Now with OS X Mountain Lion, which should arrive some time this summer, true feature parity for Notes, Reminders and Notifications comes to OS X. I’ve spent some time with the new features, and I’m eager to share my experiences with you.

Notes

Notes syncing from iOS back to OS X has always struck me as a tacked-on feature, with notes buried in Mail.app, making viewing and editing notes awkward and unpleasant. With Mountain Lion, notes get their rightful position in their own app. The Mountain Lion version is a near-duplicate of the iOS version, and I do not view that as a criticism, because Notes on iOS is very elegant in its simplicity.

What I found interesting is while Notes can be turned on and off via the iCloud System Preference, it apparently still uses IMAP for some of the backend transfer as I was asked to enter in my passwords for my Gmail accounts. Notes appear to sync quickly, within a minute or so of being edited.

I’m really excited about Notes being easier to use in OS X. I swap between Evernote and Notes for my note-taking needs, with Evernote getting my article-length notes clipped from the web or imported PDFs, and Notes getting my day-to-day notes, like what printer my Mom has, dial-in codes for meetings, meeting notes, etc.

Reminders

Reminders, formerly To-Dos, made a lot of sense living in iCal pre-iOS. However, the Calendar iOS app never had to-dos, and with the advent of the Reminders iOS app, it became very uncomfortable having them stored in iCal. I always found iCal’s handling of to-dos unwieldy, and being stuck in a small pane off to the side didn’t help. It’s been said that the areas of OS X and iOS that are the most polished are the ones Steve Jobs was very involved in — if so, I’m fairly confident the man never managed a task list in iCal.

Now with Mountain Lion, to-dos are moved to their own Reminders app, and life couldn’t be better. It’s a nearly identical copy of the iOS app in looks and function, with two big differences: on OS X you can choose if a list is on iCloud or your Mac, and I cannot see a way to set a location-based reminder. While OS X isn’t really location aware (even though it does have Find my Mac), it would be nice if I could set a reminder in OS X for something I need to do at work and have my iPhone remind me when I get there.

Overall, I’m happy with Reminders in Mountain Lion as it allows me to easily manage my to-dos. While I still expect to handle most of my project-level task management in OmniFocus, Reminders will be the app I use to remind me of life’s daily minutiae.

Notifications

The last of what I call the Big Three features to migrate from iOS to OS X is Notifications. Users of Growl will find Notifications very similar as notifications are displayed in the upper right-hand corner. As with iOS, you can choose if an app displays a banner, an alert that shows up in the middle of the screen, a badge icon, or all three.

Right now, obviously, only the apps built into Mountain Lion are supported. According to this piece by John Gruber, only apps acquired from the Mac App Store can send events to Notifications. As an aside, you can configure Mail.app to only alert you if you receive an e-mail from someone you have flagged as a VIP, which helps cut down on the popup clutter.

So far my experiences with Notifications have been light, with not many apps supporting it. I’m not sure if Notifications will ever fully replace Growl for me since not all the apps I rely on Growl for are available in the Mac App Store.

Final thoughts

Apple’s headline on the Mountain Lion web page is “Inspired by iPad. Re-imagined for Mac,” and that’s pretty much true based on my usage of it so far. I’m happy there is feature parity between iOS and OS X for Notes and Reminders. If you don’t complement your Macintosh with an iOS device, you may not derive the same excitement I do from these new features. But if you’re a  heavy user of Notes and Reminders you will be thrilled that these apps are now on OS X.

One hope I have, with OS X moving to a yearly upgrade cycle, as iOS has always had, is that features that complement each other on both operating systems will be released at the same time, and not with the lag we currently have.

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The program has three major components: Calendar Cleaner, Contacts Cleaner and Sync Tune-Up. If you want just one of the components, you can purchase the first two separately at the Mac App Store. However it’s likely you’ll need all three so I recommend the buying the full package.

Contacts Cleaner looks for issues that could cause errors such as invalid characters, malformed phone numbers as well as duplicate information. What I like about this program is that it not only finds the errors, but tells you why it thinks they represent a problem. For example, I’d often put “husband and wife” in the First Name field, but Contacts Cleaner warns me “This contact has a space in the first name. In some cases these names can become transposed after syncing with Google.” Sure enough when I went into Google, I noticed that problem.

