The Tilted Llama

Replacing MobileMe

To date, I have used MobileMe for the past year.  It’s nice.  Very nice.  But to be fair, it could be replaced.  I have decided to continue my subscription for the time being because “it just works” although the alternatives are viable if you have the time to set everything up.  Here’s how you can break down the services for MobileMe for you, your Mac, and your iPhone.

1) Contacts & Calendar sync (free - $25)
One of the big draws of MobileMe is having your contacts & calendar in sync across your mac, mobileme account (i.e. online), and your phone.  Well, Google Sync is available for JUST such a purpose.  It is capable of syncing your calendars as well as your contacts.  Click on the links for how - and remember there are caveats such as contacts not syncing all of the Address Book fields for instance.  SpanningSync is a low-cost alternative, but it’s not free ($25/year or $65 lifetime)

2) Push email (free)
Push email from MobileMe is nice.  I don’t use it however - everyone emails me on my pre-existing Gmail account!  So luckily Gmail is supported too by Exchange, and as you set up your calendars & contacts, Gmail gets pushed too (for iPhone software 3.0 or greater).

3) Bookmark sync (free)
Bookmarks are problematic.  There’s not a good way to sync then OTA (over-the-air) as in MobileMe.  But, there’s a better solution.  XMarks is an online bookmark synchronization tool that’s available FREE.  Sign-up and then download the Safari & Firefox bookmark sync tools (available for IE & Chrome too).  Once you get your computer in sync across browsers, your iPhone will be up-to-date the next time that you sync with iTunes.  Its not OTA though….so here’s what you can do.  From your iPhone/iTouch, go to my.xmarks.com, click the “+” button and then select “Add to Home Screen”.  WHAMO!  You’ve now got a pretty XMarks icon on your iPhone which immediately connects to all your online bookmarks.  This is great because you’ve got computer, online, and iPhone booksmarks at the ready & fully backed up.

4) Web Publishing (free)
iWeb is great and so easy to use.  Publishing to your MobileMe account is a no-brainer.  But we NEVER use it!  My wife uses Wordpress & I’m here on Tumblr - both great tools for publishing that just work better.  Not to mention are completely FREE!

5) Photo publishing (free)
Syncing your iPhoto albums with MobileMe galleries is something that has kept us MobileMe customers actually - its really quite easy and it looks fantastic.  But, for those who don’t visit our MobileMe galleries, we use Picasa & our Facebook accounts too.  Using a few basic tools such as the Picasa iPhoto Uploader and the Facebook Exporter for iPhoto you just select your photos & go to File->Export and you’re done!  For videos, we’re all YouTube.  Fantastic way to publish videos, and easy using our Flip camera and software.

6) iDisk (free)
20Gb storage is a nice perk of MobileMe.  Unfortunately iDisk is really inconvenient on the web.  It meshes nicely with Finder on the Mac and on my iPhone I can use QuickOffice to actually EDIT Excel & Word documents.  A huge plus.  But in terms of real-time syncing of files & creating an online repository for quick access to files (an online USB drive, in essence) I use Dropbox.  2Gb is totally free and the small menu bar icon allows you to select a “dropbox” folder that is monitored for any changes.  Valuable files are backed up, easy to access from literally ANY computer with internet access, and there’s a great iPhone app.  Additionally, photos taken on the iPhone can be sent to the “Photos” folder and viewed as a slideshow from Dropbox.  The only downside is that for the time being there are NO iPhone/iTouch apps to edit files, so you would HAVE to have iDisk support for that feature.

