Expert Tips and Tutorials for Syncing with Google Calendar and Gmail

2018/01/02

How to test fake SD card

Test SD cards

Sandisk SD Card

SDHC (MicroSD or so called TF) cards had been pretty cheap lately, no matter you are trying famous brands like Kingston or Transcend, they are cheap, however, there are a lot of fake cards out there, some of them are just using some brands that you never heard of, or some of them are faking famous brands like kingston.

Fake SD cards symptons and problems

FAKE SD cards (counterfeit SD cards) usually come with large capacity like 32GB or 128GB, and sometimes they are cheaper, however, the capacity is not real, once you place more files in it, older files disappear or just become empty or wipded out.

Once you get one of these fake SD cards, your nightmare never ends, you spend hours and hours to find out what's wrong and finally you got the idea, maybe this SD card is a fake.

How to identify Fake SD cards

It's not easy to identify fake SD cards because the newly written files are usually valid, only older files becomes bad, so it's not easy to proof that a TF card is fake manually.

Free fake SD card testing software

Today we are going to introduce a nice little utility to test the SD card, it is done by filling the SD card with random digits dummy files, and them verify what had been written, the SD card is only good when all files passed the test.

** before you start, make sure your SD card is empty, so all space can be tested.

1. download the software H2TESTW from https://www.heise.de/download/product/h2testw-50539

2. installl and launch it

SD Card testing software

3. Click write and verify and wait.

2017/12/15

How do I sync Baïkal Server with Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016 & 2019?

Outlook with CardDAV sync Baïkal? with CalDAV sync Baïkal?

A German dude from my company was chatting about discontinued Google Calendar Synchronization service. He then migrated to a open-source Baikal CardDAV/CalDAV server (now this project is maintained by sabre.io). He is doing fine on his iPhone but he worried more about what to use for his Outlook?

It sounds interesting that everyone is searching for an alternative to Google Calendar Synchronization service. The following is a testdrive to see if EVO Collaborator for Outlook can handle Baïkal Server?

Within ECO, I simply input the following Baikal CardDAV url or Baikal CalDAV url and it went through Baikal autodiscovery.
https://<domain or ip>:<port>/baikal/
After entering username and password, I can now access Baikal CardDAV/CalDAV services.

I then passed this URL to my colleague and told him to try it with his own hand. The result came out fine as expected! That is really cool!

2017/12/13

How to sync Zimbra contacts and calendar with Outlook?

How do I import Zimbra calendar and contacts to outlook 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019?

Some of my friends are using Zimbra Network Edition and often compalin that the Zimbra Connector for Outlook ZCO only works with MAPI. I tried Zimbra Network Edition along with some connector softwares on the market. Amazingly, I found that EVO Collaborator for Outlook works! (not the ZCO which only works with paid version of zimbra) All I need to do is to correctly enter the server URL below Hostname (CardDAV/CalDAV) or webcal:// URL within ECO as the following:

https://<servername_or_server_ip>:443/

After fields within the profile have been properly filled out, calendar sync is a breeze. Not only Zimbra platform supports CardDAV and CalDAV, but also EVO Mail Server has native support on ECO smoothly.

2017/12/12

How to sync Google Calendar with Outlook 2016 & 2019?

How to synchronize Google calendar to Outlook 2016 & 2019?

On July 29 of 2015, the long awaited Windows 10 was released. Two months following that, Microsoft Outlook 2016 was released on Sept. 22 of 2015. Many of us are looking for good synchronization compatibility between Google Calendar (or shall I say CardDAV and CalDAV) and Outlook. Well, apparently, Microsoft let us down.

Microsoft may have its own reason not to blend in CardDAV and CalDAV. However, I think lots of users around the globe are looking for a solution of synchronizing their contact, calendar, and task items on Google, iCloud, Yahoo, Outlook.com and many more service of the kind with Outlook 2016.

Developers such as gSyncit and EVO Collaborator for Outlook have well prepared for the launch of Outlook 2016 in a Windows 10 environment. While gSyncit released its v4.0 last August, EVO Collaborator for Outlook took a whole year to consolidate itself with compatibility vs. various cloud and on-premises platforms. Yet, EVO has announced the official release of v2.0 to welcome Outlook 2016 with the same ease of use and simplicity of configuring profiles.

