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5 apps for Diwali

5 apps for Diwali

TUAW wishes its Hindu readers - Diwali ki hardik shubhkamnaye . This holiday rejoices in the Inner Light and the underlying reality o...

Why Siri should (and probably will) come to iPad 2

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Since the iPhone 4S features the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, owners of Apple's current-gen tablet have wondered if it's possible that Siri, Apple's new voice assistant, might be offered on the iPad 2. While my colleague Erica Sadun's answer to that is "Don't hold your breath," I only agree with her up to a point: I don't think there are any technical hurdles whatsoever to running Siri on an iPad 2, and the fact that the device doesn't currently feature voice controls is meaningless. I think Siri will come to the iPad 2 eventually -- certainly not right away, but possibly within the next six months.</div>
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Voice Control as it now exists on the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 doesn't function on the iPad or iPad 2, but there's a reason for that: the existing commands would be essentially useless on those devices. The pre-Siri version of Voice Control allows you to use voice commands to control music playback, dial phone numbers or initiate FaceTime calls, and ask the device for information about the current time or currently playing song. That's about all Voice Control does. Those functions are all useful features on a device that spends much of its time in your pocket, but on an iPad they make very little sense.</div>
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On the other hand, Siri's commands would be <span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5;">immensely</span> useful on the iPad. The same things Apple showed off at the "Let's talk iPhone" event, like setting up Reminders and Calendar events or looking up information on Wikipedia or Wolfram Alpha, would be very handy to have -- so handy that I don't see why Apple wouldn't offer them. Apple has long been a company that designs products its own workers want to use, and it's hard to imagine that no one in Cupertino has thought about how Siri could vastly expand the power and capability of the iPad 2.</div>
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Since the iPad 2 has both a microphone and the same A5 as the iPhone 4S, there shouldn't be any technical reason why Siri wouldn't function well on that device. Some have speculated that the iPhone 4S has 1 GB of RAM to the iPad 2's 512 MB (a claim that will have to wait for an iFixit teardown before it can be proven or disproven), but my TUAW colleagues don't believe that Siri's functions should be so RAM-intensive that they require such massive amounts of memory.</div>
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In fact, we've done some digging into Siri and found that most of the actual work of understanding voice commands gets offloaded to external servers. In essence, the iPhone 4S and its built-in processing functions determine what you <span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5;">said</span>, while Apple's servers translate that into what you <span class="Apple-style-span" mce_name="em" mce_style="font-style: italic;" style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.5;">meant</span> and send that information back to your iPhone. The pre-processing that takes place on the device itself may be too taxing for an A4 processor, but the iPad 2's A5 should theoretically be able to handle it just fine. Perhaps even better -- Apple has a habit of underclocking CPUs for the iPhone in the interest of power management, so the iPad 2's A5 is likely to outperform that of the iPhone 4S for many functions.</div>
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The fact that Apple hasn't yet said one way or another whether Siri will come to devices other than the iPhone 4S also doesn't mean much. The iPhone 4, 3GS, and newer iPod touch models had an exclusive on multitasking for almost exactly six months before iOS 4.2 debuted and brought that feature to the iPad, and the same thing may end up being true for Siri.</div>
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Here's what I think is the most likely scenario: Siri will remain an iPhone 4S exclusive at least until the third tier of international rollouts completes in December. In fact, Apple will probably wait until after the end of the holiday quarter and bring Siri to the iPad 2 in the first quarter of 2012. Not only will this give market incentive for people to buy the iPhone 4S by having Siri as a device-exclusive feature during the holiday period, it'll also give Apple's servers and Siri's algorithms time to adjust and scale to the number of inquiries it'll receive.</div>
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Once Siri's beta period ends and international rollouts for the iPhone 4S are reasonably complete, that's the perfect time to bring Siri to the iPad 2 in a dot-update to iOS 5. By that time Siri and its supporting infrastructure will be more mature and able to handle the extra load of adding support for one more device type, and it should also help alleviate the typical post-holiday quarter sales slump.</div>
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As for the other devices in Apple's iOS stable, like the iPod touch, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS, I don't expect them to ever see support for Siri. Siri's developers have already confirmed that many compromises were required to get the service running on the iPhone 3GS, and it's probably the same story for iOS devices with an A4 processor. The 2012 model iPod touch will likely be updated to an A5 processor, however, so we might see Siri support for next year's iPod touch.</div>
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For the time being, Siri remains an iPhone 4S exclusive and one we have yet to test for ourselves. We look forward to putting this innovative feature under our interrogation lights once the iPhone 4S is released on October 14.</div>
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Why Siri should (and probably will) come to iPad 2

Since the iPhone 4S features the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, owners of Apple's current-gen tablet have wondered if it's p...

