Getting iCloud calendar to sync with HP Touchpad

So you want to display your iCloud calendar from your iOS device on your HP Touchpad (webos).

Well there is an easy way.

In the calendar on your Mac - right click on the calendar and share the calendar / make it public, and copy the url.

Paste the url into this website;

https://icaltogcal.com

Then click continue, and copy the new share url.

Add this to your google calendar;

https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/178357?hl=en - How to add the calendar to google


Sign in to your Google Apps account in a web browser and open your GoogleCalendar.

In the left sidebar under Other Calendars, click the Add menu. Then choose one of the following:

Add by URL: Adds a team or company calendar someone created. Enter the calendar's address (ends in .ics).

Now it should process the url and add the calendar. It takes a few hours to start syncing, so it will be blank for a while, but after a few hours (I left it for 24 hours) it will start syncing.

Then on the Touchpad add your Google account to the calendar, and voila the calendar will appear on your Touchpad. 

Done.

Use of Siri in iOS 7

I'm happy with Siri, and iOS 7, what I particular like using Siri for is when I am travelling in the car and I use it mainly for i) Setting reminders; ii) Reading notifications; iii) Responding to text messages; iv) making phone calls; v) Playing music.

It comes with certain issues the main issues are;

a) Occasionally, and actually quite often I get the message "Sorry I can't take any requests right now" or "I'm currently having a problem" or something to that effect. Normally it goes away after a few seconds, today it continued for 10+ minutes, it would be good to have a way to know whether Siri is working or not.

b) When I set a reminder I can set it to remind when I arrive "at home" or "at work" but when I say at a place such as "arriving at Basildon" it doesn't understand what I'm saying and makes that part of the reminder description. The same thing happens when I set it to remind me at a time, it sometimes gets confused and includes the time as part of the task description. Now when I want it to remind me I say "remind me at 1.30pm" and then it says "what would you like me to remind you about" and then I say "remember to feed the fish" or something, and then it allows me to create the reminder at 1.30pm.

c) Notifications sometimes gets confused when I'm trying to get it to playback my voice mail. So I think saying something like call voicemail, or listen to phone voicemail does the trick most of the time.

d) Playing music doesn't seem to understand when I say an album name and artist together .e.g. "play Counting Crows" works, and "play Recovering satellites" works, but not "play counting crows recovering satellites). Also at the moment I've got a bug where playing certain music, it says "playing xxx..." but then nothing plays, which is a bit annoying.

It's getting better though, and it's really useful. Especially replying to text messages is great.

iOS 7 first impressions

What I like about it;

- Lock screen with access to camera, notifications and control centre is excellent

- New control centre, is fab way of accessing quickly some certain commands e.g. turning on/off wifi, airport mode, discrete mode

- Notifications is awesome, works much better, the notification alerts/bars look much better, and it's better integrated. Only downside is the post to twitter and Facebook share widget has gone, which is annoying.

- Calendar app is really good, as is the new camera app and photos app

- The email app is improved, looks good, and has now got some (limited) smart inboxes

- The look of the new iOS is fresh and new and the animations are cool

- The apps that have been re-engineered for iOS 7 look really good

What I don't like so much / or problems I've had;

- Siri's voice - Siri now sounds very strange

- Weather not appearing in notification centre - this was fixed by turning location services on, from within restrictions

- Post to twitter and FB has been removed

- Search from siri is unfortunately going to Bing rather than Google, and it doesn't appear to be fixable at the moment

- Loading/updating apps very confusing - initially the icons were very confusing, but I now understand how this works

- Where have events gone in photos - thought I like the way photos are grouped together

- All day events not appearing under notification centre - haven't been able to figure this out yet