Mac Outlook 2011 Calendar Sync Issue w/ iPhone

Okay, here’s the bottom line. If you own a Mac and use Microsoft’s Outlook to manage your calendar, it will not synchronize w/ your iPhone or iPad, period, and Microsoft has know about the issue since last year!  This is why I am furious, and become more angry each day! My nightmare started several months ago when I made the decision to transition away from PC’s over to Mac. I prolonged this decision as long as I could for one reason and one reason only. I had used Microsoft Outlook to manage my business for almost 20 years and I knew they were getting ready to release it for the Mac instead of their Entourage product and that I would be able to import my valuable PST files over to my Mac! I literally timed my exodus based on the release of one piece of software, Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac.

Microsoft has addressed this issue several times in the past and assured thousands of us that the glitch would be addressed soon but nothing has happened. Most recently the team answered questions from several other unhappy users and totally avoided my question, be sure to read the comments. There was a point in April where we got our hopes up that Microsoft was releasing a service pack to address these issues but nothing ever came of this promise either. Microsoft, being the software company, designs software to run on Apple’s hardware. That’s pretty cut and dry right? Well, here’s a release where Microsoft actually blamed Apple for the synchronization issues

I have been reaching out to the Office for Mac team on their blog recently hoping to get some answers but haven’t been contacted by a single person as of today. Well, many of you that know me can attest to the fact that I can be somewhat persistent if aggravated, well I have reached that point. Today I reached out to the Office for Mac team on their Twitter account and their Facebook Page.

I honestly feel as if Microsoft has betrayed their loyal user base and feel no remorse about their actions because they have the only show in town when it comes to business management, scheduling, task management, collaboration, email, and shared contacts. I also feel as if Microsoft owes me personally a complete refund for $600 that I spent putting their software on all of our new Mac’s in addition to potentially more money that I can prove in loss productivity and revenue.

EP:021 – The Cotton Club Podcast

thecottonclubpodcastsign_thumb_thumbI had the opportunity this week to record another episode of The Cotton Club with Keith Crawford, Amy B. Hole, Brant Collins, Robert Blake, and Calvin Hill. On this episode we all discussed some of our favorite brands of 2010 and what it was we liked about each one.  Last week I summarized some of the brands that I discussed on the show like Gowalla, Tom’s Shoes, Starbucks, Facebook, and Groupon in a blog post, you can read that post here

Some of the other brands and startups mentioned by everyone else included; Apple, Netflix, Microsoft Kinect, Wufoo Forms, Mailchimp, Evernote, and Sports Authority, just to name a few. As usual we wrapped up the show discussing some of our favorite iPhone applications.  A few of the apps that were discussed include Glue, World Series of Poker / Texas Hold-em, Pixel Pipe, Instagram, Public Radio, and Notifo. This was one of our longer shows in that it ran over an hour and twenty minutes but there is a lot of really good information and discussion, enjoy!

EP:020 – The Cotton Club Podcast

thecottonclubpodcastsign_thumb This past week Keith Crawford, Luke Irvin, and I sat down with the CEO of Footfeed, Dennis Mink to discuss their brilliant iphone application. Footfeed is a new mobile geo location check-in aggregator network that brings together many web services so users can checkin to many networks simultaneously. Built from the ground up as a stand alone check-in service, Footfeed integrates APIs from Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook (and soon Twitter, Google Latitude and Whrrl).

Footfeed features an advanced location matching algorithm that matches locations across different services so that users can check-in to multiple services with one click. Using the Footfeed mobile check-in app, users can have their location matched across the different networks connected to their account and check-in to all networks simultaneously. Footfeed also offers an API to developers and companies interested in adding multi check-in capabilities to their apps.

Footfeed was co-founded by Dennis Mink and Benjamin Floering and incorporated in January 2010. Dennis brings 12 years of experience in marketing and product development, having built two successful digital marketing agencies in Los Angeles. Ben Floering, who worked with IBM and AMD, is a senior software engineer and core code contributor to the Rails code base. In addition, Val Ornoy, a serial entrepreneur who most recently led business development in location-based services for Motorola, and a 14 year veteran in the mobile and tech space, heads up business development.

Have you tried Footfeed yet? If so, what are your thoughts??