Apple rumored to hold press event on Sept. 7

Apple rumored to hold press event on Sept. 7

Apple typically holds a press event in September to introduce new iPods. Current rumors suggest that this year's fall media event wi...

Blotter for Mac puts iCal on your desktop

<br/><p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="179" src="http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/2961/blottertuawle.jpg" style="width: 450px; height: 298px; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" width="270" /></p><br/>Back when I was in corporate America, an annual tradition was to order new calendars for the desk. I preferred the "day at a glance" type, but many of my fellow wage slaves liked these large desk blotter calendars that displayed a full month. Now there's a Mac app from WireLoad, Blotter (US$9.99) that turns your iCal events and tasks into the electronic equivalent of the desk blotter calendar.<br/><h3>Blotter</h3><br/>After you purchase Blotter from the Mac App Store, an app icon appears in your Dock. I have enough icons in my Dock, so I usually drag 'em off, and that was the case with Blotter. Not to worry, though -- once you've launched Blotter, a tiny menu bar icon appears for setting preferences and creating new events and tasks. Blotter can be set to auto-launch at login, and that's the way it should be.<br/><br/>The main feature of Blotter is the beautiful translucent calendar that appears on your Mac desktop. By default, it shows the current week, but can be set in preferences to show the seven days or only weekday dates. The current date is listed as a large number, with the month, year, and day of the week listed below. There's also a list of To Do items, as well as a "Right Now" mini-view showing the next four or five hours at a glance. I have my Blotter calendar set to fade out after 60 seconds -- a quick click on the menu bar icon brings it back to full intensity.<br/><div><br/><br/><strong>Gallery: <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/">Blotter for Mac</a></strong><br/><br/><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263968"><img alt="" src="http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/502/blottertuaw1thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263969"><img alt="" src="http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/8728/blottertuaw2thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263970"><img alt="" src="http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/4217/blottertuaw3thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263971"><img alt="" src="http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/7750/blottertuaw4thumbnail.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.tuaw.com/photos/blotter-for-mac/#4263972"><img alt="" src="http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/9784/blottertuaw5thumbnail.jpg" /></a><br/><br/></div><br/>Blotter isn't meant to replace iCal. Instead, it is meant to work with iCal so that you don't need to actually open your calendar to look at it. It's always there on the desktop for you to see if you need it, much in the manner those desk blotter calendars were on our real desktops in the past, soaking up coffee spills and giving us a look at what was coming up in the next few days or weeks. If you use Google calendars, no problem -- as long as you're subscribing to those calendars in iCal, they'll show up on Blotter.<br/><br/>The calendar can be set to take up a lot of screen real estate or a smaller area, and in the smaller views it is movable to various locations on your desktop. There's a "narrow" mode that displays just the date, To Do list, and the Right Now mini-view, but it seems to defeat the purpose of Blotter for me.<br/><br/>On my 27" iMac I tend to always have a lot of windows open, so they obscure the view of Blotter and also defeat the purpose of the app a bit. However, it's possible to hide windows temporarily by pressing Command-H repeatedly while in the Finder, and that makes it very easy to hide windows very quickly, glance at the Blotter calendar, and then return to work without taking my hands off of the keyboard.<br/><br/>Within the Blotter preferences, there is a setting for displaying all iCal calendars or just a selected few. One of the few negatives I see with this app is that for some reason, the color of one of my calendars -- which is orange in iCal -- came over as a sickly olive color in Blotter. The two main calendars (home and work) showed up in their proper colors.<br/><br/>What about adding new events and tasks to the calendar with Blotter? The app would be worthless without this capability, and Blotter makes it as easy as either clicking on the menu bar icon and selecting New Event or New Task, or by setting up a keyboard shortcut. In either case, a small dialog appears for entering in the scheduling information on the fly.<br/><h3>Conclusion</h3><br/>Blotter is a very attractive Mac utility for displaying iCal events and tasks on otherwise unused space on your Mac desktop. I fear, though, that Blotter might be made obsolete by Lion. While testing the next version of Mac OS X, I've found it useful to place iCal in full-screen mode. From any screen, it's available with a gesture and a click; much faster and easier than clicking on my desktop and hitting Command-H until I can see Blotter. Still, the translucent Blotter calendar is <em>much</em> sexier than even the Lion calendar in full-screen. Apple should take some design cues from the Blotter developers for the future.<br/><br/>Don't just take my opinion about Blotter. I've included a video review of the app by friend and frequent TUAW TV Live guest Doc Rock, who was the person who turned me onto this amazing utility.

