Hey,
got a Desire recently, which I basically love. The only thing that's giving me troubles is syncing Outlook (2007, will upgrade to 2010 shortly) contacts and calendar and the general way to use the Desire for legitimate PIM (especially calendar).
I used both an HTC Himalaya and Athena running Windows Mobile before, and the one thing that always worked smoothly was syncing with Outlook. Also, I really liked the way Outlook Mobile worked as a PIM solution (I used a today screen plug-in called Calendar+ I think to display my appointments for the next 10-14 days).
First of all, HTC Sync doesn't really work well for me. First time sync went just fine, but subsequent syncs put all my appointments of by one hour (I am in the GMT+1/CET time zone, that might have to do with it). This is especially annoying, as full-day appointments, birthdays, etc. are now displayed as lasting from 01.00 to 01.00 am.
Contacts get synced multiple times, so each phone contact is now available at least twice and as often as four or five times (all the contacts get linked into one by the Sense UI though).
Also, multiple groups are merged on subsequent syncs, for example if a contact is in the groups "Family" and "VIP" in Outlook, they are now in an Android-only "Family\;VIP" group.
Furthermore, Calendar (both from Android and HTC) really feely toy-ish, compared to Outlook Mobile. I was used to full-day-appointments being displayed as a general line of information with other appointments being display by time or length, including place and maybe conflicts with other appointments. The Android/HTC calendar just shows me a long list of things - I could use a spreadsheet or even a textfile if that's all I wanted or expected out of a calendar.
Is there an app, including widget(s) that is somewhat more like Outlook/Calendar+ on Windows Mobile?
Also, could my syncing troubles get solved if I decided to sync Outlook with Gmail/Google Calendar and sync the Desire with these (even though I'm not too keen to store these things in the Google Cloud).
Kind regards and thanks for any info anyone could provide!
Hi,
I have most of the sync working, but still get some odd things happen, like no GAL lookup and occasional duplicate entries. There is an app call Touchdown that is worth a look.
I am trying to get HTC to fix my issues, will let you know how I get on.
Peter
my HTC sync works fab!.. I have an Orange Uk .. slate colour !
I have office 2003 and at work 2007.. all works fine .
Contacts and calender works fine.. when you first sync you do get mutiple entry's for each user .. but the phone sorts this out for you ... re the mobile , facebook gmail etc
UK ist GMT, so maybe it's a bug in Sync that throws the appointments off by GMT±x hours?
It's OK that the contacts get merged, I jsut don't see it as desired behaviour to have every contact in my phone 8-10 times, even if the phone merges everything into one.
If I change any contact info on the phone and sync back into Outlook, who can guarantee the proper change is applied to the respective Outlook contact?
PIM - Personal Information Manager, what "smartphones" where soposed to be, what they used to be, what Android needs to become.
I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH, the 3 most important features of any PIM device is:
1. UNIVERSAL SEARCH
Search of the entire phone (not the internet), search through all your personal data, thru the contacts, notes, calendar, spreadsheets, memos, to-do lists, word processing files, SMS/MMS, thru every native apps, thru every 3rd party app data, anything and everything on your phone (not the internet) quickly and completely the way Palm OS did. Fast information retrieval of your personal data and databases is the most important and single most useful thing on this planet as far as PIM’s are concerned. Not links to twitter, not cool little icon creation tools, not fun cutesy little play things, but real world useful things.
2. UNIVERSAL CUT/COPY & PASTE
The ability to copy an address or sentence out of a text message or email, (not the entire message, only the portion you need) and paste it into a contact, or paste it into a memo or task field, or it into Google maps. Or Copy part of a to-do list item and paste it into a spreadsheet, or copy a value out of a spreadsheet cell and paste it into an email etc.
3. DESKTOP APPLICATION to sync with.
A desktop application to sync with, to back up all your PIM information (contacts, calendar, to-do lists, memos, wordprocessing files, spreadsheet files etc, to your PC and vice/versa (without being forced to use Outlook). Not syncing to “the cloud”, I don’t want all my personal info spread out all over the internet for who knows who to snoop through. I want my personal info on my phone and my desktop PC only. A Desktop application to be able to do the bulk of your data entry from your PC then syncing it to your phone instead of having to type out and tons of personal data, such as useful formulas, extensive notes about people, long letters or ebooks you want to cut and paste into your desktop app so you can sync it to your phone so you can read it on the road at your leasure without trying to type all that data into your little touch screen pad. To be able to look up information and data stored on my phone without not having to wait on a slow connection as it stores and retrieves from the cloud. And to be able to look up the same information on my desktop app when I can’t find my phone. To backup my data or retrieve it without being dependant an internet connection. When I lose my old phone, I want to be able to sync the new phone to my Desktop application had have all my personal info and data files loaded on to my new phone putting me right back in business without skipping a beat.
