The thing is that Google Calendar provides iCal files and such. It is a very open system that just begs the rest of the calendar world to sync with it. There is no technological reason that the iPhone can’t synchronize with my Google Calendar directly on its own. The fact that it does not is an example of the kind of thing that only happens on closed platforms. This kind of feature would never be missing from an open platform. I can almost guarantee Android phones will do this. The iPhone needs to do it as well. I can understand it not working well with Google Apps, but not working with it at all is unacceptable.

For now, I need to find a practical solution to this problem. The first thing you might suggest to me is that I should visit my Google Calendar in the mobile Safari browser. This does indeed work, but not well. The user interface of the native iPhone calendar application is far superior to the mobile web interface of Google Calendar. Also, the web interface lacks a lot of functionality, namely the ability to set the phone to alert me about events. If the user interface isn’t good, it’s effectively no different than if the functionality did not exist in the first place.

Your next suggestion might be to get a Mobile Me account. Hah! Listen, I’m a Google Apps user. I’m already fully invested in it. I’m not about to pay for Mobile Me, which seems to not be doing so well. Even if Mobile Me worked, Google Apps is free and better. I think it’s pretty unreasonable to expect me to pay that kind of money just to synchronize my calendar. In fact, I think it is pretty unreasonable to expect me to pay any amount of money for this one feature. Any non-free solution is right out the door. Well, maybe I’ll pay a one-time fee of $5, but that’s it.

The restriction on spending money includes purchasing Microsoft Office or Outlook. If I had a copy of Outlook, I could syncrhonize it with my Google Calendar using any of a myriad of apps like this official one. Then iTunes would act as a go-between Outlook and the iPhone. It’s a chain with five pieces (Google, Calendar Sync, Outlook, iTunes, iPhone) for a process that really only requires two pieces (Google, iPhone), but it will work. The problem is that I don’t own Outlook or Office. Sure, I could pirate them or whatever, but that’s not going to happen. I need a legitimate and reliable solution, not some hack.

In the same vein as the Outlook solution, there are also programs out there like Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync takes Google Calendar and synchronizes it with iCal. iCal then works with iTunes, and then to the phone. It’s a little bit smoother operation than some others because Spanning Sync actually appears to be a really polished application. The problem is that it is Mac only. It would be cheaper to buy Outlook than for me to buy a Mac.

Jailbreaking the iPhone would probably solve the problem, but that’s not going to happen either. I pay a lot of money for this phone, and other than this one issue, I’m almost entirely satisified with it. I’m not going to risk screwing it all up. You can jailbreak at your own risk. I’m staying on the straight and narrow.

This morning I finally came across something that might be a possible solution. It’s called NuevaSync. What NuevaSync does is pretty clever. They have what I must believe to be a Microsoft Exchange server. They allow you to get a account on the server. They will then automatically synchronize your Google Calendar with their Exchange Server. You then connect to their Exchange server directly from the iPhone, and now you will have push synchronization with your calendar. This is even better than solutions like spanning sync, as updates will be pushed, rather than manually synchronized through iTunes. So why not use NuevaSync?

The first reason not to use NuevaSync is that it doesn’t appear to support Google Apps, only regular Google accounts. Too many people who try to integrate with Google, including Google themselves, forget about Google Apps users. Google Apps users are the hardcore Googlers. They should more features and functionality, and they should get it before non-apps Google users. It’s really a shame that so often everything is the other way around.

The second reason is that an iPhone can only connect to one Exchange account at a time. I’m already using my one account to synchronize with the Exchange server at work. Why not also use the work calendar you say? Because I don’t want my personal calendar on my employer’s server, that’s why. I think that’s a reasonable expectation, don’t you? Actually my company was recently acquired. My boss who used to be a partner is now an employee. He was using the work server for his personal calendar, but now he’s trying to get everything off of there. He has a Mac, though, so maybe Spanning Sync will work for him.

In the meantime, here I am with a Google Calendar and an iPhone 3g, and never the twain shall meet. This is a serious situation that needs to be rectified.

Anyway, one of my major disappointments with the iPhone is the lack of podcatching software. If it had a podcatcher, I probably would have bought one right off the bat. Android has presented me with the opportunity to write my own mobile podcatching software. I’ve decided that I’m going to go for it. Being an Ubuntu user, I had to setup the SDK to get working. However, I ran into a few problems along the way. Since I suspect many other Ubuntu users out there also might want to get into the Android developing business, here I will post how I got the development environment setup in Ubuntu.

The first thing you need is a computer with Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon installed. The computer should be connected to the Internet. Ubuntu by default tries to use open source versions of Java, and while these are pretty good, they will not work for android development. The fact that Ubuntu will not default to using Sun Java, even after you install it explicitly, is the primary reason this how to is necessary. Anyway, the first step is to update your packages and install Eclipse and Sun Java.

