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?

Verizon “Share a Whopping Bill” plan

I was really hoping to move my iPhones (2) from ATT to Verizon with the new iPhones hopefully coming out in September. After all, all the rest of my family phones are on Verizon, 5 of them plus a Mifi. It stinks paying for minutes or texts across the two services.

The only reason I went on ATT in the first place was because Verizon didn’t have an iPhone. Now that they do and we are finally eligible (post ATT contract), it was a definite. It was a total lock!

Until they announced their new horrible phone plans - http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/plan-information/?page=share-everything . I have yet to figure out a use case where there isn’t a massive price gouge going with the new plan. Whether it’s one phone or all phones or any combination, it’s like a hundred dollars more a month, and way less data to boot.

No way I will get a single new plan or upgrade/update there. All my dumb phones can stay there without a contract on my grandfathered plan as long as they last. I am taking my hundreds of dollars a month to some other vendor that doesn’t want to punitively charge an idiot tax. I’m no idiot.

Microsoft Office 2012 Preview

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en

You can preview the next version of Microsoft office today! Note that the preview version is “the service”, rather than the product. Something you’ll want to understand better when the full version comes out.

Well and pump problems

Found a great site today that helps with diagnosing water well and pump problems, called Inspectapedia:

http://inspectapedia.com/water/Water_Information.htm

Sounds like a great new word for Scrabble too!

NAS error - You require permission from UNIX

This is an error you will see in Windows, usually followed by a particular user (either ROOT or NOBODY), and the type of action you were trying to take (delete, edit, save) on a file. You would get this error when attempting such an operation against a personal NAS, a Network Attached Storage server, which is basically a device on your home network with hard drives you can access over the network through Windows shares (CIFS) or FTP.

I ran across this with my iOmega iConnect. This is a relatively cheap yet cool little device with 4 usb ports on it. You pop it on your wifi or wired network and plug in some external drives or usb thumb drives even, and then it serves all that storage up. It has some performance foibles, and the security can be a little hairy, but for the most part it works great.

Until I ran into this error. For one of the computers accessing files on one of the drives, it wasn’t able to edit, move or delete certain files.

When I googled the error, I found out that this problem is very common, and is not limited to my particular personal NAS, but occurs with many different ones.

It’s pretty well known that these little network devices tend to have Unix or Linux at the core. There are tons of embeddable distros that are very mature and stable. Thus the error makes perfect sense, and we can guess that Windows and Unix are having a misunderstanding about file permissions, which considering they have different file permission systems, is not surprising.

There was one post I found that went a little deeper into what the particular incompatibility is:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/BlackArmor-NAS-Network-Storage/File-Access-Denied-quot-You-require-permission-from-UNIX-root-to/td-p/95048

Here’s a quote from the relevant portion, “ it has to do the EXT file system the NAS uses and inherent limitations, the fact that these files are hidden to Unix “ … ”If you gained root access via Linux and mounted the EXT partition then you probably could do this”

So all that being said, none of the fixes or workarounds mentioned in the various posts, including running “ATTRIB Z:\*.* -a -r -s -h -i /S /D” on the whole drive, worked for me. What did eventually work, was to pull the drive from the NAS and mount it to a pc locally via USB, and to move all the files out of what were essentially old system folders (My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc.) into new standard folders. Then a second step that was required, was to go into Windows on the machine that was having problems with the files, and get rid of all previous relevant cached share connections ( http://superuser.com/questions/63190/windows-7-cached-network-share-credentials ), and reboot and make a brand new share connection.

iPad3 Cases

Anybody else cursing Apple for all the secrecy? Sure it makes for a splashy product launch. But all the accessory partners have to wait until the retail device starts selling TO BEGIN DESIGNING new companion products. So there’s nothing for months as we have to wait for the whole process including manufacturing and getting the product to retail.

So here I am with this great new iPad3 (yes I know the deal with the name, think of it as an alias). I don’t want to touch it, or take it anywhere, because of the lack of case. I’m bound to either drop it, or spill caustic sauce of some kind on it.

Things are worse this cycle, because the outer dimension changes were miniscule. That means that many of the ipad2 accessories almost fit. I ruined an iPad2 screen protector trying to get an iPad2 case on the iPad3.

In fact I tried several iPad2 cases, and the difference makes a difference. So buyer beware. I’ve been holding out buying any more cases until the iPad3 cases come out, until last night. I had a chance to actually go to Best Buy http://www.bestbuy.com where I could “touch before I buy”. All the iPad2 cases are labeled “works with New iPad”. It’s literally a sticker that they slapped on them.

