Tuesday, March 31, 2009

PDA Meltdown - Sync and Destroy!

Excuse the rant.. but.. really..

Is really too much to ask the software development community to come up with a standard for PDA/PIM data interchange?

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It is not as if PDA functionality wasn't already working as long ago as Outlook97! Why do they ("they".. not "them", a totally different group with a different agenda!) insist upon breaking things that really should consistent and reliable cornerstones of our daily work environment?


Why haven't Outlook replacements been better adapted? Evolution as an example.. great project.. very robust application.. then inexplicably went nowhere except to the deep6 section of Novell's website.

How hard could it possibly be to create a framework where all of your PDA components interoperate? Tasks, Notes, Contacts, Calendar, and then link to your emails? How hard could it be to make reminders, vcards, and event invitations work across the various gadgets?

It is not as if the record label "home address" or "work phone" needs to be different in each place, or does it? I guess some people think it is useful to call the data records different things.. just to make life interesting?

Just try to integrate a CRM system in the following mix.. pure joy.

Gmail... no tasks in the calendar.. no notes either.. unless you do some arcane backflips using email drafts or blog entries.. and then they would not sync to your mobile tool, so what is the point of bothering? The google sync tool is "broken" between various data locations like Mac Apps, Entourage, and Outlook. There are 3rd party solutions, but my survey shows them to be a rogues gallery of other inadequate solutions.

Plaxo.. When the Plaxo Sync tool does not make your system do a three-legged race during pollen season.. it works fine.. if fine is defined as no Notes or Tasks Synced except with Outlook, and your gmail contacts is a one way sync that ends up forcing you to delete your gmail online address book every few months to remove the thousands of duplicates!

Blackberry.. does go a along way.. but still has issues with stand alone calendar invites to people outside of your organization, creating duplicates.. Over the Air (OTA) syncing doesn't exist, unless you have the Enterprise server, and then have set it up.. why wasn't this available from our phone carriers? We have data services on our phones, why not use them for something that reduces our workload!

Apple Apps - just plain stink. Ever tried to use cut n paste inside of Address Book? Pure fun. AB selects ALL the text as soon as you finish what you intended to select! It has been doing that for 3 years now.

iCal and Outlook? Totally different file formats.

How about using a different email app from Mac Mail? If you do, there is no way to tell Address Book NOT to use Mac Mail. There is no Notes application, at least not one that syncs to your mobile devices without the need to buy 3rd party software.. and if you read the reviews for MissingSync, you dodged a bullet by not using it! Oh. Lest I forget.. Tasks do not sync to anything outside of Apple Apps, Plaxo ignores them. So.. useless.

Entourage on Mac? It is a cul-de-sac for your data. It is the Hotel California of PIM Software. Once you have migrated to it, you will never leave, at least not with your Categories intact. Try it sometime. Try going to Outlook FROM Entourage. I guess that is what Microsoft considers to be end-to-end cross platform compatbility touted by it's Mac Office Business Unit. Have a look at their own words

Outlook has great features. One of my favorite features is when Outlook is not crashing trying to use IMAP with gmail... Too bad it runs on Windoze.. so you are left wide open to attack if you an average user who is not savvy enough to set up all your security apps the "right way" or have a resident geek in the family to make sure you are all buttoned up. As for Vista being secure.. just keep on clicking every 5 seconds. are you sure? Are you really sure? No really really really.. are you sure? Then you still might be able to run something on your own system without fiddlin with it, or calling the resident geek in to fix it. I am that resident geek, and I simply can't get away charging my relatives for my services! It is not kricket to bill family!

Just try sending a vcard from your computer to your blackberry. It cant read it. Yet, vcard standards have been set in stone since for over a decade.. unless it is true that vcard 3.0 just broke everything in the name of progress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard

Geez.