Palm to iPhone - only the notes remain

As summarized in my last note, I've got everything but my Memo Pad items (Notes) moved from Palm to iPhone. I've also realized that if were to do this all over again, I'd have paid my $25 sidegrade fee for Missing Sync for iPhone (includes migration utility).

Hey, I didn't have the benefit of reading my own blog postings.

The Memo Pad/Notes items are tough. I could get Missing Sync for iPhone [1], but then the data sits on my home machine. That wouldn't be so bad if the iPhone included any search functionality, but it doesn't.

I could wait for iPhone OS 2.1, but there's no guarantee Apple will actually include notes synchronization then. They've get a huge number of bugs to fix.

I don't like the usual hack of storing notes as fake contacts (messes up address book, weak search).

I could store them as tasks without dates or priorities on Toodledo/Todo. That's not a bad option.

I looked at Evernote again. It seems a natural fit. I installed the Windows version and used the "Add to Evernote" option to move all Notes to the net. The first time I did this the Windows app crashed, so I first created a local-only database, imported into that, then created a "sync" (net) repository and dragged them from the local to the net version.

This worked. The notes are on the net, and I can search them from the Evernote client on my iPhone (as long as I'm connected). I can even do some limited work with them using the Evernote client on OS X.

There's only one fly in the ointment, but it's a big, ugly sucker.

I tested the "export" features of the Windows client. Pathetic. The data is locked in. Worse, some web searches find Evernote users commenting about the need for export ... in 2005.

I really don't trust a company that locks in user data like that. They're well beyond the point where words are any use -- they need to show results.

So I have the data there for now, but I'm assuming I won't be able to get any of it out. So Evernote is a transitional strategy.

As I think harder about this I came across a review of evernote contrasting it to some other options:

Evernote for Mac Reviewed (beta version) Daniel mostly on Software:

• 3.1: Evernote (2.7 plus 0.4 for what my benchmark doesn’t count)
• 2.8: Journler, Together
• 2.5: Scrivener, Soho Notes
• 2.4: EagleFiler
• 2.3: DevonThink Personal
• 2.0: Yojimbo
• 1.8: Circus Ponies NoteBook

There are a large suite of unstructured textbase apps for OS X, including Tinderbox. This Particular Outliner and Tidbits often review these apps.

These note taking apps go far beyond what I've done with the memos, which are really memory fragments, but I'll take a walk through this space and see what the Cloud or iPhone integration options are. (Yojimbo's web site still talks about .Mac sync, which is not a good sign.)

It has also occurred to me that there might be a way to structure my Notes as blog postings, and then store them as a private blog, choosing the blog based on available iPhone apps.

So it's Evernote for the moment, but I'm actively considering alternatives.

The current collection of solutions makes an interesting contrast to the simplicity of my original Palm III - even if I ignore the migration challenges!

• Calendar: iPhone <-> iCal <-> Google Calendar via Spanning Sync ($25)
  
• Contacts: iPhone <-> Address Book
  
• Tasks: iPhone ToDo <-> Toodledo ( -> iCal + Google Calendar as read-only) ($35)
  
• Notes: iPhone Evernote <-> Evernote service (temporary)

Obviously my data is fairly scattered now. I positively reek of cloudness.

[1] The mystery of why this is the only product able to access the iPhone data store over the USB conduit grows. What's Mark/Space got that no-one else has?

Update 9/29/08: Migrating Palm Notes (Memos) to Toodledo and Appigo Notebook.app

Update 3/14/09: See comments for an advanced approach using, in part, a Perl script.

Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes

My painful Palm to iPhone/cloud migration continues. I've updated my summary table.

I migrated my Calendar by basically stopping use of my Palm/Outlook Calendar and entering data in the iPhone/iCal calendar [1]. I use Spanning Sync to publish to gCal and, less often, update from changes I make to gCal. I'll archive my Palm data in PDFs and data tables.

I migrated tasks by moving them from the Palm to Palm Desktop to archival To Do file to Toodledo. I corrected minor conversion bug on Toodledo and sync with ToDo.app on the iPhone.

I migrated my encrypted password database to 1Password.

Note the above costs money. I've spent about $80 on additional software and services and I'm not done yet. Some of the costs are recurring, but on the other hand so far I've seen no reason to buy MobileMess.

I don't yet know what I'll do with my Memos/Notes. Too bad Google Notebook isn't a more useful product, and too bad Evernote doesn't yet do data freedom. I will probably wait to see if Apple delivers sync of iPhone Notes in September. Other options:

• Put my notes into the Toodledo task framework.
• Use the fake address trick.
• Buy Missing Sync for iPhone.
  

On another front sync with my work calendar, contacts, tasks, memos, notes, appears hopeless for now. (I fear those will be intractable unless Chapura produces an iPhone version of KeySuite.)

So the Address Book/Contacts are up next, then I take a break.

