Remote Login Using Google Chrome Desktop

Sometimes when I’m away from home, I need to access my desktop computer system remotely to transfer a file or check on something. I’ve used a variety of products and services to do so, but most of them were cumbersome to use. I’m now using Google Remote Desktop which works absolutely great from my Android phone and/or tablet.

It’s very easy to setup, and is quite secure. Amazingly, it runs very quick, even from my Android phone using AT&T’s LTE wireless network. So, if you need to remotely access your home Windows or Mac computer system, check out Google Remote Desktop. Best of all, it’s free!

Microsoft’s “Scroogled” Ad Campaign

Microsoft has a new ad campaign which specifically attacks Google, called “Scroogled”. You can buy coffee mugs and T-Shirts from the Microsoft store that say, “Don’t Get Scroogled” or “Keep Calm While We Steal Your Data” with the Google Chrome logo on the mug. I find it amusing that Microsoft says this, while they seem to charge high prices for their Windows OS upgrades and Surface tablets.

Microsoft also has some YouTube videos directly attacking Google: video 1 and video 2. In these videos Microsoft assumes most people want or need to run apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Microsoft Office (for Word, Excel, Outlook). Which, of course, the Google Chromebook cannot do. I can personally say that I don’t use Microsoft Office on my iMac at home, and I’m doing just fine. Instead, I’m using the Open Source freeware called ApacheOffice which works just as good as Microsoft’s Word/Office/Powerpoint and is compatible with the Microsoft counterpoints.

I own a Samsung Google Chromebook and I do have to admit I don’t use it much. Actually, I don’t use any laptop for personal use, but instead use my Nexus 7 and Acer A500 tablets at home and while on the go. I suppose I reserve all my serious typing activities for my home iMac and only need to web browse or view emails while being mobile.

What I do like about my Chromebook is that it was very inexpensive, has relatively long battery life, and boots up within 60 seconds. It also automatically downloads and upgrades the OS in the background without me having to deal with it (unlike Microsoft’s constant and annoying OS updates). Yes, the available Google Chrome apps are not as powerful as those designed for the Apple Macs or Windows PCs, but they are sufficient for my needs.

My Google Chromebook Review

My Birthday came up (again!) and my wonderful wife asked what I would like as a birthday present. Since I’m a man that already has everything, I couldn’t answer her question. I already have a iMac as my desktop computer, a small Windows 7 laptop, two Android tablets (10″ and 7″), a Android smartphone, etc. I really had all the gadgets that I could want.

That same week, I heard about the impending release of the next version of the Google Chromebook, so I decided to investigate a bit. It was very intriguing to me, so I mentioned to my wife that a Chromebook might be something she could get me as a birthday present. As such, it arrived on my doorstep (albeit, a week after my Birthday) and I had one more new gadget to play with and ultimately write this review.

First of all, I’ve only been using this for a day now, so you’re getting a review from a fresh new user’s perspective. But none the less, I felt compelled to write this review since it would give me the opportunity to test out the Chrombook’s WiFi connection, keyboard, etc.

I’ll start with the positives. First, the Chromebook is well constructed and looks very much like a Macbook Air. The keyboard especially looks and feels very close to an Apple Macbook (which is a good thing). If I covered up the “SAMSUNG” label on the bottom of the screen frame and slapped an Apple icon sticker on the top of this device, you would probably mistake it for a Macbook Air.

When I first started up the device, it immediately wanted to connect to my home WiFi, and then followed by downloading and installing a software update (which took about 15 minutes). After the update, the system came up asking for my Google login name and password (which was my Gmail account). After typing that info in, within a few seconds my Chromebook was up and ready to go! In fact, one of the best features of this device is how fast it boots up. From being completely turned off, the system is up and ready in just 8 seconds. That’s super fast in my book!

The system is basically a very light version of Linux, but the only thing you see is the Chrome web browser. You do everything in the browser, which is probably the biggest limitation you might have if you’re use to running native applications. So if you want to run Microsoft Excel locally on your Chromebook you can’t; you’ll need to use a comparable spreadsheet program that can be run from a web browser in the cloud.

Google Play Music

If you’re a Google Android Smartphone or Tablet user, you can take advantage of a service called Google Play Music which allows you to stream your music from the Internet to your mobile device. It’s like your own personal Pandora app, where you can upload all your music to the Google Servers and have it streamed down to your phone or tablet. So if you have unlimited data (like I do with my Sprint cell phone service), streaming music is great since it eliminates the need to store the music files on your mobile device’s local storage.

So I’ve been using Google Play Music while driving in my car, with my music being streamed from my Google account to my phone and through my bluetooth connection with Ford Sync. Works very nicely!

Pandora Radio’s Limited Skipping Rule

During the work week, I have a 1-hour freeway commute from home to work and I often listen to Podcasts to keep me from going insane. When I can’t find a good Podcast, I’ll often use the Pandora Radio app on my Android Smartphone to listen to music tracks since I hate using my car radio (with all commercials, commentaries, etc). Unfortunately, you can only skip 6 songs per hour with the free version, and I also learned this limitation applies for the subscription version ($36/yr) as well.

