Synchronization case study: Address Book, the iPhone, and Google Contacts

The following is excerpted from the documentation for Spanning Sync, an application that synchronizes my OS X and iPhone Address Book contacts with Google's contacts. Read it and despair, but remember the fault is not in Spanning Sync ...

Spanning Sync - Sync iCal and Google Calendar

... The first option, “Preserve Address Book data” is recommended because it guarantees that names and street addresses in Address Book maintain their formatting. For example, a first name "Vincent" and last name "Van Gogh" doesn't become first = "Vincent", middle = "Van", last = "Gogh". The downside is that the extra formatting may keep autocompletion from working as expected in Gmail ... When editing contact names and postal addresses, do so in Address Book and not in Gmail if you're using the Address Bookcompatibility mode (recommended). Deleting these fields in Gmail is fine, as is editing other fields such as email addresses and phone numbers... Google does not allow multiple contacts to have the same email address. If you have contacts in Address Book that share the same email address, Google will reject all but one of them and Spanning Sync will notify you of the conflict.

Yes, Synchronization is Hell. Google and OS X Address books have different data models for a Contact. Full reliable synchronization is not possible.

Of course on can more or less sync Address Book Contacts with MobileMe, but MobileMe calendaring is unacceptably feeble so that's not an acceptable option. Attempting to sync Outlook contacts will produce lesser but similar conflicts -- at least until 10.6 OS X adopts Exchange Server's definition of a Contact.

I wonder if anyone at Apple understands this. I imagine someone did, but when he tried to explain the problem to Jobs he was banished to the Dark Tower ...

See also: Why you can't get your work calendar on your iPhone

Update: Read the comment from Charles Wood, one of the founders and developers of Spanning Sync. There's a reason I'm a Spanning Sync customer -- I appreciate that they tackle this terribly hard problem. Dang, but we're at a frustrating point in the general problem of 'synchronization' and data exchange. I can only hope understanding of the fundamental problem is percolating from engineering up to the executive suite ...

Office 2007 - the bizarre bits

I've been using Office 2007 on XP for a few months.

My overall impressions are:

1. Excel: few real changes, maybe slightly improved
2. PowerPoint: Using themes in PPT 2003 mode is ... a recipe for madness.
   
3. Word: mostly better, but some odd new gaps
4. Access: buggy and mostly worse for what I do (data analysis, manipulation)
5. Outlook: almost every significant new feature is broken, some hideously broken. For heaven's sake, don't try the feed reader sync with IE 7 on a non-trivial feed list -- unless you like to see your machine meltdown. Some ancient bugs were fixed.
   

If you're on Office 2003 you should wait about 2 months post Office 2007 SP2.

The main benefits of Office 2007 seem to be that it does work, awkwardly, with Sharepoint 2007 document management, whereas Office 2003 is a total fail. (Non-Office applications are even worse, which suggests that the European anti-trust effort has finally collapsed.)

Which brings me to the bizarre stuff I keep running across then forget about. I'll put one in one or two then add more. These aren't bugs -- those are too numerous (esp in Outlook 2007) to list. These aren't rants on the half-baked user-customizeable quick reference bar or the new UI (which is dumb but I'm used to it now), these are just bizarre design choice.

1. Word tables: There's a whizzy new table creator, but we've lost control over row and cell attributes. Try to copy table cell shading from one cell to another cell. The table overall didn't work; the Office team should figure out what went wrong and fix it.
2. Word auto-format: Even more intrusive, though less often wrong.
3. In Outlook 2007, unlike 2003, you can't
   
4. PowerPoint "Theme" revision - at least when used in PPT 2003 compatibility mode. Oh, my, Lord ...

Update 11/4/09: The more I use it, the more I wish Microsoft would go away (they won't)

1. In Outlook there's no visual indicator to differentiate between blocked times (appointments) and meetings (has attendees). When I look at my calendar I'm not sure whether I'm late for some work I set for myself or if I've got people waiting for me.
2. I hate, hate, hate that I can't get PowerPoint to open windows on more than a single monitor. (To be fair, I think Microsoft screwed this up ages ago).

See also:

• Lessons from Outlook 2007 Notes colors
• Reverting from Office 2007 to Office 2003: MAPI32.DLL vs. MSMAPI32.dll
• Office 2007 Diagnostics includes memory and disk check tools

Gmail tasks grow up - slightly

I've been rather unimpressed with Google/Gmail Tasks. They remind me of Apple's disastrous Mail.app tasks, except they don't even have categories.

