Longtime readers of this blog will know that I have a focus on, and a personal interest in, PIM (personal information management). And while I've made a lot of progress the last couple of years in getting my PIM solution defined, the one missing piece has always been that I was unable to create new calendar entries that had alerts (reminders), using my preferred alerting method (which is a series of emails from Google Calendar), except by using the "full" (desktop) version of the Google Calendar web page.
I couldn't (get entries with preferred reminders) in the iPhone calendar app. I couldn't in Microsoft Outlook on the Windows desktop. I couldn't in the mobile Google calendar page.
But let me summarize my PIM solution so that you have the context. It's a triangle with 3 corners.
First corner: Outlook runs on the desktop for calendar, contacts, and email when I am there. It also provides another key component - backup of the cloud. Many folks are learning the rashness of not keeping a local copy of what is in the cloud. The company goes under, or the servers go down, or your account is compromised or deleted or locked out, and you are done. But not if you have a local backup.
Second corner: Google is my current cloud PIM solution for calendar, contacts, and email. They have highly functional and efficient web-based clients to fill every gap. They have mature API's and robust standards support.
Third corner: iPhone/iPad is my mobile client of choice. Apple has a unique focus on the user. They understand the toaster paradigm (people don't want to configure drivers, manage updates, and reboot their toaster, they just want to push a button and make toast). Apple's products, for the most part, strive to get out of the way and let you do what you came to do.
I should note here that I do not try to add iCloud as another cloud provider. It might be possible, but it doesn't make sense to make things more complicated than necessary. I do think the interesting thing with iCloud is it is vertical integration (it's for Apple products) and thus will always tend to lead to insularity rather than homogeneity, which goes against the whole point of the cloud in my opinion. Very interesting to me.
The coolest part of the triangle is getting them all syncing back and forth. That means a change on any one is replicated on both the other corners. And this has to be "non-rickety" - adding a phone number to a contact on one platform can't cause the email address to go away on another.
I actually bought a product to take care of syncing Google to Outlook, after a long period of research and trial and error. I'd prefer something from Google or Microsoft, but alas. The product I bought is gSyncit (http://www.fieldstonsoftware.com/software/gsyncit3 ).
I use a host of connections on the iPhone to sync back and forth with Google. In fact I use a different one for each of mail, calendar, and contacts. I use "Exchange” account for contacts, “Other” (Pop/Smtp) for email, and the “Gmail” account for Calendars. Actually it was moving to that last one that is part of the final fix. More on that in a minute.
Note in my diagram that the last connecting line (between Outlook and the iPhone) is grayed out. I am not syncing these two because Google takes care of that. I could do a sync with either iTunes or with iCloud directly between them, but I don’t see the benefit at this point.
Some other miscellaneous parts of my PIM solution follow:
| TYPE | SOLUTION | COMMENTS |
| Notes | Evernote | The notes are in their cloud, and Evernote has desktop, iOS, and web clients which all sync with their cloud. |
| Notes | OneNote | Second choice, but I'm evaluating it because it is more accepted in business and now has an iOS client and can sync to the MS cloud Skydrive. |
| Tasks | Toodledo | Tasks on their website, and there is a web client and iOS clients. Prefer the organization over Remember The Milk. I'm not currently syncing tasks back to the desktop, but I just read that gSyncIt has expanded to Toodledo (and Evernote and a mess of others). |
| Passwords/Bookmarks | eWallet | No cloud yet, but they have wifi sync between the desktop and iOS clients, very secure, supports many types of information. |
| Passwords/Bookmarks | Lastpass/Xmarks | For bookmarks and passwords associated with websites, this can be more easy to use on the desktop, because they integrate with the desktop browser. Not as easy to use on iOS, but they do have apps. |
| Music | Zune | I have Zunes still and use Zune software and the subscription service. |
| Podcasts | Zune | |
| TV/Movies | misc | I use Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and iTunes for TV and Movies. There’s still a lot of innovation to come in this category. |
| Pictures/Videos | na | I keep all of these local, and back them up. I use explorer to get them off the iPhone. I don’t sync them around. |
| Backup | iDrive | offsite file backup |
Ok, finally on to the topic in the title. How did I finally discover a way to create calendar entries with my preferred email reminders on something other than the desktop version of Google calendar?
