cal

Believe it or not, there are still parts of the U.S. that don't have access to high-speed Internet. But that's looking to change with the onset of TV white-space broadband technology.

The first commercial application of this type of service in the U.S. is coming to a rural area of Northern California called El Dorado County, or Gold Country. Internet provider Cal.net is partnering with network equipment provider Carlson to bring this region's residents something more than dial-up.

"Over 59,000 residents in our rural service area have had little or no quality … Read more

I share a lot of calendars with friends and family members using Apple's iCloud service. Every time someone adds an event to a shared calendar, I am bombarded with alerts across multiple iOS and OS X devices. It can get annoying. I don't so much mind the alerts on my iOS device, but I do mind them on OS X. Then recently, I stumbled upon the seemingly hidden preference to turn off shared calendar alerts in iCal. Here's where you can find it:

PALOMAR MOUNTAIN, Calif.--If you want to talk big scientific breakthroughs, how about quasars and supernovae?

Those are just two of the most important discoveries in the long, very storied history of the Palomar Observatory, a set of telescopes and other astronomical instruments located at the top of this mountain northeast of San Diego. And while the facility no longer holds quite the place in the astronomy community that it once had, for most of the second half of the 20th century, it was the undisputed champion of the world.

Topping the bill at Palomar is its groundbreaking 200-inch Hale Telescope. … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week people wrote in with questions about enabling screen zooming in accounts on OS X, bookmarks being duplicated by iCloud, CAC card readers not authenticating properly in Lion, and iCal showing up behind Dashboard widgets. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

NOTE: The "contact us" box on the MacFixIt page for e-mailing us your questions will hopefully be back … Read more

If you have thousands of photos on your iPhone, then you have likely spent more time than you care to scrolling through your Camera Roll, looking for that one photo you'd like to view or share.

To aid your search efforts, free app PhotoCal sorts your photos, putting them in a calendar view, which lets you quickly jump back to a specific day or week or month in the past.

When you first launch PhotoCal, the app asks to allow it to know your location. If you do, you will then be able to use the mapping feature in … Read more

Editor's note: This is the fourth story in an ongoing series profiling college graduates throughout the United States as they hunt for technology jobs. Click here for CNET's special report, "Wanted: A job in tech." In tomorrow's story, another in-demand grad student grapples with quality of life versus money.

When graduating senior Michelle Jiang visited a job fair in Florida last year, recruiters were chasing her down. Literally.

After dropping off a resume at the booth for Johnson Controls, a maker of heating, air-conditioning and power solutions, the next day the company's recruiter ran … Read more

TimeTable is a low-cost tool that works with iCal to help you track your hours, so you know exactly how much time you've spent on particular tasks--which can be especially handy for consultants and anyone else who tracks their time for billing purposes.

TimeTable has a simple, multipane interface that plugs right into your iCal data: You see your iCal calendars on the left, which you can select or deselect, and a list of events with date, duration, and title on the right (and you can add a dozen different columns in all, including notes and start and end … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer e-mailed questions from our readers. This week there were questions on maintaining iCal syncing on older versions of OS X, options to prevent batteries from expanding, using a hybrid drive in a Macbook Pro, and concerns about performance impacts of "Throttling Respawn" messages in the system console. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few answers here, we certainly welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: Maintaining iCal syncing on older Macs

MacFixIt reader "… Read more

Using iCal linked with Apple's online MobileMe service is one way to synchronize your calendars across devices and make them available online wherever you have an Internet connection. Despite the benefits of this, a number of users have recently run into a problem in which setting alarms on future events results in an access-forbidden error that seems to pop up randomly.

For people experiencing this problem, if you create an event seven or more days in the future and then create an alarm or reminder for this event that occurs seven or more days in advance, iCal issues the … Read more