Up until now I’ve been using Goosync to manage my Calendar on my iPod Touch.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was the only way I could find to sync my iPod with my Google Calendar, which I use for everything.  In fact I just recently wrote about using GooSync as one of my favorite iPod Apps.

Well that all changed today when I downloaded the iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update.  Sadly this is a free update for the iPhone, but it costs $10 for the iPod Touch.  I looked carefully at the updated features (there are over 100) and decided that it had enough for me to justify the outlay.  The best update as far as I’m concerned is to enable direct syncing with external calendar services using CalDAV or iCal.  Although Google really hasn’t made it easy to figure out how to do it, they released support for CalDAV almost a year ago.  They have some detailed instructions on how to sync Google Calendar with Apple iCal on the web at Google Help.  Although these instructions didn’t provide an exact step by step for how to sync with my iPod, it was enough to get me going.

Here’s how to do it on the iPod Touch (and I assume it is the same or very similar on the iPhone):

1. Click on the Settings icon on your iPod
2. Open “Mail, Contacts, Calendars“
3. Click “Add Account…“
4. Choose “Other“
5. Choose “Add CalDAV Account“
6. Enter the following information:
   • Server: www.google.com
   • User Name: your Google Account username
   • Password: your Google Account password
   • Description: anything you like, I like “Google Calendar” myself
7. Hit Next, and it will verify your account details, then return you to the Accounts screen
8. Scroll all the way down to the “Calendars” panel and click on “Default Calendar“
9. Choose the CalDAV Calendar that you just entered

Your iPod calendar will now automatically sync with your Google Calendar at the frequency you have selected in the “Fetch New Data” panel.  Set it to Push to have it go automatically (drains the battery faster) or choose a Fetch frequency.

This is an awesome addition to the iPod Touch and I’m look forward to using it!

Coming up with a good domain name or URL for a new website can be exceedingly difficult these days.  There are so many webpages out there that it often seems like all the good names have already been taken.  Chances are that any combination of one, two, or even three words related to your intended website topic will already have been joined together to make up a website URL. 

When creating the URL (and therefore the brand itself) for this website I tested over two hundred potential URL’s before I found an address that I was happy with.  Don’t get me wrong, I found other available URL’s along the way, just not one that I really wanted to create  a brand around.  Here are a couple of tips that might help make your life easier when creating a new web address:

1. Try a random phrase generator to help with some words.  Ideally you could find one that would allow you to narrow down the range of words or concepts first before you start hitting the next button.  Unfortunately I can’t recommend anything like that because I simply couldn’t find one.  But I did find a few that helped to spark my creativity and they eventually led my to picking my URL.  Check out the tools from “Creativity Tools“, randomphrase.com, and the “Random Technology Phrase Generator“.
2. Use a good WHOIS tool to help you search to see if your word or phrase is available for registration as a domain name.  I really like Geektools and GoDaddy
3. Be prepared to buy your new domain name right away.  Maybe I’m just suspicious, but I’m always afraid that just using one of the WHOIS tools above might trigger someone else to register the domain that you were looking for.  So if you find something that looks like it will work, buy it!  Buy it now!
4. Don’t forget to use a coupon code to make your domain purchase cheaper.  Simply use Google to search for the a coupon or promo code for the domain registrar you plan to use.  Here’s a link to some codes for GoDaddy