Like I said above, the first key is switch from whatever iPhone account you are using for Google calendars (probably Exchange) and use Google Sync (listed as “GMAIL!” in add accounts). Google Sync will use your default reminders set in Google calendar if you don’t add them in iPhone. This was a revelation. I found out about it here - http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/mobile/sxF0iQs7bR4 . As noted in that forum though, this breaks multiple calendars, which is a problem as that is how I follow the rest of the family. They point you to the following URL http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/ with some instructions - http://www.knowliz.com/2009/02/how-to-sync-multiple-calendars-with.html but that didn’t work for me, my other calendars never showed up. Then finally I found - http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=151674&topic=13950&ctx=topic which lead me to https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect . I was able to successfully add my other calendars there, and have them show up on my iPhone.
So finally, after literally years, my PIM search is done. Only remaining question is, how long with this fragile peace last?
I finally got around to trying this myself, and it works pretty good.
The library site is nowhere near as good as Amazon’s for searching, browsing, or choosing books. But it works.
In fact you get thrown to Amazon’s site at least once during the “checkout” process (which requires no money of course).
But I can say I’ve tried it, and I can show others how to use it now.
I’d like to think I could buy less e-books, because I can get books from the library now on my Kindle, and I’m not particularly interested in reading things twice. But the website has to get better first, and I have some concerns around availability – from the little I could tell it looked like a lot of the books were out – supply exceeding demand at least during the honeymoon period here. Time will tell.
One of my favorite topics is PIM (personal information management I think) – contacts and calendar basically. Sometimes email and notes and tasks are included. I struggle with remembering things and staying organized like many people, thus the interest.
I’ve written posts before on keeping iOS products in sync with desktop and web PIM tools, the challenges of cross-platform, etc. Challenges there had settled down lately with the maturity of Google’s products, and the ubiquity of Exchange sync.
Now iCloud comes roaring into town, packing heat and looking to have a showdown. This is actually my biggest “head-scratcher” with iOS5 right now. How do I either make them play nice, or choose between them? There’s still lots of “dorking” to be tried, but so far it looks like playing nice is not a realistic option.
I’m not alone in this conundrum. Here’s a small sampling of other people who are asking the same questions:
I read a new term today that I definitely want to add to my vocab (ulary). I think it’s probably more grammatical to write it non-glance-able though. In terms of mobile computing it wraps up a very important concept in a petite package. It’s buried in the following link-
http://www.tested.com/news/an-android-advocates-perspective-on-apple-ios-5/2430/
The idea is that computing while you are mobile is different from computing at your desk. Your can’t afford to focus. The resources are constrained. Therefore there are new UI concerns that need to be addressed to provide a safe, efficient, pleasing experience. Stuff’s gotta be glance-able man!
Ok, you’ve gone to the trouble of sniffing my browser to see I’m coming from a smartphone. You’ve spent good money building a mobile site or experience separate from your full web site. That’s great and I commend you. However, if what I need isn’t present in the feature set or content of the mobile view, and you don’t provide a way for me to view your full site, then all that money was wasted, sorry. Take a look at Google or Facebook (which allow you to switch back and forth).
http://tv.spb.com
http://www.spb.com/pocketpc-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/android-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/iphone-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/blackberry-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/symbian-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/webos-software/tv/
As a long-time Windows Mobile fan I’m familiar with SPB. They were one of two or three suites of software that really made Windows Mobile useful.
They created this SPB TV for Windows Mobile about the time that I transitioned away to the iPhone, so I never did more than play with it a little. I remember being unimpressed with the channel selection.
However they have parlayed this into something pretty amazing, a cross-platform mobile IPTV solution, if I understand things right.
They have Windows Mobile, iPhone (/iPad), Android, Blackberry, WebOS, and Symbian clients! There’s a WAP version available for other mobile platforms. They have 2 million users now, and over 150 channels.
