Working in the ad industry for a while, one common pet peeve of creatives is the amount of working files, source files and fonts that are scattered all over their workstation. Pulling out archived files of past work will usually result in hair pulling and much frustration, trying to locate certain images.

When I saw this note in TUAW about the release of the beta version of Flow from Gridiron Software, I think those issues can be put to rest.

Flow is the world’s first Visual Workflow Manager, built from the ground up to keep creative professionals streamlined and informed. Flow gives you a total understanding of your project, visually and intuitively. In one simple interface, you’ll see all your project files, how they’re related to each other, and where they’re located–on a local drive, on a network volume, even on a DVD you burned a few months ago.

Flow works its magic via its Real-Time Asset Tracking that runs in the background and tracks your actions while you work on all major creative and Office productivity applications and then connect the various assets and their relationships to the projects you are working on, and representing them in a visual workflow map.

Besides keeping track of your assets and version control, there is also time tracking to track the time spent, packaging to help you prepare the files to send to your printer or your client and also tagging and search functions.

With its features sounding like the promise land for many disorganized creative professionals, Flow has the potential to allow creative professionals to focus on what they do best – being creative – and keeping the effort on files and assets management to a minimum.

Flow is available for US$249 for a single license with the options for discounts for those in Education or opting for Volume purchase. The beta version is also available for downloading and only requires a quick registration.

Google released a new tool called Calaboration that simplifies the work to add your Google Calendars into iCal into a few simple steps.

1. Download the Calaboration setup tool from Google Code
2. Run the app and key-in your email and password to log into Google
3. Once signed in, you will see the calendars that is in your Google Calendar, simply select those you want to add into iCal and click the “Add to iCal” button
   • You’ll need ownership privileges before the calendars can be added

In a few moments, when you open your iCal, you will find those selected Google Calendars appearing on the left of your iCal. To find out more information, click on Preference and select Accounts. There you can find the various Google Calendars’ information.

Pretty easy to setup.

Syncing is pretty fast. Entries made in iCal is immediately sent to the cloud and appears in Google Calendar. Entries made in Google Calendar will also appear in iCal upon refreshing, whether automatically depending on the refresh rates set in Preference->Accounts, or done manually.

One issue when adding entries to the Shared calendar is you have to select the correct calendar on the left hand sidebar you are syncing to Google before you can create the entry in the calendar. No options to select other Shared calendars. Likewise, if you are selecting a native iCal calendar, you cannot add entries to the Shared calendars. This should be easily fixed…

One other thing I hope to be able to do now, is to sync a calendar from iCal to Google Calendar, including the ability to add/edit items while in Google Calendar. You can add your iCal calendar to Google Calendar if you publish it to MobileMe or your own server but it is only a read-only calendar.

When that happens, the cycle is complete!