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install eclipse sun-java6-jdk

If you want to use Sun Java as the default JVM in your web browsers, run this command as well.

sudo aptitude install sun-java6-plugin

Now you need to make Sun Java the default jvm in Ubuntu. You can do that with this command.

sudo update-java-alternatives -s java-6-sun

We also need to edit the file /etc/jvm. Edit that file as root with your favorite text editor.

sudo gedit /etc/jvm

The contents of the file will look something like this.

/usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj
/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-1.5.0-sun
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
/usr

Change it to look like this, then save and quit your text editor.

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
/usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj
/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-1.5.0-sun
/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
/usr

When certain programs on your system want to run java, they will look at this file to figure out which JVM to use. They will try every JVM in the list starting with the one on top until one of them works. Eclipse, however, does not use this file. It has its own file that works in the same way. First edit the eclipse java_home file as root.

sudo vim /etc/eclipse/java_home

There should already be a line in that file for Sun Java 6. Move this line to the top of the file. Add it to the top if it isn’t there.

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Now your Ubuntu system is ready to run the Android development kit. Go to the Android documentation site and follow the directions there. Have fun making mobile apps in Java!

I have no problem if someone asks me for a professional opinion of what type of hardware I would purchase under specific circumstances. I am fine with someone asking me if I think it is worth their time to watch every episode of an anime, or if they should just watch the compilation movies. Those are the types of questions that I am more than happy to answer. If someone asks about the difference between DVD+R and DVD-R, that’s not cool. I have a big problem if someone asks me what Linux is. Asking what video games are coming out soon for the Nintendo DS is not cool. These are the types of questions that make me sad, but why do I get upset at the latter and not at the former?

The first type of question is something that requires analysis of multiple factors. Few people have the problem solving or risk analysis skills to make an informed decision. When a problem requires a complete understanding of a larger body of knowledge, then I have no problem giving my knowledgeable bodies a workout. In fact, I am eager to provide those services because I believe that it helps me in some small way when other humans make better decisions.

The second type of question is simply a request for data. That data is not secret, and it is not hard to come by. I may or may not have that data stored in my fleshy memory banks, but hether I do or not does not matter. The fact is that the information is publicly available and distributed widely. If some guy shouts into a megaphone that the show starts at five o’clock, ask me a minute later what time the show starts, and I will hit you upside the head.

The Internet is a worldwide megaphone. Millions of people are constantly shouting into it while simultaneously listening to everything that comes out of it. If you want to know who directed a movie, IMDB has the answer. If you want to know the capital of a country in Africa, Wikipedia has the answer. Want to know how many episodes there are of that anime you just saw? Anime News Network Encyclopedia has the answer. And of course, no matter what your problem, Google has the answer 99% of the time. If you ask me a question that is easily answered by any of these sources, it makes me want to hit you upside the head.

I am about to let you all in on a secret. I actually don’t know much. I’m a smart guy, at least I think I am, and I know that I am more knowledgeable about certain things than most other people on the planet. However, most of the time people ask me questions on the web, I just look the answers up. I appear to be much more well-informed on the web than I really am because I have the instinct to look up the answers to any question I encounter. The fact is that I don’t have more information in my brain than idiot savants do. I mostly know just one thing. That one thing is how to use a search engine efficiently. If you need help learning to use a search engine, I will be happy to oblige. If you want me to do the searching for you, suck it.

I like to help people a lot. It is very fun and rewarding for me, and I hope it is equally rewarding for the people I help. When someone asks me for help I want to be nice to them. If someone asks me for something, they obviously think highly of me, and I am not interested in changing that. However, sometimes I just have to give you the big ol’ RTFM. I have so little free time and so many things on my plate, there is just no room for doing simple research for other people. Sorry, but you’re going to have to do something for yourself. No, don’t give me that business about being too lazy. Writing me an e-mail requires a lot less effort than using a search engine. From now on whenever someone asks me this type of question, I’m not going to send them the answer. I’m going to send them the search results.

I am in the business of teaching people to fish. If you depend on me to do the fishing for you, you’re probably going to starve. The next time you want to know something, have the common courtesy to at least ask Google before you ask me. Most of the time that’s all I would have done for you anyway.

So today when google update google news to allow customization I thought that was pretty cool. But then I tried it. It’s freaking awesome! No longer is there a sports section with news about cricket and soccer. There are two sections, one for Formula 1 and another for Ice Hockey, the only sports I care about. The Entertainment section is going, going, gone to be replaced by the anime section. The US and World news sections are expanded to reveal those stories that make it just under the radar. And the Sci-Tech and business sections have four new friends: video games, copyright, nintendo and open-source/linux. This is the high quality shite.

What’s even better about it is that it provides me with a URL I can share with the world, so you can see the same news that I see. Think about it. Such a small change to an existing interface has the most amazing effects completely changing the way I read news. I hope that one day I will live in a world where this kind of stuff happens every single day. Oh wait, I do. Here is the URL to read news just like I do.