But I found a case that meets my needs. The specific quality that’s important to me and hard to find, is a case that protects the sides completely, all the way up onto the screen, without messing up the screen protector or adding a ton of bulk and weight. The trend lately seems to be to protect the back and just barely come up around the corners. I had such a case for my iPad2, and the iPad got dented when it dropped on a corner.

The case I found is the Griffin Elan Folio Slim http://store.griffintechnology.com/elan-folio-slim . It’s a folio (cover folds around like a book). The magnetic off, in fact, does not work, but that is not important to me. It has serious side protection and even protects the face by being raised on the edge of the face, plus there’s an actual tuck-in tab where the iPad is inserted, which most do not have. Yet it does not make the iPad feel appreciably heavier or bigger. The case looks like leather, with a microsuede interior, but according to the documentation it’s polyurethane. It has a built in landscape stand.

I’m actually pairing this case with a Amazon sleeve bag http://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Netbook-10-Inch-Netbooks-Touchpad/dp/B002VPE1Q6 for even more protection, as I plan to carry it with me a lot. Besides protection this adds a handle and an accessory compartment.

One piece of advice I could add is to check prices before you buy.

• http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Elan-Folio-Black-GB03440/dp/B005G2QXTY/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1333996679&sr=1-2
• http://www.amazon.com/Elan-Folio-Slim-iPad-Blk/dp/B005G2R4IS/ref=sr_1_20?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1333996679&sr=1-20
• http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Elan-Folio-Black-GB02446/dp/B004RE282I/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1333996679&sr=1-1
• http://www.amazon.com/GRIFFIN-GB02446-IPAD-ELAN-FOLIO/dp/B004VFG9BY/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1333996679&sr=1-4

Gaming laptops 2012

Most times when I recommend laptops I just tell people to take the best deal at NewEgg in the $500-600 range for Toshiba or Acer. In the past I have recommended Dell when they were on top of the market, and then HP, both more expensive, but right now Acer build quality seems to be the best for the money.

However I've got a couple of friends who are gamers. Here is a recommendation I made in 2010 for one of them: http://iponderus.com/2010/09/gaming-laptops.html . We're going to build on and update that post today, as one of those gamers had their custom-built desktop die and they are looking for a laptop.

Gaming laptops are a breed apart. You really have to dive in and understand the current market to get the best deal and the best machine. You have to get the ebb and flow of each key part in order to understand their relative merit to the whole.
 
I started out looking at MSI and Asus machines at NewEgg. The MSI machines had great specs but seemed to be really poorly put together- lots of flimsy plastic with LEDs flashing everywhere. The Asus machines looked better but had a fatal flaw - the video card they were using, the Nvidia GTX 560M, had been choked from a 192 bit pipeline to 128 bit, even though the video memory was bumped from 1.5 GB to 2 GB. All the forums indicated this would hobble the card.

From there I was able to guess at a current price range for a low-end-of-the-high-end gaming laptop, $1100-1500. I prefer to stay one step down from the deluxe, and one step behind the cutting edge. That avoids what I call the stupid tax on both of those levels. The next step was to see what that would buy me in the custom laptop market, where you get to choose the parts that go into your Compal or Clevo base model (see my earlier post mentioned above for the background on them).

In order to hit that target price, I decided on a particular base Clevo model that had been out awhile, but had been updated to the latest chipset, so that it could take the latest and greatest video cards and processors. I also preferred the build quality of that model to anything else out.

http://www.clevo.com.tw/en/products/prodinfo_2.asp?productid=308

Next I began to compile a list of the latest custom builders, and which ones were still offering that platform:

• http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=30027
• http://www.mythlogiccorp.com/configure.php?id=84
• http://www.avadirect.com/shopping_cart.asp
• http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Xplorer_X6-9300_Gaming_Notebook/
• http://www.malibal.com/boutique/pc/configurePrd.asp?idProduct=285

I should note that the one I decided on, based on lowest price, everything else being pretty similar across the vendors, was Malibal, the last in that list.

I also checked out a couple of other builders, who didn't offer that model, but did have a slightly newer one:

http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8150-clevo-p150hm-p-2972.html?wconfigure=yes

http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=serial-price&serial=P150HM&promoteid=90000364&screenid=13116906&cpuid=30151612&hdid=40112658&cdromid=20074691&ramid=80117626&batteryid=10140100

I couldn't compare Sager, where I bought my last gaming laptop, because they only had a much newer model at a higher pricepoint: http://www.sagernotebook.com/

Now if you are coming to this post awhile after it is written, then those links will probably fail, however you can still check out the builders by just going to www.<builder>.com, or whatever the root of the domain is.

