Let loose the geeks of tech war: Google on Android vs. Google on iPhone

I use my iPhone with Google Apps - not MobileMe.

I'd love to use MobileMe -- I'm not deterred by the cost. The problem is that MobileMe sucks. No public APIs. No calendar sharing. Exactly the same Notes and Tasks functionality as Google Apps (none).

Google Apps are simply vastly better than the MobileMe alternatives.

So my iPhone Mail.app syncs with Gmail. iPhone Calendar.app syncs, via my iCal/Spanning Sync desktop, with Google Calendar. My Notes and Tasks (Appigo Notebook and Tasks.app sync with Toodledo). Of course Maps.app works with Google Maps, Google Reader Mobile works with Google Reader, and Google.app search works with ...

You get the picture, as my son Ben would say.

Apple either doesn't get the picture, or they can't execute on the server.

Problem is, the picture's not complete. I can't, say, sync iPhone Calendar.app directly with Google Calendar. My wife's Blackberry Pearl can do that, thanks to Google software, but my iPhone can't. This is a big problem, and it's a problem owned by ... Apple.

Not good.

On the other hand, that won't be a problem for the Android ... (emphases mine):

Official Google Mobile Blog: Google on Android

At Google, we develop products that we love to use ourselves. For example, we're avid users of Search, Gmail, Maps, and many others. But for those of us in mobile, it's tough. Not all products work the same on all devices, and although we try and optimize for each device, we often run into challenges specific to certain mobile phone platforms. I, for one, used to carry three devices with me all day. I love my iPhone for its powerful browser and music player. I use my BlackBerry for Gmail and Calendar (and occasionally Brick Breaker), and I carry a Nokia N-series phone because of its camera and YouTube application.

The first Android-powered phone, announced today by T-Mobile, comes 'with Google'. The following Google applications are preloaded on the device: Search, Maps, Gmail with Contacts, Calendar, Google Talk, and YouTube. There are a few things I'm particularly excited about:

• Easy to use. It's never been easier to use Google on your phone. With single sign-in, you can log in to your Google account and have instant access to all your favorite Google products. No messing around with settings, your login never expires, and everything just works. If you don't have a Google account yet, you can set one up on your phone and be up and running in seconds.
• Fully synchronized. Your emails, contacts, calendar entries, Google Talk chats are fully synchronized with Gmail and Calendar on the web. New events are pushed in real-time to your phone and any changes you make on-the-go are immediately available on the web. If you ever lose or break your phone, all your data is safe and secure in the cloud.
• Designed to work together. Search is now available as a feature in many applications, including non-Google ones, such as the music player. While you're listening to a song -- like something from Depeche Mode -- just 'long-press' the artist's name. You'll see a menu pop up that let's you search Google for the Depeche Mode Wikipedia entry, or search YouTube for the music video. The contact application lets you see your friend's IM status, view his address on a map, and communicate with him using Gmail or Google Talk. And, of course, you can call or text him as well.

Depeche Mode? Shades of my ancient Quebecer (eng) past.

Emily's Blackberry isn't the greatest. I'd like to get something better. It has to work well with our family Google Apps. Could be she'll be getting an Android.

Apple needs to get their *** in sync. They need to either match Google on the server side (impossible) or fully support Google Apps as competitors to Mobile Me.

Or my next phone, won't be an iPhone. I may not be the only one ...

Thanks Google. I love these bloodless tech wars.

How do I share my Google Reader Shared Items Feed and process it via Yahoo Pipes?

Google Reader provides all kinds of nice feeds from your "folders" (tags) and your shared items. Most of 'em can be managed by any feed reader, including Yahoo Pipes.

Except for the Shared Items Feed. That one requires a cookie corresponding to a Google Gmail account. I'd like to be able to share manipulate that feed, so I've posted a question on the Google Reader Group:

Share my Google Reader Shared Items Feed and process in Yahoo Pipes - How Do I? | Google Groups

Public Google Reader folders (tags) have feeds. They don't require authentication; I can manage them in Yahoo Pipes, anyone can see them.

Things are different from the Google Reader Shared Items (and probably starred items too). They have a feed, but it requires a Google (Gmail?) account to be read.

For example, here's the Atom feed for my shared items:

http://www.google.com/reader/atom/user/06457543619879090746/state/com.google/reading-list

I think anyone with a Google account can view it (may have to log in) this feed using Google Reader.

I can't add it to Bloglines though, and Yahoo Pipes can't process it.

I do realize that anyone can view the web version of this:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/06457543619879090746

but that's not what I want to share. I want to be able to publicly share and process the shared items feed including sharing it with people who don't have a Gmail account.

Is there a way to do this (short of using a feed proxy)?

I doubt there's a solution today, but maybe Google will rethink this requirement ...

Update 2/2/09: I find a fix from a different angle.

Don't throw out those OS 9 apps just yet ...

