I’ve been testing various offerings which synchronize a calendar between Lotus Notes and Google Calendar. None of them are perfect but one is rising up quickly – SyncNotes2Google. Despite the name, it does support bidirectional sync. It does support timezones which was an issue I found with GooCalSync.

There’s not much to say other than I’ve tested it and it did what I expected. The bug i encountered has already been reported – "Issue 12: Reoccuring meetings get sync twice from Notes to Google Calendar".

I have not yet tested Companionlink but they describe the exact scenario I am looking at with an Android device as one endpoint. They also handle contacts and tasks which I have not found elsewhere. (image source: CompanionLink)

I hope to look at Lotus Traveler soon.

Google knows everything you search for and every link you click on from their search. Now they want to know every website, picture, and download…  every time, everywhere …

Most of us aren’t familiar with DNS because it’s often handled automatically by our Internet Service Provider (ISP), but it provides an essential function for the web. You could think of it as the switchboard of the Internet, converting easy-to-remember domain names — e.g., www.google.com — into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) numbers — e.g., 74.125.45.100 — that computers use to communicate with one another.

Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster we’re launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out.

source: google blog

Sounds like they are being helpful, yeah ? NO! By becoming the DNS resolver, they get to know every URL you visit, every image you look at, every download you make, every email server you touch, every bank you do online business with, every everything, every time. I personally think that is just dangerous. Unless they disclose their data retention and usage policy for "Google DNS", I won’t even kick the tires.

The most common Google search that hits theSalmonFam.org blog is: stages of the common cold !

For those who have not read the post, it is a humorous look the common cold through the 5 stages of death. Here’s a link for your … umm … enjoyment.

Google says “email was invented 40 years ago and Wave is what email would be if it were invented today”. That alone does not mean “Wave is better than email”. Email works because it works … for everyone.

I’m on Gmail and use Thunderbird. At work I’m on Lotus Notes. I use an iPhone *and* a Blackberry. My brother is on Microsoft Exchange at work and Yahoo mail at home. I can email my mother’s telephone. My niece can text message my email address. IT JUST WORKS – with everyone, everywhere.

Enter Google Wave. Cool stuff ! I’d love to give it a try. I bet its will be a blast within a team. But hardly anyone has it and it won’t be everywhere anytime soon … well, maybe if Google is lucky it will be ubiquitous in 40 years by which time there will be Google Omni (I’m claiming that name here and now) or something.

The problem with a new “all-in-one” solution is that it only works when everyone involved has the same all-in-one solution. It also assumes everyone wants the same all-in-one solution. Like I said, I have gmail but I hardly ever want to use the gmail native web interface. I really like the iPhone experience and for my desktop, Thunderbird is my compromise choice. A web experience is way down on my list of choices. Perhaps Wave will be different. Perhaps Wave will be better than email … some day.

So don’t “wave off email” just yet

I have tried and given up on Google’s Chromium based browser several times. The failing grade always has come from the same issue – creating stand-alone web applications from web sites. “BUT WAIT” you scream at your computer in hopes I will hear – “Chrome has web applications shortcuts built right it!” Fortunately, I do not hear you. However, I did some digging and found an answer – actually, I found something that let me search form something more which eventually helped me to create an answer.

Problem statement:

I create an application shortcut in with a Chromium based browser to Google Reader. I launch the new shortcut and login and tell it to save my password. I then launch a standard Chrome browser. But wait, it is logged in with my user and password from the Google Reader web application. I don’t want that ! I really don’t want it. What happens when I launch my GMail application shortcut ? I have a different user and password for my personal GMail account. Chrome is meant to have these all as separate processes. Why it it sharing all this stuff?

Solution:

Firefox with Prism solves this by creating separate profiles. It turns out, Chromium can do the same. All you do is go ahead and create the application shortcut. Next right click on the shortcut and edit the properties. Find the “target” that specifies the program and command line options and edit it to be something like the following:

“C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome.exe” –app=http://www.google.com/reader/view/ –user-data-dir=”..\Local Settings\Application Data\Chromium\User Data\GoogleReader”

For each web application shortcut, you will replace “GoogleReader” with an appropriate folder name.

The above is for Chrome v3. Depending on what version of the Chrome browser you are using, the root of the user-data-dir seems to vary. One website listed it as “..\User Data\<name>” but that placed my results in an odd place. If all else fails, you can do what I did and temporarily give it a unique name, run it once, and then search for wherever the directory gets created; then adjust the target to get it where you want. You don’t need to have it with other chrome profiles so you may want to create a separate area for your web application shortcuts.

With this little addition, I now have “web applications” for my Google Reader, Google Voice, GMail, my router’s control page, my NAS’s control page, my printer’s control page, ….. I guess you get the idea.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I don’t actually run Google Chrome. I use SRWare Iron – the more private build of Chrome !