Calendar Cleaner does similar checks for errors that can occur with your various sync destinations. My calendar was fraught with malformed recurring events that wouldn’t sync, and a pass by Calendar Cleaner fixed those in no time.

Both programs give you the option of opening the item within Address Book or iCal in order to make sure you know what kind of change is being made before you authorize it. Apple’s Address Book application looks for merged items itself, but doesn’t give you options to control what is merged. iCal users have no built-in options to search for duplicates and merge events.

Finally, Sync Tune-Up (only available as part of the bundle) gives you a front end for more fine-grained control over fixing your sync-related issues, such as de-registering individual devices and software, or the “nuclear” option which rebuilds the entire sync database. If your sync is taking extra long or you’ve made a bunch of changes with your devices or accounts, a nice reset can do you a world of good. A good indication of problems can be found by looking at your console logs and looking for mentions of the “truth” and too much vacuuming.

The more you sync, the more likely it is that problems will occur. To prevent or repair these problems, Spanning Tools is a great option.

Disclosure: Spanning Tools provided a copy of the software for review purposes.

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1. Remove icons from Launchpad. Right now, the only icons you can remove from Launchpad are apps installed via the Mac App Store. If you remove the icon, the whole app is removed. In a way, this makes sense: they want to transfer the same ease-of-deletion from iOS to OS X. The problem is, if you have a ton of what Lion sees as apps — in my case, all the old World of Warcraft patches showed up in Launchpad — you’re going to have a mess. I can’t hide the apps completely, so instead I performed the digital equivalent of stuffing them in the closet. I created a single folder, moved any non-app programs into that, and stuck it on the last page in Launchpad.

2. Reveal your Home Library folder. I’m not sure why Apple hid this, but there are two ways you can get to it. The first is to go to the Finder, open the Go menu, and choose “Go to Folder.” Type in ~/Library/ and hit Enter. This will bring you to the folder. If you need to get there more than occasionally, or have an app where the hidden flag is causing problems, you can make it visible by typing in “chflags nohidden ~/Library” in the Terminal.

3. Make an app open in all spaces. This tip only works if you have multiple Desktop spaces. To add a space in Mission Control move your pointer to the upper-right hand corner and click on the large Plus icon. Then, right-click on the apps’s icon in the Dock, choose Options, and “Assign to: All spaces.” As a bonus tip, you can also create an empty space to quickly flip to an empty display if you need to.

4. Remove icons from the Sidebar. I’ve run into a few instances where dragging an icon off the Sidebar doesn’t actually remove it. If this happens, right-click the wayward icon and choose “Remove from Sidebar.” If, like me, you ended up with some Sidebar folders pointing to now nonexistent folders and can’t remove them at all, renaming the com.apple.sidebarlists.plist file in ~\Library\Preferences folder (it doesn’t matter what you rename it to) and rebooting will restore your Sidebar to default icons.

5. MobileMe Calendar syncing is now set in iCal. This one threw me at first. In Snow Leopard, you set MobileMe Calendar syncing within the MobileMe System Preferences pane. Now, it’s under iCal’s preferences under Accounts. I imagine this is because iCloud will render the MobileMe preferences pane obsolete.

These are five quick tips I’ve found to help me ease into Lion. What tips do you folks have?

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Backup, Backup and Backup

No matter what backup solution you use (Time Machine, online, manual), now is the time to run a full backup just in case. Additionally be sure you’ve synced all your iOS devices to your Mac. If you do “over the air” syncing you should be fine.

Just to be extra safe, I ran two additional backups within iCal. Under the File Menu in iCal is the Export Function. First, create a full iCal Archive under the Export Menu. That backs up your entire iCal calendar list en mass. However, I alo backed up each and every calendar to an .ics file by choosing each one and then going to File, Export, and then Export. This backs up each calendar manually.

