Cloud Computing – and end to the pain

 

Ok, so I have posted several entries on my quest to find a suite of on-line and free applications that would allow me to do the following:

1. Sync my contacts and calendar on-line to be shared with someone else.
2. Store documents on-line that would allow me to access them by my mobile, and my laptop, and share then with someone.  This would also allow me to utilize my Office Mobile application on my Smartphone to edit documents stored on-line, and resave them to the on-line site and/or e-mail them from my Smartphone.

That’s a bit short in the description, but feel free to look back to see what I was attempting to do in more detail in my earlier posts.

The search has been long and hard.  Frustrating.  Difficult.  Exasperating.  Irritating.  I pulled my hair.  I had moments of grumbling at my computer.  I wanted to throw tantrums and perform other unsavory and immature things.

To put it in all in a nutshell, it wasn’t a lot of fun.

Some of the items I tried were:

1. Microsoft Live and Skydrive
2. Google Docs and other Google Offerings
3. Gh.o.st Desktop
4. and last but not least, Syncwizard.

I won’t go into the amount of detail reviewing the last two services as I did the first two, for reasons I will explain later in the post.

Gh.o.st:

This is an on-line desktop service that basically simulates remote desktop services.  It provides you with a windows looking interface and will allow you to export your calendar and contacts for upload.  It also allows you upload files, such as office documents and mp3 files, movies, etc.  It will also allow you to use google docs to edit documents.

Although the interface looks nice, and although there was a lack of documentation, it was easy to set-up.  However, since it doesn’t allow syncing between the calendar and contacts, this was a service that worked for me.

I truly can’t understand why someone would want to use a service such as this, except for perhaps accessing documents from another computer.  You can not access the information by Smartphone.  What really confused me is why you would want to upload mp3’s.  With services such as youtube and yahoo music videos, if you wish to have someone listen to a song, you can look it up and play it.  I personally think having the ability to access mp3’s like this is a waste of time.

However, if you’re looking for something that will allow you to upload documents, constantly export contacts and calendar information for importing on-line, that gives you an interface similar to Windows XP for accessing anywhere, you might like the service.

Syncwizard:

The first thing I will say about this service is that the lack of documentation is mind boggling.  This service basically is an interface for a number of different services, and condenses your access to one place.  According to what I could read and understand, with available Outlook programs, you can sync calendar and contacts, as well as store documents on-line.  You can also download a file that you can install on your Smartphone so that you can access the information that way.

It looked like I had found my solution.

I began the very lengthy and complicated steps to try and download, install and run the connectors.  Once done, it didn’t work.  It seems that you have then spend an impressive amount of time searching help threads to discover proper settings for the connector, which doesn’t match the default setting at all.  I finally discovered what settings I needed and the connector appeared to sync with my Outlook contacts and calendar, but unfortunately, none of the synced information appeared on the syncwizard space that belonged to me.  I never even tried the on-line file storage.

However, despite the problems,  and you are a patient and computer literate to the point of being half magician, it might be worth checking out if you are looking for a similar service.  I stopped working on it.

Why?

Well, I just so happened to be talking to our corporate IT person today, explaining some of this to him and he told me that our company will soon be rolling out Microsoft’s Sharepoint, which will do everything I want.

If you want to check out Syncwizard: http://www.syncwizard.com/en/index.jsp

So there ends my quest.  I spent a lot of time and effort trying to make my life easier for my job, only to discover my company is already working on the very solution I was looking for.

Ain’t it always the way?

So, good luck if you are looking for something similar.

In closing, I will say, out of this entire exhausting experience, I only got what I consider one great benefit out of it.  That benefit is Microsoft’s LiveWriter, which I have found to be an extremely excellent program.  LiveWriter is a blog writing software that is easy to use, quite powerful and works like a charm.

I love Microsoft’s LiveWriter.  If you blog yourself, I highly recommend getting it.  You will have to install Windows Live to get it, but it’s worth it.  Trust me.

Until my next adventure in some crazy computer screen, I remain,

Still Computer Crazy.

Kevin Riley

My Continuing Journey in Cloud Computing – Google Docs Review

 

Hello fellow readers and technology fans.  Yesterday, I wrote more about my experience with Windows Live, and trying to come up with a way to use it in a more business oriented way.  If you read it, then  you know I was more than a little disappointed.  Ok, not just disappointed, but disgusted and irritated.  There were several hair pulling incidents, and plenty of sneers directed at my laptop screen.

Well, tonight I want to write on my next experience in seeking to discover a way in harnessing the power of my laptop, my Smartphone, and the internet.  We’ll get to that in a minute.

