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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

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