Month: December 2011

iCloud and Snow Leopard and Google Sync

So ... I'm not sure what's going on but a few weeks after Google integrated Circles into Gmail my Google Contacts are all screwed up. dd in how badly Google Contacts and Calendar sync to my iOS devices and my Mac and one begins to wonder if there might be a better way. My wife has started screaming at me that this "cloud stuff sucks". She is very rightly frustrated that contacts she adds to her iPhone (using her Google account) don't show up when she uses her Gmail account on her Mac and vice versa.

After watching a live conversion of a MobileMe account to iCloud — a recent [Princeton MUG presentation](http://pmug-nj.org) — I took a leap of faith and removed Google Contact sync from my iOS devices and Mac and switched to using iCloud to sync my contacts. I'm an instant convert. No only did all my contacts sync to my devices — something I've never got Google Contact sync to do — but ALL of my devices (iMac, iPad, iPhone) have the same information. And when I update any contact on my iPhone within seconds I see the information update on my Mac and my iPad. Right before my eyes. It just works!

So, now that I am hooked, I want all my Macs to sync to iCloud. Problem is ... not all my Macs can run Lion. My 2006 MacBook is running Snow Leopard — the Core Duo CPU is not supported — and it seems that [iCloud is a Lion only service](http://www.apple.com/icloud/setup/mac.html). Does anyone know a way around this?

State lotteries and the Internet

Like shooting ducks in a barrel by Robert X. Cringely (I, Cringely)

If millions of tickets have been sold for a huge lottery jackpot with no winner yet identified, would it be possible for a syndicate or maybe a huge corporation to simply say “I’ll take all the remaining tickets, please,” reducing the odds to certainty through one huge electronic buy? Why does this feel like a really bad idea?

St.Vincent & The Grenadines

St. Vincent and the Grenadines What’s not to like about a tropical paradise that bills itself as “one destination, 32 gorgeous Caribbean islands”? Located between St. Lucia and Grenada, this island chain has long drawn stars and vacationers with deep pockets, but it will become more accessible to a wider range of travelers thanks to a $240 million airport scheduled to open on St. Vincent, Travel + Leisure reports. Top 10 Destination for 2012 is my birthplace

Maybe I’ll finally get to visit my birthplace with my kids. It’s been 16 years. Until that international airport is completed I’m not putting up with the bullcrap of a two-hour ride to fly out of JFK at 6 AM, a three-hour plane ride to sit in an airport in Barbados for several hours, before finally landing in a propeller plane — 12 hours after starting the trip. The international airport will reduce the trip to less than half that.