Meeting Karaoke

I recently downloaded the new Google Mobile App for Blackberry, which has location based searching and voice input. I was playing around with it during a meeting and discovered something fun. If you hold down the input key while someone is speaking during the meeting, the term Google tries to search for is pretty funny.

Here are what I got -

• jet air ohio is for allah
• crime in stereo in jersey city
• 2 officers and literacy west law
• ivy cap on and off
• youtube williamsburg working class hero bag
• the river ranch florida 100 warrenton
• meeting in san jose charity

Google Sync - Unified Blackberry / Google / Exchange Calendars !

Like everyone one else, I noted the release of the Google Sync from Blackberries with some interest. We have been doing an eval of Google Apps Premiere at work, and the first question we get on calendars is "does it sync to my Blackberry or Exchange?".

Until Wednesday, the answer was "no". Well, "maybe" if you bought some 3rd party app. But we hadn't bothered to test any of others without strong business needs articulated.

When I downloaded Google Sync (see here to get a link sent to your Blackberry), I was wondering what would happen. Had Google added a new category of events to my calendar ? If I created an appointment on my Blackberry, would I get an option to sync to Google or Exchange or both ?

Hmm.

Since there seems to be little discussion of Google Sync yet, here is what I have seen -

• Everything you have in your Blackberry/Exchange calender before the install is ignored.
  
• Feature Request - It sure would be nice if there was an option to populate existing events into your Google Calendar.
• All events created or modified after install Google Sync show up in your Google, Blackberry, and Exchange calendars.
• Modifying events on any of the three places seemed to work fine and sync fine.
• With the default "server wins" setting in Google Sync, events don't disappear from the Google calendar (since the server wins).
• Settings the option to "handheld wins" causes all three calendars to be in sync. This seems to be the way that Google Sync turns your Blackberry into a magical bridge between Google and Exchange.
• Google Sync gives you the option to also sync events from other Google calendars you subscribe to. I would be careful with this.
• Bug - Making meetings private in Exchange does not flow through to your Google calendar. So anyone with access to your Google calendar can see your dentist appointment or other embarrassing stuff.
• The app seems to sync about every 5 minutes and a manual sync takes about 15 seconds.

BTW - Google Sync works with either a regular GMail calendar or with your domain if you are Google Apps user.

I hope to see more Good Things in this arena. Have fun.