Author: William Gallagher
How to add Facebook events to your normal calendar
Facebook is all about sharing – until you want to go outside its walled garden. It is a right bugger trying to get anything out of the Facebook app and into anything else and nowhere is this more ragingly painful than with events.
If I get a notification on Facebook that someone has invited me to an event, sometimes I will avoid reading it until I know I can do something about it. Until I know that I will be able to check my calendar and know whether I'm free. Until I know for certain that I can make the decision and say yes right away, I will sometimes come off Facebook rather than do it or lose the notification.
And other times I just say bollocks to it all, I don't know if I can go so I'm going to say I'm not going.
It is possible to link Facebook to your regular calendar. That's certainly true on a Mac or iOS where Facebook is baked into the operating system, I'm sure it must be easily possible on PCs and Windows too.
I will never know.
Not because I won't bother to try it on a PC but because I will not do it on anything. Most especially not on my Mac.
Because that setting links your calendar and your contacts: every bleedin' Facebook person you know is then automatically added to your phone book. There are people on Facebook I can't even remember adding as friends and my Contacts book is long enough already. I'm not doing that.
Now, because I won't do that – you try undoing the addition of hundreds of people to your phone book – I can't test out what happens with calendars. It seems highly, highly likely to me that if you give Facebook the keys to your calendar, it will use them. It will add every Facebook event to your calendar.
But have you see every Facebook event? Tonight I decided to sort this out for good and in doing so poked around a lot. I saw my complete list of Facebook events and there are dozens upon dozens of which I am going to one. And of which I had heard of two. Dear god in heaven, keep Facebook away from my calendar.
So.
I did this so you don't have to: I worked through how to tease a single event out of Facebook. I was invited to something, I fancied going but wasn't sure I could make it, so I got it out of Facebook and I added it to my calendar. I did so prefixing it with ¿ (just as I recommended here) and I'll look at later at whether I can make it. I'll look later because I can. Because it's in my calendar and I chose to put it there.
It's a measure of how frustratingly locked down Facebook is that this feels like a victory.
Here's how to do it.
1) Go to the Events page on a web browser, not the Facebook app.
2) Find the event, click or tap to go into it
3) Look for the … option toward the top and click that
4) Choose Export Event
5) Choose Send to Email
There may be several email addresses available to you there in a drop-down menu: choose a real, non-Facebook address.
You'll get a calendar invitation file, a .ics, in your email. Click on that and you'll see more details than you ever care to know (like the list of everybody who's said they're going) but also an option to add it to your calendar.
Does that sound like a faff? Imagine figuring it out like you're searching for an Easter Egg in a game. That was me tonight.
It's a waste of time, having to get an emailed .ics before you can do anything about it, but at least it works.
Give away your time to get more
Oh, now I just sound like I write for Hallmark Cards. But, seriously, do things for other people, give your time away and you will have more. Or, okay, it will feel like you've got more time and you will do more: it's the same thing. The site 99U says we suffer from 'time scarcity' and that actually the word 'suffer' is spot-on.
A scarcity mindset turns you into a time miser. You start doing silly things like counting the minutes you spend waiting in line for your coffee or silently cursing every single commuter who slows you down on your way to work. At this point, giving away time seems like the very last thing that you should do.
Yet, saying and acting upon this statement—“I have enough time to be generous with it”—is a surprisingly effective antidote to the time-scarcity mindset. Simply giving your time away to others, even as little as ten minutes, creates a sense of “time affluence.”
In one experiment conducted by professors from Yale, Wharton, and Harvard, people who spent 15 minutes helping to edit research essays by local at-risk students reported that they felt like they had more spare time, committed to spending more time on a follow-up task, and then worked longer on that task. In some magical way, this group of givers was both more productive and felt like they had more time.
We can’t control what happens during our days, but we can control how we react. Usually, “busy” is a state of mind—a trap we can, and should, strive to avoid. Reframe your outlook, and your productivity (and mental health) will thank you.
Choi has a lot more to say about time management: give her a read.
Don’t spend your time, produce it
I did this thing today. Give me a pixel's worth of an excuse and I'll bend your ear off about it, but the important thing is that it was an hour and a half at the Birmingham Rep. Ninety minutes. And I have no idea how many hours it took me to produce it, but I've been talking about it since December so the odds are that I have spent a wee bit more than 90 minutes on the job.
But all the time I spent producing it is why it was produced. Is why it happened. And, fortunately, why it went well. You can't put months into every ninety minute slot in your day, but an hour that works well for you needs more than sixty minutes.
Same thing, different example. I was just asked how long a particular script had taken me to write and the honest answer is that there are two honest answers. I can truthfully tell you that it took me an hour. And I can truthfully tell you that it took me three weeks.
The lesson I'm taking away from myself and what I've ended up doing is that in both cases, I got the time ready in advance. Planned what I wanted in both cases. I got the venue and the guests for the Rep, I got a lot of contributing material for the script. The only real difference is that then when it came down to the time that this had to happen, I was alone with the script and had to get it done. And with the Rep thing, I was far from alone and all I had to do then was watch as really interesting people did their thing for me and the rest of the audience.
I have a proposal to write on Monday. When I'm done talking with you, I'm going to make sure I've got everything I need ready for it. I'm going to produce the hour it'll take me to do the work. I'm going to produce the work.
Apps in use: Audio Hijack Pro
I can't remember how long I have been using Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro on my various Macs. It's long enough that I forget it's software, I just know it in my bones, and it's long enough that it's years since I noticed ow Rogue Amoeba is an unusual name.