As an alternative, I discovered that the service called Spotify has similar capabilities as Pandora Radio, but it has unlimited skipping of songs. I tested it out on my iMac and Android smartphone and it seems to work pretty good. The big issue I had initially with Spotify is that it was trying to use my seldom-used Facebook login details to log into Spotify. I suspect Spotify can be tied into Facebook where all your “Friends” will know what music you’re currently listening to. A bit too Big-Brother for my taste.

So, I’m going to give Spotify a try and see how well it works. One thing I immediately noticed is that you can very quickly skip songs as compared to Pandora Radio which takes about 5-8 seconds to skip a song.

My Kindle Fire Review

When the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet was announced, I was intrigued. A small 7 inch tablet sold by Amazon.com for $199? Was the hardware any good, and is a 7 inch screen sufficient for a tablet? I already have a 10 inch Acer A500 Android tablet (which works great, by the way), so do I really need a 7 inch tablet also? Luckily, my intrigue and an October birthday made it an easy choice to pre-order the Kindle Fire which I received the 2nd week of November.

My big justification for getting a Kindle Fire was to test Android apps which I current develop for the Android smartphones and tablets. However, my plan would be to use the Kindle Fire as a personal tablet, as my larger Acer A500 tablet is a bit too bulky to tote around with me on trips to Starbucks or Panera Bread. So here’s my personal review after owning the Kindle Fire for about three weeks.

First, the Fire is well built and constructed of good components. The unit looks like a generic black-slab tablet with a very nice 1024×600 color screen. The device uses a variation of the Android OS, and runs very smoothly. As an average consumer, you’d never know it was running Android under the hood as Amazon has placed a nice, easy-to-use layer between the user and the OS. It can be limiting for advanced Android users, but works great for the general population to make the Fire much easier to use. As an advanced user, I have no complaints, as you can easily “side load” Android apps on the Fire with very little difficulty (and no need to root it).

Syncing Apple iCal with Google Calendar

Now that I’m back to using my Palm Pixi smartphone, I’ve got to re-evaluate my personal and work calendar syncing options. I’ve got my Apple iMac (running the iCal app), my Palm PIxi smartphone, and two different calendars to sync (along with my contacts). So, what’s the best solution?

After exploring several different options, it seems my best solution is  product called SpanningSync for the Mac. This app runs in the background on my iMac system and periodically syncs my personal and work calendars in the Apple iCal app with two different calendars in Google Calendar in the cloud, of which my Palm Pixi has the ability to sync with. What’s nice about SpanningSync is that I can control which specific calendar in Apple iCal will sync with which specific Google calendar. I’ve setup 2-way syncing, so wherever I make an addition, deletion, or change all the calendars are updated. SpanningSync also will sync my contacts between Apple Address Book and Google Contacts, and subsequently the contacts on my Palm Pixi.

This system works surprising well. I’m currently running the 15-day trial version, but if all continues to go well I’ll pay for the $25/year subscription.

Calendar mayhem!

I have trouble remembering appointments, family events, birthdays, etc. so I rely heavily on a calendar to keep my life in order. This is true for both my personal and business life, so like to keep two separate calendars to keep things compartmentalized. The issue I’ve been struggling with is finding the most efficient way of dealing with these two calendars and keeping them synced with my computers and mobile devices.

So here’s what I have available:

1. Personal calendar for my personal appointments and events
2. Business calendar for my work appointments, travel dates, etc.
3. An iMac at home running Snow Leopard Mac X OS
4. A Dell laptop running Windows 7 for work
5. An Apple iPhone 4 as my smartphone
6. Microsoft Exchange Server for my work email, calendar, and contacts
7. Apple MobileMe for Calendar, Email, and Contacts
8. Google Calendar and Contacts

My goal, is to be able to view and edit my calendar appointments (personal and business) on my iMac desktop computer, Dell laptop, and iPhone device. I know there’s all kinds of 3rd-party freeware and commercial software for syncing calendar data between applications and the cloud, but I wanted to minimize that as much as possible to eliminate any chances of “foul ups”.

I ended up using this solution: Create two calendars with my MobileMe account that allows me to create,view, and edit appointments. If you’re unfamiliar with MobileMe, it is Apple’s cloud-based system which allows for centralized email, calendar, contacts, and offline disk storage. Using this method, I can always access my calendars via a web browser with an Internet connection. Because the majority of my devices are Apple-based, it made sense using this method for syncing purposes. So, I now use the Apple iCal application to access both MobileMe calendars on my iMac desktop computer, and the built-in Calendar app on my iPhone for doing the same. For my Dell laptop (running Windows 7), I use the Microsoft Outlook application along with a MobileMe syncing utility (provided by Apple) to sync my two MobileMe calendars with Outlook for local access. This method seems to work well so far, but I need to always make sure I’m viewing the two MobileMe calendars in all my apps and not the default local calendars (which should be empty).