7) Keychain, Back-to-my-Mac (free to $39.99)
These are features designed to sync your log-in information & keep your desktop consistent among Mac computers (at work & at home for instance).  I only have one mac because I’m poor as hell so I don’t need the Back-to-my-Mac feature AT ALL (unless there’s something I’m missing).  If I need to access the Mac from my iPhone, LogMeIn is a great (and FREE) alternative among other costlier programs.  And 1Password is a nice option with an iPhone app & Snow Leopard compatbility.  In fact, the browser 1Password bar has become indispensible - my wife recently asked the password for a website we commonly go to and neither of us had any idea.  1Password makes things automated and you don’t have to remember a ton of passwords.  Similarly, it includes a Wallet so you also don’t have to remember all your credit/debit card info, bank account numbers, etc.  The cost is $39.95 but sometimes you can get a deal (i.e. macheist.com)

8) Find My Iphone & Remote Data Wipe (free)
New features recently released from MobileMe include the ability to have your phone ring remotely even if it is on vibrate, enabling you to locate it between your couch cushions, and to wipe all the data from your phone in the case that it falls into nefarious hands.  These are really invaluable if you are prone to losing your phone or you don’t have AT&T insurance or what have you.  There are two solutions.  For “Find My IPhone” features, you must have a jailbroken phone and you can install a program which hooks to a website that allows you to ping the GPS on your iPhone (findmyi.org).  Data Wipe is going to become available through iredhanded, an app which is still in beta (visit iredhanded.com to sign up).

9) Notes, To Dos ($7.99/month)
MobileMe doesn’t include anything special for these functions.  Fortunately, there are two free programs which do (although for a nominal fee, their usability increases a great deal).  Evernote is a fantastic repository for all the garbage you can’t keep in your brain but want to keep for future reference: the name of a wine you tried (take a picture of the label with your iPhone! The OCR will recognize the text!), the list of instructions to push your gmail to your iphone from that blog you found, etc.  Evernote is free online and has free browser plug-ins and a VERY robust iPhone app.  Get it.  It is really quite amazing.  For $5/month you can also upload your word, excel, and PDF files which become instantly searchable - a very powerful feature if you are doing research, for instance. 

Reqall is a To Do program (among a great host of them on the appstore) which has become useful.  It includes voice recognition so you can add tasks with one hand on your iPhone.  The desktop version is just the online site www.reqall.com making access to your to do list that much easier.  To Dos appear sorted by “shopping” “to do” and “notes”.  You can delegate to others with reqall.  And, with the pro account ($2.99/month), your tasks get sync’d with Google Calendar and each task references your Evernote account!  So you say “Meet Bill to hand over documents about Google Calendar sync” and the meeting is not only reflected on your Google calendar, but when you tap for related info, all Evernote notes about Goolgle Calendar sync come up automatically.

There are a variety of other services which are used in similar ways for many of these tasks.  Google search your way through all the various companies selling solutions for these and other useful things you can do with a mac & an iphone - the price at the end is all relative to the time you have to invest.

Google Calendars & Contacts on Your iPhone/iTouch

After the last post, you should now have some modicum of two-way communication with your google calendars. Right?  Great.  Now you should be able to add an event in iCal or Google Calendars and WHAMO its synced.  Keep in mind this might take up to an hour - it’s not instant.  Now we have to get these to talk to your iPhone/iTouch…

Great news for you - Google is Exchange worthy!  Its called Google Sync and its designed to push any changes to calendar or contacts directly to your iPhone/iTouch (when connected to network).  Here’s how:

• Open settings on your iPhone/iTouch
• Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars & Add Account
• Select “Microsoft Exchange”
• Enter the name of the account into the “Email” field and leave “Domain” blank
• Enter your Google account Email address into “Username” - both.of.us@gmail.com in this case
• Enter your password into “Password” of course
• Tap Next and under “Server” you enter m.google.com and then press Next again
• Turn on Calendars…you can also get your gmail pushed to you and your contacts if you have them on Google

But wait!  There’s more…nothing will show up until you tell Google which calendars you want on your iPhone/iTouch.  In order to do that you have to a) open safari and go to http://m.google.com/sync and sign-in using your account (both.of.us@gmail.com).  Since I’ve shared both my calendar (“husband”) and my wife’s (“wife”) they should show up next to the PRIMARY calendar (“both.of.us”).  A Birthdays calendar will appear if you’ve subscribed or sync’d a Birthday calendar too…just check the little boxes next to the calendar name!

iCal & Google Calendars

So you want to have a calendar that you can use at home & on your iPhone or iTouch with hands-free, cord-free syncing?  Thankfully, Google has made that easier without resorting to MobileMe (unless you have other needs, i.e. Remote Data Wipe & Locate My iPhone).  This is a lot of information - if something doesn’t apply, ignore it.  Without further ado, here’s how.

