
More on Google from Murphy Mac
Amazon iPod Nano: $133
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I’ve been thinking the Google Search Box needs more juice for a long, long time. A recent Pogue column got me thinking about it again - so here’s what I’m looking for.
What You Can Do Now
Google lets you log in - they know who you are when you run a search from the box. Google needs to leverage that fact into increased functionality. I’ve posted before about all the things the search box lets you do. Look at Pogue’s column for details on the kinds of things the search box lets you enter. Flight status, currency conversion, all kinds of useful stuff. I’ve posted about it too. But why doesn’t Google deliver more?
What You Should Be Able To Do
Parsing a line of text for the good stuff isn’t much of a challenge for the brainpower at Google - what I’m looking for is something they could turn on tomorrow. Here’s an example:
Say I want to add an appointment. I could go to my Google Calendar and use the Quick Add link. Then I can type a natural language description of the appointment, something like- tomorrow lunch with Merlin 11:45am at LAX In-N-Out -and the appointment gets created in my Google Calendar. That’s nice, but why do I have to go to Google Calendar to do that when I have a permanent Google search box on every web browser I use? I have to load Google Calendar and click the Quick Add link before I can enter my appointment details. I don’t even want to go to Google Calendar after the appointment is created.
Instead, I’d rather type a qualifier in the regular search box like- appt# Dentist Dec 7 10am. The appointment would be added to the default calendar of whatever Google account I’m logged into. Obviously the appt# would tell Google I’m creating an appointment.
Where do we go from there? I’d be happy to send a quick email from the search box: email# to:laporte, pogue, mossberg sub: google body: they don’t like my idea
In this case the names would be pulled from my Google contacts. But you could enter an email address instead. And once Google buys Twitter you could just use a screen name and send a tweet.
What else? Depends on what you like to do with Google. How about where# pambeesly to see her location in Google Latitude? I should be able to add stocks to my iGoogle page. Open a Google Document by name. Send a text. Upload a photo.
Mobile
This is the big one. Google should be itching to keep me in their mobile app for as long as they can. If I can send texts, add appointments, open docs, and see where people are all from one simple search box on my mobile device I’m far less likely to wander off to another application or another vendor. For some people it’s much more convenient than digging through a GUI and multiple page loads.
When will we see something like this? Who knows. Google Calendar lets you specify lots of information with Quick Add, even details for a recurring appointment. So someone over there likes plain language interfaces. But it doesn’t let you specify a calendar. You never know what features we’re going to get, but you can hope.
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