EP:014 – The Cotton Club Podcast

thecottonclubpodcastsign_thumb1_thumb1_thumb[1] This evening I recorded another episode of The Cotton Club Podcast with Keith Crawford, Steven Trotter, and Mitch Canter.  It was awesome to have Mitch on the show w/ us this evening because he is an authority on all things wordpress in my opinion.  Keith and I first met Mitch at Wordcamp Fayetteville earlier this year and have followed his streams on Twitter and Facebook since then.

The topic for this evenings show was the GPL debate going on between Thesis and WordPress or Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenwig, however you want to look at it.  We covered how the whole controversy got started and what in the world it’s all about.  There have been tons of spirited debates recently on this topic so I thought it was appropriate we address it here on the show.  Also, we had Mitch give us a run down of his favorite WordPress Plugins and then we played a speed round of which plugin to use w/ Mitch.  Some of the plugins Mitch covered included: Gravity Forms, Kieran’s Calendar, PowerPress, Sexy Bookmarks, and WP-Touch.

Also, as usual we discussed our favorite iPhone apps of the week.  Some of the apps discussed in this episode included: DISQUS, Get Glue, iTweetReply, Boxcar, and LED Flashlight Ultimate.

EP:012 – The Cotton Club Podcast

thecottonclubpodcastsign_thumb[1] Well I think we figured out in this episode of The Cotton Club Podcast exactly how important a reliable internet connection is to producing a show like this.  My guests Keith Crawford, Brant Collins, Robert Blake, Craig McCoy, Arlton Lowry, and Steven Trotter were all gracious despite the fact we were disconnected 4 times thanks to my connection dropping out.  I promise to work on this and get it all squared away in the very near future so please bear with us through this episode, I did my best editing work to splice together all of the audio, hopefully you won’t be able to tell but I bet you do…

Even though we had some tough connection issues we still managed to cover some pretty cool topics in this episode including the release of the new iPhone and the IOS4.0 operating system.  We also touched on the rollout of WordPress 3.0.  Another discussion was carried over from my recent blog post on social media taboo where we each weighed in with our thoughts.  If you run a business and want to leverage social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Gowalla, or Foursquare in your marketing you should definitely give this episode a listen.  Our guests Arlton Lowry and Steven Trotter also discussed the co-working trends that have started up in Jonesboro and Conway and as usual we wrapped up the show discussing our favorite iPhone apps.  Again, please forgive our sloppiness in this episode, we are working to get everything resolved with our connection so we are up and running again soon without interruptions.

EP:011 – The Cotton Club Podcast

thecottonclubpodcastsign I think I learned something very important during this episode of The Cotton Club, the planned shows where we work from an outline of things to discuss don’t turn out near as well as the shows that are totally unplanned open conversations.  In this episode my guests, Robert Blake, Brant Collins, Steven Trotter and Keith Crawford, and I discussed a wide variety of technology related topics including the new release of the iPhone 4 from Apple, the launch of t.co URL shortener by Twitter, Microsoft Office Live, and as always our favorite iPhone Apps.

During the first part of the show we lost connection but we wouldn’t let that deter us, we soldiered on and managed to cut a pretty good show.  Steven also filled us in on a big event going down in Jonesboro called Barcamp Jonesboro.  This sounds like an awesome opportunity to hang out w/ some cool folks and discuss some awesome topics.   Hope you enjoy the show…

EP:009 – The Cotton Club Podcast

Just wrapped up another episode of The Cotton Club Podcast tonight w/ guest hosts Brant Collins and Robert Blake.  The topic for discussion for this evenings show was SEO, or search engine optimization.  I have actually gotten a lot of requests from people to do a show on this topic so hopefully we did a good enough job explaining our viewpoints without confusing everyone.

On the show we discuss some popular misconceptions regarding SEO as well as some standard practices that we all put into our clients projects for SEO.  We also discussed which search engines you should worry about, and what market share the big SE’s have at this time.

Brant and Robert also shared some findings from a few of their own personal analytics reports to help give us some insight as to what they are seeing and we also touched on what impact social media saturation can have on a websites traffic.  We also discussed quality versus quantity in terms of traffic analytics.  If you own a website and would like to maximize your search engine rankings, you should definitely check out this episode.

To wrap up the show we each talked about our favorite iPhone apps of the week.  Robert mentioned a game he has been playing called Angry Birds, Brant mentioned an augmented reality browser app called Layar that sounds pretty interesting, and I shared an app called Wind Meter that uses your phone to measure wind speed.