Log Into MobileMe and Begin the Process

Now that you have triple redundancy on your calendars, you can begin the process. Log into your MobileMe account via Safari (just to play it safe don’t use alternate browsers) and then click the icon in the upper left for iCal, which is the familiar spiral day-at-a-time calendar icon. You should be presented with a window reminding you to “Upgrade to the new MobileMe Calendar.” Click “next” and you’ll be presented with the system requirements. Since CalDAV only works with Leopard or Snow Leopard, Tiger’s been fully de-clawed for iOS. If you fail to move to CalDAV your MobileMe calendar sync won’t work unless you move to 10.5 or 10.6 and if you do, Tiger will no longer sync without a third party helper like BusySync.

After confirming your devices meet the requirements, click “Upgrade Now” and the process begins. You’ll see a series of conformations that the calendars are being prepared and upgraded.

What’s happening in the background is your existing calendars that were synced with your computer and MobileMe are making their move off your computer and into the cloud. When complete, your calendars exist on MobileMe servers and your iCal merely provides another way of accessing them. Your iOS device should be smart enough to notice the change and modify itself as well. Now your calendars will exist on MobileMe’s servers and your other devices merely access the data, similar to the way IMAP works for email. Syncing is virtually instant since modifications are transferred directly to the cloud.

Trust, but Verify

Just to play it safe, I had some preset test routines ready to make sure everything when smoothly. I waited about 20 minutes to do the following to make sure all the changes propagated:

1. Add an item via iCal and verify it shows up on my iOS and Mac OS devices and MobileMe’s website
2. Add an item via each iOS device and verify it shows up on all other devices
3. Modify an event on each device and make sure that change shows up
4. If you have any calendars shared with someone, make sure they follow steps 1-3 for your calendar and you do the same for theirs, after they’ve also performed the upgrade

Snags, Errors, and General Weirdness

If all goes well, you are done! However with computers, everything doesn’t run so smoothly all of the time. In my particular instance one of my calendars was somehow corrupt enough to not make the move to the cloud, but I could still access it on my desktop. I kept getting errors in the upgrade process until I deleted the calendar from my desktop. After the upgrade was complete, I then imported the .ics file I backed up earlier manually. It work, but if it hadn’t, I was going to use Time Machine to restore a version that wasn’t corrupt and then I’d again move it to MobileMe manually.

I was a big user of BusySync and BusySync has specific instructions and caveats on how to make the move with their software. As for other secondary services, I’m disappointed that syncing with Google became more complex after the upgrade. I had to manually add my Google shared calendars.

Once the upgrade is complete, the way others subscribe to your calendar has changed. They now can have both read as well as write access to your calendars and most likely you’ll manually have to invite them to your calendar by using the Share command under the Calendar Menu within iCal. I had to manually re-invite people.

Another snag I personally ran into was on my MacBook, when I first launched iCal, it kept all the old calendars and then MobileMe created the proper CalDAV settings automatically but kept those old local calendars so everything was duplicated.

Two great websites to help ease the transition are here and here. If you ran into any snags or have any suggestions about upgrading your MobileMe calander, be sure to let us know in the comments.

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Icon Garden

Any discussion of Apple’s icon design should begin with a discussion of some of Apple’s most infamous 8-bit icons from its original GUI. Apple used to feature large versions of these in its icon garden at 1 Infinite Loop, however at some point around 1998, Apple removed the icons. Featured amongst the garden were classic icons, such as the eraser, hand, stopwatch, and even Clarus the Dogcow. (Moof!)

Check out how the paint bucket is "filling" the grass with green and the paint brush and pencil have just finished "creating" the flowers.

Whoa! The eraser is erasing the flowers!

Similar Colors

Depending on how cluttered your Dock is, you may or may not have noticed that the most prominent colors chosen by Apple for its icons is from the blue family. This trend was originally favored in Apple’s hardware (the original Bondi blue iMac, for instance). Associated with the sky or the ocean (a la OS X’s original UI codename Aqua), the blue also evokes a sense of stability, trust and calmness. (It really does make the infamous Blue Screen of Death a lot less harsh than if it were red.) It wasn’t until the release of Leopard that Apple shipped with a default desktop background that wasn’t blue.

Evolution of Icons

Some icons in OS X have evolved over time. Occasionally there may be some rhyme and reason to changing icons, such as the inclusion of the video camera for when iChat AV was originally launched, or the major redesign of iMovie between iMovie HD and iMovie ’08.