Even though the clients appear to be free on most platforms, you only get a couple of channels to try out. There’s actually a roughly $10 charge as best I can tell, to get full functionality and content. However there are no recurring subscription fees, instead there are ads.
I’m just getting started in trying it out, so I can’t comment much on quality yet. On Android over wifi I only seem to get a minute or two before the video dies or buffers, but that may not be an app problem.
As I understand they are working on carrier agreements as well, which could play heavily into the long-term viability of the solution.
Neuvasync (http://nuevasync.com , http://blog.nuevasync.com), which I have been recommending for years for people who want to sync their iPhones and other smart phones to Google PIM services (contacts and calendar basically), has decided to stop offering a free version of their services, if I read this right - http://blog.nuevasync.com/blog/nuevasync/entry/new_services .
As Google offers the same syncing for free, I’m afraid most people, me included, will choose to move to the Google version. Well thanks for the memories..
The 3-horse smartphone race is on. Apple iPhone, Google Android, and Windows Phone are duking it out for market share and mindshare. They each are amazing advances in their own way, and have plenty of features in common and differentiators as well.
One of the cool features of the latest generation of smartphones that has really resonated with people because of it’s utility and ease of use, is backend cloud integration, which has practically replaced the old clunky desktop pim (personal information management – contacts/calendar/tasks) sync functionality. Apple has the MobileMe platform, Google has all their cloud web services that have blossomed from Gmail, and Microsoft has their Live services.
What is it going to take to pull ahead in the next leg of the race? Something big. As I mentioned this vertical cloud integration to backend web services is something big. They all have it. And each one also allows a certain amount of limited capability for other vendors’ services as well. For instance I don’t have MobileMe, and instead use Nuevasync to sync contacts and calendars with Google’s backend over IMAP and Exchange.
But what none of them have, is great integration no matter what the backend platform. So if you are a Google services customer, but you want to use Windows phone, you are penalized with reduced functionality and convenience. If you are a MobileMe customer who wants to try an Android phone, you’re not going to get the full experience. And you can get your Live mail on the iPhone, but you’re going to have pay a 3rd party or hack to get your contacts or calendar.
Now we can easily guess why these 3 companies would want to tie smartphone users to their web pim offerings. These backend services are very sticky. If you got Hotmail a decade ago, you’re probably still using it, and naturally your contacts and calendar ended up in Live. Gmail customers use Google Contacts and Calendar, and Reader, etc. MobileMe has plenty of loyal diehard fans, even though Apple charges $100/yr for what the other services give away. People change cell companies all the time, as evidenced by the “churn” statistics we always hear about. But if these companies can get us hooked onto their services, we are much more likely to stay with their phone platform, because of the extra integration features.
I think the next leader though, is going to have to be welcoming to customers of other web services, rather than penalizing. In the same way as Google has garnered massive gains lately by supporting multiple carriers and multiple equipment vendors, the big 3 need to equally support multiple backend services well. Or perhaps even offer ala carte – email from Hotmail, contacts from Google, calendar from MobileMe, etc.
(As a footnote I’d like to pre-respond to the guaranteed-to-come accusation that I’ve mistakenly left Palm or Blackberry or Symbian out of the race. Yes it’s just my opinion, and I’ll be glad to change it when I feel it’s warranted.)
I received the Energizer XP8000 battery from Woot today, that I ordered around 8/11, specifically because it is supposed to charge the iPad as well, which takes double the standard iPhone charge - 2 Amps at 5 Volts = 10 Watts. The iPhone takes 1 Amp at 5 Volts = 5 Watts, and your standard USB port puts out .5 Amps at 5 Volts = 2.5 Watts, if I have my facts straight.
Well there was a little bag for the iPad adapter (PC007), and some instructions inside, but no adapter tip. So either somebody stole it, or Energizer never put it in.
What makes this worse is I went to the Energizer site, where I am supposed to get two free tips a year with registration, registered, searched for the iPad tip, could see it in the list, but was unable to order it. There’s no information on why, if they are out of stock or if the tip catches on fire or what. A Google search didn’t turn up any more info.
