Sync Nirvana has been achieved

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?

Travel Time

One thing I do with my calendar, that I don’t see anyone else do, is I include travel time. This actually makes calendaring very complicated, because it’s not a native part of the various calendar applications.

For instance, if Mr. Everyman has a doctor’s appointment at 11:30am, he probably make a calendar entry “DOCTOR” starting 11:30, ending at noon or 12:30, depending on the circumstances.

For me that calendar entry would start at 10:30am, and end at 1:30 or 2pm, and be labeled, “DOCTOR 11:30”. This gives me an hour travel window on each side, and also takes into account an involved visit or perhaps a side trip to get a prescription filled.

I feel doing it this way is necessary, so that I can see possible conflicts, without diving into the details of every appointment. Just from the blocks of time I can tell instantly.

Where this often creates a problem, is that the wonderful advanced wizards built into our calendaring programs want to helpfully pull any date-like values from the text and create/adjust the start time based on them. So I put start time at 10:30, and then write “doctor 11:30” and the wizard changes the start time on me. It is possible to get around this usually by formatting the time in the text strange enough for the wizard to not recognize it. But what a pain.

Another shortcoming is that I can’t tell easily when an appointment actually does start. Talk about wanting to have my cake and eat it too.. This method also matches up poorly when I sync or import other calendars, which of course don’t abide by such a convention, or when others want to access my calendar, and can’t figure it out.

I’m not expecting any solutions to this dilemma, I just wanted to point it out, as I’m usually campaigning for simplifying these global PIM tools so that we can have better standardization, but here I am looking for a whole new layer of fields. Classic!

iOS5 tips – iCloud sync vs Google sync

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:

• http://iphonehelp.in/2011/10/14/icloud-doesnt-work-with-google-sync/
• http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=0610650f9bcb357f&hl=en
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/apple-iphone-ios-5-icloud-problems-decline-after-initial-stumbles/2011/10/14/gIQAxa2XkL_story.html
• http://www.ausbt.com.au/icloud-for-business-travellers-your-essential-guide
• http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/icloud-explained-things-to-consider-before-embracing-the-cloud/
• http://daggle.com/outlook-icloud-google-calendar-sync-2748
• http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1168685.html
• http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1247881.html
• http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1181601.html

RIP Neuvasync

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..

Apple, Google, Microsoft leverage vertical mobile-cloud integration

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.)

Google Calendar mobile clients don’t set default reminders

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.

Quick fix for iPhone duplicate contacts with Nuevasync

If like me you are crazy enough to sync Outlook to Google and Google to the iPhone, you may have found yourself with duplicate contacts on the iPhone (but not in Gmail or in Outlook) after the 3.0 software update. After a lot of agonizing (about deleting contacts and then having that ripple to the other services) I finally turned off contact synch for Nuevasync in the iPhone settings, which wiped out the iPhone contacts. Then I re-enabled it, and I ended up with just a single set of contacts, yeah! Please note that I did of course backup Outlook just in case, and so should you as well…

Update to Evernote problem

Update: I did some perusing of the Evernote forum (for example http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=8694&p=33366&hilit=plain+text&sid=cbb2da7fe3c575e3cfa863943d1013b9 ) and it turns out the problem I described in my last post ( http://iponderus.com/2009/02/windows-7-and-evernote-problem.html ) is in Evernote, not Windows 7.

Specifically plain text (as pasted from Notepad) now is pasted by default as "Plain space formatted text" rather than "Plain Text" as a response to complaints from people working with source code and the like.

The work-around for now, is to use Ctrl-Shift-V (rather than Ctrl-V) to paste, which is the keyboard shortcut for "Paste Special" so that you can choose "Plain Text".

Hopefully Evernote will fix this soon.

iPhone Calendar Alerts and Synching

Ok some weird behavior has come up in reference to round-robin syncing between Google, Outlook, and the iPhone (Outlook <-> Google over gSyncIt and Google <-> iPhone over Nuevasync). The problem is that calender event reminders (also called alerts) are lost. Even the parts I can get working have hard caveats - for instance the iPhone 3G has an upper limit of two days, whereas I prefer two weeks for Birthdays.

What I have decided to do after testing out many scenarios, is to leave all calendar event reminders blank by default. This is because it turns out that empty alerts cause Google calendar to use the default alerting mechanism (set in properties) - which I have set to an email one week beforehand. The nice thing about the email is I tend to miss the iPhone alerts because they are so minimal, and the Outlook alerts just pile up and bug me. This is a nice middleground - emails I can respond to when I feel like it, but am unlikely to miss.

Now, for any events I create less than one week before their appointment date/time, I will put in a reminder of two days (or less). I think more testing will be required to get this working reliably - but I think we are on the way to a workable solution.

No more touching the phone to the desktop

So as I prepare for the imminent arrival of the iPhone (what you thought I was kidding?), I am taking the opportunity to re-evaluate my requirements in a pdaphone and how I can torque the iphone to deliver them. Speaking of pdaphone is anyone besides me ready to just call it a mobile computer yet and be done with it?