1) Organize.  You need to figure out what you need.  For me, I have one mac & two iphones (one for me, one for my wife).  I want to be able to enter a calendar event on my mac or on my iphones and have it show up everywhere (mac, both phones, and google).  But my wife & I need separate calendars.  So here’s what I did…

• Set up a joint google account (both.of.us@gmail.com), since we both have existing gmail accounts as is (wife@gmail.com and husband@gmail.com).
• Set up a calendar under my wife’s account (name: wife) and set up a calendar under my account (name: husband).  Then, under calendar preferences set the Sharing to “read, write” for the new both.of.us@gmail.com account
• Log in to the joint account and you can see both the “wife” calendar and the “husband” calendar.  Then I called the PRIMARY calendar “both of us” for those joint events like parties that we both want to see. 
• If you have a contacts list with birthdays you can also add those! 
  1. If your contacts are in google,  go to the Settings page, select the Calendars tab and click on “Browse public calendars”, then add the calendar “Contacts’ birthdays and events”. Unfortunately, Google’s built-in calendar doesn’t support notifications so keep that in mind. 
  2. If your contacts are in Apple Address Book, then in iCal go to settings and click Show Birthdays Calendar.  This is a subscription calendar however which is problematic because you can’t merely sync this to Google.  So, you’ll either have to publish the calendar to a free server (http://www.icalx.com/) by right-clicking and pressing “Publish”, use Dates to Ical 2 ($4.50),  or converting it to a regular calendar (which you can NO LONGER update)…
     • Select the calendar you want to convert in iCal.
     • From the File menu, choose Export > Export….
     • Export the calendar to your desktop.
     • Double-click the newly created “.ics” file on your desktop.
     • When prompted by iCal, choose to create a new calendar

2) Synchronize.  Now you need your PC/Mac & Google to talk.  Or at least be on good terms.  You can do this a few ways depending on your situation.

1. If you use iCal and/or Outlook and want to MIGRATE to google exclusively, just hit File->Export.  Google calendars accept just about every format at this point.
2. If you don’t use anything, set up a NEW google calendar on an account you want to use…say your Gmail account.
3. If you use iCal/Outlook and want to KEEP using it while syncing with your iPhone/iTouch…

1.) and 2.) are easy.  3.) is not.  But it’s the most similar to what MobileMe provides - so here’s how to do that.  We’ll assume you’re using a Mac with iCal for the sake of this blog.

If you’re running Mac OS X Leopard (not the new Snow Leopard)*:

• Open Apple iCal, go to Preferences and then the Accounts tab. 
• Click on the + button to add an account.
•  Under Account Information, enter your Google Account username and password.
• Under Server Options, add the following URL: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.COM/user
• Replace ‘youremail@domain.com’ with the email address that you use to log in to Calendar. Make sure to include the ‘@domain.com’ portion (which is @gmail.com for Gmail users) in this section.
• Click Add.
• Under the Delegation tab, select the calendars you’d like to add to iCal by checking the boxes next to them. You may need to hit refresh to get the latest list of calendars.
• Add your email address to your Address Book card by selecting Add Email. You’ll be prompted to add your email address only if your address is not already in your Address Book.
• You won’t be able to invite or email guests to Google Calendar events within iCal if your address is not in your Address Book.

Your Google Calendar will now appear in iCal’s list of calendars, and changes you make to your Google Calendar in iCal will be reflected when you sign in to Google Calendar.

