Pocket Informant and Google

Wany

New member
I made a huge mistake [/GOB]. Agendus has the suckiest interface I've used to date, and I've got some seriously old apps on Syd. It's not just inconvenient to use, it's inconvenient to the point of distraction. When pointing out a serious but easy to fix flaw (pre winmo6 death), I noticed it had been pointed out repeatedly and assurances were made but nothing was ever done. Any hope of improvements, if they hadn't died with winmo6's death, are dead because even before that they weren't considerate in regards to their UI.

So I'm looking for something that is actually usable without me having twist my own MOs in knots. PI looks nice enough. But lately, since I've been using chrome more and more, I've been considering using Google as my primary PIM sync. What I wasn't able to find while searching was any integrated way to sync PI stuff with google and vice versa.

I think I'll end up doing some of my data entry through chrome, and I want that pushed to my phone, but I also want data I do on my phone to get pushed to google.

Is this doable? If it is, and it isn't an integrated feature, can you describe the number of steps it would take to accomplish it?

Any additional advice, tips and tricks would be appreciated. Thanks. :)
 
The iPhone version of PI syncs with Google and I'm almost certain the Android version they are developing (Alex has a Nexus One) will also. I'm guessing they won't look to do that for the dead-ended WinMo 6.x, though they might do it for a WinPho 7 version.
 
*sigh*

XDAndroid has come a long way, but it's not quite prime time yet, and I think dual booting is the only option. You can't flat out replace WinMo afaik.

Also, despite a lot of stuff I use now being present on Android, one of my most valued programs' developers is hostile to the android platform. I managed to talk him into considering it a few months ago, he was even going to get a nexus one and play around, and then he did a 180* and sent out a mass email to all pleco customers saying it wasn't going to happen and then argued furiously on his boards about how it wasn't a great platform for him.

These is no true replacement for Pleco. It's sui generis. Lots of companies make cheap chinese dictionaries, but Pleco is like aged kobe steak to their moldy bread. Unless someone comes along and provides good emulation of winmo (or iPhone) programs on Android (a la styletap), I'm quickly reaching an ugly point. I'll have to reboot every time I want to use my dictionary, or once I buy a real android device, I'll have to keep Syd around as a dedicated pleco device, which means I won't have my dictionary on hand at all times as I've become accustomed to over the past 6 or so years.

EDIT: I'm also a heavy One Note user. While One Note Mobile 2007 doesn't deserve the OneNote name (I've played with more feature-rich rubber bands), word had it that 1note Mobile 2010 would. That would be tough to replace. I may be comfortable syncing certain things to the cloud (which has always been true to some degree), but I want my originals to be offline created and offline stored. I stopped playing with evernote within minutes.

Now, if anyone needs me, I'll be in the corner whimpering and throwing darts at pictures of the hipster dufus zunies who hijacked my platform.
 
I was reading some (admittedly not all) of the Google Android thread, it seems his biggest argument is fearing that Android is too small a niche to add much to his business (apparently hasn't been noticiing Droid sales). Odd. It sounds a little like he hasn't been all that happy with the Apple app store model and is hesitant to go to another, although, in fact, Android does not require selling through the Android Market (although there are discoverability advantages in doing so).

It is an odd argulent given that Palm Garnet is fading (in terms of new sales), WinMo 6.x will in a couple of years and no one knows the fate of WebOS.

Odd.

Wonder what his real beef is.

On a tangent, someone in the thread mentioned if you don't have a sim in, you don't see pay apps in the Market. I'm going to have to test that tonight and report. I'm curious, if it is true, if that is a carrier customization or if it applies to unlocked as well.
 
Lawl. :D :D



He's not wrong about dangers of fragmentation (which is his main argument). Pleco, and a lot of developers, went through crap when Palm was doing their undocumented tweaks near the end of the PDA era. He's somewhat afraid that, even accounting for Droid (which did delay their 2.1 update for a long frigging time) sales (he did acknowledge those at some point) or other popular phones, with so much carrier control some of the tenants of Android have been negated, and Pleco won't run reliably on a phone just because it has android on it and then his customers will feel he has betrayed them because his software won't run on their devices even though he claims to support android.

He's not entirely wrong. And it isn't clear YET if most android phones will behave like Droid or HTC's, or if most will behave more like the Motorola Backflip, where you don't have a manufacturer dictator, but you do have a carrier dictator. Google does need to address this and IMO, they haven't done so completely yet. At the moment, I wouldn't recommend any Android phone other than the Nexus One. There you know you won't get left behind as the OS adds features and functionality.

The other part is he's invested a lot of money going multiplatform with his code and he got screwed. He converted everything to C so that Palm and WinMo could be built from the same code base, and then suddenly C went out of style. When Android's NDK came up as a topic, he seemed to claim that something about it made it unsuitable for an easy port of the code.

It's not easy putting the future of your tiny company on the line with uncertain development futures when things that seem certain and the common wisdom keep flipflopping on you, and some users got a little hostile which caused him to get defensive and entrenched. I hope that passes, but I'd feel better if I could just have a little insurance policy: a la styletap. Frankly, I think having a tool that converted iphone apps to android apps, along the lines of what Palm did, would also be helpful to the the Android platform in general.
 
Not that I have any desire to do so, but do I understand correctly that I couldn't sync Touchie to Google IF I wanted to? I thought I could set up the sync software from Google and do that if I wanted... I'm confuzzled! :confused:
 
I thought I already replied to this, but I don't see my reply now. Anyway, I hate subscriptions, but that might be a decent gap filler.
 
In re pleco, I haven't been there this month, and his tone has changed a couple of more times. That's good, IMO, better than him becoming too entrenched.
 
You were totally trying to help me out and I totally didn't get it the first time around (I don't remember what it was I thought you were talking about). I just discovered Google Sync would sync with winmo via exchange/activesync protocol. And then I thought, hey, why didn't someone on BH tell me about this?!? :confused: So I came back here and someone did tell me about this. At least twice. :o :o :o

Am now investigating further to see if this is as full a solution as it appears to be (I can live without mobile exchange access at my school --I'll get my email by pop3 or forwarding). It kind of looks like there is no tasks sync (Edit: tasks are not supported). Oh well.
 
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