If you have not used ECO before, you may refer to my old posts of how to configure contacts, calendars and tasks from various source with Outlook since steps are basically the same and simple.

2018.01.05

2017/12/04

Outlook.com contacts not syncing with Outlook 2016 & 2019

outlook.com, formerly known as hotmail

Today I was asked about this question, "Outlook.com contacts not syncing with Outlook 2016", I knew that Outlook should automatically sync with outlook.com contacts once the account is added.

However in real world, this kind of problems happened a lot in Microsoft products, don't try to call Microsoft support, You may end up with spending several hours with some dude, explaining your issue with the software again and again. I know, been there, done that!

Resolving Outlook 2016 contacts not syncing with Outlook.com issue quickly

Since we don't have the time to explain with some dudes who don't have access to their R&D resources, why wasting time on that, just use something helpful instead.

We'd like to introduce you EVO Collaborator for Outlook. with this handy plugin, your outlook.com is just few minutes away from your Outlook 2016.

The setup is simple, I have written a tutorial for that before, please read sync outlook.com contacts and calendars with outlook here

2017/12/01

How to sync Bitrix24 calendars, contacts and tasks with Outlook?

My friend opened a small company and he was looking for a decent collaboration platform that comes with CRM. He found Bitrix24 is a nice solution for a starter like him since it has its own cross-platform applications or APPs for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Now, he is looking for a way to sync his contacts, calendars and tasks with his newly installed Outlook 2016 on his Windows 10 machines as well as other computers installing Outlook 2007, 2010 2013 or 2019 under Windows 7 or Windows 8 in company. I suggested him to try some CardDAV & CalDAV compatible Outlook connector software plug-ins on the market because Bitrix24 is compatible with both CardDAV and CalDAV protocols.

He found and installed several add-ins. However, he realized it is tough in finding server’s CardDAV URL and CalDAV URL. Not until he tried EVO Collaborator for Outlook, life was a lot easier because ECO is able to auto-detect the address book URL and calendar URL with a single mouse click.

He said it is quite easy. What he did is downloading ECO from its official website, installing the outlook add-in, entering the following information and clicking on TEST button to verify configuration. That is all:

Server URL:
According to Bitrix24’s support document, the URL should look like the URL in step 4.

With ECO’s server auto-detect feature, all you need to enter is:

<servername>.bitrix24.com
Your username and password

After the phone call, I actually tried out but I found that Bitrix24 only implements one-way synchronization from server to outlook for both address book and task. I did some research on Bitrix24’s forum and found that Bitrix24 made this one-way sync limitation https://www.bitrix24.de/support/forum/forum5/topic435/ on purpose for their own concern. So, this one-way sync situation is normal and not an issue.

2018.01.05

2017/11/09

Sync Outlook with Horde Groupware Server

In this year of 2020, more and more jobs require people to work from home due to COVID-19 pandamic. Syncing calendar, contact and task remotely from home in order to cope with colleagues has become an issue for those who have not done this before.

Horde Groupware Server is an popular open-source solution in United States and Europe Union. Many companies use them for address book, calendar and task sharing and synchronization.

A decent Exchange alternative

horde groupware

Since it is an open-source software, we can treat it as one of the alternatives to implement over Exchange Server or Office 365. Yet, it is well maintained that updates are released now and then.

CardDAV and CalDAV implementation

Horde Groupware serve is using CardDAV and CalDAV as backbone for contact, calendar and task. Users are able to connect to the server and synchronize data items across platforms such as Windows, Linux, iOS, OS X, BB, and Android...

What about Outlook 2016 & 2019?

Thanks to CardDAV and CalDAV webdav protocols, it is common to sync under all above platforms except Windows. For Outlook does not support these open-source standards, we need an add-in as bridge to interconnect the server and Outlook. Here, I found EVO Collaborator for Outlook handy and it works:

Download and install EVO Collaborator for Outlook from the official website
Open Outlook and go to Configure profile(s)
Click on a Profile #22 or any not-configured entry to the left.
Enter Horde Groupware server URL in Hostname (CardDAV/CalDAV) or webcal:// URL like this:

https://<Server_IP>/horde/rpc.php
Enter username and password. Then click on TEST, Apply and Quit.