Other times, icons are seemingly changed sporadically, like the evolution of the iTunes icons. Originally every new version came with a new icon, but even that trend has wavered.

Other applications have also seen different icons with new versions, such as Backup, iDVD, iPhoto and Keynote. Though the Keynote icon has not seen a drastic change since Keynote ’08, the version that ships with iWork ’09 updates the date of the fourth-quarter report on the icon to Q4 2009.

Alternative Uses

Some icons depict their contents, such as the icon for a photo or a typeface. Other icons present users with dynamically updating information, such as the iCal icon which changes to reflect the current date. Other icons “change” by badges that indicate various information (unread emails, download speeds, etc.).

Another example are icons for exported vCards. If you have set them up in Address Book, they will export with their photo in the icon.

With the introduction of Snow Leopard this fall, users will once again begin to find new uses for icons, as the operating system allows users to preview media directly on the icon itself.

Bonus iPhone Icon

If you haven’t had a chance yet to take your iPhone or iPod touch into Starbucks, when you do, you’ll notice a new icon in your iTunes Store app. Specifically the Starbucks icon, and it is the only navbar icon on the device that exists in full color and not the usual masked blue color as typically seen.

Have you noticed any other unique or interesting icon changes or features?

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I’ve never been as organized as I currently am with the combination of my MacBook Pro, iPhone and Google Calendar. Sure, before I crossed the line to Apple, I had tried to use Thunderbird (with Lightning’s Calendar plugin) to keep organized, syncing to my Windows Mobile phone, but it was always clunky and slow and not worth the effort when things didn’t “Just Work.” Since tasting the sweet Apple pie, I now have multiple Google calendars shared with my wife and synced to both of our Macs and iPod touch/iPhones with Spanning Sync. We are now totally organized, and it’s awesome.

However, like any data system, it’s a case of garbage in, garbage out. The combination of data corruption and synchronization is one that can wreak total and utter havoc on the most organized of people, rendering us as useless as a fish out of water. To combat the potential of this scenario, the folks over at Spanning Sync have released a public beta of its new utility, Spanning Tools.

Spanning Tools is a preventative maintenance suite, analyzing your critical data, alerting you of potential problems, and allowing you to take the appropriate action to eliminate the threat before it manifests in corruption. Spanning Tools comprises three separate utilities.

Calendar Cleaner

Calendar Cleaner scans your iCal databases looking for duplicate events and those with malformed dates. It strongly suggests backing up your iCal database first — neatly providing the backup and restore functionality within the application.

Contacts Cleaner

Like the Calendar Cleaner, the Contacts Cleaner scans your Address Book for dodgy data in your contacts. It checks for duplicate contacts, duplicate email addresses, contacts with only a single name or a space in a name field (which can cause problems with synchronization). In all cases, you have multiple ways to fix the data (such as using “???” for a blank name, converting to a company contact, removing the space, replacing it with a hyphen, etc). As with Calendar Cleaner, it also has built-in Address Book backup and restore functionality.

Sync Tune-Up

The last utility, Sync Tune-Up, provides a window into Apple’s Sync Services, allowing you to see exactly what applications are registered with the service and have access to your data. This gives you an easy method to disable a rogue application that you think is causing a problem, or that you just don’t use anymore.

Sync Tune-Up also provides some last-resort trouble-shooting options to Reset your sync data if things have stopped working completely.

Great Potential

Spanning Tools has great potential as a preventative maintenance utility with critical organization data. I consider it akin to keeping the chain well-greased on your bicycle. The folks at Spanning Sync haven’t announced if Spanning Tools will be a paid product when the final version is released — but in the meantime, the public preview has worked flawlessly for me by identifying some potential issues and presented suitable fixes. I can sleep a little better at night in knowing my organizational data is solid.

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Even though Apple builds great products for the consumer, the company often misses the boat with business users. Snow Leopard stands to make serious inroads with Mac users in wingtips and pinstripes with native support for Microsoft Exchange Server. Mail, iCal, and Address Book will all be updated to talk directly with your Exchange account and in some cases, may work better than Entourage.

The Long & Winding Road

It’s taken a long time to get to this point, but the Mac has a long history of working with Microsoft. I think a little history is interesting here to show how we’ve arrived at Snow Leopard.