Blotter for Mac puts iCal on your desktop

Back when I was in corporate America, an annual tradition was to order new calendars for the desk. I preferred the "day at a glance...

Google says less is more: Gmail and Google Calendar to sport a more spartan look

<div><img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="230" src="http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/1897/threadlistlarge.jpg" style="margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 4px; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid;" width="360" /></div><br/>Does Gmail's current look seem chaotic and claustrophobic to you? Are you overwhelmed by the myriad mailing options, labels, and chat windows? We aren't either, but apparently Google sees things differently, and has an interface overhaul planned that'll simplify things in your webmail world. It looks like the spacious and simple design language from Google + will carry over to all the web services proffered by the gang in Mountain View. For now, it's available as a couple of simplistic skins to be tried on in the Themes tab of your Gmail settings, with more permanent changes rolling out in the coming months. Google Calendar is slated for a stripped-down wardrobe in the next few days as well, with El Goog promising more cosmetic and functional changes for both services later this summer. In the meantime, the company's looking for feedback on its new interface so it can fix any issues folks find. We want your opinions, too, so tell us what you think of Google's new threads in the comments below.

Google says less is more: Gmail and Google Calendar to sport a more spartan look

Does Gmail's current look seem chaotic and claustrophobic to you? Are you overwhelmed by the myriad mailing options, labels, and chat wi...

Office 2011 Service Pack 1 due next week, improves Outlook compatibility

<br/><br/><img align="right" alt="officemacblackfriday_2.jpg" border="0" height="217" hspace="8" src="http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/5712/officemacblackfriday2.jpg" vspace="8" width="284" />The upgrade from Microsoft Office 2008 to 2011 has not been without its drawbacks; for users of Entourage who moved to the all-new Outlook for Mac, in particular, there have been a few holes in the feature lineup. None of them are necessarily showstoppers, but the collection of odd omissions has given the flagship mail/calendar/contact management platform an air of unfinished business over the past few months.<br/><br/>Good news, though: Microsoft's Office for Mac blog reports that we will be seeing Service Pack 1 for Office 2011 next week. The big-ticket returning feature for Outlook is calendar support in Sync Services, meaning that Outlook calendars may once again synchronize locally with iCal, BusyCal or tethered iPhones, iPod touch or iPad units through iTunes.<br/><br/>Outlook's punch list also includes editing support for Exchange's server-side rules (which last appeared on the Mac in Outlook 2001 for Mac OS 9!), the return of the Redirect and Resend options in addition to simple message forwarding, and editing of messages in the Inbox. Excel is also getting better Solver integration, and there are sure to be hundreds of other bug fixes and minor improvements.<br/><br/>While the Sync Services calendar support is welcome, it's slightly ironic that it's coming back to Microsoft's PIM at the same time that Apple's MobileMe calendars are transitioning to CalDAV--which in turn is breaking Sync Services support for those hosted calendars via iCal and BusyCal. That means there still won't be a supported way to get MobileMe calendars to synchronize with Outlook for Mac (or Entourage 2008, for that matter), at least in the short term.<br/><br/>There are some Outlook users who will be able to synchronize to MobileMe's CalDAV servers... but they aren't using Mac OS X. 32-bit versions of Outlook 2007 or 2010 on Windows can indeed sync up to MobileMe, with the help of Apple's MobileMe control panel on Windows XP, Vista or 7.<br/><br/>The Office 2011 SP1 download will be available sometime the week of April 11th; we'll let you know when it drops.

Office 2011 Service Pack 1 due next week, improves Outlook compatibility

The upgrade from Microsoft Office 2008 to 2011 has not been without its drawbacks; for users of Entourage who moved to the all-new Outlook f...

