All articles tagged , Apps, Calendar, Google, iPhone, iPod touch, MobileMe, Productivity, Tips

One of the many new features introduced in the iPhone 2.0 update is the ability for the iPhone’s calendar app to recognize multiple calendars you have in iCal or Google calendar. If you sync your calendar to your iPhone through USB, you may notice a bug where the colors displayed in the iPhone calendar don’t match up with the colors in iCal. Although this appears to be a bug that Apple will have to fix, there are a few homemade workaround solutions you can try if you’re as meticulous about your colors matching as we are.
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If you do any social networking with your friends or colleagues online, then you know what a pain it is to check all the sites to monitor their activity. You have to go to each site, sign into your account, check the updates. This gets more and more tedious as you connect with more people using different social networks. You’ve got friends on YouTube, and some are on Facebook, your colleagues are on LinkedIn, he uses Digg, she uses Flickr, you get the idea. It’s getting to be a big distraction just to keep up, and your CPA (constant partial attention) is getting stretched to its limit.

Enter FriendFeed, a social media aggregator that combines activity from all of your social networks into a single stream. While FriendFeed does not currently have a mobile-friendly version of the service, there are other ways of using it on mobile Safari and we’ll tell you how after the jump.
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Last week we told you about the update to Google Reader that brings its iPhone interface closer to its desktop sibling. If you use Google Reader on the iPhone as much as we do, then you’ll probably like this really cool iPhone trick that lets you continue using the iPhone version of Google Reader while using your desktop browser. This fun little trick is great for keeping an eye on your RSS feeds while you continue to work or surf the web in your browser’s main window pane. After the jump, we’ll tell you how to set this up in Firefox since we’re big fans of that browser, although this trick should work in any web browser that has a sidebar feature.
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Google has updated its iPhone optimized version of Google Reader making it the absolute best way to read news feeds on the iPhone. You can expect a bevy of native RSS apps to flood the App Store in June, but we think they’ll have a tough time trumping Google’s web-based reader for the iPhone. This week’s update enables mobile users to star items for later reading, and browse large lists of items. These changes bring Google Reader for the iPhone much closer to its sibling app for the desktop web. One really nice new feature is the expanding list that shows you the entire news item within the context of the list so you don’t have to go back and forth between article content and the list view. The new features are still in beta which means users navigating to Google Reader will still see the old version unless you point to the URL to the beta below.

Google Reader for iPhone and iPod touch (beta)

www.google.com/reader/i/

Whoa, we didn’t see this one coming. Sphere, software that connects contextually relevant content to your content, has been acquired by AOL for a rumored $25 million. Sphere was originally a search engine for finding content on blogs but then morphed into an engine to discover contextually related content with clients like the Time, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, and many others. AOL has taken this new technology and created a very nice search utility specifically tailored for the iPhone and iPod touch. The interface blends the iPhone’s mulit-touch surface with AJAX to deliver a user experience that allows the richness of the web to shine on mobile Safari. This new search tool has features you won’t find in Google or any of the major search engines. If you’re tired of Google or just want to check out a new way to find good stuff on the web using your iPhone, then check out this surprisingly great search utility from AOL. Who’da thunk? Learn more after the jump.
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Wow. So much Googley goodness this week, it’s making our heads spin. Two days ago Google rolls out a wicked good update to its iPhone and iPod touch interface to make all the Google web apps faster and easier to use for mobile Safari users. This release preceded the Stevenote address at Macworld on Tuesday which included the announcement about this week’s firmware update to 1.1.3 and all the cool features contained within. But as Steve focused all the attention on Apple, Google was sneaking in its own updates to make Gmail the king of email on the iPhone and iPod touch. Here are the Gmail updates you probably don’t know about.
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Last year at Macworld, Steve Jobs rocked the casbah with the announcement of the iPhone. Speculation is running high this year on what Jobs will announce tomorrow during this year’s Macworld keynote. Personally, we doubt Apple can top the iPhone news, but you never know. Today is the first day of the Macworld conference and Google preempts Apple’s strike with a bomb of it’s own. The complete Goolge web suite gets another makeover today with full optimization for iPhone and iPod touch. The enhancements include customized tabs for easy access to all of Google’s web apps, faster Gmail, and the inclusion of iGoogle, the customizable home page now with gadgets for the iPhone and iPod touch.
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Apparently, Yahoo doesn’t give a hoot about the iPhone. In a move as perplexing as the Iranian navy, Yahoo announces Yahoo Go 3.0 which will allow users to add widgets to their cell phones. However, instead of adopting standards-based widgets that will work on the iPhone firmware, or even on Google’s Android operating system, Yahoo opts to support the deeply fractioned mobile markets that are destined for the tar pits in the very near future. Unlike iPhone and Android, Yahoo Go is not an operating system and therefore there is no guarantee for developers in getting distribution of widgets to consumers.
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