The Mac has had Microsoft Office almost from the beginning (Word and Excel for Mac were first released in 1985). Jaguar added LDAP access to Address Book. Panther introduced Windows Printer Sharing and Active Directory support so that you could log into a Windows Domain from a Macintosh. Tiger introduced Exchange accounts in Mail (though with IMAP access only) along with much improved support for Samba and Windows file sharing. The move to Intel gave us virtualization of Windows apps.

Leopard brought Boot Camp, of course, but this did nothing to help integrate Mac OS X itself into a Windows environment. But under the hood some exciting things were happening. The Address Book and Calendar stores were updated to offer better programmatic access and the Sync Services framework was updated. The result was that Mail and iCal were better at sharing data with each other and we got to-do items that were shared between those two apps. iCal was updated to access outside CalDAV accounts and Mail got Notes that (eventually) were able to sync with the iPhone.

The iPhone OS 2.0 firmware update pushed Exchange integration to new heights because Apple chose to license the ActiveSync technology from Microsoft. This put the iPhone on a level playing field with Windows Mobile devices and Outlook when accessing information stored in Exchange.

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard brings all of this together: integrated email, calendar, and address book (with to-do’s and notes) with access to outside accounts and the ActiveSync technology used in the iPhone. In fact, Apple is touting that the Mac will now have out-of-the-box support for “Exchange Server 2007, something that Windows PC’s don’t have.” The requirement to use Exchange Server 2007 might disappoint some that are still on 2003, but it makes good sense when you consider that 2007 has the new Business Logic Layer that provides a consistent view of your mailboxes from any device and takes a lot of work out of writing client software. In fact, Entourage has been testing a beta version that also requires Exchange 2007 in order to take advantage of this technology to make Entourage behave more like Outlook does on a Windows PC.

Entourage?

Personally, I hope for Entourage to die a slow and horrible death. Having been on the support end of things, I have seen how hard it is to make Entourage work reliably. And when it fails? Look out, because all of your email messages, contact info, tasks, calendar items, etc. are stored in one big database file. Lose that file, and you’ve lost everything. And backing it up with Time Machine means you have copied a multigigabyte file to your backup drive every hour.

Recovering from errors in Mail, where each message is an individual file, is much simpler and it works beautifully with Time Machine and Spotlight because of this file structure. I know there are people that like the consolidated view of all information in one application, but I suspect that this preference comes more from force of habit after using Outlook than any real advantage.

So can Mail, iCal, and Address Book replace Entourage? I think so.

Mail

Mail provides access to your Exchange account right along any other IMAP or POP3 accounts. As a Mac user, you get all the cool Mac features like data detectors, Spotlight, and Quick Look. I’m impressed that Quick Look can display previews of Office documents even if you don’t have Microsoft Office for Mac installed on your machine. This might be a good reason to give iWork another look.

Quick Look

iCal

iCal will seamlessly blend your personal local calendars and your Exchange calendars in one view. I liked how the WWDC Keynote demo showed how iCal could intelligently schedule meetings to avoid conflicts, just like Outlook. And of course it’s still integrated with Mail and Address Book so you can see your to-do’s here or in Mail, and you can auto-fill addresses from Exchange.

Address Book

OK, contacts are not very sexy, but I do like how you can access the Global Address List from within any app that can talk to Address Book. That means Mail will auto-complete addresses as you type messages and iCal will auto-complete names as you create meeting invitations. I suppose it might mean that other apps like Delicious Library that integrate with Address Book will let you keep track of DVDs that you loan to people at work, even if they aren’t in your personal contact list. I also like how smart groups can blend your personal address book with the Exchange contacts. Very slick.

The Future of Microsoft Office

I see a big problem coming for the MacBU at Microsoft. One of the primary reasons to purchase the full version of Microsoft Office (the only reason?) was to get Exchange support. Now that Snow Leopard will include Exchange support natively, I suspect a lot of people will choose to purchase the Home & Student Edition, despite the language in the license that prevents you from using it for work-related activities. A decrease in revenue would naturally lead to a decrease in funding for future development. Despite my feelings about Entourage, Office is pretty useful. I hope that Apple pushes them a little hard (iWork updates will help too), but I hope they don’t push so hard that Office is abandoned. I have felt like Entourage has languished along for a few years now and if I don’t get my wish for it to just curl up and die, then maybe we can get a better, more reliable Entourage for people who want to use it.