I'm expecting to migrate from either Outlook (via Access?) or Palm Desktop to OS X Address Book (10.4 if possible). Options so far:

• Mac OS X 10.1, 10.2: How to import addresses into Address Book
• OS X 10.2 had some import scripts (I suspect these are gone)
• Thunderbird to ldif
• abtransfer
• Sync Address Book with my Palm
• Use Missing Sync for Palm OS - we have an ancient license!
  
• Buy Missing Sync for iPhone and use the migration assistant to move from the Palm ($25 with a crossgrade from our Missing Sync for Palm and Missing Sync for Blackberry licenses)
• Use MobileMe (added later, I forgot about my prior post!)
  

I think I'll reinstall my old copy of Missing Sync for Palm to migrate my contacts from the Palm (backup first of course). Then, if Apple or a Cloud competitor doesn't give me a good Notes solution by the end of September, I'll invest $25 in Missing Sync for iPhone and take care of my Notes problem.

[1] As I wrote this note I realized that I could have used my old copy of Missing Sync for Palm and moved the calendar data from my Palm to iCal. Note this exposes one of the many peculiar limitations of iCal. Categories in the Palm become calendars in iCal. Of course Spanning Sync only syncs one calendar to Google. So much for categories ...

Update 8/17/08: Address book moved easily. This is what I did.

1. Install my old version of Missing Sync for Palm OS.
2. Backup OS X address book and iCal
3. Delete all existing Address Book entries and sync iPhone (so all gone from both)
4. Disconnect iPhone
   
5. Set Missing Sync to overwrite Notes (might as well get those on the Mac somehow!)
6. Disable sync on Everything else including calendar.
7. Missing Sync default is to "sync contacts". This is a misnomer on first sync; it should say that handheld will overwrite desktop (same for calendar).
8. Consider zipping up your iPhone backup file at this point.
9. Sync Palm then disconnect
10. Connect iPhone and Sync
    

Oddly enough, my favorites were preserved. I wonder if they match on strings.

Based on what I've learned so far, this is what I'd recommend for any Palm user migrating to iPhone/Mac:

1. Consider Missing Sync for iPhone, it includes the "migration assistant" that will move your data. It's $50 new, but you get a $25 sidegrade on other MS products and future upgrades. (See update below however)
2. Use Migration Facility to move data from Palm.
3. Use iCal data to move tasks to Toodledo or RTM. Pay for these. After migration to Toodledo/RTM, you'll want to delete tasks from iCal and disable task synchronization.
   
4. Buy ToDo.app for iPhone.
5. Buy Spanning Sync to sync iCal with gCal (optional).
   

I'm now almost done with the personal migration. Only a solution for Notes remains -- a solution for my work data is still in the future.

Update 1/5/09: A commenter left a very negative review of Missing Sync for iPhone, so please read and review before ordering. My experience personal experience was with using other Missing Sync products.

Update 5/7/09: A reader points us to to a detailed migration path from Palm/OS X to iPhone/OS X.

GooSync - not yet for the iPhone (soon?)

GooSync specializes in SyncML based phone to gCal sync. Nothing yet for the iPhone though:

GooSync - Supported Devices

A synchronisation application is not yet available for the Apple iPhone.

A tech support forum posting mentions (incredibly) Nuevasync. I'm beginning to think that exchange server approach might work, which is kind of an amazing thought.

Here's a tech support post from July 2008, there's considerable frustration with Apple's struggles (or lack of honesty):

I can confirm that our SyncML client partner has a full working prototype for the iPhone, and as soon as Apple officially offer Calendar and Contacts support so will we.

Apple have announced release dates for official iPhone Calendar and Contacts support since the beginning of the year. Unfortunately these releases have never materialized. The Contacts API will be available soon (or so we're told) but still no calendar API set for release. We have offered release dates this year based on information received from Apple, and this information has thus far proven to be unreliable. Obviously with Apple not offering any solid commitments its impossible for us to either.

I can confirm that there have been working clients on offer for "jail-broken" iPhones. These are something that we do not endorse and will not work on v2.0 iPhones.

We can only apologise for this and can assure you we are as frustrated with the situation as you may be. As soon as there are any solid releases we will be sure to let you know.

Update 8/19/08: See comments. GooSync is waiting on app store approval now ...

Google Calendar's CalDAV drives the iMac to Leopard

I knew this was coming soon.

This was the final straw: Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center: "Only iCal 3.x supports CalDAV sync. (iCal 3.x is standard in all versions of Leopard.)".

Farewell Classic.

I'll need some more sleep before I steel myself or the upgrade. The last machine I upgraded to 10.5 blew up.

NuevaSync; iPhone to Google Calendar

This is extreme beta -- only for the brave. Interesting, however. Also some notes on Apple's sync framework, which is obnoxious (emphasis mine):

NuevaSync - Over the Air Synchronization

NuevaSync now has support for several Apple products. You can use the new iPhone® 3G as well as the original iPhone® and iPod® touch with 2.0 firmware.
Visit our device setup instructions for information on configuring your Apple device.