They're not dead yet though ...

Official Gmail Blog: Tasks: Paper vs. iPhone

We set out to fix this by making Tasks available from your phone with a version optimized for the small screen. And starting today, you can manage your task list from your iPhone or Android device...

... Just go to gmail.com/tasks from your phone's browser and log in. If you already use the version of Tasks in Gmail Labs, you'll see the same task list that's always in sync...
... so try it out and let us know.

P.S. There's a new gadget version of Tasks too -- so if you want to add your same task list to iGoogle, now you can.

I put my request list into the let us know bucket:

• an API
• Calendar integration (esp. something like this)
• The "palm to do" minimal attribute set

If they get the API and calendar integration I'd love to see Appigo's iphone ToDo.app sync to Google Gmail tasks instead of to Toodledo.

Using Bloggers undocumented label (category) feeds and Yahoo Pipes to create a tech opinion feed out of Gordon's Notes

[3/14/09: See Update below. I loved how this worked, but I had to give up on it. If blogs survive, maybe Google will add Pipes-like features properly.]

Dang. What's a geek got to do to be fully informed these days?

I've only now learned that my 2nd biggest Blogger feature request, feeds on Blogger "labels" (aka categories, sometimes called tags), has been unofficially available for at least a year ...

Blogspot ... Feeds by Category / search labels

Here's the default URL for any search label in Blogger:

xxx.blogspot.com/search/label/labelname

To convert that search label into a Blogger ... feed, replace the string /search/label/ with /feeds/posts/default/-/ so the new feed URL for that search label has the following syntax:

xxx.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname

For this to work, you should have enabled Site Feeds for that blogs. Blogger Label Feeds will inherit the full or partial text settings from the main feed itself.

A year! I could have easily solved the problem I flailed at only 5 months ago.

The problem is I my opinion blog, Gordon's Notes mixes both technical and liberal political opinions. The technical opinions might fit in with tech.kateva.org but the political opinions won't. In any case, I like to keep this site to the apolitical "facts", so even technology opinions are a bit out.

Now I can organize feeds however I like, using this undocumented feature and Yahoo Pipes.

To start with, here's the label for "technology"

http://notes.kateva.org/search/label/technology

and here's the feed (Atom) following the above pattern

http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/technology

It's a well formed feed, except that it doesn't get a useful name like "Gordon's Notes - technology"; it just gets called "Gordon's Notes".

That's good, now we add Yahoo Pipes (best thing they've ever done).

At Yahoo Pipes I can merge multiple GN opinion feeds (Case matters, spaces are sort of ok but, you know, spaces are always a pain)

http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/Apple
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/data lock
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/drm
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/Google
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/Google Apps
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/netbook
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/os x
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/palm
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/spam
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/technology
http://notes.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default/-/xanadu

The feed summation is pretty trivial ...

After I save and rename the YP feed I end up with:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/jfaughnan/gn_tech

Google Reader treats this as a proper feed. So, after years of blogging, I'm now able to do my own syndication.

This will be fun.

Update 2/7/09: Since I had to treat each label as a separate feed, and since a post can have multiple labels, the above design produced a lot of duplicates. It also had no sort order. I added the "Unique" (by ID) and "Sort" (pub date) operations to fix those problems.

I've also created a new feed that takes the the pipe for http://pipes.yahoo.com/jfaughnan/gn_tech and then adds (Union) the feed from Gordon's Tech (this blog) and sorts by publication date. I didn't need another unique operator because I wasn't creating more duplicates.

This new feed combines all my posts from Gordon's Tech with my technology opinions posted in Gordon's Notes. It's

http://pipes.yahoo.com/jfaughnan/tech_plus

and the new feed is

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=CGBvCFr13RG4ekbA1JzWFw&_render=rss

I might add this to my post footer but I've noticed two limitations of this type of feed.

• The posts sort correctly when I view the generated Pipe web view, but the feed from that view gives all posts close to the same pub date.
• The feed does not inherit the title set in properties, it gets the URL string.
  

Update 3/8/09: hmm. There might be a serious problem here. Lately Google isn't indexing my stuff as well as they used to. I've seen that before when Google gets confused by splogs. It indexes splogs that have harvested my posts, then it starts treating my blog as though it were also a splog. Usually it self-corrects after a few days but this time it seems to persist.

