Some of us have been using Google Voice (GV) for the last few months and loving it! All the while, the GrandCentral service – the precursor to GV – was still alive and well. Today, however, GrandCentral account holders began receiving emails informing them that the service will be closing its doors December 31, 2009. To us this means Google thinks enough GrandCentral users have migrated to Google Voice that it can safely wind down the old service. Here’s the full email from GrandCentral:

Dear GrandCentral User (alexluft16):

We’re writing to let you know that we will be closing down the GrandCentral website as of December 31, 2009.

All GrandCentral accounts were upgraded to Google Voice earlier this year, but since that time, you’ve still been able to log-in to your GrandCentral account and listen to old messages there. You will no longer be able to log-in to your GrandCentral account after December 31. Because of this, we strongly suggest downloading any messages or contacts that you want to keep in the next 43 days.

We will send you another reminder before closing down the site, but we suggest you take action now to download any information you want to keep.

- The Google Voice Team

For anyone who needs invites to Google Voice, we have a few left – so please leave a comment and we’ll send them out on a first-comment-first-served basis.

The latest development channel release of Google Chrome contains the ability to sync the browser’s bookmarks. The feature will let you keep the same set of bookmarks on multiple machines as well as store them in your Google Docs. Interestingly enough, Google already has a web-based bookmark service that goes by the name of Google Bookmarks. I wonder whether the plan is to eventually use Google Bookmarks as the back-end sync destination instead of Docs (a much better fit, wouldn’t you say?). If that is the strategy, then it is my opinion that we should get ready for a huge overhaul to the Google Bookmarks service.

The current implementation of Google Bookmarks is – simply put – outdated. The feature that’s most prominently missing is the ability to share and make my bookmarks public. For a company that’s all about making the next generation communications platform (Google Wave), that’s kind of embarrassing. One of the biggest advantages of keeping my bookmarks on the web with services such as Delicious and Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) is discoverability: I am able to see what tags (labels) others used for a web site and pre-fill their tags to my bookmark, the comments they used for it, as well as related sites that others bookmarked. Google Bookmarks also lacks browser-side import/export functions and doesn’t exactly have the best user interface in the game.

Assuming that the end-game is to use Google Bookmarks as the back-end for Chrome bookmark sync as well as for web access of bookmarks, I think it’s safe to say that the currently outdated service will get a very big revamp in the months ahead. Hopefully we’ll be able to get our hands on an official Chrome for Mac release before then. That, or we’ll see Google Bookmarks dropped and the bookmark functionality folded into Docs.

This was to be expected: Google CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple’s board today, citing a conflict of interest. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest.”

For quite some time, Apple and Google have been serving the same markets:

• Web-based email, calendaring, and contact lists: Apple’s MobileMe and Google’s Gmail/Calendar/Contacts
• Cellular phones: Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android
• Browsers: Apple Safari, Google Chrome
• Productivity applications: Apple’s iWork online and Google’s Docs
• Most recently, Google has announced that it will enter the desktop OS space with Chrome OS, which would compete head-on with the Mac OS

When initial whispers regarding the effectiveness of Mr. Schmidt on Apple’s board began to spread, many analysts pointed out that even though the two companies compete in many spaces, they have different business models for the aforementioned products: Apple charges a premium price while Google either gives its products and services away for free or doesn’t charge an OEM a fee for a license (in the case of Android and Chrome OS). As I’ve stated on our daily bit podcast before, this argument holds no merit: different business models or not, most consumers will end up purchasing only one of the above products/services – either an iPhone or a Google Android-based device. That is, unless the consumer has unlimited amounts of resources (read: money) – in which case the simple rules of economics no longer apply. The same goes for the rest of the markets in which the two companies have overlapping products/services. Now that any conflicts of interest are out of the way, I see the two companies becoming more competitive, especially in the following areas:

• Mobility: enhanced multitouch support on Google Android-based devices should more closely compete with the iPhone
• Productivity: Apple’s iWork online suite being made available as a standalone product to directly compete with Google Docs
• Operating Systems: Google’s Chrome OS not withholding any punches versus Mac OS X

Yet one has to wonder what words were exchanged between Jobs and Schmidt when Apple booted all Google Voice-related apps from its App Store last week. Would that alone have been a reason for Schmidt to step down as Apple board member? Most likely, not. But it must have played a role in his overall decision. Full press release after the break, if you’re interested: 

Dr. Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple’s Board of Directors

CUPERTINO, California-August 3, 2009-Apple today announced that Dr. Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, is resigning from Apple’s Board of Directors, a position he has held since August 2006.

“Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Ever since its initial release in 2007, the iPhone – along with its sibling, the iPod Touch – have shipped with a YouTube app. The sole reason for this app’s existence is because the iPhone isn’t capable of displaying Flash content. That much we already know. Yet with such prominent support for YouTube, I’m surprised that competing video sharing sites aren’t protesting with the words “monopoly, monopoly, monopoly.” Yes, I believe that Apple and YouTube‘s parent company, Google, are behaving in a monopolistic fashion when it comes to video on the iPhone.

Flash – the background

Lets set some facts straight first: Flash is the format used to stream video content and display hyper-dynamic websites, among other things. Used by YouTube, Vimeo, Mevio, Hulu, Cnet, Ustream, Justin.TV, and countless other video websites, Flash is the most prevalent video delivery method on the web by a far cry. The only exception to the previous examples is Apple: it uses the beloved H.264 standard to deliver videos on its own website. But what’s important to note here is that Adobe has been trying, time in time again, to get Flash on the iPhone, all to no avail: Apple has had multiple excuses as to why Flash on the iPhone can’t be a reality. The company has cited battery life and a lack in processing power as the two major items that prevent Flash from being available on the device.

Competing mobile operating systems such as Nokia’s Symbian OS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and Palm’s WebOS, have all either announced support for, or have already delivered devices that are capable of running the Flash Player. Today, the only Flash hold-outs are the Apple’s iPhone/iPod Touch and RIM’s Blackberry line.  Given these facts, the effects of not being able to play back Flash on the iPhone are quite surprising, and even scary!

Streaming Video on the iPhone

If we look at all the possible ways in which a user can get streaming video on the iPhone, it may initially appear that the options are abundant. We have the CBS TV app, the Ustream app, and – of course – the built-in YouTube app (built-in because the user can’t delete it from the device). Even .MOV video can be streamed to the oiPhone’s Safari browser directly from a web site. But let’s take a look at the underlying technology that enables these apps to work. All of these apps, that’s right – every single application on the iPhone that has the ability to stream video from the web – is built the same way on the back end! Whether it’s CBS TV, YouTube, or Ustream, all of these apps have one thing in common: they all deliver video using the H.264 standard! This means that YouTube, which displays all its videos in Flash on the desktop, must re-encode its entire catalog into H.264, essentially having to store two copies of every video: one in the Flash file format, the other in H.264. This is a major undertaking that requires massive processing power (for transcoding the video) and at least double the amount of storage (to store two versions of the same video file). In a business environment where efficiency is key, this may seem very inefficient. If it seems so, that’s because it is. In fact, this inefficiency is exactly the reason only certain companies have made their videos available on the iPhone for streaming consumption.

CBS and Google’s YouTube are two examples that immediately come to mind: both organizations are huge (inter) national conglomerates that can afford to have this kind of inefficiency in their work flows. Both want to be present on all devices, no questions asked, and both have the scale (eyeballs) to allow inefficiencies to occur. Ustream isn’t a conglomerate by any stretch (although I hope it gets there one day). In that effect, it only makes certain videos available for viewing on the iPhone: it transcodes individuals videos and, thus, is not hindered by the inefficiency of having to transcode all videos that it hosts.

As you can see, the necessity to transcode video content keeps some players from displaying their videos on the iPhone/iPod Touch: smaller video sharing sites such as Vimeo, Viddler, Flickr Video, BreakTV, Veoh, IMEEM, and even the popular Hulu, don’t make their videos available on the devices. These companies either can’t afford the kind of inefficiency associated with the transcoding process, or don’t think that the benefits (income) would outweight the negatives (expenses).

So here’s the real question: is it simply a good business decision on Apple’s part to include a YouTube app on the iPhone, or is it a ploy to kill off all those other video sharing services? Following are arguments for either side of the spectrum:

Good busines is all it is

YouTube is the world’s most popular social video site by a far margin. So it would be wise for Apple to figure out a way to enable its users to access the service. Since the iPhone/iPod Touch (as well as the Apple TV – another Apple device that plays back YouTube content using H.264) don’t support Flash, it is in Apple’s best interest to find a solution to make it all work. In that regard, it did find such a solution: Apple asked Google to transcode the entire YouTube video catalog to H.264.

Anti competitive for sure!

It’s no secret that Apple and Google have some interesting ties: Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board of directors, the two companies appear to have a common enemy (Microsoft), and there is some close collaboration between the two (Google is the default search engine in Safari for the Mac and iPhone, Mac OS X Address Book can sync with Google Contacts out of the box, Google Maps is the only mapping solution on the iPhone/Touch, just to name a few). In a move to increase YouTube’s stranglehold in the video sharing space (since YouTube is still leaking money left and right), Google agreed to transcode YouTube video from Flash to H.264. Somewhere along the way – either before or after beginning the transcoding process – YouTube realized that doing so would be cost-prohibitive for smaller players (the competitors mentioned previously).