The Future of the Mac at Work

I suspect that despite my enthusiasm, the initial support for Exchange in the first release of Snow Leopard is going to blow. I would advise caution about committing to abandoning Entourage, or a large-scale migration from Windows PCs and Outlook in 2009. The bugs, and there will be bugs, will get worked out though, and 2010 could be a very exciting year for the Mac in the business segment.

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My only gripe was the buggy MobileMe web site. Problems were numerous, such as the page randomly refreshing in the middle of adding a calendar event. Obviously this wasn’t disastrous on its own, but annoying tics add up, and eventually push people to look for alternatives.

Recently, I discovered an offering from Google that challenged the PIM synchronization features of MobileMe and competitors like Microsoft Exchange (what you unfortunately probably use at the office). This new service, Google Sync, offers the same seamless integration between your computer and mobile phone. It’s fast, free, and, most importantly, it works.

Setting it up, as you will soon find out, can be tricky, and takes time, patience, and an understanding of two-way syncing. Unless, that is, you’re starting from a blank slate with no contacts or calendars. However, I assume you already have a digital life, so I will attempt to coach you through transferring your information to Google first. I’m not going to retype all of Google’s own instructions. Instead, I’ll outline shortcuts around the sticky issues I encountered while setting up Sync. Google doesn’t organize its instruction processes well, so hopefully this will save you some time and a few headaches.

Requirements:

• Google account
• Contacts organized in Address Book
• Calendars organized in iCal
• You do not use an Exchange account on your iPhone

Exporting your Address Book Contacts to Google

1. I used a Google-recommended application called A to G to export my contacts as a large CSV file, and then import them into Google Contacts. You can get A to G here.
2. After you created the CSV file on your desktop, go to your Google Contacts page:
   https://google.com/contacts
   Note: For Google Apps users go here:
   https://mail.google.com/a/[domain name]/#contacts
3. Click on “Import”, choose the CSV file on your hard drive, and boom, your contacts are now in Google.

Exporting your iCal calendars to Google

1. Unfortunately, you have to export your iCal calendars one at a time. You can do this by clicking once on a calendar in the CALENDARS area, and selecting File -> Export.



2. Then, go to Google Calendar:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/
   Note: For Google Apps users go here:
   https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/[domain name]/
3. Settings -> Calendars -> Import Calendar
   
4. Click “Choose File” to select the exported calendar on your hard drive. Choose which Google Calendar you want to import the information into. I recommend manually creating calendars in Google Calendar with the same names as your iCal calendars. Then, import the iCal files into their corresponding Google calendars. Repeat for each file you exported from iCal. Your calendars are now on Google.

Let’s recap. Your current contacts and calendars are now on Google. However, that information will never change unless you set up synchronization on your iPhone and Mac(s).

Configuring Google Sync

Warning: This is where you begin changing settings. If you’re a MobileMe user, all of your data is safe with Apple and everything you do here is completely reversible.

It’s easy to temporarily disable MobileMe while you set up Google Sync. Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars, select your MobileMe account from the Accounts list. Switch Contacts and Calendars to their OFF positions. If, in the end, you don’t want to use Google Sync, you can remove the Google Sync account you are about to set up, and switch your MobileMe Contacts and Calendars to their ON positions.

If you sync your Address Book and iCal information via iTunes, you should deselect those options in iTunes and resync your iPhone. The goal here is to clear out your contacts and calendar information on your phone. Again, if you decide to not use Google Sync, you can remove your Google information, select the contacts and calendars checkboxes in iTunes, and sync your iPhone with your computer once more to restore your data.

Now you’re ready to get your iPhone syncing data from Google. Follow these instructions about setting up your iPhone to get that working.

Important Google Apps note #1:
Apps users have to enable Google Sync in your dashboard, which can be done following these instructions.

