Google iCal Support Stinks on Ice

Google Calendar's iCal feed support is bad...there...I've said it. The emperor has no clothes. My iCal feeds regularly take 24-36 hours to refresh. Its been this way for months. That's simply not good enough in my "change by the minute" life.

I'm not the only one saying it as witnessed by the growing unrest in their support discussions...just do a quick query for "ical refresh". Google knows its an issue as noted in this "understated" FAQ in Google's Calendar Support Pages:

"Currently, calendar feeds are automatically updated by Google Calendar every few hours. We understand that some users want to have the ability to refresh the calendars they added manually and we are exploring various ways to enable this. If the calendar you're subscribing to using Google Calendar isn't refreshed after 24 hours, please send us the calendar address and the detail of the problem so that we can investigate. "

Every few hours is tough to take. 24 hours before you think this is a problem? Really? That's laughable. Even worse, its a silent failure. There's no last updated info available. I have to go to each subscribed calendar to see if Google is accurate. If I have to do that then what's the point? And it's likely that some users don't even realize there's a problem until its too late.

Google, if you want me to take you seriously and depend on your services as the focal point for my life then this HAS to get fixed. Google centric phones with this kind of backend calendar support don't deserve the consumer's support yet either. Many Google-centric phone buyers (G1, Hero, Droid, even Palm Pre to some extent) are finding this out too late to do anything about it.

Things my Palm Pre does Wrong

Updated: Some things have been fixed along the way :)

My personal list of things my Palm Pre does not get right.

WRONG!!!!!
No Voice Dial
Treo Pro...press the bluetooth button on my earpiece and speak.
Pre...slide up, enter PIN number, open dialer or hope I have PhotoContacts open, type select...bah! not a good situation in the car. I literally have to pull over or just avoid calls in the car. What a waste of time.
Cannot select the amount of time to snooze an alarm
5 minute snooze? Really? Flippin' annoying when I need to remind myself to get going somewhere and hour prior but need that 5 minute warning just before the same event.
UPDATE: Preware and a patch fixes this one thank you. But it still should be built in functionality.
No categories on anything
just plain dumb to regress like this, Palm OS did it
No "Today" screen"
Good lord do I miss this from WinMo...soooooo handy!
Tasks app is so simplistic its unusable
The basic app in Palm OS and even WinMo is infinitely more ususable than this. Was this a complete after thought?
UPDATE: The stock app is still grim but there are some useful Toodledo based apps that show promise. Done! in particular is headed in the right direction.
Application Space Limit
Really? Hundreds of apps available through the official catalog including some really good ones that I have kept installed. And now I am done. I can't install any more because Palm decided apps should live in a relatively tiny chunk of partitioned memory. So sorry app developers, would love to buy your stuff but I can't buy what I can't install.
UPDATE: Fixed by Palm, thanks!
3 Page App Launcher Limit
I now have a multitude of little apps that can do good (or fun) things. Unfortunately I have to wedge them into one of 3 available App Launcher pages. Was it that hard to perfect and release an "add a page" function? Homebrewers had it done in about 12 seconds.
UPDATE: Easy enough via Preware and a patch but Palm should just support it out of the box.


REALLY WRONG and BAD!!!
Appointments added to Pre do not show up in Outlook via Exchange
started with 1.3.1. simply unacceptable. Work around found thanks to some work by users over at the Palm Support forums
UPDATE: Fixed with an OS update
Appointments show up on Pre that are not on my Google Calendar
started in 1.2. simply unacceptable, seems to be related to iCal feeds from external websites.
Reminders from Exchange events triggering 1 hour early
this paired with the 5 minute snooze limitation is absolutely brutal
UPDATE: Fixed with an OS update
Email notifications not vibrating when ringer switch is on vibrate??
started with 1.3.1, still trying to confirm this one. Seems sporadic.
UPDATE: Fixed with an OS update
Locking devs out of calendar data
Makes it impossible for them to develope killer apps to replace your PIM trash.

