Recently in Less technical Category

Transferring your number to Google Voice is the best way to leverage all of the features available. It’s pretty easy to transfer from most providers, but I ran into a few bumps when transferring my AT&T prepaid GoPhone number. To make your transfer a little easier, here is what I learned.

1. Realize that by transferring this number you will be forfeiting your remaining balance, so you may want to run it down first. Now that this disclaimer step is done, time to get to the actual steps!
2. Get your account number. This is not on the website or on any documentation you have. You must call 611 from your cell phone, dial 0 at the menu and speak to a customer service representative. Your account number will be a 12 digit number in the form of ####-####-####.
3. Create a Google Voice account and opt to transfer your cell phone number.
4. During the flow when prompted for your cell phone information, provide the 12 digit account number in the field provided.
5. Sit back and wait for the transfer to happen.
6. If you’d like to use your handset as a forward target for Google Voice, you’ll need a new handset number. Once the transfer is complete, head on over to an AT&T store and ask for a new number for your cell phone. I’ve found the least confusing way is to show up with no SIM card and ask for a new one. They’re free with a new GoPhone plan.

And just like that you’re all set!

Most of my entries are about the cryptic errors that I encounter while writing code or using some poorly documented engineering tool, but consumer products by Microsoft can sometimes be complicated too.

Today I had a slide deck I was attempting to print on my black and white laser printer. No problem, right? Apparently now. The background image for these slides were pretty important. I walked to the printer and saw a mostly blank deck of slides. I had a sad. I searched around and could find on control that corresponded to the printing of slide backgrounds.

As it turns out selecting 'Output: color' (even for a black and white laser printer) is the setting I was looking for.

Just to review:

To print with backgrounds, use this setting

To print with no backgrounds, use this setting

By default if you set up your Google account with your iDevice only your account’s main calendar will be displayed. If you make heavy use of shared calendars across many accounts (e.g. a personal calendar on your own domain and a work calendar on your work domain), this can be quite a problem, but don’t worry! It’s easy to fix. We just need to do a little URL hax0ring,

1. First, select a primary Google account. This is the account that will rule them all in that we’ll be syncing your iDevice with it for calendaring. For the sake of this tutorial we’ll call this primary account awesome@gmail.com.
   • If you wish to use push mail notifications, this is the only account you will be able to do that with so chose wisely.
2. On all of your other Google accounts, log in and share your calendars with your primary account, awesome@gmail.com. Read only sharing is sufficient. If you’re unable to share your calendar to an outside domain, contact your Google Apps administrator for your domain. They may need to enable this.
3. From your primary account, awesome@gmail.com, use the web calendar interface to verify that all of the calendars are successfully shared.
4. We’re almost there! Just a few more steps. Now configure your iDevice to synchronize calendar with this gmail account.
   • You can optionally configure email and contacts synchronization at this time as well.
   • After a few minutes you should see your primary calendar on your iDevice, but none of the shared calendars (yet).
5. Time for some l337 URL hax0ring. Still logged into your primary account, awesome@gmail.com, go to this magic iDevice calendar configuration page: http://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect You should see all of your shared calendars listed. Check the checkbox for each calendar you’d like to appear on your iDevice.
   • If your primary account is on a domain hosted by google, for example you’re really awesome@example.com where example.com is a Google Apps domain, go to this magic URL instead: http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/example.com/iphoneselect substituting your hosted domain name for example.com
   
6. You’re all done! Wait about 10 minutes and the shared calendars should all appear.
   I bet you’re tired from all of that computer hacking. You diserve a tab for all your efforts.

source

Disclaimer: I don’t actually own the email address awesome@gmail.com, it’s just an example… an awesome example, but still an example. If you’re awesome@gmail.com, sorry for the spam, but your email was just too awesome to resist for illustrative purposes.

Tablet computing is one technology that I’ve been attempting to early-adopt for years, but it’s never quite been there. What I’ve always dreamed of is the PADD device that everyone walked around with in Star Trek TNG: A small, light, sleek, multifunctional device that accepts pen input, accepts touch input, and is reasonable to carry around.

Around 2003 I purchased a Toshiba m200. It was a hybrid Windows XP Tablet computer. It had a keyboard but could also be converted into tablet mode. The operating system was a clunky afterthought on Windows XP, but it did have one shining star in the product offering (and it was not stupid marble game). It was OneNote. At the time everything Microsoft made seemed clunky and over-complicated, but OneNote did everything that made sense, and nothing else. It was, and still is, a great product.

I stopped using it, though. The application was great, but the operating system and hardware were just not there yet. Also people kept asking me why I was drawing on my laptop (since tablet computers were still fringe).

Now its 2010. Everyone has heard of the iPad. Tablet computing has gone mainstream but there does not seem to be a single killer OneNote like application for the iPad. This may have something to do with the lack of an included stylus. This void, however, can be filled using a combination of applications.

First off, you’ll need a system for organizing those notes. This is where Evernote comes in handy. The interface is clean, it supports cool features like automatic geotagging and you can even attach voice sound clips to your notes. Even better than OneNote, it supports automatic synchronization between all sorts of devices. It’s pretty mature, and has been around for awhile, but the iPad is the killer device for this service.

Unfortunately, since it started as a web browser / desktop application, Evernote does not yet allow you to scribble those quick notes. On the bright side it does allow you to email content to your primary notebook, and this is the trick.

For your stylus sketches and note taking, go grab a copy of Penultimate. Of the dozen or so drawing / sketching / scribbling apps I’ve tried, this one is by far the best. Input is clean and precise. It is also the only one I’ve found that works while your wrist is rested on the screen, which makes scribbling a lot more comfortable.

Once you’re done with that scribbled note in penultimate, use the ‘email this note’ feature to fire it off to Evernote. A quick synchronisation and there it will appear in your notebook.

It’s not perfect yet, and it’s a bit awkward, but it works well enough for me!