BOWLED A GOOGLY

Dick Pountain/17 November 2010 14:37/Idealog 196

November was a hectic month for me, with lots of social engagements, so it was particularly galling when Palm Desktop 6.2 abruptly lost all my appointments. It was in fact one of those "last straw" moments. I'd been having trouble with Palm Desktop for some time, ever since I upgraded to Windows Vista. It soon started losing large chunks of my contacts database - at lengthy but random intervals, perhaps twice a year - but I stupidly persisted in working around it because the data still existed on my Treo phone so I'd just Hotsync set to "Handheld overwrites Desktop" and restore them. I searched the forums and found that others were having problems too, but version 6.2, the Vista version, is the last from Palm so bug fixes and future support are non-existent.

This bug of course negates the entire point of Hotsync, since I always enter new addresses via my laptop, not my phone, and had to start deliberately syncing after each new entry to make sure the Treo had all the data. And having my phone hold my master database is a terrible idea anyway. But when those appointments disappeared they weren't on the Treo either, and that brought me sharply to my senses: as the young folks might say, Palm is soooo over for me...

The problem is, what to replace it with. I'd already taken a first step away from Palm by adopting Googlemail as  my email client (I never used the email facility in Palm Desktop). Actually I use Gmail as the *interface* to my mail rather than as client: it aggregates mails sent to two older email addresses, plus mail to my own domain which comes via a BT mailbox so I always have a second copy. Around a year ago I exported all 939 of my Palm contacts to my Gmail Contacts, a painless enough process once you choose vCard format, but disastrous if you try comma or tab delimited files (I tried both of course). But, there's no automatic sync between Gmail and Palm Desktop.

Losing those appointments pushed me further to investigate Google Calendar and I discovered that I like it. What tipped it for me is that it automatically parses locations contained in appointments and gives me links straight into Google Maps. So I had the basis of a new life-organising paradigm here, if I junked my Treo for an Android phone that can sync with Gmail, Contacts and Calendar. Another alternative would be to junk the Treo for a Windows Mobile 7, or any other smartphone that can sync with MS Outlook, which most of them can. The problem there is that I'm allergic to Outlook, which is the reason I went Palm in the first place. I find Outlook incomprehensible and confused to a maddening degree, and what's more incomprehensible still to me is that so many people can tolerate it. So, Android it is then.

This brings me to a large and highly-topical philosophical question, which is, can you trust all your personal data to "the cloud". After searching my conscience in depth, my answer is a muted "yes". It all depends upon your estimate of comparative risks, and mine is that the chances of my laptop or phone being lost, stolen or destroyed in a house fire somewhat exceed those of Google going bust, or turning evil and charging £100 a week for storage. The truth is that these Palm Desktop hiccups have rather soured phone/PC synchronisation for me. I will of course be downloading my Google Contacts periodically and backing them up locally just in case, for which purpose I'll probably write a script and schedule it. As for the privacy issues that obsess some people, its only my banking and financial details I worry about. On the Palm I kept these behind a separate password, but Gmail doesn't have any such facility so I'll have to investigate other ways to store them.

I've taken the first step by purchasing an Orange San Francisco smartphone, as recommended by Paul in this month's Mobile & Wireless column. It's a cute little device and I don't even mind the Orange crap it's smothered in so much as some reviewers appeared to. But then I remain an extraordinarily low-volume mobile user: in the UK I barely make mobile voice calls at all, and in Italy where I use it more I use a Telecom Italia PAYG account. What's more I don't suffer from OSAS (Obsessive Smartphone Aesthetics Syndrome) which is epidemic at the moment, making otherwise sane people grizzle that they "hate the chrome strip down the side", or that the "pinch-and-twiddle gesture has the wrong feel". I'm only barely reconciled to using mobiles in any case, and they fall way below guitars, pottery or even cushions in my aesthetic concern list.

I will however soon get around to unlocking the San Fran, bunging in a T-Mobile SIM and then rooting, reaming and rogering it until it does things the way I want, which is basically to sync up with Gmail, Google Contacts and Google Calendar. I suspect that endeavour will provide me with hours of fun/heartbreak between now and Christmas.