Annoying
Battery Life
I seem to crush the battery life on this thing. I look for any opportunity to charge (at my desk, in the car, almost always leashed to a charger at home) Granted my set up may stress this poor little battery. The prime users have to be my email accounts, along with Twitter or web browsing. Dont make that many calls during the day.
Exchange account: as delivered
Gmail (IMAP): as delivered
Gmail (IMAP): every 30 minutes
Gmail (IMAP): every 1 hr

Workdays: off the charger at 5:45am . 50% by 9am. At work I am on roam almost all the time so its even harder on the battery
Weekends: off the charger around 8am, 50% around 2pm, sooner if I make some phone calls. Good coverage at home
UPDATE: Some of the new uberkernels were showing a lot of promise including some incremental battery life improvements. Nothing stunning, but better.

UPDATES:
11/17/2009 at 0930: added battery life entry.
7/2010: updated as a parting gift to my time with webOS :)

Things My Palm Pre gets RIGHT!

Here's my running list of things my Palm Pre gets right. This is just a start

Synergy
I love love love the way my Outlook, Google, Facebook and Linked in stuff come together in one happy little device.

Interface
webOS is just nice to use. You can still see some Palm "zen" in there. Pinches, zooms and flicks are all very intuitive

Form Factor
Maybe its a tiny bit thick but the full face screen with a slide out keyboard are a big hit with me. The round edges make this one of the most comfortable smartphones to use or to carry around in a pocket.

App Download/Install Process
Aside from the stupid app space limit the rest of the app install process is really good. Find it, download it, install it...simple.

Web Browsing
The Pre opened up a whole new world of mobile browsing. Generally speaking I find the browser to be pretty brilliant. It quickly and accurately renders 90% of the sites I visit.

Palm Loves You Man
OK, this isnt so much about the phone but Palm itself (and even Sprint) Palm and Sprint could have over-reacted when the homecrew community sprang up and made webOS their own in less than a couple of weeks. But instead of devoting time and effort to lock these folks out they seemed to just smile a say "hey that's amazing...just be careful using some of that stuff 'cause its likely to break when we do an update". This, in comparison to other companies, was the equivalent of a big warm hug and a welcome to the family. Let's hope this continues and that we see Palm open up better access to the contact, calendar and task...and GPS too.

Rapid OS Progress
Palm has not been shy about pushing OS updates. Lightning fast when compared to other platforms. Apparently Sprint is pretty tight with this process too as we are not hearing about them holding up updates for testing. So keep on delivering those improvements Palm!

Cautiously Dipping my Toes in the Exchange Sync Waters again

So a couple of weeks back the I.T. department flipped the kill switch and remote wiped my Pre (detailed ad nauseum here). Again, I can't bitch too much since the Pre and webOS are clearly not on our supported list for Exchange Mobile Sync.
I submitted a help desk ticket to (a)see if they could explain why I got remote wiped and (b) if they could reset my profile. They reset my profile but offered no explanation for why I got remote wiped in the first place. The resolution included some info that clearly showed my profile had been hooked up to a WinMo and a Palm device. But beyond that...who knows. Did somebody trip across this and decide to mete out some I.T. justice? Am I setting off alarms and error logs when I connect?
After going a couple days I decided to give it a shot again. Its been good for about 6 days but I didn't get wiped until about 2 weeks last time. Hmmmmmmm...

Next Laptop?

My aging G4 Powerbook has eaten another battery and its been kicked to the curb for further OS upgrades since it's not sportin' an Intel processor. So...what to do.

It still runs solid even after 4 years but is obviously slower than the Vaio I picked up last year. I could burn another $80 on a battery and stick it out for another 18 months (which seems to be the life of a battery in this thing).