So?

Have you heard of the recent Windows 7 developments in the European Union? Quick summary: to ease concerns of competition regulators in the EU, Microsoft has offered to provide users with a ballot upon first starting Windows 7. The multiple-choice ballot will ask the user to select the web browser he prefers to use. If the EU twisted Microsoft’s arms into providing such a “choice,” how is it then that Apple is able to ship the iPhone and iPod Touch that are only capable of playing back web video from only one web site – YouTube?

Sometime late last evening, Microsoft launched its latest addition to its Bing decision engine.  Dubbed Bing Tweets, the new destination is a mash up of real-time Twitter search with Bing web results (something Microsoft apparently calls Bing Insights).  Interestingly, the site is a second series of partnerships between Microsoft and Federated Media – the first being ExecTweets.  And while there is a plethora of real-time search engines cropping up (seemingly left and right nowadays), Bing Tweets may be that one place that takes real-time search mainstream.

Bing Tweets is described as combining “Twitter trends with Bing search results, enabling you to see deeper, real-time information about the hottest topics on Twitter. You can also search for anything in the BingTweets search box (at the top right of every page) and see Bing search results alongside the most recent related tweets.”

Design

The design is very attractive, user friendly, and fairly straightforward.  It takes a few seconds and a few clicks to get used to the layout, which consists of five main content areas and one search box.

In the upper right corner, above the four main content areas, Bing Tweets displays a search box.  This is no ordinary search box, since using it will deliver a combination of Tweets along with search results from Bing (the decision engine we’ve all come to love).  Here is a brief description of the five content areas:

Trending topics on Twitter: this is where I anticipate most users will interact with Bing Tweets.  This section currently consists of four main categories: Popular Now, People, Places, and Products.  Clicking one of these categories reveals the appropriate subset of trending topics on Twitter.  A really cool feature here is the ability of trending topics to grow and shrink.  If, for example, the trending topic for the Palm Pre became more popular, the size of the font would grow.  The reverse effect (shrinking) is also true if the trending topic loses its popularity.  Over time, I see the headings being expanded into other categories: politics and sports spring to mind.

The Tweets content area (column) is immediately below the trending topics on Twitter content area.  It displays a self-updating stream of tweets about the trending topic selected in the above content area.  When a user clicks a tweet in this stream, the updates pause for a few seconds and resume again.  Interestingly enough, the tweets displayed here aren’t exactly real-time: in my tests, Bing Tweets first began displaying tweets from a few days ago and upon running out of new tweets to display, the stream stopped moving (I searched for an unpopular topic).  One interesting tidbit is that this stream doesn’t seem to take hash tags into account when displaying tweets.  When I searched for TechNest Report and included #TechNestReport in my tweet, the stream didn’t display my update with the hash tag at all.

Search Results: this is the area of the site that needs the least amount of explaining, since it’s a direct Bing search result, down to the T.  It’s actually an iFrame of the Bing search results page and allows one to scroll left and right outside the intended viewing area.  Perhaps this is why Lizette thought the site was rushed to market: the Bing team could have integrated a real Bing results page and not just an iFrame.

Share this result: this content area is directly to the right of the trending topics on Twitter content area and above the search results content area.  It’s prefilled with the following text by default: “Check out BingTweets about your search query,” (emphasis – mine) followed by a bit.ly URL and a #bing hashtag.  The user has the option to Tweet this or ShareThis.  Tweeting this takes the user directly to his web-based Twitter account and prefills the compose Tweet box.  ShareThis is actually a ShareThis button (the company) which allows the user to email, text, or post the web page to a myriad of social networks.  By using the ShareThis button as opposed to a custom-built social sharing solution, the service may give off the vibe of being rushed to market, although I think only the hardcore tech geeks will notice this.  The ShareThis button is quite common throughout the web, so it actually might decrease the learning curve for mainstream users – increasing the chances that the user has seen and used the button on a different site.  For example, our blog also uses the ShareThis button.

How do you decide? The last content area of the service is located at the bottom of the page.   It asks visitors: “How do you use the Internet to find the answers you need to make faster, more informed decisions?”  The question is followed by an invitation to Share Your Ideas, which – when clicked – takes users to a page with a form that asks to fill out the name, email, title, and idea.  The submit button is preceded by a check box that reads “I have read and agree with the Terms & Conditions of contributing to the White Paper.”  This content area collects the submissions and then divides them into Featured Authors and Recent Ideas.  It’s unclear exactly what the process is that would take a submission from an idea to a featured author spot, but I’m guessing that’s the part that Federated Media takes care of.  Current featured authors include Anita Campbell, Harry McCracken, and Xeni Jardin, among others.

