Google and time zones: Calendar oddities on the iPhone

I view my Google Calendar three different ways, and depending on the view I see appointments at different times. It turns out this is not as bad as I first thought when I wrote ...

Gordon's Tech: gSyncit for Outlook 2007 to Google Calendar and Contacts Sync

... Not yet characterized, but there are time zone problems. I think Google Calendar tries to be 'smart' about the time zone one is currently in. Big mistake. Correction -- this isn't a gSyncit/Outlook problem. I think this is a Google Calendar quirk depending on the time zone settings on the web client host machine....

First, some background. Our family Google Calendar repository is being updated from four streams (no over-the-air iPhone sync, damnit): (see also)

1. XP Outlook/exchange to Google Calendar via gSyncit
   
2. OS X iCal to Google Calendar via Spanning Sync (and iPhone to iCal via Apple's damned sync cable. [2])
   
3. Blackberry Pearl to Google Calendar via the BB Google author calendar sync app
4. Direct data entry via Google's various web interfaces including the little appreciated and under-marketed Google Apps iPhone mobile interface.
   

If this sounds risky and complex please see footnote [1].

I am shocked that this setup actually works, but it does. It's held together by duct tape and bailing wire of course, but so was my father's Valiant and it drove us around for years. Blood will tell.

Or does it work? I was seeing events appearing at different times depending on how I viewed the data:

1. Google Calendar via desktop Firefox
2. Google Calendar via iPhone Safari connection Google's semi-secret high powered Google Apps web calendar view.
3. Google Appls iPhone optimized web view
   

It turnes out that, behind the scenes, Google Calendar is doing quite a bit of time zone work, but it behaves differently depending on how you access it. From the iPhone it uses the phone's local time zone information -- so appointments always shift to local time. From a browser it uses the time zone setting associated with your Google Calendar settings. You do remember that option, right?

Google ought to make this more explicit in the UI; Google Calendar should at least display the active time zone with the ability to change it from the calendar. Still, it's impressive that this works at all.

The trick will be remembering to change my Google Calendar settings time zone back to central time when I get home ...

[1] I could write a book on the state and evolution of family/work calendar integration/ synchronization and all the lessons it holds for health care IT, system integration, the semantic web, the future of publicly traded companies, interconnected complex adaptive systems, and the implications for human progress. Andrew accuses me of making the simple complex, but my take is that reality is recursive and all simplicity is an illusion over the supremely complex. I don't have time to write the book, but I'm due to put some hints into Gordon's Notes. Now back to the topic ...

[2] Damned because of the side-effects of Apple's Digital Rights Management lockdown of the cable interface and failure to provide a vendor-useable API / sync framework.

Update 11/10/08: Ok, this is creepy. Now I'm seeing new time zone related options in the Calendar settings. They don't seem to be doing anything to the Calendar I see, but I didn't notice them yesterday ....

Google reader: now with translation services

Google is very keen on Google Reader. It's a testament to their genius.

Now they've added translation services ...

Official Google Reader Blog: Is Your Web Truly World-Wide?

...Next time you find an interesting feed in another language, just subscribe to it as normal in Reader. When you view the feed in Reader, check off 'Translate into my language' in the feed settings, and (voila!) the feed will be immediately translated for you....

I would very much like to see Google sell a commercial appliance-based version of Google Reader for use within corporate firewalls.

Is it too late to go back to Palm 1994?

After my latest iPhone Toodledo / Appigo disaster I've been reconsidering my approach.

Maybe I need to go give up on the Cloud for a while, and let things bake a bit.

Or maybe I'm being premature. Evernote's no longer guilty of data lock, maybe I should try them again.

I mozy over to my Evernote account. There I'm greeted with my first note ...

Evernote Web: Note Search

...Unknown exception (com.google.gwt.core.client.JavaScriptException: (TypeError): c is null fileName: http://www.evernote.com/enweb/ENWeb/26883679FEFF138CBBFB08EA679E2AA0.cache.html lineNumber: 2534 stack: vdd(null,229501)@http://www.evernote.com/enweb/ENWeb/26883679FEFF1 ....bject Object]) ..../enweb/ENWeb/26883679FEFF138CBBFB08EA679E2AA0.cache.html:800 ) during operation (Unknown)...

Pick up towel. Throw. In.

I'm toast.

Time to rethink my approach to Task and Notes.

Frankly, if I'd know it was going to be this bad I'd have stuck with my old Palm handheld for another year!

Appigo and Toodledo – nasty emergent design flaw makes a mess of my iPhone Notes and Tasks

This is about the worst design flaw / bug /emergent interaction I’ve encountered in the past few years.

Here's the story from my rejected post to the Appigo Todo Google Group [1]

When I added Notebook to Todo, and after I'd imported hundreds of notes Toodledo, I ended up with a set of categories (aka folders) for my iPhone Appigo Notes and Tasks that were the sum of the Palm categories I had used for Notes and the Palm categories I had used for Tasks.

Since my Palm Notes and Tasks had different categories, there were empty folders that showed in Notes (but not empty in Tasks) and vice-versa. They cluttered up my folder list.

So I deleted the empty folders on both sides.

Can you guess what happens next?

It took a surprisingly long time after the deletion, perhaps due to Toodledo synchronization issues, but I now have hundreds of Tasks and Notes that no longer belong to any category…

… At least when synchronizing with Toodledo, Tasks and Notes share a common set of categories/folders. If you remove a folder from Notes that is empty, you remove the matching folder from Tasks. All contained Tasks go into the inbox (at least they aren't deleted).