This was my first Apple product and I gotta say its a really nice piece of hardware. I've enjoyed using it and so has my wife. OS X is all good and iLife is a nicely done piece of software. The Apple is still my preferred photo management and DVD makin' rig even though it's noticeably slower than the Sony. Every single camera that I ever plugged in just worked. I could go on...

Now, my Sony ran Vista really well and it runs Windows 7 even better I will not complain about it or jump on the Microsoft hater-wagon. But the hardware, even brand new, was no where near as good as the Powerbook. This Vaio(VGN-CR320E) without a doubt has one of the worst trackpads I have ever used. The body creaks and flexes and the battery rattles horribly. But it works reliably...and the screen is lovely.

So what's next? Its gonna be a laptop, that much I do know. It will have DVD/CD burner. But other than that I am playing the field. Apple and PC have equal opportunities in my book. More later as this story develops

Palm Needs to Work on Their Backup Scheme

The concept behind Palm's Backup/Restore on the Palm Pre is solid...on the surface anyway. Tie it to your profile and make it dead easy for regular back ups. Need to restore? Reset, sign in, hit the "easy button" and watch it happen. But its got some holes that need to be addressed.

On the subject of back ups. Maybe I should have realized that my pictures weren't being backed up. After all that's a lot of data. Seems like the user manual is pretty darn quiet on this little tidbit, but fine I'll take my lumps. I will not, however, cut you ANY slack for not backing up my bookmarks. That. Really. SUCKS!

Now...restores. You need to give the user some control on what gets restored. I'm sure the "easy button" approach seemed like a good idea at the time but as I learned the hard way a remote wipe on an Exchange accountcan really ruin your day...over and over and over again. Automatically restoring all email accounts is a bad thing when its one of the email accounts that is causing your problems. This will only get more important as the number of apps grow. Sooner or later your gonna get a rogue app that won't let go of your device even after a reset and restore. Just a quick Advanced Options button would do the trick.

Things my Palm Pre Needs...v2

Consider this a running list of the things my Palm Pre needs...

Voice Dialing
Native Password App
Email Search
Snooze Intervals: Every 5 minutes is not good enough, I need 5 min through 1 hour minimum
Categories: and they better sync with Exchange
----ADDED TO THE LIST----
Restore Control: Some things act evil when restored...more here

And yes...I have submitted all of these to Palm via there lovely Feedback/Request page...you should too!

Remote Wipe Palm Pre Death Loop

Sure, the Palm Pre isn't technically a "supported" device at our company when its comes to syncing with Exchange. But hey, it follows all the security protocols thanks to the 1.1.0 update. I got it to work so what the heck and its great.

So after 2 blissful weeks of syncing my Pre with Exchange at work the phone suddenly hard reset. Wait...what? How could this be?!?!? The Pre had been a paragon of stability. After a seemingly interminable amount of time the Pre begins booting, I sign into my profile and it dutifully restores itself from last night's back up...perfect! Reboot...connect...start syncing...BAM! Hard reset. What the frimmin-fratz is going on here? I endure the same process two more times and then I resign myself to the fact that my Pre will need to be replaced.

Cue the Sprint Mogul sulking on the sidelines...put me in coach! I activate the Mogul fire it up, set up some email accounts and then set up Exchange sync. Log in...good... prompt for PIN settings...good...BAM! Hard reset...uh oh, something is amiss in Exchange land.

A persistent nagging thought makes its way to the front of the line for my consideration. You sir, have been remote wiped. No wonder my Pre kept resetting. The restore includes my Exchange account and when it tried to reconnect the remote wipe was waiting there to kill my device again.

Now, how do I stop the Remote Wipe death loop? Finally it comes to me, change my password at work. Bingo! Now the when my Pre attempts re-connect, sorry sir no joy, wrong password. Phew.

The folks who control our Exchange server reset the wipe command and didn't make a stink about me hooking the Pre up but also didn't (won't?) divulge what kicked off the remote wipe. I am hesitant to try it again but I really miss having my work stuff on my device. One thing for sure is that I will separately back up my blankity-blankin pictures before I do...a subject for another post.