As always, thanks for listening and if you have any questions or topics you would like to see us address on the show be sure to drop me a line at: cotton.rohrscheib@pleth.com and I will be happy to consider it.

EP:007 – The Cotton Club Podcast

podcast-artwork-250-itunes[1] After a short hiatus, The Cotton Club Podcast is back!  Tonight I had special guest co-hosts Keith Crawford and Robert Blake on the show to discuss a wide variety of topics including the new Facebook enhancements rolled out at the F8 Conference and we each weighed in on what our thoughts were as to how it’s all going to impact site owners and bloggers.  We also touched on Location Based Applications, Gowalla and Foursquare, and how we view these two competing applications.

Robert also broke a funny follow-up chapter to the Gizmodo / Apple controversy where the new iPhone was discovered in a bar.  Apparently the “Apple Police” have started raiding homes!  You won’t want to miss the newest revelations in this saga so be sure to listen.  Also, as we closed out the show all three of us commented on our iPhone apps of the week.  Keith shared Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy, Robert hee-hawed a little bit about Farmtown, and I closed out the show discussing the Gowalla Sniffer.

It’s hard to believe but we almost went for 45 minutes this evening making this one of our longer shows, but be sure to listen to the entire show because it’s packed w/ some cool content.  If you haven’t already subscribed to The Cotton Club on iTunes, you can do so by clicking here…

Waze Brings Back Treasure Chests for Valentines

A few days ago Daniel from Waze sent me an email to let me know that Waze is bringing back their Treasure Chests in a Valentine’s Day themed promotion.  This promotion is pretty cool, let’s say you are driving along and you open up a treasure chest, it might be filled with tickets to the movies for 2 or a heart shaped box of chocolates.  How cool is that?  The themed goodies are also going to look like cupids arrows and love balloons. 

If you are unfamiliar with the Waze app for the iPhone, I strongly recommend you check them out.  I have reviewed this app twice on my blog and talked about it extensively on my podcast, The Cotton Club. If you missed those posts you can find them here and here

Here’s a press release from the company about this new promotion:

Palo Alto, Calif. — February 8, 2009 — Waze, the first free provider of driver-generated maps and real-time road information geared towards everyday driving, today announced a Valentine’s Day treasure hunt to help save the day for techies who might have forgotten to consider their sweethearts this February 14th.

Waze’s ‘Valentine’s Treasure Hunt’ will feature ‘road goodies’ as well as virtual treasure chests that, when driven over, have the potential to reward users with a real-world prizes – Valentine’s ‘movie night for two’ gift cards or heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. From February 8 to February 14, 2010, users in the US and Canada, should start looking for treasure chests along their daily commute for their chance to win. More details can be found on the waze blog.

Waze’s holiday-themed ‘road goodies’ – small icons worth bonus points – will be implemented on the map, internationally. The Valentine’s ‘road goodies’ include a cupid’s arrow, worth 15 points, as well as heart-shaped love balloons, worth 10 points, scattered all over the map. Users can use these road goodies to increase their point totals, in prep for waze’s next version which will include a scoreboard, allowing users to check out where they stand among their local driving communities.

I am hoping to have a representative on my podcast from Waze in the very near future so stay tuned for that.  Also, Daniel sent along some screengrabs that I thought I would share:

Waze Valentine  Waze Vday Treasure1

EP:000 – The Cotton Club Podcast

itunes-subscribe In the next couple of days I will be launching the first installment of The Cotton Club PodcastThe Cotton Club is one of two podcasts that I am going to be a part of this year, the other is a project that I am going to be working w/ Keith Crawford on called The Social Radar, stay tuned for details on that podcast in the very near future.

Unlike The Social Radar Podcast project, The Cotton Club is going to be a lot less focused and a lot more laid back.  The Social Radar will deal mostly with the topic of Social Media and Marketing as to where The Cotton Club could end up being a free for all!  I am pretty passionate about what I do so it’s probably a safe bet that a large portion of each show will be dedicated to the web in general, including development, blogging, social media, seo, etc., but since I am also passionate about things such as NASCAR and Football, there is a high probability that there will be a certain amount of trash talking as well.

If you know me very well, you will probably know that I am also somewhat of a joker, and no matter how hard I try, weird occurrences seem to find me.  Highlights from these occurrences as well as some older stories will also be a big part of this project.

If you have iTunes and would like to subscribe to The Cotton Club, you may do so by clicking here (iTunes will open in a new window, just hit the subscribe button).

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