I’d like to draw your attention to the fancy ad on the right side of my blog. Just over there —>. (Okay, those of you who are just reading the RSS feed, you’ll have to actually navigate to the blog to see the very fancy animated ad.)

Anyway, I just wanted to draw your attention to the CompanionLink trial that is currently being offered. The advertisement is about to run out, and before it does, I wanted to let you know that I’m using CompanionLink to sync my Google calendar with my Palm Zire 72, and it is *nice*.

You may remember that I tried out CompanionLink a few months ago, but didn’t have any joy. Even after a second attempt, I still couldn’t get it to work.

Well, this time, I had the undivided attention of one of their tech gurus (thanks Andy!). Between my sending in error logs, and their excellent support, we were able to get my system to work. And do you know what the problem was?

It turns out that I use a custom date format. Have for years. All of my hand-rolled backup batch files are tied to it. The custom format showed, for instance, “Tue 03 Jul 07″. For whatever reason, the combination of this custom format, combined with Google Calendar and a synchronization app (such as CompanionLink and probably gSyncIt and SyncMyCal as well) caused a major melt-down. The easy solution? Change my custom date format to a standard one.

Okay, it wasn’t a perfectly easy transition. Since I’ve been using my palm for years, and have alternated between using Outlook and the Palm Desktop as my conduit, I had a bit more trouble. It turned out that I had some strange recurring appointments that I couldn’t see at all, even when I tried using the Palm Desktop again. They weren’t even visible on the Palm. But CompanionLink would sync them to the Google Calendar, which would then proceed to throw a hissy fit. I ended up reinstalling the Palm Desktop, using a blank calendar to overwrite my Palm a couple of times, dancing around dressed in paint and waving a chicken bone. And then, things worked perfectly.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the best thing about CompanionLink was the customer service. And I’m a big proponent of good customer service.

The next best thing? It lets me sync to either Outlook (and then to Palm), or to the Palm Desktop, or to the Palm itself. It also offers support to other applications, such as Lotus Notes (which I hope to use one day), Windows Mobile, and even the Blackberry.

If you’re using Google Calendar, and want to hook it into your other calendar apps or hardware, check out CompanionLink.

I’ve just been turned onto a new way of getting HTML content into my Palm. Let’s assume that you’ve got a non-wireless Palm and you want to get either a web page, or an HTML file from your desktop onto it. I’ve used AvantGo before, and it’s great for setting up “channels”, and pushing a whole of bunch of fresh web content to your Palm during HotSync. However, it only handles actual Web page, i.e., online content only.

Now let’s say that you’ve got this HTML file on your computer and you’re just dying to put it onto your Palm in readable format. You could, I guess, convert it to text and then bring it in using DocumentsToGo or some such, but wouldn’t you rather have the file looking like it was meant to?

Enter Plucker, a plucky (haha) little (free) “offline Web and e-book viewer” for PalmOS handheld devices. From their web page, “Plucker comes with Unix, Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX tools, scripts, and conduits that let you decide exactly what part of the WWW you’d like to download onto your PDA.”

The reason I have an HTML file that I want to read in my Palm is that EverNote still doesn’t support mobile platforms. The topic came up recently (again) in the forums, and I was reminded of the suggestion that Plucker could be used to create a kludge solution, at least temporarily. Because this is something that many EN users may not be used to doing, I thought I’d write a little walkthrough here.

Get Plucker

Although Plucker offers a plethora of downloadable scripts, through mirrors, torrents, etc., it’s actually pretty easy to get it onto your computer and installed. Check out their downloads page, and look for the Plucker Desktop download for Windows. If you’re comfortable with torrents, choose that; otherwise, you can just download the exe straightaway. The desktop software also created the appropriate prc files for my Palm, so you shouldn’t need anything else from the download page.

Install Plucker. Easy installation. The first time you run it, the Plucker desktop walks you through a setup wizard. I chose all of the default options. When you get to the destinations screen, you can choose two things: (1) where on your Palm you want the Plucker files to live and (2) where on your hard drive you want the files to live. The way Plucker works is that it converts an HTML (or txt) file into a PDB file, which is readable on the Palm. This way, you’ll end up with a directory on your hard drive with all the PDB files, and the same files will be automatically ready for syncing to your Palm. I chose to keep the files on my SD card, since there’s lots of space there.