Important note #2:
If you use more than one calendar, you have to configure that on the iPhone, otherwise only one will appear in the phone’s calendar app. After you’re done with the “Setting up your iPhone” section, go to m.google.com on your iPhone and select Sync. If you’re a Google Apps user, scroll to the bottom to select the “Google Apps User?” link. After logging in you can select which calendars you want to sync to the iPhone (maximum is five currently).

Now, any changes you make in Google Contacts or Google Calendar will be reflected on your iPhone. Also, any changes you make to your iPhone’s contacts or calendar information will be reflected on Google’s corresponding sites. Do you use IMAP for your Gmail account? Then consider yourself 100 percent synced.

If you’re satisfied with using Google’s sites and your iPhone to manage your information, then you’re done. However, if you want your current information to appear in iCal and Address Book, then you have a few more steps:

1. Importing your Google Contacts into Address Book
   This requires setting up built-in Address Book preferences.
2. Importing your Google Calendars into iCal
   This uses software called Collaboration.

Conclusion

Congratulations on making it this far. Hopefully, you’ve successfully set up Google Contacts and Google Calendar with your existing information, and both your iPhone and Mac(s) are now synchronized with Google. You can now make changes to or add contacts and events from any computer or your iPhone, and all without spending a dime. Please leave a comment below if you have any questions!

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WeatherCal may be a one-trick pony, but it is one nice looking pony all the same. This $10 release from Bare Bones Software marries weather data and iCal in a very elegant utility.

In a nutshell, WeatherCal creates calendar events in iCal with the five-day forecast for any location around the world. It starts out by finding the location in your “Me” card in Address Book, but you can add more locations by typing in the city and state or zip code. For locations outside the United States, you use the city and country (or city and province in Canada). Once you’ve added the location to System Preferences, WeatherCal will create a new calendar in iCal for that location and then inserts events for the next five days that show the forecast.

Data is provided by Weather Underground and the calendar events include a link to get more details on the Weather Underground web site.

Weather data is refreshed every hour to keep the forecast up to date.

Pro Tip: When entering a new location, you can also use airport codes.

There is no limit on the number of locations, but there might be a practical limit as iCal seems to have refresh problems with more than 10 calendars or so.

Rich Siegel, founder of Bare Bones Software, said that the idea came from one of their developers, Steve Kalkwarf, who simply had a flash of inspiration to solve a problem of personal interest. They had a look at a prototype around the office and decided that it was actually pretty cool. Rich also said that Weather Underground was great to work with and provided WeatherCal with a worldwide feed so they could address the needs of customers outside the U.S., which was a design goal from the start.

Bare Bones Software took some extra steps to deal with non-English characters like å, ä, and ö. You can type in “Luleå” or “Lulea” (in Sweden) and WeatherCal will find it either way. In my own testing, I found that the Russian text “Нижний Новгород” is not recognized, but the strict English transliteration “Niznij Novgorod” does work. I am used to some other transliteration schemes for Russian, but it’s a quick matter to get used to the way the data is formatted by Weather Underground. Users outside the U.S. will have to learn the English spelling or transliteration for their locations, but since this is essentially a one-time task, I suspect it will not be too onerous. If you have questions about a particular city, you can always go to the wunderground.com and browse through their maps and city listings to see how it is listed there.

There are other solutions for getting weather info on your Mac (dashboard widgets, etc.), but there is a nice practical advantage in having this info in local iCal calendars. Subscription calendars in iCal do not sync to MobileMe, but local calendars do carry over. Because your five day forecast is in a local calendar, WeatherCal provides a way for you to see the weather you are interested in checking on all your desktops, iPhone, iPod touch, and online at me.com.

Another practical reason was outlined by beta tester Jan Moström of Sweden:

Although I have other weather forecast applications on my Mac I tend to use WeatherCal the most … since I already have my calendar open.

The license allows you to install WeatherCal on any Mac that you own, but if you are syncing iCal with MobileMe, it is probably best to install the utility on one machine and let MobileMe sync the iCal data to the other Macs.

Pro Tip: If you are tracking a few locations, in Leopard you can create a Calendar Group (I named mine “WeatherCal”), and place all your forecast calendars in there. That way you can turn all your forecasts on and off with one click.