I’ll keep the device, because I can use it for cell phones and netbooks, etc., but what a bad experience. Hopefully some day I will get the right tip, though I can tell it’s going to involve pain and suffering. I will think twice about doing business with either of these companies again.
Oh this bug drives me crazy!! I can’t believe they haven’t fixed this yet, it’s been years!
When you create a new calendar item from the mobile web client, it doesn’t create any of your default reminders with it, so you get no notice of the event.
Furthermore, all the syncing services also seem to skip the reminders, or set a pop-up reminder, or just keep their own reminder. I am thinking here of the iPhone calendar and syncing via Nuevasync (imap/Exchange) and desktop Outlook syncing over gSyncIt, though the last time I checked the same was true of the various Microsoft and Google syncing utilities as well.
I should note in Google’s defense that the capability is available via the API.
I note that the iPad can switch between mobile and desktop versions of the web client, so that is an additional way to create appointments besides via a desktop browser, and still get default reminders.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/murphys_law_downloading_att_koolaid_25_month
A couple of days ago I commented on how AT&T’s announced changes to data plans were a total violation of customer trust ( http://iponderus.com/2010/06/at-bait-and-switch-on-ipad-data-plan.html ) because the iPad was promised and promoted with a certain attractive data plan which they are dropping after the iPad has been out only a month. What they are doing should be illegal under some kind of deceptive advertising law.
Anyhow today I’ll try to hold it down on that topic long enough to mention the nightmare the rest of the AT&T data plan changes are going to bring to us. I can’t believe so many folks are congratulating AT&T on saving us $5/month! People, when has AT&T ever cared about your wallet?? Well this is about your wallet for sure, but it’s about making it lighter, not heavier! Read the linked column from MaximumPC. The iPad is a content consumer. It is going to eat data like no one has ever seen. Sure you are using 200mb/month today. That’s for checking your email. Wanna take a guess how much data you’ll be using next year watching hi-def movies?
This move is nothing more or less than the beginning of an industry-wide shift to tiered data plans, which have been threatened and telegraphed for several years now. The owners of the data pipes have no intention of letting content owners get rich while they play the livery-man. They are going to soak us royally for that rich content that is coming. Note how much each extra Gig is. That’s what’s known as a stupid-tax.
http://www.daveswebsite.com/gsyncit_critical.shtml
Well I guess I know how I lost both my calendar and contact data now..
This is of course a very real concern, because I use synching to keep Google (the backend cloud), Outlook (my backup), and the iPhone (my user interface) all current. A problem with just one piece wipes out all three in roughly one minute. Luckily I had some backups of those folders in Outlook. And I will start making more! I guess the answer would be to get Outlook more into a backup mode than a synching mode, where I am getting a separate snapshot once a day or similar.
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/02/kindle-more-than-an-ebook-reader-its-a-development-platform.html
Thinking about developing a Kindle app, say 20 seconds after thinking about developing an iPad app, is kind of disheartening. The Kindle makes a great book reader, and was the hottest item in tablet town, however all that changed with the iPad announcement.
The thought of an app on the grayscale screen, with the incredibly slow and clunky controls, is frustrating. But I just noticed that it appears in the sdk that your custom apps might have the ability to use the free “Whisper-net” (cellular data connection). That is attractive. Some kind of lightweight forms-driven database client app, with great free connectivity back to a central server, with really good battery life, and that could finally make the hardware keyboard look like more than a mistake, that really has a value proposition.
It’s still not an iPad-killer, but this angle might provide the Kindle a second vector of business and interest and ROI in addition to their lead in the book reader business. They’re going to need it as the book prices get equalized and the iPad onslaught gets underway.
After research, I’ve purchased two apps for this year’s trip to Disney World.
One is eTicket, for the iPhone, which has been created by two of the key Disney World websites, WDWInfo and Disboards.
The other is “Walt Disney World Maps Box Set UPinPoint LLC” for Android, which basically is just a box set of the UPinPoint maps I already have for the iPhone. They are great, lots of info and GPS enabled, very similar to the handout you get at the gate of each park, but with a little dot to show where you are, and lots of pop-up info.