First getting back to basics - PIM - email, calendar, contacts. My updated requirement is strict and steep - no more touching the phone to the desktop. The data will live in the cloud, my complaints about privacy not withstanding. The phone and desktop are merely views (with timely caching) into that data (and additionally the desktop will back up the data). I expected the solutions for this to be fully baked a year ago, but we are still playing with half a deck honestly. After evaluating all the competition I have decided to back a horse named Nuevasync, http://www.nuevasync.com . They are the only ones to deliver OTA (over the air) syncing between Google and iPhone 3G for contacts and calendar today. Interestingly rather than SyncML they are using Exchange, thus requiring no phone software install. There are lots of tools for syncing Google to Outlook on the laptop (my backup solution and my desktop viewer).

Second is the extension to PIM - notes and passwords. Evernote ( http://www.evernote.com ) and eWallet ( http://www.iliumsoft.com/site/ew/ewallet.php ) win this category (thanks Bob!). One major bonus is eWallet, Evernote, and Nuevasync all work with Windows Mobile in addition to iPhone. So I can migrate and try them out today, and make a seamless transition to the iPhone shortly. Tasks is still up in the air, thanks to my dependence on and sensitivity to GTD. Basically it will be a lot of trial and error completely focused on eliminating friction, which is a fruitless task but oh well. I have looked at some of the junk to-do apps on the iPhone, and spent some time thinking about Remember-The-Milk, which has an iphone client and a lot of APIs. But it is not a perfect fit. I wish I had time to finish my home-made solution.

I use Google Reader for RSS feed reading, and there is a fine iPhone web client for that. Podcasts were going to be a problem as I don't want to have to sync with desktop iTunes to get them, but just today Apple released 2.2 with OTA podcast download support yeah! I already use a mobile website for the Bible ( http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile ) so that should look even better on the bigger screen. As best as I can understand without actually trying it, Blogger will allow me to post including pictures from mobile basically via emails, which is fine for now.

Honestly everything else is gravy. Music, movies, games, great app-store apps for television management and remote mousing, etc. The big plus is Google Earth/Maps of course.

Some future post should really dive into the thorny tangle of accessing my desktop (data and remote control) from the (remote) iphone.

Evernote offers API

http://blog.evernote.com/2008/10/01/evernote-launches-api/http://www.evernote.com/about/developer/

Driven by what I would call a competitive imperative ("everybody's doing it"), Evernote has opened up it's online note-taking platform to programmatic access. This is great news, and they are to be lauded for doing it. I will be looking at it closely, though I am still put off by the lack of encryption on the server-side data (you can keep data client-side, and use a 3rd party tool to encrypt that). I am a big proponent of Evernote, have followed their progress for years, done some beta-testing, and depended on their product every day for my "brain-dump".

Dictate to Evernote

http://lifehacker.com/373815/jott-your-way-to-evernote-bliss

So here is a way to dictate (speak) your notes, reminders, whatever, into your cell phone, and have them end up in your note-taking application (Evernote) automatically, for free. Wow.

Evernote 3 beta now can do local databases

http://www.evernote.com/about/support/release_notes/

I have been holding back a bit from the new Evernote (and still using 2), because it kept everything in the cloud. But now that it can create local databases also, I will be much more willing to move to it. Now I can have "notebooks" in both places - general notes in the cloud, which will be cool, and private stuff on my pc in an encrypted notebook, where it belongs. Good show Evernote team!

EverNote is getting ready to release a new version

http://preview.evernote.com/

They seem to be making a move to the web for the datastore, which gives me privacy heartburn. Not apparent if there will even be a choice for the current thick client backend.

Outlook connector for Live and Hotmail accounts

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx

I have been pulling Hotmail into Outlook for years, and honestly it has been hard to keep up with all the changes they make to that particular connection. Here is the most current. I actually had Hotmail synching ok to Outlook without it, but was unable to add new accounts including my new LIVE email account.

Evernote for Windows Mobile

http://www.evernote.com/products/evernote/technology_preview/

Finally! After literally years of waiting (for me and others) Evernote has heard our whining and complaining and made some strides on getting a PocketPC and Smartphone version of Evernote out. It's not even a beta, but at this point we're just happy to see anything! Way to go EverNote!

Google calendar synching roundup

http://www.goosync.com/

http://rareedge.com/gmobilesync/

https://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=697660

http://www.scheduleworld.com/tg/cal/day.jsp

http://www.snoopsoft.com/webcal/default.asp

http://www.calgoo.com/

http://syncmycal.blogspot.com/
http://www.syncmycal.com/

http://www.companionlink.com/products/companionlinkforgoogle.html

http://code.google.com/p/pocketgcal/?

http://oggsync.com/

http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/

http://www.plaxo.com/info

Ugh, this is some list! As best as I can tell none of them is perfect at this point..

Threaded email in Outlook

http://lifehacker.com/software/email-apps/make-outlook-thread-conversations-like-gmail-157042.php

This seems like a revolutionary idea to me, especially given how important Outlook and email is to my day-to-day routine (work and non).

I have changed my view to include the conversation header, and enabled grouping. I have set up the rule to copy sent items to the inbox. It's not clear here, but new mail does end up at the top with sorting by conversation, even though the threading is "kinda" by subject.

This is a huge change but I am going to give it a serious trial, as it makes so much sense. Further I plan to leave the sent items unread until I get a reply - that gives me the ability to track emails I am waiting for a response to, something I have always wanted.

Xobni

http://www.xobni.com

Very cool web-based Outlook add-in that is in beta..

Jott

http://jott.com/

Web-based pim with voice-reco and voice commands? I have to look into this further...