In the comments to last week's post on the caveats of using invitations with iCal, a reader pointed out John Maisey's iCal Reply Checker. As it turns out, that little utility delivers a set of useful options that should have been built into iCal all along.

I took a look at Audio Hijack Pro as a potential tool that is inexpensive and simple enough that even I can use it as a two-person audio podcast recording tool.

Making travel reservations online has come a long way, and some airlines now even include standard vCalendar files in their confirmation emails, so it takes just a few mouse clicks to add all flight-related information to your digital calendar. One such airlines is Lufthansa, who include vCalendar _invitations_. And that, I daresay, is a bad idea.

The free Griffin iTalkSync app makes the process of copying an iPhone (or 2nd generation iPod touch) iTalk audio recording simple and painless. I have lost yet another excuse for not having a regular podcast.

Courtesy of my MacBook and a Lufthansa ticket, I am typing away at this blog post en route from London to Munich, cruising along at some 30,000 feet. Which is just the right environment for writing about what to bring along when traveling with your geek equipment.

Microsoft Live Mesh is a free (so far) online storage service. Microsoft recently released a beta client for Mac OS X Leopard. I installed it on my MacBook and took it for a spin. You can find nearly a dozen screenshots illustrating the installation procedure and initial configuration.

Is Time Machine all I need you need to stay operational on a daily basis? I think it comes pretty close. But, I took a look at additional options to keep me and my Macs operational on a daily basis.

One member of the "Trio of Album Artwork Utilities for iTunes" that I wrote about three weeks ago was CoverScout. Because there were some minor "misunderstandings" between this software and iTunes 8, I was expecting an update that would fix these issues, and that update came out last Friday. Little did I know, however, that the developers were working on a new major release of the software, as well!

Back in the days when I used to write on the Apple Discussions Forums under the pseudonym of Mimi — I know, I know —, the Mac OS X Installer was a rather sorry mess. Today, it's a fine piece of updating goodness, save for one particular weakness: it does not automatically download and install updates on a freshly initialized...

Google wants me to sync my T-Mobile G1 Android-based smartphone with Google Contacts and Google Calendar. That's fine. But, I would also like this information synced to OS X's Address Book and iCal. It can't be that hard, can it?