(bonus: multi-calendar syncing)
If you’ve ever wondered how to synchronize iCal with Google calendar, well, here’s how.
You can use this to synchronize calendars across multiple computers. Just sync up each one with the same Google calendar and you’re set. Any item created at one computer will transfer to the others.
Jack Po, an experienced entrepreneur and local friend of mine, just posted some tools startups might find useful. While I agree with most of what he has to say, some healthy horizon-broadening is in order.
I’m new to the startup scene, but I’ve always been a tech guy. Here are my tools:
Website Registration: 1and1 has free private registration that you can toggle on or off. $7 is the base fee for a .com.
Website Hosting: Engine Yard (for rails), SliceHost (for custom stuff), Media Temple (for shared hosting), Google App Engine (easily scalable, but has had hiccups…)
DNS Hosting: I stick with whoever hosts my site. I’ve never had any problems.
Email, Calendar, Wiki, Internal Messaging: Google Apps
Actual Website: Ruby, Java, or Plain old HTML/CSS/jQuery
Phone: Skype, Grand Central (but GC keeps deleting my old messages… boo!), iPhone
Conference Calls: Skype – easy and free.
Surveys, Spreadsheets and Documents: Google Docs – The coolest part of this suite is the real-time collaboration. Plus, there’s a form-filler mode for the spreadsheet app that you can use to conduct surveys.
Newsletters: Google Groups (for continuous conversations) or Gmail email aliases with BCC (for periodicals).
Project Management: Lighthouse, Github, Google Code, Sourceforge, or just plain old face-time. I’m actually itching to build a way more intuitive project management system. But for now, I can live with these. (I used to use Basecamp, but it can be abused too easily…)
Website statistics: Google Analytics
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Google Sitemaps
Code Tools: Linux Shell, TextMate, Eclipse
Computers: Apple Macs.
Presentations: Apple Keynote
Graphics: Adobe Photoshop CS3, Omnigraffle
You can retrieve your Gmail messages with a client or device that supports IMAP, like Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail.To enable IMAP in your Gmail account:
1. Log in to your Gmail account.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
4. Select Enable IMAP.
5. Configure your IMAP client* and click Save Changes.
Via Google Help Page
I now have my iPhone and Apple Mail set up to use IMAP. This is awesome.
I’ve noticed an influx of people looking for my short paper on Procrastination. I would love to hear from you if you find it useful!
 
The TextMate website lists two ways to install LaTeX. If you have MacPorts installed, then you simply need to run sudo port install tetex. If you don’t have MacPorts installed, I would highly suggest installing it, since the alternative officially sanctioned way of getting LaTeX, through i-Installer, is no longer actively maintained.ÂÂÂ
 
TextMate is one of the most highly regarded editors on the Mac OS X platform. It was popularized by DHH of Ruby on Rails fame and has spawned several copy cats, such as E, a TextMate clone for Windows. You can pick up a copy of TextMate at Macromates. Once you have TextMate installed, enable Cutting-Edge updates by going to TextMate > Preferences > Software Update > Watch For: > Cutting-Edge.
 
Skim is the spiritual successor to PDFView. It has many noteworthy features, including, but not limited to note-taking and annotation features, highlighting, and TextMate / pdfsync integration. Once you have Skim installed, activate Skim > Preferences > Sync > Check for file changes. TextMate should already be entered as the default editor.ÂÂÂ
 To configure the new LaTeX bundle in TextMate, go to Bundles > LaTeX > Preferences … and set your viewer to Skim. Now you should be all set to write LaTeX documents in TextMate!
VinceP 2:15 pm on November 20, 2008 Permalink
Kevin, I just wanted to say thanks for the article. Although short, it strikes right at the heart of procrastination, and I really think it's a common sense approach to what is a VERY stressful problem. Being overwhelmed or bored into inaction is a state that, once it becomes severe, is very hard to shake. The simple solutions you offered are key for me and, along with tracking my time usage in a detailed way (including just being honest and tracking the times I procrastinated), should help me stay out of the inaction tarpit in the future.
Anyone reading this should realize that it might seem silly to have this problem (or to just admit that one has this problem), but if you ever stretch yourself (or even just think about stretching yourself – we all dream), you WILL hit this at some point.
Having just gone through an intense period of this myself, all I can recommend is just being honest about it instead of ashamed. Recognize it for what it is, and make a plan to get out of that state as soon as possible. Letting it fester can actually turn into a “job changing event”, if you know what I mean.
Kevin, a suggestion / though for the article – Your paper didn't address the 'Bored' side of the procrastination graph. One is bored because the perceived difficulty of the tasks is much lower than one's perceived abilities. My suggestion there is to make the boring work interesting by either a) reducing the boring task into chunks like you suggest then make the completion of each chunk a semi-competitive game or b) find a way to automate the boring work by using a more interesting way to work – so for example modifying 100 XML files by hand (for a webmaster for example), would be very boring but learning how to automate that with a short script would be much more fun.
FYI – I found your paper through the links on Wikipedia in the procrastination entry.