Get the HTML File

Now, if you’re not an EverNote user, you can skip this section. Otherwise, let’s assume there’s a category or two (or even your entire database if you’re really adventurous) that you want to see on your Palm. For me, there’s a category where I keep lists of books, sorted by author, that I want to get from the library. I’d like to have these notes with me so I can see what I need to read next.

In EN, select the category (or notes) that you want to export. Right-click on one of the note headers, and select Export…

Pick a file name, and the HTML extension. Now you have an HTML file that Plucker can work with.

Creating a Channel in Plucker for a File

Plucker offers a channel wizard which is really easy. You can find it under the File menu:

Follow through the wizard. First, you pick a name for your new channel. Then, you can either pick a URL for an online web page, or select “Start on a Local File” to suck in the HTML file that we’ve just created. You can just select the defaults now and head all the way through wizard. You can then run the Channel configuration afterwards; there you can do things like add in a schedule, which means that this file would be sampled at regular intervals. I think it would be easier to avoid the schedule and just resample the file after updating it. But that’s just me.

Now, if you look at the Plucker main screen, you’ll see the channels that are configured.

Updating the Channel

At this point, the channel has been set up, but Plucker hasn’t done any translation yet. If you just want to update this particular channel, you can right-click on it and choose “Update Selected Channels”. There’s also a button on the toolbar. Either way, get that channel updated.

You get a progress screen, showing you that Plucker is doing its thing. When it’s done, just click OK. Now, in the chosen directory on your hard drive, there will be a new PDB file, containing the information from the HTML page.

Don’t Forget to Sync!

There’s just one more step, and that’s to actually perform a HotSync to your Palm to get the PDB onto it. Plucker takes care of the overhead, i.e., putting the PDB into the queue, but you still have to push the button. Do it now.

On the Palm

Now on the Palm, you’ll have an icon for Plucker - looks like a big soother. If you open the application, you should see a list of the PDBs that are available to read. Open the file you’ve just created.

There are a host of options that you can play with, e.g., full-screen mode, size of font, even orientation of the screen. In the screenshot below, I’ve got the portrait orientation, with the font. It’s not necessarily the most comfortable for long term reading, but it’s great for packing in info when I’m just searching for something.

What’s even better is that there is a great search. If you click on the left lens of the glasses icon (or Find under the Go menu), you get a search box. Enter the item you’re searching for. In this test, I want to find my list of books by Reichs. If you want to repeat the search, i.e., find again, just click on the right lens of the glasses icon (a cute touch, I thought).

The search works well, and even remembers terms that you’ve searched for before. In addition, you can assign bookmarks to your file, to make finding key areas even easier.

What Else?

Plucker is obviously more powerful than just this one use case. For instance, you can also read in text files (say you don’t use DocumentsToGo) and images. It will also work with online web pages.

For inputting a favourite EverNote category into your Palm, it’s priceless. And it’s free (or donation-ware). Once you have the setup done, updating your information in the palm is as easy as:

1. Export notes from EN (keep using the exact same file and location to make it easy.)
2. Run Plucker and update the channel pointing to that file.
3. Sync your Palm.
4. Nope, you’re already done.

Oh, if you’re looking for more information about HTML and PDAs, Plucker has put together a nice comparison between the big three, i.e., Plucker, AvantGo, and iSilo. Check it out.

I received an email a couple of months ago, asking what kind of tools did I use for different parts of my process. I’m finally getting around to answering those questions, mostly because part of my answer depends on information you didn’t have until I added recent posts :)

So, in answer to Fox’s questions, here’s what I use: (And sorry for such a long delay Fox!)

1) Email, do you use only web gmail interface or outlook with gmail pop3 ?

I use Gmail and I do all of my serious email work in the web interface. I have added a few extensions in order to make gmailing that much better, but to be honest, Gmail rocks right out of the box.