Alas, by creating Pipes from my feeds I wonder if I've created my own de facto splogs. I tried to submit a question to Yahoo about making these non-indexed but the submit forum crashed. I think I'll have to take these offline. Unfortunately it's very hard to learn Google's policy on these things.

Update 3/15/09: I never did get an answer on my Yahoo or Google Groups questions. I did find that I was getting odd results from subscribing to the Pipes I created. Google Reader persistently showed me old posts as new, probably because when a Yahoo Pipe is generated all the source posts get the same date.

In addition, even though I "unpublished" the Pipes I linked to them from various posts, and I think Google was finding and indexing them. I don't see how Google could differentiate them from spam blogs, and we know that the GoogleMind associates splog taint with the parasitized victim. (The GoogleMind is a harsh and unforgiving Yahwhite god.)

Yahoo Pipes needs a no-index tag and it needs to handle post dates differently.

I didn't want to delete my Pipes in case I wanted to work with them in the future. So I simply changed the URLs to something new and thus invisible.

Prediction: We won’t see a fixed MobileMe until 10.6 is out

I usually keep my editorial opinions off my tech blog, and post them in Gordon’s Notes (tech) instead. This one’s a bit of an exception.

I’ve been spinning cycles thinking about why Apple’s MobileMe and synchronization solutions are so miserable – and why they’re not improving.

Incompetence alone is not an explanation. Yes, Apple uses early adopters as beta testers, and yes, the MobileMe launch demonstrated Apple has serious internal issues, but they’ve still got good people.

Marketing is not an explanation. I can’t imagine any reason why Apple would not want MobileMe calendaring and synchronization to be a wonderful experience that would tie their desktop and phone customers ever more closely to Apple.

That leaves one explanation. Synchronization Hell.

The fundamental problem with “synchronization”* is that computers are not yet super-sentient. If a transaction hub had full knowledge of the world, and an IQ of 150, and lots of time to think things over, it could figure out how to translate an “all day event” represented as an attribute on a day to one represented as a “24 hour event” with a buggy representation of time zones and daylight savings time.

We’re not there yet.

It’s impossible, in the sense of mathematically not possible, to perfectly migrate data between systems that represent the semantics (meanings) of the data differently. Small discrepancies are amplified with each synchronization. Things get left out. Not only are the results inexplicable to users, they’re inexplicable to engineers.

In Apple’s case they’re deeply stuck. They have desktop systems running 10.4 and 10.5 that they’re trying to support, each with somewhat different models for calendar items, contacts, and tasks. (Let’s not even mention the horrors of the Mail.app vs. iCal.app task fiasco). The iPhone has yet another data model for Calendar and Contacts, not to mention Notes (but no Tasks). The iPhone has to “sync” with Outlook (when Exchange is not present) and iCal/Address Book (OS X) and MobileMe and Exchange Server.

The solution is to surrender to Microsoft and accept the Exchange Server model of the world. Yes, Microsoft’s monopoly is not dead.

So in OS X 10.6 everything adopts the Microsoft Exchange Server data and semantic model of Contacts, Tasks, Notes, Calendar events, etc. At that point MobileMe, the iPhone, and the OS X desktop will align. That’s probably good news, though users of PPC machines may be out of luck**.

“Snow Leopard” is probably coming out later this year. I don’t think MobileMe and the iPhone will give us the basic PDA functions we need until after 10.6 is widely available.

--

* In the world of HealthCare IT, where I live during daylight hours, the equivalent words are “mapping”, “messaging” and “interoperability”.

** It’s generally assumed that 10.6 will be Intel only. I would not be surprised if Apple has not yet made a final decision.

MobileMe alternatives – including for iPhone Sync (MacWorld)

Great article by “Joe Kissell ..senior editor of TidBits and author of numerous e-books about OS X” for MacWorld. He’s reviewing alternatives to MobileMe, but I particularly appreciated the iPhone sync options. He doesn’t mention using AOL IM as an alternative to the MobileMe chat directory and doesn’t mention any “Back To My Mac” alternatives to MobileMe. (I don’t think there are any.)