First, I want to make sure that you all know that although I gave Windows Live a terrible review, it was only in reviewing the service as I wanted to use it.  I’m sure that for non business purposes, it would be a pretty enjoyable experience.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets focus on what I did next in my quest.  I decided to try Google and their suite of applications for cloud computing.  This includes Google Docs and Google Calendar.

Again, the above symbol represents what I’m looking for.  I want a seamless suite and service that will allow me to do the following but keep in mind my laptop would remain my “core” device.

1. The ability to create documents on my laptop and upload them onto a secure service that I can access from anywhere and have the ability for someone else to access them if I choose.
2. The ability to seamlessly sync my contacts and my calendar for viewing anyway and by someone I choose.
3. The ability to have my Smartphone access all of this on the road, including my calendar, contacts, and documents.  This would include the ability to download documents onto my Smartphone, edit them with my Mobile Office Suite, e-mail them from my Smartphone and re-upload them to my cloud drive for access by my laptop later.
4. I would even like the ability to have photos uploaded here so I could share them with my boss and the experts at the office.

In short, I want something seamless that connects my work not only to and from my Smartphone, but also have it available from another computer and have my boss be able to access, add to and change contacts, calendars and documents if he needs to.

So I signed up for Google Docs.  Figured that was the best place to start.  I will admit I  was immediately impressed with the interface.  It was much better than Microsoft’s.  You have the ability to create subfolders for your work.  The fact that you can use The Google Doc program to edit and create is nice, but not really a requirement for me.  When trying the service, I was immediately dismayed to discover I could not upload documents that were created using Office 2007.  The file extensions for those (using Word for the example) is *.docx.  Google doesn’t allow that format, so you have to save as a 2003 document.  I’m not sure why Microsoft even made Office 2007 save in a different format, considering they have been using *.doc for so many years, but I won’t get into that now.  So that was the first disappointment.

I’m going to include a portion of a screenshot for the space you store your documents.  Note I have blurred the folder names, as that happens to be sensitive company data.

I know it’s a little hard to read, but I’m sure you can see it’s rather nice.  You can assign other users to have access if you want, although I didn’t try this feature.

Once I was done, I tried to access this feature on my Smartphone.  I will admit it was a little difficult getting through submenus to finally reach it, but it was intuitive enough to get right through it, unlike Microsoft Live’s Skydrive.  The mobile interface was fantastic.  It almost looks like the above screenshot.  Sure enough, I clicked on one of my documents and could view it perfectly.  I was getting really excited!  Then my excitement took a leap out a 10 story building, landed in a garbage truck, got compacted and carted away to the dump.  it seems, for whatever reason, you can’t download your documents and re-upload them from your phone.  What a disappointment!  The only thing you can do is view them.

Well, I tried to distract my disappointment by trying the calendar.  I activated it and it was really nice.  Easily added to and edited.  But to add your appointments from Outlook,  you have to export them and import them up into Google’s Calendar.  Their is no Outlook Connector to connect them.  This time my disappointment got diverted from the dump to an incinerator.

Am I the only one seeing the problems here?  Sure, Google Docs was created for the average home user, as well as their other software suites on-line.  But I’m still quite disappointed that they didn’t see the advantage to business people, like me, who are looking for something to save them time, energy, etc.  I guess with Google, I’m less disappointed than in Microsoft, since their core income comes from the business world.  Talk about a major let down.

So, if I was to rate the Google service, I would give it one star (for my purposes) but only because the interface is better than Microsoft’s and you can even create and edit documents on-line with Google Writer.

I’m diligently looking for other options and may have found a promising lead.  The service is G.ho.st and I will be trying it out to see what I can do with it.  I’ll let you know of course and if you want to check it out yourself, take a look at: g.ho.st.  It only give you 5GB of storage but I can actually see myself not needing that much space.

I would now like to say that this whole process has made me wish I had a programmer or was a programmer.  It’s seems to me that their are plenty of applications out there that are trying to do a wonderful thing, but they are more interested in personal life applications and not business.  Not every corporation will have a set-up for something like this, although I know for great amounts of money, it is available.  What is needed is an application that helps a business individual, like me, be more efficient.

Until next time, I remain, computer and internet frustrated.

~ Kevin Riley

Computer Frustration – A Windows Live Review

 

Ok, so a few days ago, I wrote about some difficulties with using Windows Live and the Skydrive that Microsoft has released.  If you read it, you will know I ran into some difficulties but finally was able to access my Skydrive from my Windows Mobile Smartphone.  Since then, I have continued to work with Windows Live and attempted to add another option.  After working on it off and on for the past few days, I decided to write more about the experience.