Dealing with two different calendars in life

For my day job I use Microsoft Outlook running on my Windows XP laptop for all my work-related appointments. Since my calendar is “shared” among my colleagues, I don’t put any personal appointments in it. Sure, I could always mark my personal appointments as “private” so only I can see the title and details, but I’m so paranoid that I would forget and thus have my private life displayed for all my co-workers to see.

Thus, I keep my personal calendar on my home machine (Apple iMac) using the provided iCal calendar application. The big challenge for me, is to be able to see both calendars on my home iMac, my work laptop, and on my Palm Pixi smartphone. So here’s what I did to make that happen:

First, my Palm Pixi can display multiple calendars provided by a single handful of sources. One is Microsoft Exchange and the other is Google Calendar. Since my work email through Outlook uses MS Exchange, that was a no brainer. So I have my work calendar on my Palm Pixi already figured out. Since my Palm Pixi can handle the Google Calendar, I needed to get my personal appointments synced or entered into Google Calendar in the cloud. I discovered the best way to do this is to subscribe to Google Calendar in Apple iCal and use it as my main personal calendar. I can make entries to Google Calendar in iCal and they will automatically be pushed up to Google Calendar in the Cloud. This way, my Palm Pixi can display both my personal (Google) calendar and work (Exchange) calendar.

With my personal calendar already in the cloud in Google Calendar, All I needed to do was subscribe to it in MS Outlook on my work laptop. Now I can view my personal appointments and work appointments on my work laptop using Outlook (albeit, I can only view my personal appointments, which is ok with me).

Finally, I needed to somehow get my work appointments from Outlook to be visible in Apple iCal on my Mac. I accomplished this, by publishing my Outlook appointments to a WebDav server in the cloud, specifically to a free file storage service called http://www.box.net. Basically, Outlook will periodically upload a single file (.ics) to the http://www.box.net file server and thus store my work appointments in the cloud in a simple text file. Next, I have Apple iCal subscribe to this WebDav server to download the calendar information in the .ics file every 15 minutes or so.

Now, I have a system that will allow me to view both my work and personal appointments on my home iMac, work laptop, and Palm Pixi smartphone without me having to copy and paste appointments between two separate calendars. Here’s what I can do for making changes:

1) My Palm Pixi can make updates to both my Personal and work calendars

2) Personal appointment changes are made on my home iMac.

3) Work appointment changes are made on my work laptop in Outlook.

I know that this all sounds like a pain, but I really needed to keep my personal and work appointments separate and have both viewable on different computers and devices.

Now, some might ask, “Why don’t you just have two separate calendars in Google Calendar and keep everything in one place, in the cloud?” That’s a good question. The biggest reason I’ve found, is that when I get a meeting invite in an email message, if I double-click on the attached .ics file my computer will try to open the .ics file using a stand-alone application on my system. So it will either try to use Apple iCal or Outlook or some other specified application. I don’t have the ability to have my web browser open and process the .ics file for entering it into Google Calendar. That just won’t work. Thus, I’m stuck with using an actual computer calendar application to easily process meeting invitations.

What I really would need, is a small application that can open the .ics file and place it in Google Calendar in the cloud. That, would be a really handy app!

 

DropBox : Great utility for syncing files between computers

When I purchased my Apple iMac last month, I was offered the option of signing up for an Apple subscription service called MobileMe, which has several nice online features for syncing and staying connected with my Mac. For example, with MobileMe you can sync your mail, calendar, contacts, etc. between your Apple devices (e.g., Mac, iPod Touch, iPhone). You also have cloud storage where you can easily store data on Apple’s servers and have access to it from your Mac or any web browser. This service goes for $99 per year, and is a good deal if you want to keep your multiple Mac devices in sync. I, however, currently own just one Apple device (my iMac) so I don’t have a real use for this service.

The one attractive thing about MobileMe was the “iDisk” or cloud storage of up to 20 GB, which would allow me to conveniently store files for all of my computers and laptops to access. Fortunately, there’s a few different options available other than MobileMe to do this same function. The best that I’ve found is called DropBox, which allows you to have a folder in the cloud for file storage. You can then automatically sync those files to any computer you choose (PC or Mac) and also access files via apps on the iPhone and Palm WebOS devices. In addition, you can  send shared folder links from DropBox to your friends or anyone via email and let them have access to certain files. It’s a great way to share files (or keep files in sync) when working on a big project with other people.

The best thing about DropBox, is that they offer 2 GB of cloud storage for free. If you need more storage, you can pay a small monthly fee. I’m currently using the basic free service to have a convenient place to put files for my Mac, personal laptop, and work laptop to share. For small files this works great, but if you’re trying to transfer larger files (say, a few hundred Megs) it can take a while to upload, download, and sync.

As I said there’s other similar cloud services available, but I particularly like DropBox because it’s very easy to use, unobtrusive, and has a web-based login page that allows me to upload and download files. Definitely worth checking out!