Overall, Microsoft got it right with the user interface.  It’s very easy to use for such a powerful real-time search engine.  My only suggestion for the site would be to unify suggested terms.  If I search for TechNestReport (one word) using the top-most search box in Bing Tweets, the Bing search results content area would present its suggestion: TechNest Report (with a space between Nest and Report).  It would be nice to see the suggestions unified across the entire service.  The site is built using Java components and thus uses absolutely no Flash to display its dynamic effects (read: auto-updating Twitter search).  As such, it is extremely mobile friendly: my Flash-less iPhone displayed the web page without a hitch.

Goals: mainstream or whalestream?

So what’s the target market here?  Currently, real-time search is a popular topic among web geeks and has not yet received the proper attention from mainstream media that it deserves.  Nevertheless, Microsoft has its own battles to fight on the search front.  It currently has two major goals with Bing: increase consumer awareness (brand awareness) which – eventually – should translate to taking search share away from other players.  Bing is doing its own thing on that front and initial reports are showing signs of success.  Bing Tweets might be Microsoft’s second phase of assault on Google, delivering real-time search before the incumbent is – after all – what any underdog would be proud of: beating Google feature-by-feature.  At the present time, Bing Tweets does not display any ads whatsoever, so it seems that the purpose is to drive usage of the service and build awareness of Bing as an innovator and as a viable alternative to the oh-so-popular Google.  That is, until Google releases its own a real-time search product.

Google Maps is awesome.  Google Maps with Street View is even better.  Just think of all the interesting things you can find with it: intoxicated men, topless sunbathers, a man climbing over a fence to (possibly) to break into a house, UFO-look-alikes, as well as offensively ugly vehicles.  Most recently, there have been numerous complaints about the web-based mapping application that relate to privacy: Google Street View has been capturing hanging laundry in Japan’s backyards and – on occasion – not blurring vehicle license plates.

What appears to be the problem in Japan is the Google Street View vehicle – or more specifically, its camera: it is mounted too high – high enough to see over fences and into yards.  This violates certain expectations of privacy in Japan.  Google has already captured Street View footage for Tokyo as well as 11 other major Japanese cities but has announced that it will be throwing out all of that work and starting from scratch after making modifications to the camera mounts in order to lower the cameras’ field of vision.

Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is.  Street View can be extremely helpful to tourists, travelers, and others who are unfamiliar with an area and its benefits far outweigh the privacy complaints.  Here is my question to those who think Google Street View impinges on peoples’ privacy by being able to capture the details of Japanese backyards:

can I walk over to your public street and get the same “view” as Google’s street-capture vehicles did?

The answer, most likely, will be a shy, yet truthful, “yes.”  So what’s the problem here?  Is it just the age-old battle between the privacy-obsessed and the privacy-indifferent?  Or have I completely missed the mark here?  Let me know in the comments

Google Docs now supports uploading of documents in Microsoft’s most recent file format: the XML-based .docx and .xlsx that comes with Office 2007 (Windows) and 2008 (Mac).  This means that whenever someone sends you a Microosft Office Word document or an Excel spreadsheet with a file extension that ends with .x, you no longer have to convert it to a .doc or a .xls format just to upload it to Google Docs.  This also continues down the path of further removing the barriers of using Google Docs as one’s primary document-editing suite/repository.

No word yet on when Google’s online office suite will support .pptx files for PowerPoint presentations encoded in the XML goodness.

To all those who have been patiently awaiting the day when it would be easy to switch to Gmail and migrate your mail and contacts from your old mail provider, your time has come!  A post on the Google Operating System blog reports that users of other popular email services such as AOL, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and other mail services provided by ISPs will soon be able to switch to Gmail and take their emails and contacts with them; in other words, they will soon have the option to have their cake and eat it, too!Google has partnered with TrueSwitch – a firm that specializes in migrating users’ data from ISPs to other email services – and in doing so has removed the last barrier in switching to the search giant’s amazingly and spectacularly different email service.  The feature is not yet available to all Gmail users.

Once the service is available, however, users will be able to

• Import contacts
• Import mail
• Import new mail for 30 days
• Add a specific label to imported mail

The option will be available via the Accounts and Import tab in the Settings menu.

