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Being a linux user can sometimes (often) be a pain in the ass. Since there's no native ActiveSync support for linux, we have to get "creative".
For the last few weeks I have been playing with a Motorola Q. It's a popular smartphone, and I'm positives that these phones are going to get more impressive with each passing year. The phones operating system is Windows Mobile 5, which in my opinion is complete dogshit, but the phone is pretty cool.
I'm not an organized person. Everyone knows that. But I try. I try to get things so organized (at least digitally) that I confuse the hell out of myself. One example is with my calendars.
I use two main calendars. My personal calendar, for everything that isn't a gig, and my gig calendar, for everything that is. My goal is to centralize these calendars and make it so I can't possible forget something I've tried so hard to remind myself of, no matter where I may be sitting.
To do this, I first need a central point. Since I'm rebuilding my computer all the time, I had to host it elsewhere... So I chose google calendar. It's a great web app, and it's free, and I can access it from any internet browser.
So I created two separate calendars in my google account, and named them Personal and Gigs. Simple enough.
Now I'm a very lazy person. It's unlikely that I'm going to wake up in the morning and log on to view my google calendar, I want a pop up to display on my screen when an event is coming up. For this I need a desktop client. I've tried them all. Really, all of them. The one I think I've finally settled on is Mozilla's Thunderbird. It's the nicest looking, and supports the most plug ins.
So I installed Thunderbird on my computer. Keeping in mind that I also want to access these calendars from my mobile device, I decided to use syncml, it's a newer standard for transferring [[PIM]] data between devices.
By suggestion of Redth in #linuxpeople, I checked out Mark Swanson's ScheduleWorld website.
ScheduleWorld is another calendering website that synchronizes with google calendar.
I created an account with scheduleworld, and made two calendars, named Personal and Gigs, and I set each calendar to synchronize with the appropriate google calendars.
The big difference between these web applications, is that ScheduleWorld provides syncml support and google does not. ScheduleWorld is the hub from which I feed my calendars and contacts to my desktop and mobile device.
SyncML is not enabled by default in either thunderbird or windows mobile 5 (or even outlook) yet, although I'm sure in the near future all [[PIM]] applications will incorporate it. To get the functionality, Thunderbird needs an extension and WM5 needs a program. I've chosen SyncSW and Synthesis SyncML respectively.
After feeding the plugins my scheduleworld username and password, both the mobile device, and my desktop computer will synchronize all of my contacts and calendar data.
I have had success using other email clients, such as Evolution and Kontact, but I've found Thunderbird and the SyncSW extension to be an easier, more reliable, cleaner solution.
Also, to display my Upcoming gigs on the website, I've just embedded a copy of my google calender on the Gig Calendar page. Simple. Google even provides the [[HTML]] to do it.
This takes care of synchronizing my calendars and contacts... But there's still mail.
To syncronize my mail I've found IMAP to be the best solution.
First, I took all the email addresses that I have, and forwarded them all to one. I auto forward my hotmail, gmail, and whatever else right over to my comcast email account. Comcast does my spam filtering for me, and I have one central place that holds all my mail from many locations.
Next I installed Dovecot IMAP Server on my debian box here at my house. The machine is always on, and I use it for lots of things.
After installing the imap server, I installed fetchmail, and created a fetchmail rule to grab all the mail from comcast via [[POP]]. Fetchmail then delivers the mail to procmail, which delivers the mail to my IMAP Maildir.
It's a lot of steps, and it's confusing for a beginner, but all it's doing is mirroring my comcast mailbox to my local server. IMAP allows me to access the same mail, the same mailbox, from any machine, including the Motorola Q.
This way, if I read a message on my phone, and come back to my computer, the message is still there, but it's marked as read... and vice versa.
There are other ways to do this... but for me, I have found this to be the most reliable and cheapest (free) way to do what I want it to do.
Next, I need to transfer files.
I've been unsuccessful in getting anything done using a USB cable, which is a shame. There are projects such as [[synce]] that others have reported success with, but not me. I've even tried using the USB connection in a VMware Windows XP Virtual Machine, but to no avail.
I have been able to get consistent reliable results transferring files using Bluetooth.
The initial bluetooth configuration was another project entirely, and unfortunatly, I didn't document it as I went. The information that I can give you is:
I'm using kbluetoothd as a bluetooth server and a little USB Bluetooth Dongle for bluetooth support in my desktop. After creating a pairing between the phone and the desktop, I am able to browse the phone as if it were a local filesystem by using the OBEX protocol.
Now all of this gives me most of the functionality of Microsoft's Activesync, with the exception of installing EXE files. I can still install .CAB files on the phone by transferring the files over bluetooth to my storage card and running them from the phone, but I can't install packages that were intended to be installed with ActiveSync. There's no way that this can be accomplished without a reliable USB connection. I've asked the folks over at VMWare for their support, and we'll see what comes of it.
I hope that this will be helpful to someone.
-Luke.
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