• Attachment icons, so I can what kind of attachment is with an email.
• Attachment reminder, to remind me that I said I would attach something, but forgot.
• Date Search, to make it easier to find emails from a particular date.
• Saved Searches, to save custom searches. I like this extension, but I don’t think I use it enough.
• Spam-count Hide, one of the first extensions I added. I *hate* seeing my spam count. I don’t care how big it is. Don’t want to know.
• And most importantly, GTD Inbox. This extension brings GTD in my email, with the addition of labels such as S:Next Action, S:Waiting, contexts, projects, etc. The thing I like best about it is that it offers a few shortcuts in my inbox so that I can jump directly to my Next Actions, etc. Actually, no, the think I like best is that when I’m reading an email, I can quickly label it with a status, context, and/or project. Very cool.

Note: all except GTDInbox are Greasemonkey scripts, which you can install one by one. However, if you’re not into Greasemonkey, you can use the new LifeHacker Better Gmail extension, which has combined these scripts (and more) into one easy-to-use extension. Better Gmail for everyone! As of writing, Better Gmail was at version 0.3 (3 versions in 3 days).

As for using pop3 with Gmail, I do use it, but for one very specific reason. I import my primary Gmail account into Outlook, just so that I can send the important mail straight to EverNote. I could do copy and paste from the Gmail web page, but it turns out ugly. Clipping from Outlook gives me pretty notes, and they’re time-stamped properly.

2) Contacts ? How do you keep them synced ?

Heheheh. This is one part of my system that I have not messed with in years. I’ve probably only got a hundred contacts or so, and the main reason for using them is to send a parcel or Christmas cards in the mail. My contacts are kept in Outlook, and synced to my Palm. That’s it. I have a few phone numbers input into my cell, but only the ones I’m likely to use.

3) Calendar? What do you use for it?

As I discussed in a recent post about my Super Duper Personalized Productivity Desktop Background Series, I use the Remind application for my calendar. It’s pure text. It’s geeky. It’s oh-so cool for me to play with. It’s possible for me to sync it (one-way right now) to my Palm, by first sending it to my Google Calendar. (Note: two-way syncing between Google Calendar and my Palm is possible, but right now, I’m not able to get from Google Calendar back into Remind format. I believe it is possible, but since it’s not an issue for me, I’ve not looked into it.)

4) Reminders ?

Reminders. That’s pretty open ended. I’m going to assume that this doesn’t mean things like next actions (for which I use a text system), but actual reminders, say with a date/time attached.

Well, that’s an interesting question. Let’s say I’ve got something I want to do every couple of weeks, but not necessarily on a specific day. (Of course, if it was a specific day, I would put the reminder on my calendar, i.e., hard landscape.) But I’m talking about things like housework, that needs to get done, but doesn’t need to be scheduled into a specific date. Until recently, I’ve been using recurring next actions in my text system. When the start date rolled around, the NA would become visible in my system, and stay visible, and annoying, until I did it.

However, I’ve recently started playing with a different method. I was finding that my NA lists were getting cluttered with houseworky things, that caused me to lose focus from the work I really needed to get done. So, I played around with Remind a bit more, and found a way to have recurring reminders that are only visible when they come due. They don’t show up in my monthly calendar view. But as soon as a reminder becomes viable, or doable, it starts showing up in my Today view, with a note of how many days until my self-imposed deadline. (That lets me see how slack I’ve been with my housework.)

There’s another kind of reminder though - an alarm. Let’s say I need to make sure that I leave the house by a certain time, but I know I’m going to be working up until then. I don’t want to be late because I forgot what time it was, but I don’t want to avoid working so I can just watch the clock. For these cases, I just use an alarm in my Yahoo clock widget. I could also keep Outlook running and make an appointment with an alarm. Or do the same thing with my Palm. The key here being that there’s some piece of software that will ding at a certain time, telling me to get my ass in gear.

So, that’s it. The other tools in my toolbox. Thanks for the question Fox, it was quite interesting to write all this out :)

So it turns out that not only do I have Bluetooth on my laptop (never turned on), but I have Bluetooth on my Palm Zire 72 as well. What does this mean? It means that it might actually be possible for me to use GooSync to sync my Google Calendar with my Palm, without having to buy the third-party PPP software from Softick PPP.