I use it for clipping my and friends' radio appearances, I use it for recording Skype interview calls, I can't count how many things I've used it for and I'm frustrated that I'm so used to it that I can't remember a longer list of examples. But trust me, it's a favourite and it is indispensible – and today the Rogue Amoeba blog ran a little news story about uses of it that I didn't know and am immediately nicking:
Real World Usage: Podcasting With Audio Hijack Pro
Our audio recorder Audio Hijack Pro has long been a favorite tool among podcasters. Whether you want to record a conversation from Skype, or just your own microphone, Audio Hijack Pro can help you get your podcast going. As the podcast world has grown, we’ve been thrilled to see our app used by thousand of podcasters in the past decade.
One podcaster making great use of Audio Hijack Pro is Dave Hamilton, who might just know more about the app than we do! Recently, he started dishing out some tasty knowledge. First up is a video on sending multiple audio sources over Skype, using Audio Hijack Pro and Soundflower. Next, Dave had a clever trick for creating a noise gate on your Mac, to record only when audio reaches a certain level.
Seasoned veterans of Audio Hijack Pro may already know about these tricks, but if not, check them out. And of course if you’re new to the app, you can always download a free trial of Audio Hijack Pro to try it out.
Take a read of the full piece, look at the videos and add Audio Hijack Pro to your Mac.
Video: full Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue interview
The new Code Conference with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interviewed Apple's Eddy Cue with Jimmy Iovine – who as of this week is also with Apple. Though you may not be able to tell that from his cracks against the company's white earbud headphones.
Code Conference has posted the entire natter right here:
Productivity for the Neurotic
Writer Tim Ferris just opened up on the Huffington Post:
We all like to appear “successful” (a nebulous term at best) and the media like to portray standouts as superheroes.
Sometimes, these dramatic stories of overcoming the odds are inspiring. More often, they lead to an unhealthy knee-jerk conclusion:
“Well… maybe they [entrepreneur/artist/creator painted as superhero] can do it, but I'm just a normal guy/girl…”
This post is intended to give a behind-the-scenes look at my own life. Though I've occasionally done profiles like A Day In The Life with Morgan Spurlock's crew, I rarely let journalists follow me for a “normal” day. Why?
I'm no superhero. I'm not even a consistent “normal.”
Forgive me, I'd no more heard of this guy than I have used Digg. I'm learning a lot today. Ferris wrote The Four-Hour Week, which just makes me shudder, and in this feature he lists all the fantastic things he's done recently – right alongside all the bad. Some lazy, some trivial, others seriously concerning but they're all there and he says he's written all this out so that:
Most “superheroes” are nothing of the sort. They're weird, neurotic creatures who do big things DESPITE lots of self-defeating habits and self-talk.
Personally, I suck at efficiency (doing things quickly). Here's my coping mechanism and 8-step process for maximizing efficacy (doing the right things):
Productivity Tricks for the Neurotic and Crazy (Like Me) – Tim Ferris, Huffington Post
You know I'm going to recommend that you read the full piece to see what his “coping mechanism and 8-step process” is and I am. Here I am, recommending it. But also read what he's done well and what he has done badly. Right in itself, that's got me thinking about what does and doesn't matter.
If This Then Digg
If you're not using Digg, you're not doing the internet right. Apparently. As someone who isn't using the internet right, I regularly get told to use Digg and I regularly get convinced enough that I think I might get around to it. Today's telling might actually do it, though. Because I've been told it by IFTTT.
I use If This Then That a little bit. There are people who use the bejaysis out of IFTTT and fortunately they also use Digg. Because now IFTTT has added features to support this internet service:
Introducing the Digg Channel
Digg is the homepage of the internet, featuring the best articles, videos, and original content that the web is talking about right now.
One of the example ways to use this Digg channel IFTTT is:
Get a Daily Email Digest with Popular Videos
I have no idea what videos are popular on Digg, but I'm going to use this to find out. Especially as I can presumably combine channels to chuck these new Digg things into Pocket or Evernote.
Sold.
Six months with iTunes Radio
It’s still not available in the UK but it’s coming and what we’ll get here is a tried-and-tested version. I’ve been listening here in the UK since about December – I have both US and UK iTunes accounts so I can legally tune in – and the service has developed even in that short time.
Primarily, it’s added more ads.
You know that it’s an ad-supported service. Every few tracks, you get an ad. Interestingly, they’re usually video ads so while I often have iTunes way in the background behind a lot of other documents, there’ll be a corner visible and suddenly it’ll start moving. Very distracting.
But it’s become more distracting because at first there were so few ads that you noticed how few there were. Now you notice how many – and at times you notice how often the same ones are played. For a while there I could tell you every line of a Macy’s advert.
We can expect that the same thing will happen in the UK: it feels less that Apple has a plan for how many ads it will ramp up, more that it depends how many it gets. A few firms will try it out at first and then it’ll take off it won’t.
But now it also looks as if there will be more programmes, more actual non-music programmes. Right now it has none whatsoever. But US sources – you think that means rumour sites and it does, but – say that Apple is going to stream the World Cup over iTunes Radio.
Exit William.
I do recommend iTunes Radio but it depends on your starting choice. The way it works is that you type in the name of a song, an artist, a genre or perhaps a decade and you get a station. That station might start with the particular song, it might start with that particular artist, or it might not.
After very, very many different stations, I plucked “4 Non Blondes” out of the air because I like What’s Up. And it’s been a great find: I’m sure I must’ve heard What’s Up on it some time but generally I love everything it’s played me as well.
Sometimes I’m iTunes Radioed out and in principle I like the idea of spoken-word shows but I keep coming back. I just want to see what happens when Apple absorbed its new purchase, the Beats subscription service.
Five great(ish) tips for saving iPhone battery power
I knew these, I already do these and I still have a howling yearning for longer battery life on my iPhone. But if you’re not already doing these, take a look at this video from Cult of Mac about quick ways to save juice:
Via Cult of Mac