Some excerpts with a focus on sync, emphases mine …

Alternatives to MobileMe | Mobile Mac | Macworld

… Apple’s Address Book application can natively sync your contacts with Exchange, Yahoo, or Gmail Contacts, without requiring MobileMe. To set this up, open Address Book, choose Address Book: Preferences, and click on General. Select the Synchronize With Exchange, Synchronize With Yahoo, or Synchronize With Google option, depending on those you’d like to sync with…

Then, to sync, choose Sync Now from the Sync menu in your menu bar. (If the menu isn’t already there, open iSync in your Applications folder, choose iSync: Preferences, select Show Status in Menu Bar, and close the window.) Unfortunately, unless you also have MobileMe sync enabled (and set to occur on a schedule), Address Book doesn’t sync with these other services automatically; you must initiate each sync manually.

Thanks to Google Calendar’s support for the widely used CalDAV standard, iCal can connect directly with a Google-hosted calendar and sync all events automatically… you can’t simply sync an existing iCal calendar with Google Calendar…

… Another service, currently in beta testing, is Soocial. Its OS X software will sync your Address Book with a Web-based contact manager as well as (optionally) Gmail Contacts and several other services.

..Plaxo is a social networking Web site that, among many other features, offers a Web-based contact manager and calendar; they can be synched with Address Book and iCal using the company’s free Plaxo for Mac software (available only to members). Plaxo has another handy trick up its sleeve, too: it can update your Address Book automatically when contacts who are also Plaxo members change their contact details…

.. [File sync ] Evenflow’s DropBox (2GB free; 50GB for $99 per year or $10 per month); SpiderOak (2GB free; $10 per month for 100 GB; $10 per month each additional 100GB); and Sharpcast’s SugarSync (prices range from $2.49 per month for 10GB to $25 per month for 250GB).

All three services include software that you can install on your Mac or on a Windows PC (SpiderOak and DropBox also offer Linux versions, while SugarSync is also available for the iPhone and iPod touch). With this software installed, you can easily sync files between your computers and an online storage area.

DropBox sets up a single folder (the eponymous DropBox) whose contents are automatically mirrored between your Mac and the DropBox servers. SpiderOak and SugarSync let you designate one or more existing folders to behave in the same way. In all three cases, new or modified files are uploaded automatically as soon as a change is detected in the folder(s). All three services offer file sharing and synching; SugarSync and DropBox also let you upload or delete files from a Web browser.

Sync iPhone to Mac

… The iPhone fully supports Exchange accounts, which provide push e-mail, contact, and calendar updates. .. you can sign up for an individual account with several providers, including 4iPhone, interWays, mail2web, or SherWeb.

Note that you don’t need to use actual Exchange servers; third-party servers that use Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology—such Kerio MailServer, Zimbra Collaboration Suite, and Communigate Pro—also offer push synchronization of e-mail, contacts, and calendars with your iPhone…

Use NuevaSync NuevaSync is a free online service that offers over-the-air push syncing of contacts and calendars between your iPhone or iPod touch and Google (Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar), Plaxo (for contacts only), or both….

…. Athough NuevaSync can give you over-the-air push synchronization of contacts and calendars, it doesn’t sync directly with iCal or Address Book. To fill in that part of the puzzle, use BusySync, Spanning Sync, or Plaxo to sync data from your online account to your Mac…

Of course all sync services are for use “strictly at your own risk” – my experience is that all are risky and if you combine more than one sync solution you are doomed. Also the iPhone can only sync with a single Exchange server, so if your employer allows Exchange sync then you can’t use it to sync your personal data (the unreleased Palm Pre is more versatile).

I’ll be visiting some of those Exchange/ActiveSync options. I’ve been holding off on NuevaSync until they get out of beta and start to charge money.

Update: I visited some of the Exchange services. I wasn't impressed. I'll wait for NeuvaSync to get out of beta and take a look at what they're going to charge.

GoogleUpdate.exe - broken on our corporate network

This is an odd one. I don't have the answer, so any hints would be much appreciated.