Personally, I can’t wait to use this feature: I have had enough of Yahoo! Mail and the company’s blatant rip-off “strategy” of charging for an increased amount of mail filters and POP3 access (both features available free of charge in Gmail and, best of all, without any limitations).  Thankfully, I use Yahoo! Mail for only my “bac’n mail.”

Perhaps this will be the feature to take Gmail out of beta… one can only hope!

Computer-based calendaring: the background

Today’s calendaring applications help us coordinate our work (and play) time.  For some time, calendaring was something we did on a desktop-computer basis.  These “high-tech” solutions, as some would describe them, offered many benefits over traditional paper-and-pen calendaring and planning solutions.  The most significant of these benefits was (and still is) the act of making changes to a schedule: no longer does the user have to erase/white-out/cross-out a changed event and re-write it somewhere else.  By using computer-based calendars, all the user needs to do is drag the re-scheduled event to its new location in the calendar.  Yet these early solutions offered little (if anything) in terms of sharing your schedule with co-workers, family, or friends.  Read on to find out how digital calendaring can help us and what changes need to happen in order for it to improve.

The good

Then along came the web and helped the matter out (to a certain extent).  Online calendaring applications like Yahoo! Calendar made calendar-sharing easy and thus – popular.  Yahoo! Calendar even has a “sync component” that would synchronize the desktop calendar with the web version of Yahoo! Calendar.  And with the development and proliferation of new web technologies (namely AJAX), Apple, Microsoft, Google, 30Boxes, Plaxo, CalendarHub, HipCal, as well as many others, were able to make some of the easiest and most functional web-based calendars.  And to this date, Google Calendar (GCal) still offers one of the best user experiences a calendaring application can have – an ease-of-use that beats most, if not all, desktop-class calendaring software.  Features such as “click-to-add an event,” context-sensitive event-adding robots, and sharing calendars with others, are extremely intuitive and useful and end up saving users a bunch of time when adding new events.  If that isn’t enough, GCal also looks pretty going it.

Now the bad

However, as we come to a point of maturity with these web-based calendaring services, their current limitations become very apparent:

1. Outside-of-network sharing
   Some of the aforementioned calendaring applications handle the sharing of calendars very well.  In fact, one of the biggest benefits of having a calendar that lives online is the ability to share it – with friends, family, and with the rest of the world (if you so desire).  The same goes for subscribing to calendars: have access to your wife’s schedule, your kids’ hockey practices and games, and even your favorite hockey team’s game schedule – all with just a few clicks.  And while that’s really awesome, sharing is a feature that still needs to be perfected.  What’s the biggest issue that needs work?  Compatibility and interoperability.
   While all of the aforementioned calendaring solutions all allow me to publish my calendar for others to see and subscribe to – even if they use a different calendaring service, they don’t yet allow “out-of-network editing.”  Sorry to get all cell-phone-lingo on you, but it’s the reality: if I use GCal and my friend uses Microsoft Live Calendar, we can share our schedules but can not make changes to them – I can see my friend’s calendar but can’t edit it by schedule an appointment for him (and vice-versa), for example.  This is a feature that is available only to “in-network” clients – meaning that as long as I stay and share within Google (or within Microsoft Live, for that matter), I can permit others to edit my schedule.  But if I go out of the network, I can’t.
   Verdict: this is a feature request that – while might not be at the top of every calendaring service’s feature request list – should become reality over time.
2. Offline access (and then some…)
   We know that one of the limitations of web applications is the ability (or rather lack there-of) to use it in offline mode.  It’s a major limitation that prevents frequent-flyers and travelers from relying entirely on web-based software.  Today, we have come to a point of partially solving these issues.  Technologies like Google Gears, Adobe AIR, and other synchronization services help to bring data down to the PC for offline use.  This is best evidenced by looking at Google, which today has two major offline-mode initiatives for its suite of web apps.
   • Google Gears – a browser plug-in
   • The second initiative is application-specific sync: the company just announced a way to perform two-way synchronization between GCal and Apple iCal, and has had a tool to do the same with GCal and Microsoft Outlook (although the latter has some limitations in its current incarnation).

   As we move closer and closer to solve the “offline access” limitations of web-applications, another need has suddenly sprung up that revolves around a similar axis: mobile-device access.
   I have been an iPhone user ever since the 4GB first-generation version.  Today I am the proud owner of an iPhone 3G.  And while I love my iPhone and would not even think about using another cell phone (except, perhaps one of the Android phones), one aspect of the device has me down.  What is it?  Calendar integration.  In this next section I describe the many problems an iPhone user such as myself needs to go through in order to have a 21st century experience with the calendaring system on the Apple iPhone.  I will be using the iPhone as the sole example because, in my experience, it is the platform of choice for developers and of companies alike; moreover, it’s calendaring interface is the best in the mobile arena.  Just so you know, I’m not trying to pick on you if you don’t own an iPhone… I’m simply using the platform as an example of what progress needs to be made in the mobile calendaring arena for the most usable mobile device.