And yes, it turns out that I can actually pull this off, but it took me the entire afternoon to figure it out. And much chicken bone waving. It might actually be worth it to just buy the Softick PPP if you’re not into installing and tweaking mumbo jumbo. But give this a shot first, it only took me, say 3 hours.

The first thing I did was start surfing the Web, looking for people that had done this before. What I found was scary - it seemed possible, but all the web sites were scary, full of arcane details and mysterious mumbo jumbo. Here’s a look at how I pulled it off.

First, I turned on my Bluetooth adapter (I always leave it off, since I don’t want people connecting to me accidentally, or wasting my battery power. I’ll also admit that I know absolutely nothing about Bluetooth, so turning it off was probably safest.) I turned it on on both my laptop and Palm. Then I messed around for half an hour or so, trying to get it to work on my own. No go. Back to the arcane instructions online.

My laptop is a ThinkPad, with integrated Bluetooth, so I focused on web sites that discussed this hardware. Some places, like this forum, said that it was bad to have both my IBM device, and the Microsoft device running at the same time, i.e.,

Check your device manager to see if Microsoft Enumerator is listed under the Bluetooth Devices listing. If it is you’ll have to get rid of that.

Later on in the forum post is a link to instructions at Microsoft on how to disable the Microsoft device. I followed them, but I’m not sure it was effective. I seem to recall that the next time I rebooted, the second, i.e., Microsoft, device was back. Shaky ground here.

What I did like about the forum post was that it gave a good link to a Thinkpad download, which I did end up using later on. The major confusion that I had was that originally, my device manager said that I had an IBM Integrated Bluetooth III device. But the download specifically says “Integrated Bluetooth II” software, which seemed to be going backwards.

Anyway, the most help I got was from this particular page at Whizoo, where the author explains how to set up a Bluetooth connection so that you can connect to the Internet through your Palm. It was a little daunting, especially since his screenshots didn’t look anything like what my computer looks like. And he kept saying that if you don’t see such and such, then you’re set up wrong.

So, I puttered away for a while, trying to make it work somehow. Finally, I just bit the bullet. I turned off my Bluetooth radio on the laptop. I disabled the two devices, so that there was no more Bluetooth visible in my hardware devices. Then, using the download page above, I downloaded the IBM Integrated Bluetooth II software exe and ran it. This creates a directory on your machine, full of goodies. I went to that directory, said, “the heck with it” and ran the setup file. It installed some stuff, and then all of a sudden, I had an icon on my desktop for “My Bluetooth Places”. This was new. I also had a different icon in my taskbar - one that changes colour depending on whether or not I have a connection happening.

Here’s what my Hardware Devices look like now:

Here you can see my new Bluetooth Places:

And here’s what my Palm looks like when it’s connected:

And here’s the taskbar item when connected:

Now my computer looked (more) like the screenshots discussed on the instruction page. I scrolled down the header “PC Setup for sharing the Internet”, maybe a tenth of the way down the page, and started following the instructions from there. These instructions are very clear, and I had no problems at all. I managed to set up my desktop properly, then followed the instructions for the Palm side of things. Again, no problems. At the end of it, I was able to connect to the Internet through my Bluetooth. I gave GooSync a try, and it worked perfectly.

On the same, page, about two-thirds of the way down is a header called “HotSyncing“, where the author describes how to do a HotSync via Bluetooth. He doesn’t recommend it, because it’s not as fast or stable as with a USB cable, but the instructions still work. I just like being able to know that I can do it, if I want to.

If you’re interested, here are some of the links I used while figuring this out:

• Whizoo - Bluetooth Adapter Setup for Palm Tungsten…
• How to share your Internet connection via Bluetooth to a Palm OS device
• How to Hotsync your palmOne Zire 72 over Bluetooth
• use bluetooth headset with t42?
• Integrated Bluetooth II software for Win… - ThinkPad…
• Microsoft - How to remove Bluetooth wireless device support in WinXP SP2

If this is something you’re dying to try, give it a whirl - hopefully this post, and the pages I’ve linked to will help you out. If not, don’t worry - you can still use (quite easily, I might add) the PPP functionality offered through Softick PPP. It’s extremely easy to install and use.