In our corporate environment when we try to install any Google Products we now get what I'm guessing is the GoogleUpdate.exe XML manifest instead. It starts like this (example, Chrome, emphases mine):

... <asmv1:assembly xsi:schemaLocation="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1 assembly.adaptive.xsd" manifestVersion="1.0">
<assemblyIdentity name="Google Installer.app" version="1.2.133.37" publicKeyToken="9a8dfcd080ccb114" language="neutral" processorArchitecture="x86"/>
<description asmv2:publisher="Google, Inc." asmv2:product="Google Installer"/>
<deployment trustURLParameters="true" install="false"/>
−
<dependency>
−
<dependentAssembly dependencyType="install" codebase="clickonce_bootstrap.exe.manifest" size="13531">
<assemblyIdentity name="clickonce_bootstrap.exe" version="1.2.133.37" publicKeyToken="9a8dfcd080ccb114" language="neutral" processorArchitecture="x86" type="win32"/> ...

Chrome itself can still install Google Apps, but nothing else can.

We assume "Google Installer.app" is broken for us. This does not appear to be a common problem, though it's now universal in one company.

It's hard to get information on "Google Installer.app". I presume it's related to "GoogleUpdate.exe", but there are currently no pages that mention both (except this one). This is the best page I've found on GoogleUpdate.exe:

GoogleUpdate.exe - Google Chrome Help

GoogleUpdate.exe is a software component that acts as a meta-installer and auto-updater in many downloadable Google applications, including Google Chrome. It keeps your programs updated with the latest features. More importantly, GoogleUpdate allows your Google applications to be rapidly updated if security flaws are discovered...

I don't think this problem is a result of our corporate "webwasher" filters, because I think we can install will work when we connect to other networks.

Any ideas? (I tried Google's Help Groups, but they're continuing their record of being 100% useless for me.)

Update: From the Google Pack site we can install Chrome and GoogleUpdater.exe (also Earth, Picasa, etc). Chrome doesn't do one click installs of Google's products, so if you use Chrome to install a browser plug-in like Google Video Chat Google provides an executable (such as GoogleVoiceAndVideoSetup.exe) that's stored in the Downloads folder. This can then be run.

Dreamhost - registrar and hosting - still like 'em

Last August, after years of moderate dissatisfaction with my domain registration and site hosting arrangements, I signed up with Dreamhost.

I've been quite satisfied with them as a hosting service and even happier with their registrar services; you can see this from posts over the past six months. I was disappointed with their weak implementation of webdav services, but that's been a minor problem. Of course you need some geek genes to work with them, but less so than most alternatives.

If you want to keep things simple, DreamHost is a better Google Apps partner than Google -- especially now that Google is trying to hide the free stuff.

Dreamhost offers members kickbacks to facilitate recruitment. So you need to take my recommendation with more saline than usual, but if you independently decide to sign up you can use my promo code of KATEVA (our dog) and get $50 off your 1st year fee (and I get a kickback if you pay up). Be sure to check out other promo code deals however, the one on their home page looks remarkably good.

Dreamhost now offers "unlimited bandwidth" and "disk space" to new customers with the caveat that you can't be running a site designed to suck bandwidth. Existing customers can also upgade, It turns out I was somehow using more storage than I thought and was paying some modest overage fee, so I just did the free upgrade to "unlimited".

Lastly, unrelated to hosting, Dreamhost is offering an "apps" service (install Wordpress, etc) that's supposed to be free "forever" to beta testers (more invitation codes).

How to use Firefox with Sharepoint - avoiding the credential problem

I found this one via a work colleague.

Firefox works pretty well with Sharepoint, but you need to enter your domain credentials every time you authenticate. It turns out there's a way get FF to store the credentials and enter them automatically.

I haven't tested this since I use IE 7 with SP, but I wonder if a similar approach would work with a standalone windows feed reader that would be more capable that the one built into IE 7; the key is "NTLM authentication support". (The Outlook 2007 and FF feed readers are miserable, IE 7 is decent by comparison).

Configure NTLM for Firefox, Using Firefox for Sharepoint Sites « My Home Automation project

...  Firefox does have NTLM just that you need to configure it ... NTLM stands for NT LAN Manager ... Microsoft’s authentication protocol...

... launch Firefox and enter in the URL field - about:config

From there it will provide a long list of settings, on the ’search’ bar type NTLM, you will see 3 entries ... Double click on network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris

From there you will enter the DNS name of your Server...

If you use multiple SP servers, you can separate the name by commas. "DNS name" is just the familiar name, like "server_name.megacorp.com".

Restarting a remote machine: XP and Windows 2003

How do you restart a remote machine, like an XP controlled by remote desktop or a Windows 2003 server running terminal services? At least with Windows 2003 server you see a grayed out button when you try to shutdown or restart from a remote desktop session.