Calendaring on iPhone

My biggest point of dissatisfaction with the iPhone is that there is no such thing as a “natural method” of bringing my calendar down to my phone and keeping it in sync wirelessly.  This is the case whether I use Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft for my calendaring.  There is no way for me to go into the settings portion of the iPhone and configure my Google account to sync my Google Calendar with the iPhone’s Calendar app OTA (over the air).  So what’s the big deal with the whole “sync thing?”  Well, the whole point of web apps is to have access to your “stuff” wherever you are.  And this is even more true and important with a calendar – to be productive and to “work”, it needs to follow me everywhere I go.  Yet as of this writing, the only methods to get a synchronized calendar onto the iPhone are these:

1. Use a tethered sync through iTunes and sync to OS X iCal or to Outlook on Windows
2. Use Exchange through an employer/company
3. Sync over-the-air using an Exchange hack such as NuevaSync
4. Access your calendar in a mobile web interface through Safari

The thing is, all of the above solutions suck.  If that’s an overstatement, then to put it more nicely, all the above solutions compromise on something.  Below, I will go down the above list in the same order the above syncing methods are listed and explain what compromises are made with each new way.

1. Using a tethered sync with a cable is like using Windows 3.1 in 2008: while it might “work,” it’s very inelegant.  The user needs to constantly plug the phone into the computer to keep the two in sync.  If the user is a busy professional who makes frequent calendaring appointments and makes changes to them on the iPhone and on the desktop software, then to keep the schedule up to date requires constant plugging the two together (with a cord, I must add).  This is what over-the-air (OTA) syncing was made for.
2. Unfortunately, the only OTA sync the iPhone supports is Microsoft Exchange, a corporate-class suite for calendars, address book, and email.  The problem is, unless the user works for a company that uses Exchange, he’s out of luck.  And even if the user does have access to Exchange, then it becomes an issue of ethics and privacy in having the personal schedule on the corporate network.  So for personal use, Exchange for personal use would  be overkill: kind of like playing GTA 1 with today’s latest video card.
3. Fortunately, a few companies have popped up to take advantage of the Exchange capabilities in the iPhone.  I use NuevaSync, which takes my Google Calendar, pulls it down to its servers, and then converts it to Exchange.  This final Exchange format is what my iPhone reads.  I can make changes on the iPhone’s native calendaring app and changes will be reflected on my Google Calendar online.  While this solution works, it has limitations such as treating multiple Google Calendars as a single calendar: if I have different calendars, one for the ‘Nest Report and another for working out, my iPhone shows them as being one – the default calendar.  Also, it is a very ineligant solution that duplicates my calendar to NuevaSync servers.  All privacy concerns aside, this is simply an unnecessary step.
4. Online access to a calendar has the same limits as it does on the desktop: lose the internet connection, lose your calendar. wait until the internet is back.  Lose your service?  Same thing.  And most importantly, the Google Calendar “iPhone-special edition” interface is horrible.  Besides needing to log in every other time the calendar is accessed, the calendar (for some reason) doesn’t show “Today.”  Rather, it’s always a few days (or sometimes even weeks) behind schedule, requiring the user to navigate to the correct date.  Then there is the missing ability to make any changes to existing appointments: actions such as changing appointment time, date, or even deleting an appointment are missing from Google’s mobile version of the GCal interface.  And GCal mobile is by far the best on the market when compared with Microsoft and Yahoo!.

In other words – let me confirm that the above solutions suck.  They work.  But they suck.  So does using Windows 3.1 on a monochrome display… in 2008.

Fixing mobile calendaring

So what needs to be done to fix mobile calendaring?  What’s the solution?  Simply, make synchronization on the iPhone work.  This functionality can be added to the iPhone in a top-down method or through a “pull approach” by calendar providers:

• Using the top-down approach, Apple could work closely with calendar providers to integrate the calendaring systems and sync capabilities of these companies’ products into the device.  This would require Apple to come to calendaring companies and/or research their APIs, which is unlikely at the current time, as Apple is preocupied figuring out a uniform strategy for accepting and blocking entrants into the App Store.  So a better, more effective method for calendars to get to the phone by pulling demand through the channel.
• The “pull approach” is for Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft Hotmail/Live, Zimbra, and all the other calendar providers to come to Apple and show interest in getting their calendars OTA sync to the iPhone – all in a very easy manner.  Collaborating with Apple, these companies will make their calendaring apps to sync to the iPhone seamlessly.

