Tag: iOS

Dropping iCloud

John

I decided this week to drop iCloud, so I needed to find new solutions for syncing Contacts, Calendars, Tasks/Reminders, and Notes across my devices.

I’ve ended up with the following:

Contacts

I moved my Contacts to my main Google account and I sync them with Outlook on my laptop via GO Contact Sync Mod, with my HTC phone via the built in Android People App, and with my iPhone and iPad via Exchange ActiveSync (instructions).

Calendar

I moved my calendar to Google Calendar. I sync GCal with Outlook on my laptop via Google Calendar Sync, with my HTC phone via the built in Android Calendar App, with my iPhone and iPad via Exchange ActiveSync (instructions).

Tasks/Reminders

For my tasks I’ve moved to Wunderlist (link). It’s very simple (which means slightly limited), but free and available on Mac, Window, iOS, Android, and online. There’s no ability to create recurring tasks currently, but if I have a recurring task I make a recurring event on my calendar anyway.

Notes

I’m a Microsoft Office user and I love the flexibility of OneNote. I started using the mobile OneNote apps a while back and it has become my go-to notes app everywhere. OneNote ships with all Microsoft Office 2010 suites and there’s a free WebApp at SkyDrive.com. Android and iOS (iPhone, iPad) versions are available free. (Notes: 1). The first couple versions of OneNote for iOS were horrible, but the current one is quite usable. 2). The mobile apps are free unless you want to sync more than 500 notes).

Gmail Struggles

John

I’m a pretty big fan of Gmail (yes, I know, the Gmail Man is reading my email), but I was having some problems this evening. I went to check my mail on my iPad and I got an error message saying “Cannot Access Mail” and saying the the username or password was incorrect.

I freaked out a little bit thinking maybe my account got hacked or something, but I was able to log in fine on the web.

I’m still not sure what the cause was, but I did find a fix; go to this site, enter your password, and fill out the captcha. Viola! you can IMAP your Gmail.

Thanks to shaheerk over at the Google support forums for this fix.

 

I know it’s been a while since I posted, but that is one benefit of having no readers; it doesn’t matter how long I go between posts.

Experiment: Can Gadgets Take the Place of a Real Computer?

John

I’ve started an involuntary experiment. I’m going to see this week how well an iPhone, an iPad, and a Droid Incredible replace a Core i5 ThinkPad.

The fan on my T410 went kaput (my sympathies to those who bought t410s last spring, it seems they had a bad batch of fans) on Saturday, so by the time I get my computer back I should have a good idea of how useful these gadgets are, or, rather how limited they are.

I can type fairly fast on my iPad, but not as fast as on my ThinkPad… I so far have put off doing any HTML coding and I’ll probably give in and do it on my desktop at work rather than attempt it on this.

Anyway, I’ll post later to let you know how it went.