Event information will automatically refresh every five minutes. You can change this interval by opening the iCal > Preferences > Accounts menu and selecting a new refresh interval under the ‘Refresh calendars’ drop-down. Keep in mind you can also force a refresh by selecting a calendar and pressing the Apple and R keys at the same time.

Calendars that are checked but disabled have already been added to iCal - you can remove them from within iCal.

*Source: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99358#ical

If you’re running Snow Leopard (10.6), this is thankfully simpler:

In iCal, open the Preferences pane. Under Accounts, click the + button to add an account. Enter your full gmail address (you@gmail.com) and your Google Account password.  iCal will detect and configure the CalDAV settings for you. This is full two-way sync, so changes you make to events in iCal show up in GCal and vice versa.  In iCal’s Preferences, go to Accounts, then Delegation to check off as many secondary calendars as you want to sync to iCal (up to 5). 

Your calendars show up under “delegates” which is fine with me.  But hey, we’re not all easy-going (and if you’re syncing ONLY via iTunes, you’re stuck having to do this), so here’s how to put them under your “Calendars” heading*:

• Open iCal, go to Preference, then to Account, finally to Delegation. Unmark all of your delegates. 
• Open the app TexEdit and copy and paste this account url on your TextEdit worksheet: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/USERNAME@gmail.com/user 
• Now log into your google calendar. Once you are logged in, go to “My Calendar” on the left hand side and click on “settings”
• You then will see all the calendars on displayed. Choose one of the delegates which will take you to Calendar Details tab.
• Scroll down to Calendar Address and fine the “Calendar ID” on the right hand side. Copy the Calendar ID.
• Go back to TextEdit and replace part of the account URL, so it goes from https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/USERNAME@gmail.com/user  to
  https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/Calendar ID/user (mind you that Calendar ID has a “group.calendar.google.com” suffix, so an example of the final account url may look like  https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/ lbuhjrlgkfoi1oqs56710vkn8zh@group.calendar.google.com/user
• Copy the altered account URL
• Go back to iCal, Preference, then Account.
• Add a new account, if you are using 10.6, under Account Type, select Caldav, and Paste the altered account URL in the Server Address box. If you are using 10.5, once you click Add an account, expand the Server Options, and Paste in the altered account URL in the Account URL box.
• Finally enter your google username and password. Click Add.
• You’re done for one of your delegate accounts. Repeat the process till all of your accounts are added in this way. You will see all your calendars showing up under the Account panel in your iCal preference. Then you’re done.

*Source: http://blog.controlgroup.com/tag/iphone/

There is an alterative to make this whole process easier - sync your google calendar + contacts to iCal + address book using SpanningSync.  But of course it’s $25/year or $65 lifetime.

At this point, you should have multiple Google calendars, all of which are visible and editable on iCal as well as Google.  The next step is to get these calendars onto your iPhone over-the-air immediately via Push!

Address Book & Google Contacts

So why would I use Google Contacts rather than Address Book?  Well, if you want to sync your contacts over-the-air with your iPhone/iTouch, this is a FREE alternative to MobileMe.  Simply follow the steps below & then use iPhone’s native Exchange support to sync your Google account.

If you’re using Snow Leopard (10.6), it’s easy to sync contacts between Address Book and Google Contacts.  Remember, however, that GROUPS are not supported as of right now on Google.  Additionally, some information does NOT get sync’d.  Right now, the following will sync:

• People’s names and job titles
• Company names
• Email and postal addresses
• Phone numbers
• IM names, including the type of service
• Notes
• Photos (on Mac OS X 10.6 only)

Go to Preference and select Google and type in your user name and password. To force a sync go to the upper rigth and there is a MobileMe sync icon (the two arrows in a circle). This actually syncs Google as well - it works with or without MobileMe.

If you’re using Leopard: go to the Address Book menu, choose Preferences, and then check Synchronize with Google. It’ll ask for your Google account and password, then automatically update your contacts every time you sync your iPhone.  The difference is that Snow Leopard will allow over-the-air sync whereas older version of Mac OS X require physical sync.

