Greg In The Desert

The Google blog announces today the availability of google sync with the iPhone and Microsoft Mobile devices. This is real sync with the devices, not using a website.

Google’s set up instructions for the iPhone uses, of all things, Microsoft Exchange Activesync for the syncing.

I enabled my Account today and sure enough it works. I now have my Google Calendar and Contacts syncing directly with Google (instead of some funky ical to Mobileme that doesn’t really work anyway). The iPhone lets me view my Google contacts and calendars separately from the Mobileme contacts and calendars, so I don’t loose data on the phone.

I now have the same level of direct sycing with my iPhone, Mac and PC that Mobileme provides. For free. Why do I need Mobileme? (Because I believe apple will open up MobileMe to third parties).

Sync: Set Up Your iPhone or iPod Touch

To set up Google Sync on your iPhone or iPod Touch device, please follow the steps below.

Requirements and Back Up

1. Make sure your device has version 2.2 firmware or above. You can check your current version by going to Settings > About > Version.

To upgrade, follow the instructions at http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/.

2. Back up any Contacts and Calendars from your phone to your computer before proceeding. The iPhone will delete Contacts and Calendars during setup.

Learn how to backup your Contacts with iTunes: PC Users – Mac Users.

Getting Started

1. Open the Settings application on your device’s home screen.

2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.

3. Tap Add Account….

4. Select Microsoft Exchange.

Enter Account Info

5. In the Email field, enter the name of the account (anything you’d like).

6. Leave the Domain field blank.

7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.

8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.

9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.

10. A new Server field will appear. Enter m.google.com.

11. Press Next at the top of your screen again.

12. Select the Google services you want to sync. Currently only Contacts and Calendar are supported.

Make sure that you have backed up your data before proceeding.

13. Press Sync twice when warned about data loss.

You’ve set up Google Sync for your iPhone. Synchronization will begin automatically if you have Push enabled on your phone. You can also open the Calendar or Contacts app and wait a few seconds to start a sync.

There’s two high profile rejections of applications to the App store for the iPhone. In both cases they were rejected because Apple says they duplicated functionality already provided by Apple.

Podcaster is an application that lets you download podcasts directly on your iphone. According to Apple it duplicates functionality of the iPod application. Although it can play podcasts like the iPod application, the iPod application requires you to download them to your computer and sync them to the iPod app.

MailWrangler is an application lets you view Gmail email. According to Apple it duplicated the function of the built in Mail application. They can both can download Gmail but MailWrangler was for only Gmail accounts and was designed to switch between Gmail accounts easily.

Apple doesn’t publish the criteria about what will be accepted. That’s a problem when you spend considerable time developing your app then find out after you put in the effort that it’s rejected. Now that you have seen two application and you start to get an idea of what Apple considers not acceptable, I introduce an application that seems to fit in the same category but was accepted to the Application store.

Introducing iExchange. It duplicates the function of the built-in Calendar application and connects to Exchange servers, which the Calendar app can also do. Exchange compatibility was one of the big features Apple touted for OS 2.0. Yet here we have an application which does the same basic thing.

Soon enough you won’t want to live without it anymore. With iExchange Remote Calendar you can access your colleagues Microsoft Exchange based calendars from wherever you are! Use your iPhone to check if your colleague’s at the office or if he or she is available for a meeting. iExchange Remote Calendar features: Read access to all public Exchange calendars of your colleagues OVER THE AIR!! Connection to Microsoft Exchange Server 2000/2003 or 2007 with WebDAV and OWA HTTP and HTTPS are supported Select any public calendar on the Exchange Server Shows a time period of +/- 7/21 and 60 days from current date Only the first two lines of an entry are displayed. As calendar entries cannot be opened, the details of a calendar entry cannot be accessed. Recurrences, entries for one or several days (all day events) are supported Please note: To be able to use this software your company network must meet certain requirements. Therefore, before you order the software, you’ll want to contact your system administrator and check whether or not you can use iExchange. Requirements (Server): Microsoft Exchange Server 2000/2003 or 2007 (standard installation, no custom modifications in the login process) WebDAV and OWA (Outlook Web Access) enabled HTTP or HTTPS connection Requirements for accessing the calendar of a colleague: The user has to grant you read access to his or her calendar. The user or the system administrator can do so in Microsoft Outlook (Windows or Microsoft Entourage for Mac). A tip for Windows-users: If you are working with “Outlook Web Access” and can access Outlook by using the built-it login page, you should be able to use iExchange. A tip for OS-X-users: If you are using Entourage to access your company calendar, you should be able to use iExchange.