Primary PIM Apps to be fully intergreated with each other on the phone and on the Desktop are:
* Calendar/Scheduler/with very flexible alarms (i.e. repeat every third Thursday etc.). Should have Day/Week/Month/Year views.
* Contacts/Addresses/People that will show the long names on the screen when you select it.
* To Do List (KISS applies here, just need to easily slide line items up and down on the priority list and/or give it a changeable priority level, and to be able to attach longer notes if need be)
* Memo/Notes/Flash Cards to store anything and everything you think to write down to take note down, any thought, idea, note, comment, list of items, what someone said – Any and all inputs instantly retrievable by the “Universal Search”.
* Media/Pictures/Video/Music sync between desktop and device.
* Third party attachment handler (to automatically sync spreadsheet files for instance).
Store, Retrieve, and Manage/Manipulate Personal Information, that’s what Personal Information Managers (PIMs) are for. Not for doing animated gifs or other cutesy time wasters.
This is something the Twit(ers) writing software today don’t understand, not everyone has the luxury of laying around drinking soda pop and twittering each other all day, most of us need to actually get some work done in the real world. To manage and access personal information as well as internet info.
I would have switched from Palm OS to iPhone a couple years ago but the iPhone had no universal search or universal copy/paste at the time which made the iPhone worthless game machine to me. So I stayed with Palm. Now that Palm OS is being replaced with WebOS, I see now that the “new blood” writing the new Palm WebOS software left out the 3 most important things, the very things that made Palm great to begin with. So I bought a Droid Incredible, it falls flat on it’s face as a PIM, now I am back to carrying two devices a Palm OS for an actual working PIM, and a Droid for all the other “cool” stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Droid but it would be nice to get them back into one device again. The industry sometimes goes backwards instead of forwards. Now I see that Apple finally caught up to Palm by including a universal search and copy/paste into the iPhone finally, Android needs to catch up to Palm OS also, in a hurry, otherwise I may have to sidestep to an iphone when my one year contract is up.
PalmOS had a much more precise touch screen, all you had to do to select text was touch your fingernail, pen, or stylist to the letter you wanted to start with and drag to the end point to highlight the text you want, and then hit Menu/Copy. The new Johnny-come-lately touch screen phones do not have a precise way to select text directly, though the iPhone has come up with a good workaround for this, it’s not quite as fast and easy as the PalmOS but just as accurate at selecting only what you want, and it is universal just like the Palm.
If and when iambic ports Agendus to the Android OS it will be a great day for Android users, but the MOST IMPORTANT thing is we still need universal search & copy/paste across all 3-party applications. When I was a palm user I didn’t see the need for Agendus (a very robust PIM) because it seemed redundant on the Palm, but I could see the need for it on other platforms such as Windows devices, iPhone, BlackBerry etc. Now that I am a Droid user I see the need for Agendus for the Android. Agendus is starting to sound like a great Idea, a robust PIM application that can be ported to any new phone platform that comes out, that way you learn one app and keep it with you across platforms as the phone market keeps changing.
The mango messaging system seems nice and all, but I really wonder why they did not keep it seperated.
I had my doubts and than I read this article http://wmpoweruser.com/mango-and-messaging-we-have-a-problem/ which sums up some more issues.
Basically my biggest problem is that we send more important stuff trough SMS it has a much higher value than an IM. So whenever somebody smsses an adress, i will need to scroll trough 100s of IMs which I can not clear since the address is still there in one of those messages.
Second: the media are different, you can not expect the other user to switch to FB chat to MSN than to sms because I want to change service, this still incorporate 3 different media for the majority of the users namely a WL desktop client, facebook webpage and a phone for regular texting (which also costs money so people will use it differently)
Third, we used msn when we were 12, now nobody uses it in my country but I would like to use FB chat... This is not possible, you can only switch off FB chat or switch off both. So the whole feature will be useless if I dont want to use msn/windows live messenger.
Notifications: what if smsses are inportant but IMs not, hopefully I will be able to receive a toast ONLY with sms messages and just let the IMs slide. Imagine receiving 100 messages every 10 minutes it will drive you nuts. And here comes the next problem when there is an important sms inbetween you dont know who send it, because if you open up messages they all look the same so you dont know who texted you (important) or has send you and im (which has less priority).