Let me start this off by explaining what I do for a living.  I work for the Garratt-Callahan Co., Inc.  We are a company that provides chemicals and service for a variety of markets for treating water that is used for Boilers, Cooling Towers and Waste Water Systems.  I am a Territory Manager, which means I do sales and service.

My job doesn’t require me to carry around a laptop on a regular basis.  In fact, there are still plenty of Territory managers that don’t even have a laptop.  The company does not provide a computer, but you are expected to own one.  We have a corporate intranet that has forms, product information and various other things we need.  They still have all of this available in paper format, but you have to admit that it’s much easier doing it all on-line.  We have corporate e-mail as well.  We use Microsoft Exchange for e-mail and can either use Microsoft Outlook or use the Web Access for e-mail.  So just to be clear, it’s not like our company is in the dark ages.

Be that as it may, I also have a Windows Mobile Smartphone.  I don’t have to have one, I only really need it for my company phone.  But in trying to be more efficient, I decided on using a Smartphone.

My current set-up is as follows.  My phone uses IMAP for syncing my corporate e-mail and I can send and receive e-mail on it.  My customers and potential customers are stored on my phone.  In addition, because it’s a Windows Mobile phone, I have my contacts synced with Microsoft Outlook.  My laptop uses Outlook IMAP so my e-mail is also synced on my laptop.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets get to the meat of the issue.

When I read about Windows Live, the Microsoft Propaganda said that I could use it to sync files, contacts, calendar, etc and have access to it on all on my laptop, phone, and anywhere I had access to a computer.  Sounds good right?  Well it did to me.  So I decided to install it and see what I could accomplish.

This is what I envisioned when I read about this.  I saw the ability to do the following:

1. Have my contacts automatically sync from my phone to Outlook and Windows Live and vice versa.
2. Have my calendar sync from my phone to Outlook and Windows Live and vice versa.
3. Since I don’t have my laptop with me all the time, have the ability to access Skydrive from my phone and e-mail documents I have put on the Skydrive.
4. Be able to access Contacts, Calendar, and files from any computer, and have it accurate because they are all synced together with my laptop and phone.

I don’t think that is really to much to ask for.  Especially when you look at the very limited information on Windows Live and it hints at the ability to do all this.  Lets take the Skydrive for example.  Here is a screen shot of a part of the Skydrive introduction page:

If you look on the right, it clearly states Access it online, Desktop, Mobile.

If you read my previous blog, you will know how much trouble I went through trying to get access to my skydrive though my phone.  I finally got to it on my phone.  Good right?  Well, except for the fact the interface was awful.  It was full of all these folders that don’t show up if you access on your computer.  It takes a lot of maneuvering to get to your files.  I could have dealt with that, honestly.  But as of today, when I try to sign onto Skydrive through my phone, it says I must have Java enabled, something a Windows Mobile Browser doesn’t support to access it.  So now that is a crap shoot.

My next experiment was to to try and get my contacts and calendar synced up.  I had installed the Outlook Connector when I installed the Windows Live suite of software, but it didn’t work and I had to download it separately.  After a little over an hour hunting, installing and pulling out my hair, this is what I discovered.  Windows Live contacts and Calendar can sync up with Outlook, but only if you enter the data on Windows Live first.  So what exactly is the point?

I already have corporate e-mail and it’s connectable with Outlook and my Windows Mobile phone.  So why would I leave off using my corporate items to use Windows Live?  it doesn’t make sense, and for corporate users, it’s no good.  Did you get that?  Let me repeat it. For Corporate Users, Windows Live Doesn’t Work.

Either Microsoft intended Windows Live for personal reasons or they widely missed the mark.  Not only is the whole thing lacking in any decent instructions, but it’s difficult to install correctly and get working, and it doesn’t even work as advertised.

If you are looking for something personal wise that will allow you to place your contacts and calendar on-line and share photos of your dogs and share recipes documents, then I guess Windows Live is for you.  Provided you feel like going though all the trouble to install it and basically start from scratch getting your calendar and contacts on Windows Live FIRST.

However, if you’re like me, and you use Microsoft products, such as Outlook, Word, etc. for business purposes, and you are looking for a way to sync it all together, then Windows Live is not for you.

For a company who makes their bread and butter in the business world, I just can not for the life of me understand what they were thinking in doing this.

My rating for Windows Live is a half star out of 5.  Now if they hadn’t changed the Skydrive so I could have accessed it from my phone, as advertised, then I would have given them one and half stars.

Now, if someone knows more about Windows Live and knows how to get it work like I am wanting, please feel free to let me know.  Also, if you can recommend a service, that is free that will accomplish what I am looking for, I would also love hearing form you.

Do me a favor and pass the word would you?  I would love for Microsoft to hear about this.

Until then, I remain, un-synced and frustrated.