Agh! For some reason my AppleTV keeps syncing content that I specifically told it not to sync. And is has stuff synced that should have been deleted some time ago. I add a new podcast, it shows up in iTunes.

Yes, I have it set to only sync “Selected podcasts” yet it continues to sync ones that I don’t have checked. Even If I play them on the AppleTV they won’t auto delete.

I have absolutely no inside knowledge, this is just a theory of mine. I believe Apple is waiting to update everything and It’s all hinging on Leopard.

I think iLife’08 was suppose to come out earlier, but since Leopard was delayed, they had to fix it to work on Tiger.

A massive update to the iPhone is coming. The iPhone update will have 3rd party application support, better syncing, a notes application, etc. They will all require technologies in Leopard that Apple doesn’t want to give away.

The AppleTV will also have some major updates. Once such update could be Safari and the ability to browse the web on your TV (good by WebTV). One such feature will eliminate the need for a keyboard since you will manage and sync bookmarks from Safari on your computer. It also illustrates the need to have Safari on Windows

Apple is scrambling trying to get band-aid fixes in place so people don’t loose interest for the next few months. What do you think, am I way of base?

When I heard the rumors that Palm was going to release some magical, wonderful, world-changing device I was excited. I’ve owned several models of Palms and I carry my Palm TX with me everywhere. In fact, I’m not sure I’m ready to give up my Palm TX to switch to a iPhone. I was really hoping Palm was going to have a new kind of PDA.

Then I see this Foleo thing and wonder: WTF? From what I can tell, it’s a sub-laptop that’s designed to sync with your Treo. This has been in development for a few years?

It is not meant as a Laptop replacement, but more of a large screen, full keyboard companion to your smartphone’s capabilities and email functionality. While initially the product is not meant as a Laptop replacement, as time goes on and more developers create unique solutions Hawkins sees its utility as a laptop like device expanding.

I obviously don’t get it. I don’t know who is going to buy it. Everyone has a laptop. People, my mom has a laptop. Your suppose to carry your laptop around and this thing just to read your email? Oh, and carry your phone.

I thought the writing was on the wall for Palm, but if they have been putting their R&D into this instead of improving the Treo, then I would say this is the beginning of the end.

I primarily listen to my music collection through my iPod. I don’t care what Apple says, the shuffle feature of the iPod (and to a lesser degree iTunes) does a poor job of preventing the same Artist from playing randomly. Even with the the scheme I came up wit here, my iPod still played 3 songs from Metallica in a row the other day. These methods do a good job of addressing the issues.

I start off with master playlist called “Filtered”, it’s filtered for genres. Second playlist is “Filtered – 4 Stars + Played”. This ensures that songs which are rated have actually been played. I ofter will rate new songs high but not really listed to them (I have another playlist for new songs). The next playlist is “Filtered – 4 Stars + Played last 14 days.” Finally I’m to my primary playlist, “Filtered – 4 Stars + w/o last 14 days.”

Unfortunately the iPod does not automatically update these playlists, they only get updated when I sync my iPod with iTunes. At one time “The Stroke” had 2x as many plays as any other song, I like that song but not that much, this does a reasonably good job of reducing this effect. I’d prefer to have a playlist that removes, say the top 10% of played songs, but iTunes doesn’t have this option in the filter lists. This also doesn’t prevent the same artist being played in a row.

This last quarter’s classes turned out to be more difficult than expected. I signed up for a MS Access class and a Business Stats class. I won’t say much more about the Access class. I already had experience with it so it was a easy A.

I was looking forward to the stats class, since I use it all the time in my work. Unfortunately we were plagued by a new teacher and a new book. The first two chapters of homework were taking students 8 hours (!) to complete, this after being in class for 4 hours. That’s just too much for people who also have real jobs. She cut it down quite a bit after that, but just illustrates how out of sync the teacher was with our needs.

I managed a B in the class, but not without a lot of help from my classmates. If I hadn’t been able to complete the homework I wouldn’t have ever passed. Yet, I still didn’t come out of the class with a good understanding of the subjects.

Several LifeDrive reviews are out including PalmInfoceneter and Brighthand.

I’m still holding out. I held the fake demo unit at CompUSA on Sunday, It’s big but not too bad. I’m disappointed to hear that it doesn’t come with a cradle and the USB cable does not charge and sync. If I bought it those are two things I would have to buy. I also would need to get a hard case and replace seidio car mount (or at least the connector part).

Eventually I will purchase it, but for now the money could be better spent elsewhere.