I wish they can make a new tab for the im conversations or atleast filter the thread down on ALL / SMS / IM. As it is now, it will be nice for kids but if you are 16+ it will become a major pain to find what is important and what is just spam.
The system right now is shortsighted and of poor value. an implementation like blackberry's is better. SMS is a different system, mail is a different system, IM is as well, you all respond differently on each one of them. It should be possible to mannage each seperately. Now ill have to be always offline and rely on third party just to im trough FB which kills the use of this native feature, but SMS messages are just to important to blend with the IMs.
This is all speculation to be fair, they have beta testers so if there are issues with notifications they will probably be aware of these. I'm happy to use a separate messaging client and keep my messaging hub for sms only as long as WLM is allowed again in IM+ and others. That would just make things easy.
On a side note people should stop complaining that nobody uses WLM, enough with that, it's the most used IM client in the world!
I'm not 12 andstill this is my number one choice for IM as I barely use my facebook account and it has integrated facebook chat anyway.
fair (and while I wrote the article)
one major issue with being in a beta of anything is that it takes time for testing and that's huge. I mean looking at Adam Lein and others, the sms interface was a bit bare and naked - save from the actual threaded view.
In nodo, we have seen the issue of some lag in the SMS window (not nearly as bad as windows mobile, but still very noticeable) and there needs to be some richer options for recall, optimization and trash collection.
I love the idea for having a central messaging hub that integrates the services I use most (microsoft specifically). I still use MSN and it's my favorite messaging tool (I used yahoo early in college, and AIM in high school) so I use MSN a lot.
The notification I don't feel is a huge issue (as Eldar contends). There are far more bigger problems with the SMS view from a variety of different contexts. All in all, there may be a big problem. I doubt it will be solved till Apollo but that is definitely a worse case scenario.
I mean yes, the sms lag is better in nodo, but not by much
One thing to note, if you dont want to use WLM or Facebook chat just change the method of communication to SMS. There is absolutely nothing forcing you to send IM's if YOU dont want to, its only there as a convenience to WP7 users so you can continue your conversation across the different mediums seamlessly. Just because someone is online on Facebook chat or WLM doesnt mean you cant just send an SMS if that is your preference.
efjay said:
One thing to note, if you dont want to use WLM or Facebook chat just change the method of communication to SMS. There is absolutely nothing forcing you to send IM's if YOU dont want to, its only there as a convenience to WP7 users so you can continue your conversation across the different mediums seamlessly. Just because someone is online on Facebook chat or WLM doesnt mean you cant just send an SMS if that is your preference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know. Thats not the problem. But it will render the built in IM useless if disabled.
The problem is the communication trough SMS is totally different than the communication trough IM. Which will occur on different devices still for the majority out there. An SMS to me is still a high priority thing in some cases, if you want to make an appointment it works fine trough sms, however if its cluttered with all IM's from other users and stuff Im afraid one can easily get lost in the received messages and not find the IM of the appointment when looking for it or trying to find it again after you have read it.
Having IMs seperated (which are in general sended way more frequently with less important stuff than SMS) would be better because now the user can decide to use the built in IM and keep it seperated from the SMS OR mix them in a thread if he/she desires. But one will still have the advantage of starting an IM out of the people hub.
Also I know you dont have to use it, I've seen all the demo's and read about it. But the thing is what if I want to use it but just Facebook and what if I still want to see my SMS messages seperated. Using just FB chat is not possible atm, it will also pull up your WLM contacts, it would be totally cool if I could set MSN status as offline and FB status as online, but as it looks right now its only possible the other way around...
To explain the problem in more detail
Picture this: you have the device in your pocket, its fine if people want to contact me trough Facebook, but if somebody sends me an SMS with the appointmet and half an hour later starts talking to me on FB chat (because he/she is on FB than), I check my phone and the SMS with the appointment has sunk all the way down since there have been 10 new IM's from this person.
Its easy to lose/forget the valuable information if you can not check your phone every minute.
Dont get me wrong, its a feature with great potential but as of now, it will need more control over the different services (individual statusses per service) and some way to filter out the SMS messages and hide the IM or vica versa.
This feature will benefit a lot more when it would also be possible for whatapp to be integrated, which resembles the SMS a lot better than IM.
Maybe Microsoft could add a filter option? For example, when the SMS filter is toggled it would only show text messages as well send only text messages .
@Marvin_S: You could come across the same situation if you get a lot of SMS's as well, same as with email. I see your point but making them separate just makes it messier, having to switch back and forth to send messages and having to determine where a new message is. If you start adding separate notifications for each protocol then it becomes even more complex to implement and manage.