The goal is to be able to hit the Settings icon on the iPhone, select Calendars, and proceed to pick which calendaring provider the phone should synchronize with.  Period.  This method has the ability to bring new calendar users to the calendaring companies – as iPhone users will see the option and want to check it out further.

The good – again

The good news, so far, is that the industry has standards in place to take care of all the problems I have so far written about.  The iCalendar format (iCal, for short – RFC 2445) is a standard for calendaring data exchange.  A word of caution – don’t confuse this with Apple’s iCal calendaring software; Apple’s iCal is an implementation of the iCal standard, not the actual standard itself.  The cool thing about iCal is that it is made to work without being dependent on a certain communications protocol/medium.  This means that to use it, one can use email, WebDav server, and SyncML, to name just a few.

Plan of action

With that said, let’s all stand up and request demand that web-based calendaring providers (such as Google and Microsoft) work with mobile device makers (such as Apple, Nokia, RIM, Microsoft, Google) to make built-in calendar set-ups, access and OTA synchronization a must on devices like the iPhone, like the BlackBerry, and like the Android-based phones.

PS and Notes of interest

After reading this article, you might be wondering about a few things.  If questions such as why I didn’t write specifically about the BlackBerry or the Android platform the way I did about the iPhone, why I so heavily concentrated on Google, and other calendaring “wonderings,” here are your answers:

1. Yes, I know that BlackBerry users have enjoyed for some time the ability to sync with Google Calendar.  I used the iPhone in this article for the simple reason that it’s the best – so far – mobile calendaring experience.  By far.  It’s all in the user interface.  Also, I use the iPhone myself and am therefore most familiar with it.
2. The same goes for the Android G1: the calendar on the G1 that integrates – seamlessly, I might add – with Google Calendar seems to be meant as a read-only calendar with a quick capability to “jot this down.”  I hope this gets better on this excellent platform.
3. As an aside, none of the mobile calendar clients – for any calendaring solution and/or device out there – have the ability to add guests to meetings.  This is most likely not going to affect the majority of users, however.
4. What calendar do I use?  Google Calendar.  I love the interface, love the ability to synchronize it to all my “desktop-class” machines – whether they run OS X or Windows, and rely heavility on sharing my calendar with the family (and giving them the permission to make changes to my schedule).  I am planning on using the GCal feature to integrate my calendar into my website.  It’s really cool!  I know that other (smaller) calendaring services out there might have better interfaces and more features, but somehow I love the interface that Google made.  On the other hand, Yahoo! Calendar is just plain old at this point and requires too many clicks to get things done.  Windows Live Calendar is a very early beta at this point in time and isn’t integrated with Hotmail.  Moreover, its synchrnization and sharing capabilities are very limited right now.
5. I didn’t mention MobileMe in this article for a very specific reason: it does not have the feature to share calendars with others and to allow them to make changes to my calendar.  Otherwise, it’s a perfect solution and will get my subscription dollars every year if the good people at Apple were to add this functionality.  Why is it perfect besides for missing that feature?  It’s a great interface online, it synchronizes with my Mac and with my Windows machines, as well as with my iPhone.  What else can a man ask for?
6. How about tasks?  Don’t you think tasks are part of a calendar?  Sure I do, but I use Jott.  It has an excellent online interface, an awesome voice-enabled iPhone app, as well as Adobe AIR-based desktop clients.  So tasks and lists are Jotted for me.
7. Lastly, I would like to address the practice of calendar sharing and the real-world need thereof.  Some would ask why calendar sharing exists in the first place.  Others would ask why  some would use calendar sharing to grant others privileges of making changes to their calendar(s).  If you fall into the camp of asking either one of these questions, then you haven’t realized the true power of web-based calendaring.  Sharing my calendar with friends and family is a must for me.  I need to let them know when to schedule certain things for everybody – and by giving them access to my calendar, I grant them piece of mind to sit down behind my schedule on their terms and plan.  So I grant my fiance full read and write priviliges to my calendar.  This is so useful when she needs me to do something and schedules it for me into a blank slot.  It’s also handy when planning vacations, trips, and night-outs: if she blocks off my time now, I won’t be able to defer or skimp out on it later, thus committing me to attend the event in question.  In this use-case, it’s more of a productivity tool that others help you use (in my case it’s my friends and family).  If you’re still doubting online calendar sharing, go and subscribe to a calendar feed of your favorite sports team or band.  Then tell me that it’s useless and not needed.  – exhales deeply -
8. In the end, we need computer-based calendaring to progress and evolve by:

