We don't always say this, but thank you for reading the Google mobile blog.When we launched last year, we realized that we needed to better communicate what the Google mobile team was up to. Since then, we've been working hard to provide you with timely and useful information. We've also sought to keep our posts personal and engaging by introducing you to the Googlers behind our products, incorporating video, and enabling comments.While we're thrilled that our readership has continued to grow, we want to make the mobile blog even more useful and interesting to you in 2009. We invite you to tell us how we can improve. What else do you want to see on the mobile blog? Are our posts too long or too short? What phones do you most want to read about? Please fill out this quick survey to let us know what you think.In celebration of our 100th post, we're going to attempt to address one of the blog's most frequent comments: "What about MY phone?" This comment always seems to be tinged with such angst and passion. Trust us, as users we know your pain. But we also know the difficulty of developing software for disparate phones.We've put together a video that gives you a behind-the-scenes glimpse of our "Sky Lab" that contains over 800 phones for developing, demonstrating, and testing purposes. Although we have so many phones, we currently can't make all of our products work on all of these phones -- we face the same challenges that every developer faces in the mobile industry: we have to choose. So this video also reveals two very different approaches for choosing devices in this industry... If you have any better ideas, let us know! Of course, if you've been following our blog you may have noticed some patterns. We do like phones with good browsers and flat-rate data plans. Stay tuned to the Google mobile blog for more on this in the new year.Posted by Lawrence Chang, Product Marketing Manager, Google mobile team

The holidays are a time for giving, and Googlers across the globe have found some creative ways to give back to their communities this season. From raising money and crafting greeting cards to building gingerbread houses and giving blood, Googlers from east to west have been busy spreading good cheer. We've highlighted just a few of these efforts here, and we're looking forward to many more opportunities to give back in the new year.LondonThe UK engineering recruitment team started to plan its annual Secret Santa gift exchange. But as they began thinking about last year, they realized that hardly anyone on the team could remember what they'd received, let alone given. Instead of spending 10 pounds on gag gifts, they decided to use the money to make a difference. After discovering that a local children's hospital was in desperate need of gifts, they quickly raised enough money to buy a Nintendo Wii gaming console for one of the wards.Mexico CityIn the past, Google has held a "Doodle 4 Google" contest in the US, the UK, and Australia, inviting kids K-12 to submit a homepage doodle inspired by a particular theme. This year Mexico held its first such contest (theme: "the Mexico we want"). For each doodle submitted, Google donated to a non-profit that works to eradicate childhood malnutrition in Mexico. In total, more than 70,000 kilos (154,000 pounds) of food and aid were donated. Winner, Ana Karen Villagómez, was recently recognized in a ceremony in Mexico City; her doodle (pictured below) will appear on the Google homepage on January 6.Boston and beyondBoston Googlers delivered gifts to some very grateful students at a local school and spent the morning reading and playing with the children. The Chicago office held its first-ever holiday blood drive, donating 36 units of blood. And the Ann Arbor office held a "CANstruction" competition, creating sculptures out of canned food, personal items and baby items, which were all later donated.We hope that your holiday season is filled with plenty of time to slow down and reflect on what's important to you, and that you too feel inspired to find ways to give back to your own community in the new year.Posted by Eileen Duffy and Sarah Falck, AdWords Account Associates

By Mike Marchak, Google Developer TeamBefore looking back on this past year, we'd like to thank the developer community for your involvement and enthusiasm in 2008. Without you none of our accomplishments would've been possible and coming to work would not have been nearly as rewarding or exciting.In 2008 the developer team at Google made it significantly easier for developers to build increasingly sophisticated web apps. Looking back, some of the most notable events from the last year include the App Engine launch, GWT 1.5 launch, Chrome launch, AJAX Language API launch, AJAX Libraries API launch and the broad adoption of OpenSocial. We also worked hard to make it simple to integrate and extend Google applications through the launch of the You Tube API, Visualization API, Maps for Flash API, Finance API and Custom Search API. We were also really happy to participate in the Open Handset Alliance where we saw the announcement of the Android Developer Challenge winners, the Android 1.0 SDK launch, and the first app downloads in the Android Market. Our favorite part of 2008, however, was interacting with you at Google I/O and at Developer Days. These events allowed us to meet inspirational developers in 15 countries around the world who are building fantastic applications. In 2009, we look forward to building products to make the web better and that let you, the developer community, build better apps on the web. We are already excited about seeing you at events next year.Happy Holidays from the Google Developer Team.

This provides an excellent way of managing your Google calendar from your Thunderbird email client.
 
Install Lightning in Thunderbird - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2313
 
Install Provider for Google Calendar in Thunderbird - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/sunbird/addon/4631
 
To set up CalDAV support for Google Calendar in Mozilla Thunderbird, follow these steps:

1. Open the Thunderbird application and select File > New Calendar.
2. Select On the Network and click Next.
3. Select the CalDAV format option.
4. In the Location field, enter [ https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/ [ your Google Calendar email address ] /events ] and click Next.
   For example, if the email address used to access your Google Calendar is calendarfriend@gmail.com, the Location field should contain https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/calendarfriend@gmail.com/events
   Be sure to use https in your URL, as an http address will not work.
5. Enter a name and select a color for your calendar.
6. In the pop-up screen, enter the following information:
   Username: This is the complete email address you use with Google Calendar (including the part after the @ sign). If you're using Google Apps, be sure to enter your Google Apps email address.
   Password: This is the password you use to sign in to Google Calendar
7. Click OK.

Your Google Calendar will now appear in the Calendar tab of Mozilla Thunderbird, and Thunderbird will sync any changes to and from Google Calendar.