Much easier to have all the messages on one screen and you can easily just scroll to find what you want and not have to try and figure out by which method the message was delivered.
SMS isn't just for important conversations. There is a reason why people run through thousands of SMS in a month nowadays, and its not because they are really important. Its because people use SMS the same way they use IM, to chat.
If you are getting something really important in an SMS (like an appointment), it might make sense to copy it over into a task or your calendar.
nice work !http://media.xda-developers.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
Why would it make anything messier? It should be optional ofcourse, so it will only help those who will need to keep it organised.
Well SMS and IM are very different. That some of us use it the same way is a choice of course, just like some people chose to use it as different media to communicate.
You can NOT receive IM's if you dont want to receive it (OFFLINE) and the other party will not be able to send you one, while with SMS it will be sent whenever somebody desires and will be read whenever the reader has the time (always delivered --> higher priority/value).
This for me is a fundamental difference and makes SMS more reliable for appointments or letting somebody know where you are on the go.
And I just wondered why MS chose to do it this way, while all the other platforms have these forms of communication seperated.
I can see this having a good and a bad side, maybe I worry too much about the negative aspect, but it can be solved easily by providing us with some more settings to have more control over how we want to receive our IM's and Texts.
Like sheltem said a switch or a pivot with All/IM/Text will make it simple for the user to narrow its search down. And maybe defaulting it to All (like email, All/unread/flag) and having the same interface to delete IM's and texts will be great.
I have faith MS will come up with a solution which will satisfy both parties and I have full faith that they will...
thank god I didn't have to reiterate my position ad nauseum
I've been doing that since the article has been written and while I don't mind spirited debate of how windows phone is versus how it could be, it's like many users sorta either focused on Eldar's contentions, the notification, or the sms window and not the total sums of each argument.
As I said before, for us, geeks, there may not be much of an issue. But consider who/what microsoft is trying to target - everyone else. Place yourself in their shoes, and of course it can lead to some frustration and some easy mistakes from users thinking hey I sent it this way when in fact it came in another way - EVEN WITH THE TEXT/FACEBOOK option open.
I don't think there is anything wrong with an extra swipe gesture to switch mode of communication. It is almost the same thing microsoft is doing, but instead of it being in the menu setting, it is in the face of the user. And sometimes, that makes all of the difference.
I'm not knocking the idea or the service, but asking everyone to consider how people without windows phone may view it. And that empathy is important for Microsoft to make it a success. So it's not a knock at Microsoft or their intentions.
domineus said:
thank god I didn't have to reiterate my position ad nauseum
I've been doing that since the article has been written and while I don't mind spirited debate of how windows phone is versus how it could be, it's like many users sorta either focused on Eldar's contentions, the notification, or the sms window and not the total sums of each argument.
As I said before, for us, geeks, there may not be much of an issue. But consider who/what microsoft is trying to target - everyone else. Place yourself in their shoes, and of course it can lead to some frustration and some easy mistakes from users thinking hey I sent it this way when in fact it came in another way - EVEN WITH THE TEXT/FACEBOOK option open.
I don't think there is anything wrong with an extra swipe gesture to switch mode of communication. It is almost the same thing microsoft is doing, but instead of it being in the menu setting, it is in the face of the user. And sometimes, that makes all of the difference.
I'm not knocking the idea or the service, but asking everyone to consider how people without windows phone may view it. And that empathy is important for Microsoft to make it a success. So it's not a knock at Microsoft or their intentions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
It might sound really stupid and exaggerated, but I can assure you this will happen and it will be annoying to constantly switch back to SMS if you do really have to SMS. Having a seperate click in the people hub for sent IM, sent SMS, or a pivot in the messaging hub will totally rule out these errors.
But this is ofcourse the downside... and hopefully they come up with something smart and think a bit outside of the box. The system has great potential, no doubt.
Marvin_S said:
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
It might sound really stupid and exaggerated, but I can assure you this will happen and it will be annoying to constantly switch back to SMS if you do really have to SMS. Having a seperate click in the people hub for sent IM, sent SMS, or a pivot in the messaging hub will totally rule out these errors.
But this is ofcourse the downside... and hopefully they come up with something smart and think a bit outside of the box. The system has great potential, no doubt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know personally even though it says the service in a tiny font, I'll cry foul because of user error. Microsoft's main goal is to sorta cease some consensual user error not increase it. There are a variety of ideas to kick around
One comment noted a notification system in the messaging hub that indicates where the user messaged you at (like the notifications portion of the people hub) in conjunction with the swipe/pivot gestures to make a fairly good solution of which service the notification is coming from and keeping it organized.