My Palm Pre Needs...

Consider this a running list of the things my Palm Pre needs...

Voice Dialing
Native Password App
Email Search
Snooze Intervals: Every 5 minutes is not good enough, I need 5 min through 1 hour minimum
Categories: and they better sync with Exchange

Damn you Palm Pre

I ventured down to the Sprint store this evening confident in the fact that there was no way I could get sucked into buying a Palm Pre because they didn't have them in stock. Plus I was still very disappointed that Palm failed to implement a voice dial system. I have come to depend on it in the car since I drive a manual transmission. Everybody says just wait for a future update but I have come up on the short end of that proposition with Windows Mobile and Palm before. Then there were the nasty reports of hot batteries and discolored displays. I figure that, if anything, this would be a good chance to pick out the replacement for my Mogul.

So I get to the store and there it is. Good grief it is smaller than I thought...makes my Mogul look like a tank. Nice screen, responsive, intuitive OS. Calendar interface seemed passable, task list is lame (I am a PocketInformant power user) but the lack of categories really stinks. Its everything about how I organize things. And then I made a mistake...I opened the web browser. It thoroughly crushes any browsing experience I have EVER had on a Windows Mobile phone. I went over and used the Touch Pro, the Diamond and the Treo Pro. I used Opera, Skyfire and IE. Just forget it, it looked pathetic and slow on any of these Windows Mobile devices. The web browsing experience along with the UI was powerful enough to make me try to figure out how to live without categories, to actually read the user manual to see if speed dials are easy enough to live without until the fix that stupid oversight.

The news on the required plan changes was not as bad as I expected. Moving to a Family Everything Data Plan comes out to $20 more per month but for that I get data on all four lines (we only have data on two lines right now).

There are some other good phones at Sprint right now...if I had to put it in order it would be:

Palm Pre
Blackberry Curve
Palm Treo Pro/Touch Diamond
Touch Pro (I suppose the Touch Pro 2 might adjust this list)

Ugh...what to do. Well, I know the answer to that. Get the wife to Sprint so she can figure out what she likes (I am betting on the Curve...let's see how I do)

Vista Does Not Like Being Ignored

From the my previous post you will note I went a solid two weeks on Windows 7 without running Vista on my dual boot laptop. Boy...Vista doesn't necessarily like being ignored. Everything...and I mean everything...made a mad rush for the internet connection when Vista came to life. NOD32, Windows Update, Windows Defender and several assorted product update checkers just about pounded my laptop into submission. I just walked away from it for 30 minutes to let it come to terms with being brought to life again. It was fine when I came back excepts for the 7 updates that wanted to be installed on shutdown. It might be worth my while to spin Vista up a little more frequently.

Finally had to boot up Vista today

So my I had a solid two weeks on Windows 7 without needing Vista or even a reboot for that matter...until today. Never fear, Windows 7 has been running very well but I got punched between the eyes with some Word documents I needed to open. I only have Office installed on the Vista side of the house. So here's the questions:
(a) Will my single user license of Office 2007 set off the alarms in Redmond if I try to install it in Windows 7 without uninstalling in Vista?
(b) Maybe I should just try live with Google Docs or perhaps OpenOffice?

Any other ideas out there.

Ding! Its Re-Up Time...could be tough.

My Sprint contract is up again, for me and the whole fam-dam-ily. My last negotiation with Sprint went nicely with some better than average deals on a Sprint Mogul, 700wx and a couple of Katanas for the kids along with some nice concessions on monthly rates. I went from 2 lines to 4 and dropped my payment $25/month.

Overall, I like Sprint. The coverage and cost have been good to us. But there are some dark forces at work and I think this re-up could be spendy.

First up on the side of the dark forces is the Palm Pre. I'm interested...IF it can live up to the hype. Windows Mobile has grown a little long in the tooth and I don't see it making any game changing progress with version 6.5. But the Pre requires an Everything Plan. Could be rough, especially if my wife likes it too.

