Color-coding your inserted calendar data

Something our QA department has been doing for almost a year now has suddenly struck me as a really really good idea suitable for blogging.
Did you know it's possible to color-code your inserted calendar data?
What amazes me is how simple it is.
In the following example we've inserted several times (with a minimal data set) adding additional digits to our usual Category string:

All you need do on an individual basis is Manage the categories (seen here in OWA our client of choice on the Cloud).

You can also use Group Policy to propagate this for everyone if that helps you out. See Configure Categories in Outlook 2007.

More on Live @ Edu vs. On-Premises Exchange Speed Differential

		Live@EDU		On-Premises
Object Count		7675		7585
Total Time (seconds)		4193.25		597.01
Total Time (minutes)		69.89		9.95
Average Insertion time		0.55		0.08
Mode		0.41		0.05
Median		0.44		0.05
Max		9.29		3.5
Min		0.10		0.03

So our latest tests on inserting calendar items into Live@Edu vs. inserting into on-premises Exchange gives us a 7:1 time ratio.
That is: it is currently about seven times faster to migrate calendar data into your own Exchange server than it is to migrate it to Live@Edu. We've seen the same data set go far longer, but this is a good estimate to use in your planning purposes. Also yesterday another real-world site reported a figure similar to the one we found.
Just so you know.

Oracle Calendar to Exchange using UNIICAL / ICS formats

Yep. We have a version in-house we're using now -- so if any of you out there want to use ICS files to migrate to Exchange and are willing to be informed consent test sites drop us a line.
Oh yeah, same deal: we re-create meetings with responses and have put in tech to turn RDATE strings into real recurrence patterns (your Outlook client will thank you for that).

iPhone Alarm Glitch Greets New Year

The title says it all, though the New York Times has some more information.
Apple of course offers no explanation because as all Apple employees know, Apple can do no possible wrong.