Sylvia Bass

Category: Professional

  • Oracle Calendar and iPhone

    Unfortunately, there is not yet a seamless way to get your Oracle Calendar data into the native iPhone calendar app. I’ve tried many ways, only to get frustrated and end up going back to adding events manually to iCal.

    There is a commercial iPhone App called “Todo+Cal” that talks directly to Oracle Calendar. The downside is that it is a stand alone app and doesn’t have alarms to alert you when you have a meeting coming up. If you are anything like me, you need these little reminders as you get lost in the world of code and pixels.

    A little closer…

    The latest version of “Todo+Cal” has a feature that allows you to export your calendar to an .ics file and upload it to a WebDAV server. Since we use Webfiles at UCI which is built on WebDAV, it suddenly becomes possible although still a bit clumsy. Todo+Cal also has the limitation of having to manually synchronize. This requires that you login to get the latest calendar data. I emailed Todo+Cal’s support and they sent the following reply regarding auto synching.

    (more…)

  • Treading Water

    It seems like everyday there is more to do and less time do get things done. I used to be able to manage things by phone, email, or in person. Now, if I don’t write everything down, little bits slip through the cracks. I don’t want to let anyone down and I don’t want to drive myself crazy.

    OmniFocus iPhone AppThrough an iPhone App, I came across a method to end the madness. I purchased OmniFocus for both the iPhone and the desktop. The software is based on the book, “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. It’s tagline is “The Art of Stress-Free Productivity”. Stress-free, I liked the sound of that.

    The basic premise is to do a brain-dump of everything you need to do, both big and small. You can use any method of recording, the software is just one way. Once you get everything down, you can then organize and prioritize. You then choose what to do, what to delegate and what to drop. The peace comes from knowing that it’s written down somewhere so that you don’t wake up at 2 am in a sweat over something you’ve forgotten. When I leave the office on Friday, I know that I can pick right back up after the weekend and get back on task. If I remember something on the weekend, I can use the mobile iPhone App to record it, sync it and take care of it later.

    I’ve been much more efficient and much more calm. I also have a written record of what I’ve accomplished so my boss can see what a great job I’m doing or at least that I’m getting things done. 😀

  • We’ve Launched!

    After months of work, we’ve finally launched the UCI Blog service. We’re starting out by announcing it to some of our more technical users like the CSCs, the Web Developers and the OIT staff. So far so good.

    The one behavior I didn’t anticipate was that folks are logging in but not creating blogs. For these folk, they are automatically subscribed to the blog they logged in to. For the most part this is not an issue except that we’ve had some confusion about blog creation. I’ll have to follow up with the team to see what their take is on the issue.

    So, if you come across this post and want your own UCI Blog, go to:

    http://sites.uci.edu

    and click the big Create a Blog button. All faculty, staff and graduate students are eligible.