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General discussion

Digital fragmentation

by Bill Osler Jan 30, 2010 8:59PM PST

I don't know about y'all, but I find that I spend too much time trying to keep things in sync. Between work and home I find that I'm using 3 different computers (2 desktop, 1 laptop), a Palm Pilot and a cell hone. Each has a list of contacts that have to be maintained and each computer has a list of passwords that have to be maintained. This is getting tiresome. I thought the point to all of this electronics was to make things EASIER. There are days I miss my old Day Timer.

I've avoided MS products for the most part because of the security issues (yeah, I know, non-MS programs have flaws, too, but nobody is bothering to attack them because nobody uses anything but MS). Unfortunately, some of the alternatives (Palm Desktop, Pocomail, Thunderbird) don't always play nice with each other and I lose some of the advantages of having the Contacts list in digital form if my word processor can't pull addresses up from Contacts. This is getting seriously annoying.

I wonder if there is any way to achieve a pretty good degree of synchronization between multiple devices and integration of various programs without resorting the the MS solution? I have to admit that at this point the inconvenience of juggling all these incompatible products has left me thinking about joining the rest of the world in the MS camp.

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Don't know to much about it but mail protocols
by Steven Haninger Jan 30, 2010 9:47PM PST

such as imap might be something to experiment with if you're using pop, smtp or a mix on your various devices. Otherwise you just forward mail to yourself as needed but that gets to be a pain too. Isn't technology such a time saving tool?

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Yes, I forward a lot of mail to myself ...
by Bill Osler Jan 31, 2010 1:22AM PST

I have one address that gets most of my email, but if I need something on another machine I send it to myself at a different address that I don't give out. I also have all the email programs set up to leave mail on server for a while. Still, it's a nuisance.

And don't get me started on keeping my ~7 different phone/contact lists all up-to-date.

And it's not just useful stuff that I need to keep in sync. What about iTunes one the two computers I use? Apple does NOT make that easy. Most of my listening is podcasts, and I don't have any need to retain the podcasts after I listen to them, but there is no easy way that I know of to keep everything in sync and still have the ability to use iTunes on both of my personal computers. Actually, if it were just listening it wouldn't be such a challenge because I could use the iPod, but for watching the TED Talks and other videos the PC is better than an iPod.

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export address books to CSV files
by James Denison Jan 31, 2010 1:45AM PST

Almost all of them will export to that format. Upload regular to a weblink only you know. It will be there anytime online to download and import as you choose. Also when sending an email from one account, send a BCC to your other mail account. That way no one can see the other mail address if it's not one for them to use, but you can clk on their address when it arrives and quickly insert a card into the address book there if wanted.

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Yeah, I do all that ...
by Bill Osler Jan 31, 2010 2:49AM PST

The BCC is especially useful when I send mail from my Yahoo web mail account.

I prefer LDIF over CSV for the programs that support it because it is easier. Exporting CSV data from Palm is hard because it does a lousy job of getting the phone numbers/email addys in the same order for each record. That means importing the resulting CSV file is not generally a clean process. Palm can, however, do a vcard export that can be converted to LDIF.

That's OK for one off export but it's a bloody nuisance to do on a recurring basis and it ends up creating problems with duplicate addresses in the other programs.

There are some HUGE issues related to interoperability that manufacturers need to address.

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