One way sync: GroupWise Calendar to Google Calendar

I have gathered this information from several sources. The most helpful of these sources was Novell Cool Solutions. I have set this up with my GroupWise account and it is working for me. Please let me know if does or does not work for you. I will post more images by the end of the week.

Create a Rule in GroupWise:

1. Open your GroupWise client and go to Tools->Rules on the top menu bar.
   
2. Click on the "New..." Button
   
3. Give your rule a name "Delegate to Google Calendar"
4. Select the event of "Filed" and the folder for your calendar.
5. Select the checkbox for "Appointment"
6. Add an action to "Delegate" and provide your GMail email address and and enter "GWDelegate" without the quotes into the "Comments to sender:" box. This text will allow you to create a filter in your GMail account that will target only these forwarded appointments.

Create a Filter in GMail:

1. Login to your gmail account
2. Click on "Settings" from the top right menu on the screen
3. Click on "Filters"
   
4. Click on "Create a new filter" located at the bottom of the page
5. Enter your groupwise email address in the From: box
6. Enter "GWDelegate" again without the quotes in the "Has the words:" text box.
   
   
   
7. Click on "Next Step"
8. Now click on the "Delete it" check box. This seems strange that you would delete the appointment as soon as it comes. What actually happens here is that GMail picks this up and adds it to your calendar before it applies the filter. Apparently GMail system filters are fired off before the user defined filters. Another example of this behavior is the Spam filter.
   
9. Click on "Create Filter"

Test it out and let me know how it goes.

Google Trends

Official Website: http://google.com/trends

Google Webmaster Central

Official Website: http://www.google.com/webmasters/
Official Forum: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

Orkut

Official Website: http://www.orkut.com
Official Blog: http://en.blog.orkut.com/

Now I had heard of Orkut, but I did not realize that it was part of the Google family until preparing for this presentation. So you are asking what exactly is Orkut? So was I and this is the conclusion that I came to after scouring the web for a good definition. Orkut is Google's version of Facebook. I am sure that there are differences, but Orkut is a social networking/community site. A list of the features indicates that shares many of the features of other social networking/community sites. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

I want it to be clear that I don't have any experience with Orkut but my initial impression is this: "Another social networking site? Really?"

It appears that Orkut is written in ASP.NET. I find that interesting.

Google Alerts

Official Website: http://www.google.com/alerts

Google Alerts is a service you can use to track a particular search term. For example if you wanted to know any time that UVU appeared in the news, you could set up a Google Alert that would send you an email any time that UVU shows up in the news, or on a blog, or other new information source on the web.

This is an excelent tool for brand management whether personal or professional. You can set up alerts to inform you of any new iformation that is being disseminated about you, your business or even your competitors. Anything that you can search for you can also be alerted about.

Set up some alerts and try it out. As the alerts start filling your email inbox you can fine tune them to provide you with just the information that you are interested in.

I have a Google Alert set up for a general search on my name Brett Michaelis. I tend to get an email once a month or so about various different news papers that post the honor role or local sports where some by the first name Brett and someone else by the last name Michaelis appear in the same report. It hasn't proven terribly useful for me as a source of information. One thing I have been able to determine is that I am not showing up in the news. That is probably for the best.

Google Search

Official Site: http://google.com

The heart and soul of Google is search. It is the most basic service that Google offers. Most basic, that is, for people that want basic search. It can however provide much more powerful search capabilites for those individuals that care to learn some tips and tricks to the Google Search Engine.

One of the most common advanced features that I use is the "site:" search modifier. This modifier limits your search to the provided domain and any subdomains that might exist in the Google index.
Example: site:uvu.edu summer university
This will search any sites that exist in the Google index and end in uvu.edu. You can limit this search farther by using site:www.uvu.edu

Another tip that I use every time that I search isn't specific to Google, but I find it invaluable and will share here in hopes that others find to save them time as well. When I pull up a search page and I'm looking through the search results, I rarely know right away which result will contain the information that I am looking for. What I do is I briefly browse the list and while holding down the CTRL or COMMAND key I click on three or four of the links that look most promising. What this does is it leave my search results page unaltered and it opens up each link in a new tab withing my browser. Then I can click on each of the new tabs and scan for the information I need. If non of the pages contain the information I need, I close them and go right back to my original search page and repeat the process or refine my search. It is a simple trick, but it has saved me a great deal of time over the past several years.

Google Sketchup

Official Website: http://sketchup.google.com/
Official Blog: http://sketchupdate.blogspot.com/

While it looks compelling, I do not know a great deal about this offering from Google. I came across this application while doing research for the presentation. I have since downloaded and installed and I'm playing around with creating a model of my house.