Lucas Chan :: Weblog

In a nutshell, Microsoft makes it difficult. Fortunately it -can- be done.

Don’t bother with any of Outlook’s “export as text/cvs” functions, importing these files is nearly impossible. Exporting as vCard is conveniently not an option. “Save As” vCard is possible, but you can only do it for one contact at a time. Lame!

Here’s the easy way to get Outlook to save a whole bunch of vCards for you:

1. Open Outlook Contacts list.
2. Select all your contacts. This may be easiest in “Address Cards” view.
3. In the “Action” menu, select “Forward as vCard”.
4. Wait a moment while Outlook creates a new email with all of your contacts attached to it as vCards.
5. Send this email to yourself (be careful not to send it to anyone else, obviously).
6. Upon receipt of this email, save all the attachments to a location your mac can access, then import them into your Mac OS X Address Book. Yay!

Like I said, don’t bother with Outlook’s “export cvs/text” or “save as” functions. They’re extremely clunky and the amount of manual clean up you need to do is insane.

Next challenge… Calendar.

Update: Calendar instructions posted here.

The MacBook Pro is great.

Delivery was a few days ealier than expected which was a nice surprise. Nothing like a shiny new laptop to cheer you up.

It runs warm, but not hot. It’s been ages since I’ve used a laptop for an extended period of time, so I have no idea how warm these things normally get. It’s quite cold in my bedroom at the moment and the MacBook is warming up my legs quite nicely. I suspect it was shipped with one of the revised motherboards?

Mac OS X 10.4 is nice, but not that much different from 10.3. The Dashboard seems a little gimmicky. I’m not sure how much use I will get out of it. Although, I’m dangerously close to becoming addicted to the poker widget.

The in-built speakers aren’t embarassingly-lame like I’d anticipated. Will have no problems listening to music on them while nerding away at home. They’re far from studio quality obviously. :)

The MagSafe connector for the power supply; such a simple idea, but it’s totally saved my arse about 7 times already. Love it!

Happy (but now poor) customer.

I completely agree, Bring back the year 2000.

Web 2.0 is cool and all, but remember when this stuff was so hot right now?:

• Kvetch
• Remedi Project
• Fray (Fray Day!)
• Maggy Donea
• Glassdog
• The Carl
• Alexis Massie
• Regarding (OMG, so funny!)
• Cocky Bastard
• Kailber 10000
• High Five (Not the annoying kiddie band)
• CSOTD still had -some- credibility (actually, no it was long gone by then).
• And of course, Ben Brown. (How cool was uber? I mean, c’mon)

Oh the nostalgia.

Sentimental Mode: On.

I was very saddened today to see the title “Fray is on Hiatus” in Derek’s del.icio.us feed.

Since 1996 Fray was undoubtedly a pioneer in terms of personal story-telling, design and community on the web. Probably more than Derek realises. After 9 years it’s sad to see something that was once such a huge source of inspiration fall by the wayside. It seems to be happening a lot lately (the latest incarnation of Glassdog springs to mind).

But still, I regularly (and proudly) wear my Fray t-shirts and I feel very privileged to have seen the project born, bred and buried, and to have been a part of the yearly Fray Day events. Big props to Derek for all the work and effort he put in.

I like Google as much as the next guy, but seriously:

“When we first knew that my wife Carol is pregnant, I said, ‘we will name our child Google.’”