PSA: Alarm clock bug may cause iPhone alarms to fail on New Year’s Day 2011

<div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="iphone 4 back black1 PSA: Alarm clock bug may cause iPhone alarms to fail on New Years Day 2011" class="size-full wp-image-185811 aligncenter" height="266" src="http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/9798/iphone4backblack1022876.jpg" title="iPhone 4" width="400" /></div>As folks ring in the New Year across the globe, reports are surfacing of a troubling alarm clock bug affecting iPhones. According to a growing number of tweets, iPhone alarms that are set for New Year’s Day are failing to go off as scheduled. For the merry reveller with nothing to do on a Saturday, a late alarm may be a welcome relief, but for those who have to work bright and early, a delayed iPhone alarm may be the difference between getting to work late or getting there on time.<br />
Different from the Daylight Savings alarm clock bug, this latest iPhone bug reportedly does not affect recurring alarms so a temporary solution is to create a new alarm and choose multiple days for it to go off. You can also use a Calendar event or a third-party iPhone app to trigger an alarm event on your handset. Apple has not responded to this reported issue so folks are on their own to apply this temporary fix. Thankfully, this bug may be short-lived as some testing performed by 9to5 Mac suggests the iPhone will auto-fix itself on the 3rd of January. Until that time, keep a close watch on your iPhone alarms, especially if you rely on those alarms as your only means for waking up.<br />
[Via <a href="http://www.9to5mac.com/45310/new-years-2011-breaks-non-recurring-iphone-alarm-clocks">9to5 Mac</a> and <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/31/psa-iphone-alarms-not-working-come-new-years-day-2011/">Engadget</a>]

PSA: Alarm clock bug may cause iPhone alarms to fail on New Year’s Day 2011

As folks ring in the New Year across the globe, reports are surfacing of a troubling alarm clock bug affecting iPhones. According to a growi...

Verizon iPhone to launch after CES, says BusinessWeek

<img align="right" alt="" border="0" height="108" hspace="8" src="http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/7642/moscone4490066.jpg" vspace="8" width="400" />It's beginning to look a lot like the week after Christmas, when East Coast denizens <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/december-2010-blizzard/">dig out from their snow cover</a>, and the incoming emails from vendors exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show (which starts January 6 in Las Vegas) form a digital blizzard of their own. One product that everyone would <i>like</i> to see at CES, for better or worse, is the Verizon version of the iPhone -- but it's highly unlikely that it will put in an appearance.<br />
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Despite the out-there rumor floated earlier this month that the VZW iPhone would debut immediately after Christmas, there's no sign of the device yet. The latest suggestion of a whisper of an actual introduction date, however, comes courtesy of sources to BusinessWeek's Peter Burrows.<br />
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In an <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_02/b4210034485538.htm">article today addressing the conventional wisdom</a> about winners and losers when a Verizon iPhone hits the market, he passed along a tidbit from a person "familiar with Apple's plans who is not authorized to discuss them publicly." The source told Burrows that "Apple's introduction of an iPhone for use on Verizon's network will come sometime after the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January." The story's lead paragraph says the CW is that the iPhone on Verizon <a href="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/29/apple_expected_to_hold_event_by_valentines_day_to_announce_verizon_iphone.html">could come by Valentine's Day</a>, but there's no particular sourcing for that date.<br />
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Of course, "sometime after <a href="http://www.cesweb.org/">CES</a>" could technically include any date from January 10 of 2011 up until the start of the following CES in 2012. If you asked me to predict a date, with no inside information... well, let's look at the calendar. CES wraps up on January 9th; Macworld Expo kicks off on the 26th. Put your finger on the Tuesday in between the two and you get January 18.<br />
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There's a problem with the 18th, though; Apple has already said that it will <a href="http://www.apple.com/investor/">announce quarterly earnings on that day</a>. Looking at the past year, there were two major product introductions that happened two days after a <a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/25results.html">quarterly earnings report</a>. The most recent was the "Back to the Mac" event on October 20, with the earnings report on 10/18; before that, back in January, the earnings call on the 25th was followed two days later by a magical and revolutionary product launch on the 27th.<br />
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Attention tech journalists and industry analysts: if you weren't expecting to be in San Francisco on January 20, 2011, maybe you should <a href="http://www.kayak.com/flippy/DIvLMC">set up a fare alert</a> and keep an eye on your mailbox, ... you know, just in case.<br />
<h6></h6><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_02/b4210034485538.htm">Source</a>

Verizon iPhone to launch after CES, says BusinessWeek

It's beginning to look a lot like the week after Christmas, when East Coast denizens dig out from their snow cover , and the incoming em...

How to Convert a Public Folder Calendar to a Room Resource in Exchange 2007

How to Convert a Public Folder Calendar to a Room Resource in Exchange 2007

Open the Start menu and select "All Programs." Click the folder labeled "Microsoft Exchange Server 2007." Click to open...

How to Delete a Windows Calendar

How to Delete a Windows Calendar

Open your Windows Live Calendar page and sign in with your user name and password. Select the calendar that you wish to delete in the list ...