Info

You can sync your contacts with Google (GMail) or Plaxo. You can sync your calendar items with Google Calendar.

Apple has chosen always to sync from a clean slate. That means that when you enable sync, your existing contacts and calendar items will be removed and replaced with the external copies. This is an Apple feature, not a NuevaSync one...

I'm tracking their blog. Some (insane?) people are using NuevaSync already.

iPhone backups and accesing .mdbackup files

Apple - Support - Discussions - Where does iTunes saves iPhone Back-ups ... ... "The backups are in ~Library/Application Support/MobileSync".

On my system MobileSync/Backup has 3 folders. I think this reflects the tumultuous history of my iPhone and the flopped restore procedure. The name of the folder is the unique identifier of your iPod or iPhone:

To back up an attached device, you must specify its target ID. This is the name used for the folder in the MobileSync/Backup directory...

and the name of the files is ...

... the name of each backup file is actually the SHA1 hash of its path...

When I synched my iPhone 1 of the 3 folders was updated, so the others are either inactive backups or correspond to my iPod. (I think they're inactive backup files.)

My backup folder is 70MB but holds almost 1,400 items. It contains a small portion of my 8GB of iPhone data and apps.

The files end in .mdbackup. That leads to some interesting posts:

• TUAW: extracting notes data from an .mdbackup file
• .mdbackup may be Apple binary plists (format)
• a technical five part + discussion of iPhone backups (Oreilly)

The last series is the winner. It includes a post referencing a relatively friendly command line app for extracting data from an .mdbackup file (I've downloaded a copy, you should too - but note that using a command line utility is a non-trivial task. I think you need at least admin privileges and you may need to do more to enable the app to run/):

... You can examine the contents of these files and extract the backed up data from them using my mdhelper utility. It's a command-line Mac-based application that scans through these folders and allows you to extract files. For example, to recover all the png images from your backups, you could issue mdhelper -C png. Run the utility without arguments to see the built-in options...

What mdhelper does is this. It locates all backup folders. It reads in the Info.plist and Manifest.plist files and it lets you extract manifests and files based on a variety of search options. It stores extracted data on your desktop in a recovered iPhone files folder.

Pop back on Monday to learn more about backup files and how to force your iPhone to backup and restore from the Mac command line.

and, when things are really bad, you will appreciate these tips on how to restore from an archive you've made of a "good" backup (I'm sure there will be a GUI tool to do this very soon.):

.. In order to restore a device, you run the AppleMobileBackup program using the restore switch, like this:

./ambackup --restore --target targetid

This throws your iPhone into restore mode and returns any uncorrupted files from the backup folder to your device. This takes quite a bit longer than the backup, so prepare to wait a few minutes for it to complete.

If you want to restore your phone from a folder that is different from the target ID normally used, supply a source folder name as follows:

./ambackup --restore --target targetid --source sourcefoldername

If the source folder is not found in the backups folder, one is created. If it is found, that manifest and those files are used to restore your iPhone...

I've zipped a copy of my latest "good" backup, and retrospect backs up these files too. It's good to know I can, if things are desperate, scrape lost data from these files.

Update 8/20/08: The iTunes Preferences "Syncing" panel lists the backups by name and date. You can delete unwanted backups there. It only lists my iPhone backups.

Update 12/21/10: If you are looking for a particular device backup in a set of backup folders, you need to look for the manifest.plist file in each directory. Open it in a text editor and scroll down. You'll see the name of the device.

Google Page Creator to end

I noted last year that Google Page Creator was being sunset.

Now it's official. Google will transfer some Pages content to corresponding Sites and provide a download option for users who don't want to use Sites.

This is a nuisance of course, but I'm not complaining too much - yet. Sites is improving and I'm glad Google is putting some resources into this service. My Google irritation will all depend on how careful they are about the migration.

How files will be managed is still a mystery. You can attach a file to a Sites page, but it's awkward. Google Page Creator had more file upload options, but even those were weak. I'd be reasonably happy over the transition if Sites were to allow JavaScript and if Sites gets true file management.

My biggest effort will be translating my Minnesota Special Hockey web site from Page Creator to Sites. That could be ugly. My other Page Creator uses are more modest, but they include kateva.org.

Google Operating System has a good set of tips for people looking to get ahead of the rush ...

Export Files from Google Page Creator:

... Google Sites will add some of the missing features by the time Google closes Page Creator, but those who want to move to a different service or maybe to buy a domain can already export the files.

Requirement #1. There are three kinds of files that are trapped inside Page Creator: uploaded files and web pages created using the editor which can be public or unpublished. The following exporting tool can only work for uploaded files and the public web pages. ..

Requirement #2. Another prerequisite for the exporting tool is a software that downloads all the files linked from a page. For Internet Explorer, try the excellent download manager FlashGet (I use the classic version). For Firefox, there's an extension called DownThemAll that has some of the features from FlashGet...