Me 2.0

I’ve tried different ways to get push email working on my iPhone. And I’m talking about reasonable ways for businesses, not non-scalable consumer based push Apps.

I was very happy with NuevaSync’s service for a long time and I paid for their premium service to get my Google Apps emails pushed to my iPhone. The service quality however has dropped dramatically. The service is simply not working properly on my iPhone and more importantly the support provided by NuevaSync is very poor.

My main reason of paying $25 to NuevaSync as opposed to using Google’s free service was the support. That advantage gone, I’m left to use Google’s half baked email push service which is not real-time, does not remove deleted emails sometimes and like all other free services from Google, comes with no support.

When your product is competing with someone like Google, your only hope is to provide kick-ass support and take care of your customers. NuevaSync has failed in that spectacularly.

Her is my new cycle for finding new music/artists:

• Listen to my recommendations on Last.fm
• Listen to their back album on Spotify
• Look them up in Eventful
• Buy the tickets from See

iContact (Google Contacts for Windows desktop) is now available from its new home here.

If you have to support an IT system like production servers of a trading system, then you know exactly how it feels to be on your “support day”. 

Many organizations use spreadsheets to track these days and allocate their staff to be on support. But these spreadsheet based solutions are not very efficient. The spreadsheets are not accieblie online, they have to be maintained manually, the changes are usually not tracked (unless combined with a source control system) and sometimes it become difficult to make sure the support days are dished out fairly.

This is when an online algorithmic scheduling system comes handy: Onyaka is just that. Onyaka is an online staff scheduling system that automatically generates support rotas (rosters) on a rotating and fair basis.

It supports vacations, different skill sets and multiple projects and most importantly allows managers to override its decisions for maximum flexiblity.

It is absolutely free with no limits. Can’t be better than that can it?!

Really liked this one:

http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

It took me a while but I eventually got fed up with Sky’s rubbish modem/router. I got this Sagem F@ST black box when I signed up for Sky broadband. They wireless part of it was dropping connections left, right and centre and I had to disable it and get a Linksys Access Point instead. But since using Google Chrome, I started getting user authentications from the router for no reason as well as corrupt files when downloading big ones. I suspect this has something to do with the way Chrome uses lots of simultaneous connections.

Anyway, I was so fed up that I bought a Linksys AM200 “modem”, and flashed my old Linksys WRT54G firmware with DD-WRT to replace the Sagem box. I had used the Linksys router with a DLink ADSL modem before with no problems but since Sky is ADSL2+ I had to change it to an AM200.

The problem is AM200 is not really a simple modem. It has “some” router functionality. Enough to make connecting it to other routers very difficult but not enough to make it a decent router, even for home use.

So I embarked the task of connecting AM200 to WRT54G (which should be easy since it is advertised on modem’s box). Here is how I did it (after 5 attempts):

1. Sky is ADSL2+. Use this service to get your Sky DSL username and password.
2. Configure AM200 to use PPPoA with the username and password.
3. Get other ADSL settings from the old Sky modem (like VCL settings) and use them in AM200
4. Set the IP address of AM200 to 192.168.2.1 and subnet mask to 255.255.255.0
5. Enable the DHCP server on AM200.
6. Make sure AM200 is connected to the internet.
7. Disconnect your PC from AM200 LAN port, and connect AM200 LAN port to router’s WAN port.
8. Connect your PC to one of the LAN ports of the router.
9. Configure the router to get its IP address from DHCP
10. Set the IP address on the router to 192.168.0.1 and subnet mask to 255.255.255.0
11. Set the gateway of the router to 192.168.2.1 (modem’s)

Make sure DNS servers are entered in router (you can get this from your ISP or old Sky modem)

This should allow you to connect AM200 to WRT54G. Other configurations like Half bridged mode, Bridged Mode only and others will not work with PPPoA connections that have dynamic IP addresses (exactly like Sky ADSL).

Since I updated my iPhone 3G to 2.1, I’ve had the following issues:

- Occasionally: The phone goes into “Call Ending…” mode after a call is finished or “End Call” is pressed and doesn’t come out of that for some time.

- Rarely: Call is made but the screen is blank. As if you’ve held your hand in front of the proximity sensors.

- Often: GMail IMAP “Push” (15 minute pulls) doesn’t work. A manual kick (starting the mail app) is needed.

All and all, it’s made my iPhone less stable.

UPDATE: Gmail push/fetch has stopped completely after a couple of restarts. Here is a thread at Apple support forum on the iPhone 2.1 problems with email fetch/push.

