My one year subscription to Spanning Sync is coming up and while I’ve been very happy with the program itself, the $25 a year or $65 one time fee doesn’t. Last year I opted for the one year subcription as Leopard hadn’t been released and I was hoping for some built in support for syncing iCal to Google. Well that didn’t happen. This year at Macworld, BusyMac showed off a beta of BusySync 2.0 which supports syncing to Google Calendar… all for $19.95 for 1.x and a free upgrade 2.0 when released. Thanks to a 50% coupon code, Google Calendar syncing only costs me $9.98. Due to the different way each program uses to sync iCal and Google Calendar, its not as straight forward to switch to BusySync.

1) Backup. This is the most important step. Go to iCal > File > Export and save each of you calendars.

2) Disable .Mac calendar Syncing – You should not use both BusySync and .Mac to sync calendars between the same Macs. This will end up causing you to have duplicate calendars.

3) Turn off Spanning Sync. Make one last sync with Spanning Sync then go into System Preferences > Spanning Sync and uncheck the “Sync with Google Calendar” box.

4) Decided where you want to “host” your calendars. This is where most of the work is done. Spanning Sync requires you to create parallel calendars in iCal and Google Calendar and map them to each other. BusySync uses a Publish and Subscribe model where one side is the host and the other side is the client. We will need to delete any calendars that are not the host. In my example, I had 2 calendars in iCal, one called Home and Work. Google Calendar had 2 calendars called Alec Peden (default calendar that you cannot delete) and Work. I mapped Home > Alec Peden and Work > Work. To BusySync, that would be 4 different calendars. We only need 2. Since you cannot delete the default calendar in Google Calendar, we will want to delete the calendar in iCal that you had mapped to it. In my case, it would be the Home calendar. All the other calendars you have, you just need to decide where you want the host calendar to be and delete the corresponding calendar. Since I use Time Machine to back up iCal, I decided on using iCal’s calendars as the host. It honestly does not matter which one you decide.

3) Install BusySync 2.0.

4) Setup which calendars to sync by going to the System Preferences > BusySync and click the Google tab. Place a check mark next to the calendars you want to sync. Keep in mind you can have host calendars in both iCal and Google Calendar. To read more about which calendar is the client and host, visit BusySync.

5) Sync. Everything should be setup and ready to sync. Your first sync may take a few minutes but you should start to see the calendars you checked show up in both iCal and Google Calendar. If everything worked out the way you want it, go ahead and uninstall Spanning Sync by Ctrl+Clicking the icon in System Preferences and choose “Remove”.

Note: If you run into any problems. Delete the problem calendar(s), recreate a new blank calendar in either iCal or Google Calendar, check the box to sync it in BusySync and once its sync, import the ICS backup you made in step 1 into iCal.

The MacHeist II bundle sale has been underway for the last few days. I purchased last years bundle and it was well worth it. This years apps seems less appealing to me but I made the purchase anyways. Pixelmator, which is still locked at the moment, and AppZapper are the only ones I’m really interested in but the donation to the Humane Society is well worth it.

If you plan on purchasing the MacHeist bundle, I’d appreciate it if you could use my link.

Simple Comic 1.7 build 0167 beta now has a bundled Quicklook plugin for both digital comic CBZ and CBR files built in. Simple Comic is currently at version 1.6.1 on their webpage but if you go into the Preferences and click on the Beta Update Feed option under Advanced > Updates, you will be presented with the option to update to 1.7 the next time you launch the app. Once you install Simple Comic 1.7 beta, restart you Mac and you will now notice all CBZ/CBR files now have thumbnails and you can view them using Quicklook. While in Coverflow view, you will now be able to flip through pages without opening up the file too.

Nullriver’s Connect360 was just updated to version 3.2 adding support for Divx and Xvid files. Connect360 allows Mac users to stream Music, Video and Photos to a Xbox360. You will need to have the Fall 2007 Dashboard update installed on your Xbox360 but once you do, you will be able to stream Divx and Xvid encoded AVI files directly to your TV (finally!). The program costs $20 but they offer a trial version on their webpage.