If you’re a big iCal user, then this utility is a really nice solution to having the weather forecast handy. There is a real benefit to having the weather info right where you schedule outings and activities in iCal. I really like how it is implemented as a local calendar so that it can sync to MobileMe. For $10, WeatherCal solves a particular problem with the polish that one would expect from Bare Bones Software.

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If you haven’t noticed, the writers here at TAB like to write about invoicing applications. Some of our recent reviews include Billings, OnTheJob and Involer. But forget all of those other invoicing applications. I just found the one true ring of invoicing and time management: GrandTotal + TimeLog from Media Atelier.

I have been testing this application bundle for the past two weeks ,and I am very impressed with the quality and overall user experience. Because of its integration with Address Book, iCal, MobileMe, and iWork, it really feels like it’s a native app.

GrandTotal

As an invoicing application, GrandTotal has an impressive feature set. Here is a short list of the many things GrandTotal can do:

• The ability to create recurring invoices
• An invoice editor that lets you customize your own layout (using existing templates or creating your own)
• Quotes & account statements
• Flexible tax settings & multiple currency support
• Integration with Address Book and TimeLog
• Catalog for recurring and fixed amount items
• Reminders for due & overdue invoice
• Many export options, including PD

Version 1.2 was released this week and with it came the following new features:

• iPhone application (more below)
• All-new UI for the Preferences dialog box
• Ability to create an invoice with just the Gross total
• Addition of a Recent list to the Overview

As I mentioned, the application is very easy to use. Let’s take a look at the main UI (items are intentionally blurred to protect the innocent):

GrandTotal Overview Tab – Recent/Open Invoices

GrandTotal Preferences – TimeLog Integration

TimeLog

As a time-tracking application, TimeLog’s feature set is also very impressive. Here is a short list:

• Uses iCal calendars and calculates the time spent on projects. You can assign clients to your projects from the Address Book. Your timesheets are then synced with MobileMe, ensuring they are current no matter which Mac you use.
• There is a menu item that lets you manage your time easily. You can start and stop the Timer with just one click.
• TimeLog can track the applications you use and then display the usage in the TimeLine. One caveat here is that it tracks everything you do. The developer does not have blacklist functionality yet, but he is working on it.
• Export your timesheet to Pages or Numbers — this is great for sharing your data with others prior to sending out an invoice.
• Integrates with GrandTotal — all of your timesheet data is easily available in GrandTotal for quick processing of invoices.

TimeLog Main Window

iPhone App

New to version 1.2 of GrandTotal is an iPhone app that lets you review your invoices while on-the-go. The best part? It’s free.

In the app, you can view Overdue, Due and Open invoices. You then click the invoices to see the full details as well as the contact information of the client. The client information is “hot” in that it will take you to your address book contact entry so that you can call/email/text them. A nice feature to have would be to re-send any outstanding invoices via the iPhone app.

The one requirement in using the iPhone app is that you must have a MobileMe account to sync your GrandTotal data. Otherwise, the app doesn’t work (which will be a deal breaker for some).

GrandTotal iPhone App Main Screen

GrandTotal iPhone App Invoice Detail Screen

Conclusion

The tag-team of these two products provides a pretty powerful punch in managing your time as well as your billing. The user interface for both GrandTotal and TimeLog is exceptional and makes it pretty easy to get set up for your small business.

Further, you now have iPhone integration so that you can review your invoices and their current standing with your customers. This way, it’s just a quick call away for asking the question: “Is the payment on it’s way out?”

However, are these two apps the best out there? Have we reached invoicing nirvana? Well, I would say it’s pretty close — if you don’t mind a few items:

1. The price. Compared to the competition, which averages about $40, to purchase both GrandTotal and TimeLog be prepared to spend about $75.
2. iCal integration is excellent, although there is a big caveat. I would discourage you from using any existing calendars as TimeLog changes the data to existing iCal meeting entries.
3. Application management. In the competitive space, both Billings and OnTheJob contain the majority of features in one, rather than two applications.

At the end of the day, you can overcome these issues if you want to have the most full-featured time management and invoicing products on the market.

The developer says that more is on the horizon. Maybe an iPhone app for TimeLog? Possible integration with accounting applications? Stay tuned. One thing is for sure, based upon what we have with GrandTotal and TimeLog, we can only continue to expect great things in the future from Media Atelier.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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