This is the single worst bug or design flaw or bizarre emergent synchronization behavior I've run into in several years. I don't know how I'll sort this out.There’s no way to undo this behavior, and there’s no good UI on either the iPhone or Toodledo for manipulating sets of Tasks or Notes.

Man, do I hate synchronization.

What a bloody mess.

Update 11/9/08: To clarify why the problem is so bad. If the data lived in Outlook, this would be a nuisance problem. It would take some time, but I could select swathes of items and assign them to new categories. Neither Appigo nor Toodledo support multi-select operations.

I did some further testing. I created a folder in Toodledo tasks, and verified it did not, at first, appear in Toodledo Notes. I did the same with Toodledo notes. However after Appigo Notes synchronization, the Toodledo TASKS folder appeared in Appigo Notes. After a cycle of Appigo Tasks and Notes synchronization the new Toodledo Notes and Tasks folders appeared in both Appigo Tasks and Notes and then synchronized back to Toodledo Notes and Tasks.

Which brings me back to two critical points I keep relearning:

1. Synchronization is Hell.
2. Reliable service requires a single vendor to control the client and the server. Differences in folder models between Toodledo and Appigo are at the root of this exquisitely nasty bug.
3. There is a vast and perhaps unbridgeable gap between the capabilities of a robust desktop client like Outlook and what the Cloud can offer.
   

Update 11/12/08: Although Appigo did not publish my email they did respond to another complaint. They say it's not their design, it's a result of how Toodledo manages categories.

I suspect Toodledo stores notes in the same tables they use for tasks, hence the shared categories.

So this is an example of an emergent bug arising from synchronization between different application models.

Everything I need to know about Health Care messaging and synchronization I learned from my PDAs.

Update 11/13/2008: I looked into alternatives to Appigo such as Things.app and OmniFocus. The first is pre-release and has no import/export capabilities and the second, though released, has no useful import/export capabilities.

Neither meets my minimal data freedom requirements.

Since the category-loss bug arises from the combined use of Appigo's Todo.app and Notebook.app synchronizing against Toodledo's single Task/Note store, one workaround is to keep Todo.app and Toodledo Tasks but look for another solution for Notes, such as Evernote.

Alternatively, since Evernote now has a published API, Appigo could use Evernote as their note store instead of Toodledo. Their Notebook app is far more stable and useful than the Evernote iPhone client.

I'd suggest this to Appigo, but the last post I submitted to the Appigo support Group was not published. [1]

I don't have better options for the moment, so I'll stick with Appigo iPhone Todo.app and Notebook.app for the next few months. Things.app may be ready for my use by February 2009, assuming they have a robust set of import/export capabilities on the client.

Of course Google could create a Task companion for Google Calendar at any time. If they do that then the deck will be reshuffled and we'll have more options. I don't expect any solutions from Apple; I think they're in much worse organizational shape than we realize.

[1] Appigo declined to publish my post to their Google Group based support forum. If my most recent note on this thread doesn't appear, I'll have to conclude that Appigo is aggressively censoring their customer posts -- at least on this very sensitive topic.

Update 11/13/08: My posts are not appearing in Appigo's Google Group.

Update 2/24/2010: Appigo did eventually introduce warnings into their apps, so that you're less likely to fall into this trap.

Appigo Todo now has search

As of tonight the Appigo - Todo - Overview doesn't describe all the great new features, but they're listed on the App Store site.

They've added a LOT to one of my favorite apps. The killer addition is search -- now I can search in Appigo Tasks just as I've been able to search in Appigo Notebook. Tags and contexts have been added and they sync to Toodledo.

Terrific update. Highly recommended iPhone application.

Update 11/9/2008: As of today, not so highly recommended! Lord, what a screw-up.

OmniOutliner Pro's impressive outliner to HTML feature

OmniOutliner Pro is an old OS X app -- been around forever. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it started out on the NeXT workstation.

I've owned it for years, but I've never quite fit it into my workflow. The main value for me has been that it does a terrific job of opening my ancient Symantec MORE 3.1 outlines. That's handy, since 10.5 orphaned many of my old papers.

Years ago I thought I'd use it to create web pages, but it did a lousy job -- back then. Happily the OMNI Group keeps improving it, and they've never asked me for more money. A recent update mentioned something about 'dynamic html outlines', so I gave it a try.

Impressive! You can create very nice dynamic HTML outlines. Since OmniOutliner can open RTF documents it's not a bad way to put some documents on a web site -- assuming you have FTP access.

I might get some new use from my old app.

Scribd iPaper: a Flash based alternative to PDF

Today Brad DeLong's web site included one of his lectures -- hosted using Scribd iPaper.

It's supposed to be an alternative to PDF; another way to make Microsoft Office documents accessible to a broad audience. Where as PDF is optimized for print, iPaper is optimized for web display.

There's some support for non-Office documents as well ...

Upload Your Documents | Scribd

.... Microsoft Word Files doc, docx Microsoft Powerpoint Files ppt, pptx, pps
Microsoft Excel Files xls, xlsx
PDF PDF pdf, ps
Open Office Open Office Documents odt, odp, sxw, sxi, etc.
Text Text Documents txt, rtf

There's only a few wee little catches.

1. iPaper documents are pegging my browser (Camino on OS X at this time).
2. iPaper is a descendant of Adobe's FlashPaper. It uses Flash for display. Yes, Flash, the buggiest, most insecure rendering platform known to the 21st century.
3. iPaper appears to be a totally proprietary format, in fact it's not clear if one can download an iPaper file or if they have to be hosted at Scribd.
   

I prefer to avoid Flash whenever possible, so Scribd isn't a good answer for me.