If you’re looking for a free application (read: alternative to MobileMe) to synchronize your Google calendars and contacts to your iPod Touch or iPhone, without the need to install software, I have found NuevaSync to be extremely beneficiary. Arguably, its best feature is that the service uses a protocol (Microsoft Exchange) that your device already supports, so setup is as simple as creating an account with NuevaSync and then setting up an Exchange account to work with their servers. Synchronization works both ways and quickly, too, so that scheduling is convenient (as it should be). I’m holding out hope that the email push functionality will be added shortly.

For quick instructions on how to set up NuevaSync, see this original post.

And yes, I have digressed (already) from my plan to only use a physical planner. Excuse: doh, technology is cooler.

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the 2.0 release of MonoDevelop, which happened a bit ago but it took a while to hit the Ubuntu 9.04 Beta repositories. I’d forgotten about it until today, when I was trying to use the alpha 1 release to do some work on GCast; however, it’s been so long since I attacked the code base that for the life of me I could not track down a bug that had recently reared its ugly head. I’d made too many changes since the last SVN commit, so diff’ing a bunch of files was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Thank goodness, after installing MonoDevelop 2.0 with its integrated debugger, it took all of a few minutes to find the problem. I don’t know how I’ve survived this far on this particular project without a debugger — I’ve had to resort to GDB and MDB at the command line a few times, but only reluctantly — wish I could reclaim the lost time. Kudos to the MonoDevelop developers for making a great product even easier to use!

Get MonoDevelop 2.0 at: http://monodevelop.com/

Google announced the other day that it would begin allowing users of the GrandCentral service to migrate to Google Voice (in Beta). I have had a GrandCentral account for some time, but I never ended up using it. Google aquiring the service hopefully gives it the potential for a little more longevity, so I decided to take it for a spin.

Voicemail Recording & Transcribing

The voicemail service was present in GrandCentral, but transcribing was not. I gave it a try, with decent results:

Also very cool is the instant email notification you get of a new voicemail message:

Free Outgoing SMS

GMail users will recognize this feature the similar SMS lab available to the public. Works like it says, and quickly, too.

Group-Specific Forwarding Options

This has to be one of my favorite features of Google Voice — the ability to control which callers are screened and which customized voicemail greetings they hear, based on which contact group they are a part of. I did, however, have some difficulty getting the latter feature to work.

In the end, probably one of the best improvements over GrandCentral is the no-nonsense, intuitive, familiar Google user interface. Not to mention, the automated answering and screening recordings have been replaced with a sexy Google voice, which is a definite presentation plus!

Does GV offer enough features to make it worth giving out a new number? For me, that’s still up in the air.

Just for fun on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to pimp out my boring GNOME desktop. Viola, a radical transformation (notice the minimal system monitor below the menu bar):

Here’s a list of the components:

1. The “New Wave” GTK theme, from the “Gnome Themes” package, available here.
2. The MacUltimate icon set, with the system menu icon from the Mashup set.
3. Avant Window Manager for the RocketDock, available from Ubuntu repository.
4. Conky for the desktop system monitor, using this configuration. Available from Ubuntu repository.
5. “Speedometer v1″ wallpaper from Customize.org

Ok, enough procrastinating on homework.