Why is it that all hardware manufacturers (for PC) write the most crappiest software ever? ASUS builds good hardware, but when it comes to software, their website support section is one of the worst and slowest (from here in the UK at least), and this is their BIOS updater: I have no idea why a BIOS updater for a motherboard should look like a spaceship why can’t they just use normal Windows controls like EVERY BODY else? 

Or which idiot approved the use of a picture of a Mac on a Windows tool to update PC motherboard BIOS? 

But this is not why I’m so pissed off with ASUS. The problem is a software developer uses “funky” graphics for his application as if it is going to be used by 12-year olds, but leaves options like a list of ASUS FTP servers to choose from or PASSIVE/ACTIVE and Proxy connection settings in there. Couldn’t you bloody used a normal blooming HTTP for that? Was it not possible to try PASSIVE and then ACTIVE if that didn’t work and then show a link for a direct download if everything was unsuccessful? Is upgrading a BIOS somthing that people do every afternoon after picking up their kids from school?

Why should I care about which one of your FTP servers to use? Why should I care which FTP connection method I have to choose? Why should it be my problem that a company as big as ASUS can’t sign a contract with a hosting provider so I don’t get “Too many connections, try again later” in a middle of a download? 

Where do they find there “developers”? Which planet they live on? Haven’t you heard of anything called Apple? Oh wait a second, you idiots make Apple laptops in your factories. Open one up before it goes into the box. You might get something into your thick skills by chance.

OK. So in my quest for a good push solution for my contacts and calendars, I signed up for a MobileMe trial account, imported all my contacts from Google to it (export to VCard and import it in Me), and started to export my emails to it as well (using Mail.app on my MacBook via IMAP). But I decided not to go ahead with MobileMe for the following reasons:

1. It doesn’t support custom domains (like sajadi.co.uk which is mine) at the moment so I have to keep my hosting for this email address and forward it to Me and then setup the outgoing SMTP server to send it from my host or use the Reply-to solution which is even less elegant in my opinion.
2. Google (Google Apps in my case) does a brilliant job in filtering spam. I hardly get any passed the filters these days. Forwarding from my Google to Me can benefit from filters though.
3. The search features are not as strong as Google’s. No need for proof I guess!
4. The interface is still buggy. Not much but not as good as Google’s.
5. There are loads of tools out there for Google integration: Calendar Synchronises and more. This means I can use my Google calendars with my work Outlook and lots more (like subscribing to iCal feeds,…)

All this means that shelling out £60 for a MobileMe account is not a good idea. Also the sync on Mac and PC is not instant but every 15 minutes (you wonder how they can do it on a mobile device but not a PC or even Mac)

I mentioned earlier that I am a bit skeptical about NuevaSync because it is in beta, but I still gave them a shot and I’m glad to say that they’ve surprised me nicely. The service has worked flawlessly so far, it syncs my contacts with Google seamlessly (including pictures which is very nice) and is quick and responsive. As for the calendar, since I have 5 different calendars in my Google account and NuevaSync displays them in one iPhone calendar I’m still holding out of that service, but they’ve promised to fix this in future.

I wish NeaveSync best of luck and hope Google buys them (if they want the money!)

I’ve been looking for a good push solution from Gmail/Google Apps to iPhone. Not necessarily the email push since I’m not really bothered with the 15/30 minute delay caused by pulling it (except its effects on the battery life), but having push for contacts and calendar events. Quite often I get someone’s mobile number and add it to my phone’s address book. Then I need to have that on another computer. At the moment, I have to sync my iPhone (iTunes) with Google contacts. Sync is always problematic. There are duplicates, and also if you have more than one sync client (like another PC or Mac) then you’re just asking for trouble. I quite like the MobileMe solution but don’t want to move all my contacts, emails since 1997 and calendar events to MobileMe just for this purpose. Plus, MobileMe does 15 minute syncs on PC and Mac instead of instant push (which it does on iPhone) and also it does not support custom domains (at least yet). I am quite happy with my Google Apps hosting for email, contacts and calendar and would like to see a real over-the-air sync solution from Google. Something like Exchange ActiveSync would be ideal, so you can see Google Apps like an Exchange server.

I know there are services like NuevaSync, but firstly they are in beta, secondly you will be exposed to the risk of their business going down (which is much more likely to happen compared to Google’s), thirdly they are still syncing with Google.

For now, lets just sign this petition: Push Email for Gmail