Thoughts on parts:

You can compare performance and specs on parts at http://www.notebookcheck.net . They'll show you how the cpu or video card you are interested in compares to others that are currently out.

Here's what I decided on from all the options:

• Display: 15.6" 1920 x 1080
• Cpu: Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 6MB L3 Cache, 2.2-3.1GHz
• Memory: (8GB) 1333MHz DDR3 (2 of 4)
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M 1.5GB GDDR5
• Hard Drive: 500GB 7200rpm 2.5" SATA 300
• Optical Drive Bay: 8X Multi DVD+/-R/RW RAM Dual-Layer Drive
• Wireless: Intel® 6230 Advanced-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card

Display: I've had both 12" and the 17" machines. The tiny ones are impossible to see or get anything done with, and the big ones are too big to haul around or use on your lap. This is a high resolution for a 15", but I don't expect the screen to be used much at a desk (where there will be a big external monitor). The key is this is native 1080p resolution, which at some point is going to be good for watching movies.

Cpu: This is an i7, and the 2 in the beginning of the model indicates 2nd (the most recent) generation. Q means quad (four) cores rather than 2, and the M is for Mobile. It "turbos" from 2.2 to 3.1 if a single core is getting used heavily. This seems like the current sweet spot - way up there because it is i7 quad , but not in the upper echelon with the "hyperthreading" models.

Memory: I'm interested to see the machine making use of this much RAM, it wasn't that long ago that 2G was plenty, and you only got 4G if you were planning to run VMs. But now there are consumer (gaming) machines with 16GB and 32 GB. I went for 8 because like I said, I'm unsure how it is going to use all that. There are two open slots in this machine, so I can bump up later if need be.

Graphics: GTX 5XX is Nvidia's most recent high-end mobile series. There are two more bumps above the 560 (M again is mobile), 570 and 580. They tend to cost another $100 and then another $300-400. Looking at the performance gains it seemed to me you didn't get much more for the extra money. Furthermore in reading reviews, it seemed like any current game screamed with this card, and so there should be some future-proofing there (as much as you get with any video card).

Storage: I just picked a middle of the road 7200rpm drive, as what is really needed is an SSD, but the prices are still insane. This would be a good future upgrade, and in fact I think there's an extra bay, so you can have both (SSD for speed and HD for size).

Optical: Blue Ray is still so expensive. I would look at adding an external one later if it was needed.

Wireless: This is a small matter, but it shows the kind of attention to detail you need to have for this. If you take the lower standard option, or the deluxe option above this, you do not get internal Bluetooth. Only this option includes it for some reason.

Finally, I’ll note that I was able to put together a screaming system (in my opinion, and just based on specs) for the low end of my price range. Everybody will have their own preferences, but I hope some of the reasoning presented, will aid in making informed choices. I do believe when you start talking higher-end laptops, that going custom is a good decision.

Install Win8 Consumer Preview 32 bit in VmWare Player 4

Most of the posts I looked at for installing win8 on VmWare mentioned the term "slam dunk". Not so much for me.

Here's the resource that eventually helped me out, even though it is for VmWare Workstation and the dev preview instead:

http://www.mywindowsclub.com/resources/5081-Install-Windows-VMWare-Workstation.aspx

I'll try to detail where I went wrong, and what the keys were to getting back on track. First let me note that I believe you need to upgrade to at least Player 4 for this to work.

Wrong:
1. Choosing "Other" as the OS - you can install Windows 8 like that, but you won't get the "tools", which for me meant no networking.

2. So then I chose Win7, but pointed to my ISO in the VM setup. That led to the player running an unattended install file for win7 on top of the win8 setup. That kept failing and looping with an error on the product key. There seem to be indications that "removing" the "floppy" in the hardware portion of the VM setup can help with that, but it didn't help me.

Right:
Choose "Win7 as the OS (with the 32 bit win8). But choose operating system as None/Do later. Then mount the iso as the dvd after the VM fails to boot, and restart the VM. You wind up in setup without the unattended install script, but with win7 VmWare tools, which is exactly what you want.

Good luck, I'm off to play with win8!

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!

Please let it be aliens

Yes the podcasts I listen to are full of geeks and nerds. But where else can you hear things like the following:

Paul says, "please let it be aliens", to which Mary Jo replies, "even better Paul, there's a Windows Azure Data Market connection!"

http://twit.tv/show/windows-weekly/239