Sooner or later I suspect there will be an OS 9 emulator that can run some of those Classic apps. So keep the CDs around, and a copy of Classic too ...

MacWindows: The web site for Macintosh-Windows integration:

... the development of both of those emulators has veered in that direction [running OS 9 in Leopard]. I think that Mac users have more interest in the emulators now....

Appigo and Toodledo: running into sync problems

Synchronization, which includes messages between distinct data models [1], is heck.

I really appreciate my iPhone's ToDo.app and my Firefox-rendered ToodleDo task list. Problem is, they've stopped playing nice together. From a post I wrote to the Appigo Todo Google Group:

I sync Appigo ToDo.app with Toodledo.

Recently, I'm having problems. They're nasty because I can tolerate a lot of bugs, but I can't tolerate sync bugs that cost me data.

The details of my current problems aren't all that important to this post. I'm seeing items on ToDo.app fail to move to Toodledo, and I'm seeing changes made to Toodledo be reversed on sync with ToDo.app

That's bad, but the real problem is -- who owns these problems?

They could be Appigo bugs, Toodledo bugs, or emergent bugs shared between the two. I wouldn't be surprised if the problems I'm seeing are all three!

I'm a paying customer for both Appigo and Toodledo -- but I don't want to file two bug reports.

My gut sense, and I have some experience in my real job to support this, that sync is very hard when one vendor controls both ends of the transaction. It's damned near impossible when two vendors are involved.

Real soon now we're going to have to get to a situation where one vendor is responsible for the end-to-end transaction -- or Appigo is going to have to get extremely close to either ToodleDo or RTM.

In the meantime, who will own these problems?

This is what could kill Appigo's superb iPhone apps. If Apple ever produces a task tool, even if it's much inferior to Appigo's product, they'll have the huge advantage of controlling the MobileMe, iCal and iPhone data models and the message model.

I'm hoping Appigo finds a solution, but it's a damned tough problem. This has broken many a company.

[1] See HL-7.

Lessons from the messages of hapdaniel

I've been trying to use Yahoo Pipes to create new streams from my Google Reader feeds.

I've run into a parsing problem (Pipes may not support parsing feeds that require cookies) and a limitation of Pipes' Boolean logic (All A not In B).

I both cases "hapdaniel" answered my questions, though my problems are not yet solved.

Which led me to look at all messages by hapdaniel.

I've looked at the Pipes documentation. This message stream is more useful.

There's a lesson here, that I'm slowly learning. Whenever you receive a useful response on a message board, you ought to mine all related messages. Most forums allow one to see all messages of a member, almost all allow one to search for a string. These are valuable information streams.

So who is hapdaniel? A hobbyist with deep technical knowledge? A Pipes developer moonlighting in the forums? A covert tech support person? I think we see all 3 in these settings.

In some cases, it might be worth adding these information streams to a Google Custom Search engine.

iPhone app bypasses phone trees

via a Jacob Reider share:

Direct Line Saves iPhone Users From Automated Call Hell

... Add this to your list of must have iPhone applications. Direct Line (iTunes link) is a service that helps you automatically navigate phone trees to get right to an operator (exactly what companies don’t want you to do).

Install the application, browse of search the included companies, and select the one you want. Direct Line then calls the number and preselects the appropriate choices to get you to an actual person...

Costs $1. I'll try it. Jacob also links to Fonolo, a web site that does even more.

I don't mind smart, fast, well structured phone trees. It's just that they're quite rare...

Filtering my Google Reader Share with Yahoo Pipes

[Update: I thought this was working, but it turned out I was using the wrong feed. When I substituted my true Shared Item feeds Yahoo Pipes was unable to parse it. I'll see if i can fix things up, but I'll leave the post as an example of what I'd like to do with Pipes.]

I love my Google Reader shares, as can be seen on our family news page. I particularly appreciate being able to "star" and "share" items using Google Reader Mobile.

 Of course there's always room for improvement. Google lets me tag blogs and share by tag ("folder"), but I can't sum blogs and I can't filter, for example, all my shared items save those that belong to the tag "politics".

The politics is the problem. I am, shall we say, not enthused with the GOP. Now it is true that all my friends feel pretty much the same way, but that is not true of my colleagues. If I give them my Google shared items feed address they'll find it a mixed blessing.

 That's where Yahoo Pipes come in. Yahoo Pipes can be used to filter out, say, iPhone posts. Pipe are cool, even Googlers like 'em. I was hoping I could create a Pipe of form [All A not in B] where A is my Google Reader shared item feed and B is my Google Reader politics feed, but I don't think that's supported. On other hand I can filter out posts containing Cheney, Bush, McCain, Palin and even Obama.

That's not optimal of course. It will eliminate many news stories, and some horticulture. I'll see what else I can do, but in the meantime I'll test pipes.yahoo.com/jfaughnan/lesspolitics. I've added it to my Google Reader shares, so I suppose I can now create recursive shares ..


Update 2/2/09: I find a fix from a different angle.