Receiving SMS alerts for Google Calendar on Fido phones (for free)

To receive SMS alerts for Google Calendar events (either by default, or as selected) on Fido phones in Canada you need to jump through a hoop to avoid the $5/month SMS-to-Email gateway fee.

1. In Google Calendar, click Settings->Calendar Settings.
2. Click on the Mobile Setup tab.
3. Enter your appropriate Fido mobile phone information, but instead of selecting Fido for the Operator: field, choose Rogers. 

Google will now send you a confirmation SMS, and you do not need to pay the $5/month fee. When selecting the alert type for Google Calendar events you can select SMS to have it notify you of the event.

Making Google Docs pretty with user-supplied CSS

This tip comes via Merlin Mann, but since the tip was buried in a recent Macbreak Weekly podcast, I thought it would be helpful to surface here.

With Google Docs you can change a document look and feel with plain-Jane CSS editing. This is available from within Google Docs; with an open document go to Edit->Edit CSS. Inside the window that is displayed add any CSS rules you want to style your document with. The CSS doesn’t quite stay with the document if you export to Microsoft Word (it appears to make a best-guess), but internally to Google Docs (including exporting as PDF) the styling persists for the life of the document. Using Merlin Mann’s user-supplied CSS allows you to create really attractive Google Docs documents. Further, inside the CSS rules for font-family, you can supply your own system-only fonts within the font-stack, so you aren’t limited to Google Docs’ poor typefaces. Obviously, if you open the document on another machine that doesn’t have that local font available, it will not work and will instead default to the next item in the font stack.

You can download Merlin Mann’s user-supplied CSS here (includes specific instructions).

Quick note: Google changes China policy due to cyberattack

Daily news isn’t typical fare for the Textual Metanoia blog, but seeing Google completely reverse their decision to censor search results in China because of a cyberattack was just too relevant for my research to ignore. Evidently, Google was recently attacked in a sophisticated manner for the purpose of reaching Gmail accounts of dissidents. I don’t yet have sophisticated thoughts on the matter, but I see it as a kind of motivation occuring from external, invasive prompting. Saying that this kind of sabotage prompts a response isn’t in itself stirring revelation, but it does need repeating. Perhaps I’ll be able to post a follow-up with deeper analysis.