Adding to that paradigm, I can still see how the initial chat window serves a function, as a unified way the person contacted you recently. And I have to be honest, that would be really a great and refined method of implementing a submessaging system full of notification and a clean user experience.
But to ask
does a swipe really complicate the user more than a tap setting>mode>switch service to (sms/facebook/msn)
I'm sorry, I don't see how a pivot is less complex than the system that is in mango already. replacing the finger taps for one or two pivots...
imho should've posted this write up on xda
Well the thing is MS has its vision of having everything related into a horzontal scrolling panorama. Which is absolutely great.
And they want you to use the settings menu as less as possible, so in this case yeah this switch setting (which I will be using frequently) will be more annoying since its click select close than type. While the pivot swiping to the right will get you into sms directly and the user will always stay in the same "level" or layer.
And it follows the consistency of the system this way.
You will have all the options with 1 just one pivot menu:
All (which is the way it works right now) / SMS / IM / Online
if you are on all, its the threaded view with default reply option as it is now. When swipe to the right it filters the messages down to sms only with reply as SMS.
Im the same but than reply as IM.
actally that too is a good point
Microsoft has made a unified design experience focusing on pivots and wipes with metro. The idea of tapping through settings is sadly reminescent of apple and android; somethign I don't really want to go back to anytime soon
Marvin_S said:
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree that there is the potential for a problem here. Ideally, the facebook connection would be detected as idle and the OS would choose the fallback method of SMS. I haven't used it so I can't say for sure how it handles this, I'd hope it is that good. Of course, that still leaves us with the potential for problems in the window that it takes for the user to go from online to idle/away. Not nearly as big of an issue though.
It all comes down to how accurately the software can determine a user's presence. If the OS automatically sends a message via Facebook because it knows the user is actively using Facebook then I don't think there is an issue.
Personally I think ms should just separate the all and using the metro theme, sperste elm, fb chat and SMS. So you just slide. I don't use wlm, and hardly use hotmail there spam filter is awful.
Sent from my 7 Mozart T8698 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Actually, hotmaii filters out spam just fine for me. Quite well, actually.
On topic. I think we should wait and see how this works in its entirety. I don't think it's going to be as big of an issue as you guys think it may be.
And, separating the services defeats the purpose of the threaded convo view in the first place.
PG2G said:
SMS isn't just for important conversations. There is a reason why people run through thousands of SMS in a month nowadays, and its not because they are really important. Its because people use SMS the same way they use IM, to chat.
If you are getting something really important in an SMS (like an appointment), it might make sense to copy it over into a task or your calendar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This.
Seriously. If you got something important to note you probably should learn to write it down or train your working memory to recall the info instead of relying so much on technology.
Marvin_S said:
Exactly... this is how the a standard user will use it:
Im running late, hurrying to get to the station on time. Ill text my friends "hey Im on my way to the station" but he left his computer on with his FB account and the message will get send to his FB account because I forget to switch to SMS mode... I think I sended the message just fine, but sended it trough FB instead of text. Of course there is this status text saying FB, but still.
It might sound really stupid and exaggerated, but I can assure you this will happen and it will be annoying to constantly switch back to SMS if you do really have to SMS. Having a seperate click in the people hub for sent IM, sent SMS, or a pivot in the messaging hub will totally rule out these errors.
But this is ofcourse the downside... and hopefully they come up with something smart and think a bit outside of the box. The system has great potential, no doubt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm, interesting my reasonable response and the response of others would be to hit the line of communication the person would check the most which arguably is a person's self phone.
Too each his own for sure, but I don't think it's out of the norm or rather is the norm that people would message someone on their phone first, especially if going somewhere to meet someone.
Hi,
Is there an application similar to the android one that can meter calls and messages throughout a month?
it would be very usefull but never found something similar for my wp7 device...
if you know any just tell me the name thx
I haven't run across a general-purpose one (haven't really looked either), but some of the carriers include that functionality in their own apps. The myAT&T app, for example, on AT&T, will allow you to view usage of minutes, data, texts, etc. if you're on AT&T.
im not with at&t, im from europe
too bad there is no application for this purpose, it would be really usefull
I think it's a good idea. Will see
is there a library for windows phone that enables a software dev to access the call history and messages sent?
because if there is i might be able to do it myself as i have some experience with blend and c#
if you know of something like that please post here!
This isn't possible on WP7 because Microsoft doesn't provide a way to access SMS/Calls.
See here http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsphone7series/thread/6b2469b9-0bb6-4503-bc73-364812a1c277/