• Opening up sharing of calendars across web-based calendaring providers
• Providing an easy way to synchronize the calendar to mobile device (such as mobile phones, PDAs)
• Making the calendars available offline – for viewing and editing

These days, it seems like Microsoft’s business is getting attacked from every angle.  What’s most interesting, however, is that the software giant is being challenged the most in those areas that it holds a significant share of the market.  From the Mac going after Windows on the desktop, iPhone gunning for (and surpassing by years end?) Windows Mobile devices, Linux infiltrating the server market, and OpenOffice along with Google docs chipping away at the all-mighty Microsoft Office – the big M has many companies to pay attention to these days.  As of late, Microsoft has been so busy saying goodbye to Bill Gates chasing its competition, it forgot to show up to a scheduled fight with one of its most feared closest rivals.

“Exchange for the rest of us”:

Let’s see what Microsoft’s identifiable markets are: home users, business users, corporate customers.  In an interview on Windows Weekly a few months ago, a Microsoft executive in the online Live division explained how the company sees corporate users also as home users who want to enjoy their computers and have fun with them when not at work (my paraphrase).  He noted that it was Microsoft’s goal with Live to unify the experiences of such users.  That’s great and all, but just tell me one thing: how does a tech company that has been (incorrectly) relegated by the media to be the best choice for “home users” beat you in making “Exchange for the rest of us”, when Exchange is your own (Microsoft’s) product?  It’s so embarrassing that it overshadows Windows Me (the biggest flop to leave Microsoft labs).

Just in case you have been living under a rock for the last few months, that company with the “home user” target market goes by the name of Apple, Inc.  You know, the company who is known for turning certain industries upside down and re-inventing the business processes within them.  Apple announced MobileMe on June 9, 2008 and dubbed it “Exchange for the rest of us”.  That “exchange” reference, as mentioned earlier, is alluding to Microsoft Exchange – a corporate/large-business email and PIM tool/service.  MobileMe basically does Exchange but for the consumer – on a personal subscription level.  Herein lies the question: how does Apple, a company so focused on the “home user”, roll out something Microsoft should have been selling for the last five years?

You see, somewhere along the lines of Xbox breakdowns, Vista problems/negative PR, and chasing after copying Apple with Zune, Microsoft completely missed the boat.  For a nominal fee to the user, Microsoft should have created “Exchange Hotmail”: a paid-for part of Hotmail that “brings your data with you at the speed of *push*” (my marketing tagline).  It should have been the scaled down, personal version of Exchange that integrated with Hotmail/Live mail in the cloud, integrated with an Exchange-compatible mobile client, and pushed out to Outlook/Windows Live Mail on the desktop.  It would do push email, calendar, and contacts the way Exchange does it, only Joe User would be able to sign up for it himself.  But it wasn’t to be.  Apple brought it first because Microsoft was too busy defending its “server plays”.  Most likely, the big M felt that introducing a personal version of Exchange tied to Hotmail would in some way enroach on its own user base of corporate Exchange users.  But that’s just a load of bollocks, since the two markets using Exchange enterprise and my proposed Exchange Hotmail would be different (a corporation would still run an Exchange server for company-wide email and Joe the employee would simply subscribe to Exchange Hotmail for personal use).

On second thought, the company did roll out a scaled down version of its server product for home users dubbed Windows Home server.  Why could it not have applied the same type of thinking to an email and PIM system?  After all, the new Microsoft is all about software plus services (as described in the linked memo by new Microsoft chief Ray Ozzie).  Exchange Hotmail would have been a perfect play for Microsoft.  So in the end, Microsoft is left with a very popular online mail solution (Hotmail) yet has not made a significant effort to monetize it.  Apple, on the other hand, has beaten Microsoft at their own game and has brought out a kick-butt web service and, along the process, used Microsoft’s “Exchange” moniker in its description – almost as a mokery.

On triple thought, what has Microsoft really done to Hotmail and its consumer online services lately?  Sure, they have copied Yahoo! and made Hotmail “drag-and-drop”.  But what Apple is really great at doing is making an end-to-end solution, as the comapny has done with iPhone and MobileMe.  The latter is the perfect complement for the iPhone user.  Microsoft hasn’t seen the light at the end of this tunnel, and the jury is still out to see if it ever will.

P.S. Throughout the article, I put “home user” in quotation marks because for years it has been thought that “home use” was the best use of Apple Macs.  Though this opinion is beginning to change rather quickly – and as it should – many uninformed tech journalists, “experts”, and those in tech media still wrongly believe this to be the case.