Next up are the kids who I am going to hook up with data this year. Along with phones that have easy access to Google Calendar without being full on smartphones. No idea how this is going to factor in with the whole Everything Plan.

Finally, we may add the in-laws if its economically beneficial for us all and assuming we can find a nice simple phone with a nice big screen. Do you have any idea how hard that is?

Windows 7 - Software Installed so far

Sony VGN-CR320E with 3GB Ram

Firefox 3.0.10
- Adblocker Plus
- Java
Google Chrome (latest beta)
CutePDF
Flash Player

No issues with any of the above so far.

Windows 7 vs Sony Vaio SD slot

Next on the missing driver hit list was the SD card slot built into my Sony Vaio (VGN-CR320E). I installed the driver for Vista from the Sony Support website and the SD card slot started working immediately. Missing drivers remain the only real "issue" I have encountered and the Vista drivers all seem good so far. The Beta continues.

Windows 7 vs Synaptic

First little hiccup with Windows 7. My Sony Vaio's touchpad wasn't quite right. I noticed pretty dang quickly that (a) the scrolling areas on my laptops touchpad didn't work in Windows 7 and (b) I am pretty dependent on scrolling with the touchpad. I am thankful to report that the Vista driver from Synaptics driver page installs without issue and appears to function perfectly. My touchpad and I are in harmony again.

Goodbye to Ubuntu, Hope to See You Again

For the record I like nearly everything Ubuntu does as an OS. The install was painless, updates worked well and it was fast. Stuff generally worked well...except for one glaring and unforgiveable failure...the wireless driver. My Vaio uses the Intel 4965AGN which for some reason just won't play nice with Ubuntu. The result was highly throttled bandwidth, completely intolerable.

Sorry Linux folks, I am NOT going to go through the monkey motion required to try out the other wireless drivers that may or may not work if I manage to get all of the dot commands right. Not for me.

So Ubuntu got tossed, Windows 7 is in (but I am waiting Ubuntu community...and watching)

New Battery, New Life for the Sprint Mogul

So I took a chance on a cheap but supposedly OEM replacement battery from an eBay vendor for my Sprint Mogul. The old battery was so grim that even the power management system on the phone had pretty much given up on it. But the battery is indeed OEM and so far has cured the power problems. It was outstanding to get two days of battery life even with Exchange running and a dead zone at my desk that causes the phone to constantly search for a signal. Maybe the Mogul will indeed survive until contract renewal in June. For the record this marks the fourth phone in a row that had a battery failure within 6 months of renewal. Brilliant engineering.

Windows 7 RC Rockin the Dual Boot

Just got Windows 7 RC instaled on my Sony Vaio VGN-CR320E. I always regretted not jumping on the first beta chance so I figured I'd get on the Windows 7 train right away the first time. Plus I had been looking for a reason to re-purpose that partition with Ubuntu installed from my last dual boot experiment(a subject for another post).

And there was the issue. One of those tiny nagging whispering in your ear issues. You know, the thing that you think about when your finger is a fraction of an inch above the "your going to screw things up button". One word...GRUB. Oh sure Vista makes repartitioning very easy so I just blew away the Ubuntu volumes and moved on...not so fast Sparky. GRUB still owns your master boot record...suddenly that nagging issue switched to shouting to get my attention. A quick Google led me to the prescribed method for reclaiming my MBR from GRUB and all was good.

Once that monkey motion was complete Windows 7 installed without a hitch, wireless hooked up (using full bandwidth...are you listening Ubuntu?...again...that's another post) and here I am posting using a box stock Windows 7 install.

Slow Death of My Sprint Mogul

My Sprint Mogul seems to be dying a slow death that no hard reset can fix. The power management has gone wonky. Hopefully the cheap but purportedly OEM battery I got off eBay will remedy it until my June renewal...I'm looking at you Palm Pre