I still have some more research to do on mobile websites, but here is one I expect to depend on a lot:
Touring Plans - Lines
http://m.touringplans.com
Something I wrote to one of my Facebook friends..
Rewind to before Microsoft defined personal computers and imagine a computer modeled on the toaster or the microwave or the tv (but not the vcr), a device that got out of your way and let you do what you got it for. You push one button to turn it on and instantly you're surfing the internet. No booting, no hourglass. You flick your finger and you are reading your email, like changing the channel. No loading drivers, hiccupped virus updates, hours lost trying to get your sound card or printer working so you can just type a letter or play a song. Another flick and you are watching a movie. This device is a disruptive sea-change, that has the potential to reset what we think of as a computer, and pown the whole decade. The price point is half of what was expected. The battery life is twice the expected. They built their own cpu.
Also note the timing - people are in the process of moving their computing experience online and mobile, as proved by the success of Facebook, the iPhone, and the netbook (which only has enough power to run browser-based apps). Note the branching out and away from the desktop pc, with the rise of laptops, smartphones, and readers. How about the overwhelming importance of media in consumer computing - books, music, pictures, movies, rather than spreadsheets and word-processing. Apple has nailed a convergence of vectors driven by the rise of the prevalence of the Internet in computing. The Internet is the computer, and that thing in your hand, be it kvm (keyboard video mouse), laptop, smartphone, or tablet; is no longer your computer, it's just the way you communicate with your world-wide-web, which by the way, resembles Google more and more every day.
You are going to want one of these.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/palm-intros-mobile-hotspot-app-guaranteed-to-make-your-router-j/
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/01/20/review-palm-mobile-hotspot-pre-pixi-plus/
Wow another game-changer roaring down the mobile phone lane! The Palm PRE will be able to act like a MIFI – offering it’s 3G broadband to 5 clients over Wifi! All of a sudden I am interested in this also-ran. Verizon has signed on for this – with the usual high fee and 5G cap, but with clear guidance on what overage costs for once.
https://www.google.com/phone/choose?locale=en_US&s7e=
With the advent of the Nexus, Google now sells it’s own (and other’s) cellphones from it’s website.
I enjoy listening to Leo LaPorte’s tech podcasts (http://twit.tv). With his growth the last year he is looking to expand beyond iTunes distribution, and also make the leap from audio to video (not to mention making the leap from the internet to your TV via the Roku player).
So he has teamed up with MediaFly (http://mediafly.com) to distribute for him. The hows and whys are more complicated than I want to get into here.
I used to listen to the podcasts in the Zune software on my laptop when home, and on my Zune player when out (via the generic RSS feed functionality built into Zune).
Now there are MediaFly “apps” for both the iPhone and the Droid for “accessing” (streaming/downloading) the podcasts. I am using them both, and I can’t help comparing and contrasting.
Let me cut to the chase.. they both are very young, but right now the Droid app is more useful to me. Let me soften that by saying I realize how fortunate we are to be living in an age when we see advances like this – streaming and downloading mobile audio and video without having to sync. MediaFly is getting this attention because they are breaking ground, and we are the winners either way.
Both apps have drawbacks around the GUI, with the iPhone one being very busy-looking, with mystery pauses in navigation, and controls that don’t act like standard iPhone controls.
The Droid app is very touchy – over and over I lose where I am or exit the app altogether just in handling the cell phone normally.
There are a couple of issues they have in common – for instance the inability to move around in the media. I often want to back up 30 seconds or one minute in an hour-long audio or video, and that is impossible with these clients, where the Zune made it dead-simple. They need to add buttons to the slider already present. Also, if you exit the clients, most likely they will not remember the media you were playing, where you were in it, etc.
Now for my reasons for preferring the Android client at the moment - (1) Twit video – android app has it, iPhone app does not, and (2)the GUI is a little cleaner.
Actually to really make this fair I should download the full beta Android client, because the one I have is just for the Twit network of shows.
MediaFly - http://mediafly.com/
iPhone app - http://www.mediafly.com/DigitalLifestyle#SelectedDevice
Android app - http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-mediafly-android-video-twit-zzBt.aspx