BACK UP EVERYTHING!  TWICE!  This is a bit of a wonky sync if you ask me, and frankly you want to make sure all your contact data is intact.  So do yourself a favor and get the most complete contact list you can and save it before doing any of this.  Just export your contacts directly from Address Book for instance into a safe place on your Mac then proceed.

Had the sudden urge to light up as I surfaced from a busy subway some cold winter evening as if I had been hibernating until just that very moment to have one sweet drag.  Seemed very New York, very wintery thing to do.  And that’s the nature of the addiction - the anticipation.  Waiting in the train anxiously for that impending celebratory smoke; then getting to where you’re going to you can celebrate too that milestone by puffing another delicious cigarette.  It’s the waiting and the anticipating that makes it enjoyable, moment to moment to moment, never fully enjoying anything but the reward at the end of whatever arbitrary goal you set the last time.  Done with lunch. Got a paycheck. Clipped your nails. Built a house of cards.  Juggled two balls successfully.  It completely removes focus from enjoying precisely that which you are doing, such as finishing a post.

The New Bourgeois Pastime

Sick of sniffing wine from specific farms in France for its vegetals & fruitals? Tired of tasting properly steamed espresso made with only imported Italian water? Bored with puffing heavy Cuban cigars slowly to digest the rich tobacco flavor while conversing with business colleagues in the chi-chiest bar? I’ve been fortunate to have a nose which allows me to discriminate flavors with distinct accuracy and I’m bored. I can taste the squash that was grown in the 1960’s in that vintage from the 1980’s. I can tell you that the steam pressure of that espresso was 3C too low. But what I’m learning now far surpasses that.

Enter the subway. Open your nostrils and take a whiff. You smell pungent odors that can tell you stories - the homeless are a vintage with complex & widely variable varieties.

The nose:
Smell for age - a new homeless person has little odor, whereas one that has aged significantly allows for pungent aromas to delight the nose.
Examine for location - sitting next to your vintage to acquire the nose means there is little substance, but if he is covered by a dirty blanket in the corner of the car and you are overwhelmed by the bouquet, you can rest assured you’ve found your vintage!

The Foretaste:
The last meal - various flavors can be determined. For instance, the homeless who is vegan has a distinctive odor compared with the less discriminatory McDonald’s patron. Its all about the urine.
The season - winter, when snow is melting and being absorbed into the socks & shoes provides a mileu to provoke conversation among your colleagues. Has the person been in a shelter or has he been walking the boro and building aroma?

The Back-taste:
The material - a quality homeless person wears many layers - often cotton, wool, and polyesters blends which have to be defined in the backtaste. Less stout vintages will have cheap covering of all cotton perhaps with garbage bags or pure synthetics to confound the senses and dilute richness.
The formulation - taking what you’ve been sensing, put it all together to identify your vintage.

Bill:
A quality vintage 1935 homeless man with an aged nose often from the car next to you or even the bench outside a stop you’re not even entering. He is a strict fluid-diet patron, creating a unique foretaste, often with notes of far walking and sweating problems. Finally, he is often dressed in a dirty three-piece wool suit with mismatched trench-coat provided layers of locked in smell that leads to brisk conversation and poignant topics for all involved.

Frank:
This rather accessible vintage is from 1948. Often has a very strong nose despite youngish age - having showered 2 or 3 days ago, he nonetheless assaults the senses from the corner of the car despite being covered by three or four blankets. Foretaste is often lacking - winter or summer, there are constant body odors which change little, and meals are almost exclusively fried chicken. Back-taste is interesting, however - underclothes belie the cheap synthetic coats immediately visible. If you are beginning your journey into appreciating the homeless, Frank is a good place to start and a good place to invite your friends to begin discriminating the subtle undertones of Church’s or KFC, woolen or cotton slacks, socks or…perhaps no?

Perhaps you can add other vintages that you’ve experienced? A trip to your local liquor store should be able to provide you with a starting point, and of course the natural element of the subways is an excellent primer. Enjoy your new found expertise and bon appetit!