Last week, I posted about how I wanted to be able to sync my Google Calendar to Outlook, and then to my Palm. Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I’m still trying to get my Google Calendar and Outlook to talk directly, but I have found a way to cut out the middle-man. Today, I’ll tell you how you can sync Google Calendar directly to your Palm (or other handheld device).

There’s a lovely little service out there called GooSync, which “will seamlessly synchronize almost any mobile device with your Google Calendar.” It’s a great service, with two flavours:

• Free Service: Let’s you sync all-day appointments, recurring appointments, for a limited range (-7 to +30 days). As the name implies, it is free.
• Advanced User Account: This one takes it up a notch, with extended date range, support for multiple calendars, and even for shared calendars. I found this one a little pricey, especially since it’s a subscription system. You pay £19.95 (Pound Sterling) for 12 months. That didn’t sound too bad, until I did the conversion - $38 USD per year.

I signed up for the free version. Unfortunately, the total cost of syncing is not free, for someone like me, owning a Palm Zire. My Zire doesn’t “do” the internet, unlike many other devices out there. So, if I want to be able to sync, I have to do it through my cradle. As GooSync says, “the Palm HotSync software does not allow an IP connection to be established through the cradle/cable.” But not all is lost! GooSync points you towards a nifty piece of software from Softick.com, called SoftickPPP, which will provide the necessary functionality for you. And this is where the cost comes in. You could still use GooSync for free, but you’ll have to pony up $24.95 USD. On the other hand, this software lets you do more than just sync your Google Calendar. You’ll now be able to do other internety things, like surf the web, receive/send mail etc., while your Palm stays in its cradle.

Unlike the grief I had when trying to get Google Calendar synced with Outlook, this technique worked the first time I tried it. There are a few steps, but nothing onerous:

1. Download, install, configure Softick PPP. (Skip this step if your handheld device already talks to the internet.)
2. Sign up for a free GooSync account. During registration, you’ll select your handheld device, and be able to download a Palm installer .prc file, to put the GooSync client on your handheld. You also tie into your Google Calendar account.
3. Once you’ve got Softick PPP and the GooSync client on your Palm, syncing is easy:

1. Put your Palm into its cradle, or connect by cable.
2. Find the GooSync client program on your Palm.
3. Tap on the Start button. Because your Palm can now talk to the internet, it does so automatically, letting GooSync do its goodness.
4. Done. It really is that easy.

I really like this solution to my problem. First of all, I can actually synchronize my Google Calendar with my Outlook; I just have to go through my Palm to do it. (Doing so is easy - after you’ve done the GooSync on your Palm, do a regular HotSync.) In addition, it means that I’m not tied to Outlook. So, if I were to get a job where Lotus Notes was King, I could still have my Google Calendar on my Palm, without having to figure out a new solution.

Another reason I like this solution is that, although there are a few steps, especially if you need to put Softick PPP on your palm, once you’re set up - that’s it. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now (trial version of PPP), and I haven’t had any problems at all. Well, there was that time I forgot to connect my Palm to its cable, but that’s a user error ;) The whole process is clean. Yes, it doesn’t have autosync, but then again, neither does my Palm for its regular hotsyncing.

I’d have to say that the only downside is the cost of the advanced GooSync membership. I’m not a big fan of subscription-based pricing models, although I can see their attractiveness for the company providing them. However, even if I were willing to pony up some money every twelve months for the privilege of syncing to my Palm, there’s no way that I would be paying $40 USD every year. That’s way outside of my sweet spot, especially for something that really is non-essential for me.

I haven’t yet decided to commit to this solution though. I’m still harbouring a little hope that one of the Google Calendar-to-Outlook solutions pans out. However, I do like knowing that this solution is waiting for me, as soon as I decide I need it. After all, if I stay with the free version of GooSync, all it’s going to cost me is $24.95 for the Softick PPP software.