In Windows NT and 2000 you could install the “remote shutdown tool” on your remote machine but Microsoft pulled it, perhaps because they had a rather serious security problem related to remote shutdown in XP SP1.

I couldn’t find much Microsoft documentation on how this works for XP, but it’s still supported. Just fire up the command line and type “shutdown –i”. In theory you need admin privileges on the remote machine for this to work (the SP1 bug allowed non-admin users to do remote restarts with another tool).

I can confirm this works on Windows 2003 server, though there is a known bug that can affect some machines.

Restart or shut down remotely and document the reason explains how to do it. You have to know the machine name of the remote machine and you have to have admin privileges on the remote machine associated with your network name. Oddly enough the documentation there uses / for an option delimiter, but if you type “shutdown” the directions use hyphens.

From a command prompt “shutdown –i” gives you a handy GUI (you can tediously browse the network for the machine), or just type this command line (where N4591Fred is not my real machine name) …

shutdown -r -m \\N4591Fred –t 0 -c "bug fixes"

The command line example above will shutdown with no warning, but it still takes a few minutes to shutdown, restart, etc.

Update: I’ve been told that if you’re connected to a remote server you can run the “shutdown.exe” command from the remote machine command line. I haven’t tried that yet.

Legal BitTorrent sites. Who knew?

Sarcasm aside, it's useful to know that bitTorrent sites exist that are limited to legal content ...

Top Sites That Every BitTorrent User Should Know About | MakeUseOf.com

... If you want to stay out of trouble check out Legit Torrents and Legal Torrents which only list legal torrents. ...Public Domain Torrents - Lists torrents for downloading classic long forgotten movies in the Public Domain...

If you'd like to play with BitTorrent without impairing your ability to serve in the Obama administration, those links could be a worthwhile start.

Google Video Chat – at last, news from Google

We’ve been making extensive use of GVC for corporate collaboration.

It’s damned impressive, but there’s NO information from Google’s official channels on what’s going on with it.

There is, however, an authoritative source.

One of the lead developers has a personal blog …

juberjabber: Gmail voice and video v1.0.5

… Today we released the 1.0.5 update for the Gmail voice and video chat software. All current installations will begin an automatic update within the next 24 hours. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://mail.google.com/videochat and re-run the installer…

They’ve done a lot of work on the Mac version. It was grossly unstable a month ago, but I’m going to be retesting.

Wanted a fix for iTunes Podcast 2 week shutoff

This is my biggest problem with iTunes: “iTunes has stopped updating this podcast because you haven’t listened to any episodes for two weeks”.

If I'm not extremely careful it can lead to my missing episodes of In Our Time!

I've been looking for a hack that would force iTunes to wait at least 8 weeks. This Apple discussion thread points to a blog post discussing a Doug's AppleScript that forces a regular bulk update.

Be nice if Apple fixed this, but meanwhile OS X iTunes users have a crude workaround ...

Time Capsule reviewed

Not only the best Time Capsule review I've seen, it might be the ONLY decent one written: Time Capsule brings high class, high function to Wi-Fi access points |Enterprise Mac | Tom Yager | InfoWorld

How many browsers really work with Google? Fewer than you might think.

How many web browsers are fully supported clients with Google's web applications?

Fewer than most people imagine.

Consider this acid test suite of Google web applications that I routinely use:

1. Gmail with Google Video Chat
2. Google Apps: Documents, Spreadsheet
3. Blogger and BlotThis!
4. Google Sites
5. Google Calendar
   
6. Google Page Creator*

Now consider this set of browsers I run against those apps** and the OSs I use with them:

1. Firefox (XP and OS X)
2. Safari (OS X)
3. Camino (OS X)
4. Chrome (XP)

Which browser(s) really work with all of Google Apps 1-5, or even 1-4?

Just Firefox. Even today's Chrome has obvious bugs, such as omitting the final character from a link created against an existing text string.

I assume IE 7 works pretty well too, but I can't speak to that. I'm surprised Chrome still doesn't work as well as FF against Google's own properties.

It's still incredibly hard to deliver full function "web 2.0" apps against more than one browser.

* On death row and supposedly due for replacement by Google Sites, but that seems to be on hold.
** I use IE 7 regularly against Sharepoint at work, but nowhere else