Digital comic files come in two flavors, CBZ and CBR. They are just renamed ZIP and RAR files containing JPG files. While Quicklook can look at JPG files, it cannot look into a compressed file for them. Over on the arstechnica forums, a user named gheritt has whipped up a Quicklook plugin that allows you to view CBZ files. It displays them inline similar to a PDF file. Only CBZ files work right now. There is no built-in support for RAR compression in OS X 10.5 so CBR files will not work, yet.

Download the file directly from here and install into /Library/Quicklook.

The biggest decision with any new operating system is to update your current setup or do a fresh install. While the beta’s updated without an issues, I decided to go a fresh install. I always welcome fresh starts and it would give me a chance to streamline my application needs. The couple days before Leopard was released I spend time cleaning up my hard drive so it would fit onto a 120GB external drive. After making the room, I used SuperDuper! to clone my Tiger install. When installing Leopard I did a Erase and Install and planned on using the Migration Assistant to copy my information back.

After Leopard installed, I decided I wasn’t going use the Migration Assistant because I didn’t want all my old settings back. I still needed some data thought and I just copied stuff like my iTunes and iPhoto libraries back. My goal is to try and streamline my computing needs so I’m only installing programs as I need them. I hope to move to online services like Google Documents for some of my needs instead of keeping 2 or 3 different word processors on my hard drive like before.

After getting some essentials installed, it was time to play around with the new features. To be honest, there wasn’t too much right off the bat for me. I haven’t tried Time Machine yet as my external HDD still is housing a image of my Tiger install. I moved back to iChat but I don’t do any video chats and I still prefer Firefox over Safari. Obviously some of these might be useful in time but for now, I just don;t use them. That being said, the things I do use have made this upgrade well worth it in gold. First off is Spotlight. I used spot light as an application launcher and Apple has tweaked it so it now shows Applications before searching. This makes it on par with Quicksilver in application launching and with no software to install. But my favorite thing is the new Finder. I love this thing. Quicklook is by far the best feature in Leopard. The new iTunes like source list in Finder is much better than its predecessor. The fact you can see network shares in the source list is epic, very 1990’s, but still epic to see in Finder finally. I’m loving the new iCal thought RememberTheMilk’s feed does not seem to be updating now.

I’ve not been without my problems. Mostly minor like applications such as Popcorn not running. One thing that got me worried was last night. I shut my laptop lid and my laptop went into sleep. About 10 minutes later I keep hearing the sound the DVD drive makes when it checks for a disc. After about the 4th time I got up and looked. After a few minutes, the DVD drive would check for a DVD like it was waking up and I’d see the Apple light up. For some reason, the laptop was trying to wake up then go right back to sleep every few minutes. I opened the lip and shutdown the computer and left it. I’ll see what happens tonight.

Overall I’m very impressed with the update. Stuff like Time Machine I know I’ll love when I start using it and as more applications are released to support it, the application compatibility issue should go away. As soon as Google enabled IMAP on my account, I’m going to start using Mail and kick the tires on that for awhile. There is some stuff that still doesn’t make since to me like iChat not being about to handle AIM and Jabber lists in one window and Safari not being about to open links in tabs. Stuff like that was fixed with 3rd party apps in Tiger and I’m sure those apps will be updated for Leopard soon.

Friday night I headed down to the Danbury, CT Apple Store for the Leopard release event. The store was closed from 4:00pm to 6:00pm so they could prepare for the release. I ended up going down for 3:00pm because I made a Genius Bar appointment so they could take a look at my iPhone which was suffering from the negative black screen issue.

I plopped down in line right after the Apple Store closed, I was 4th in line of about 100 people. The 2 kids in front of my weren’t even there to buy Leopard. One had received it earlier that day in the mail and the other just wanted a free t-shirt. The guy behind me had just recently returned a Vitsa machine he had nothing but problems with and was there to purchase his first Mac, so I was giving him some advise and telling him about the difference’s between Mac and PC’s. During the whole time, Apple employees were handing out waters to everyone in line and taking pictures.

6:00pm rolled around and they opened their door. I made a beeline right for the Leopard DVDs and think I was the first to purchase it. As much as I would have loved to stay and check out everything, I wanted to head home and install Leopard right away. So right after I got my DVD and Tshirt, I left for home.

What’s in my Menubar:
Last.fm
Twitteriffic
Soundsource
Bandwagon FTP
DeskLickr

Desktop Apps:
AppZapper
Autorate
Disco
Handbrake
IEatBrainz
Linkinus
MacTheRipper
MetaX
Popcorn
Pukka
Skype
Tangerine!
Transmission
Transmit
VisualHub
Wednesday List
Spanning Sync
Connect360
Missing Sync for Blackberry

Web Apps:
Gmail
Google Reader
Google Calendar
Google Documents
Remember the Milk
Meebo
Backpack
My Pull List
My Mile Marker

Beta 2 of Opera Mini 2 was released yesterday with a nice list of enhancements:

• Added encryption
• Added multi search, with shortcut #+9
• Added create search from form field
• Added landscape mode, shortcut #+*
• Added support for small anti-aliased bitmap fonts
• Added content folding
• Simplified setup process
• Improved image quality
• Improved fit to width mode rendering
• Simplified settings page
• Added native BlackBerry menu
• Allow BlackBerry to accept the EULA via the menu.
• Fixed decoding of images that were skipped when partially above the window
• Added clock adjustment setting
• Changing the font size via settings now clears the document cache
• Now saves full screen mode between sessions
• Dialogs are now displayed with round corners and alpha channel overlay windows
• Delayed randomess gathering for secure connections until first real page request

What caught my eye the most was the improvements made to its Blackberry support. I had tried beta 1 and was pretty unimpressed. It was clumsy, slow and hard to use so I deleted. With specific support for Blackberry devices, I decided to load up beta 2 on my BB Pearl and give it another chance.

Blackberry Changes
Right off the bat I was loving the changes. It now behaves like any Blackberry app should. The Menu button actually brings up the menu!! Previously you had to use the QW and OP buttons to access the menus. It was frustrating at best. They did a great job of making use of the Menu, Back and Trackball in the new version.

Landscape mode
As I segway from the changes for Blackberry devices, the 2nd change I was most excited about was the landscape mode. As soon as I loaded up the8thsign.com in Opera, I was hitting #+* every way I could. Nothing I did would get landscape mode to work. I must have spend 15mins using every possible key combination and still nothing. Looked under settings and no Landscape mode listed there either. So it looks like it its not enabled on Blackberry’s for some reason. Disappointing.

Other Features
Some of the nicer new features include using the 2-3-6-8 buttons to navigate around the webpage. This may have been in beta 1 but I don’t remember it being this easy or fun to navigate. When moving side to side, its even smart enough to stop at edges of text and pictures even if its only a few pixels away. Another feature I’ve noticed is that text will be reformatted to fit your screen, even when viewing the full page and zoomed in.

Most transitions are now made with a iPhone like slide effect. In most places its very smooth but gets choppy when zooming out of a page.

Also new to this version is a OS X like hud for shortcuts and info. To see what I’m talking about, hold down the * or # buttons for a few seconds. They also use this new interface for displaying link information.

Conclusion
Beta 2 is a HUGE improvement for Opera Mini 4, especially on Blackberry Devices. Why they didn’t include landscape mode on Blackberries puzzles me but hopefully it will show up in beta 3. Getting around webpages is fast and fun. I just wish there was some way you could set it as your default browser but RIM doesn’t allow that. Hopefully in BB OS 4.3. My only complaint is the full screen view looks very distorted. It maybe due to the small screen size but the iPhones full screen mode looks amazing. If you have a Blackberry, download the beta and check it out. You can get it for free by going to http://mini.opera.com/beta from your phone.

First thing I did was try out iPhoto for obvious reasons. Now mind you, I never really “got” iPhoto but in the past 8 months I’ve gotten use to it. The first thing you notice is that Events now replace rolls. I think this will actually work out for me in the long run. My favorite upgrade so far is the keyword, no more drag and dropping. It has a more traditional tagging interface now which i love. I’ve only really played with the new iPhoto for a little bit so far and its mostly due to the fact it now runs like shit on my Macbook. As I write this I am rebuilding all the thumbnails, database and permissions hoping it will help. When scrolling and editing pictures, the CPU jumps to 100% and everything crawls. Anyone else having the same issues?

The other iLife apps I haven’t played with too much yet. iWork I’ll probably almost never use due to Google Apps but I have it if i need it.