some minor projects lately
I was reminded, when the hub-bub about Google Buzz started (particularly, the ways in which it ignored personal privacy), how happy I am to avoid Google services for private information. It's one of the reasons I run my own server for mail and web stuff rather than rely on them. At the same time, some of their services to store and comb over and maybe later publish your personal data - like Google Calendars - aren't all that easy to replace. I own an iPhone, which would happily integrate with (and, effectively, be backed up by) their calendar, and Google makes it easy to share calendars between people too.
After a lot of digging and researching in my [copious] free time, I've finally hit upon eGroupWare as a pretty decent replacement. My calendar is stored on my server (which is backed up very basically at the moment 1), and is accessible via a halfway decent web application, my iPhone, and even Thunderbird (via the Lightning plugin). Similarly, I hope to have SyncML sorted out, so that my iPhone contacts are synchronized with eGroupWare 2, and then accessible also through the web and in Thunderbird (I'm still looking at options here).
There are some bugs with eGroupWare for sure: there seem to be some serious inconsistencies in the way timezones are handled, SyncML has been a complete failure so far, and the integrated mail client is much less user-friendly than RoundCube (which I've been using for quite a while). However, it's got potential and I think I can work through the bugs with enough free time.
The payoff, though, is being able to share calendars and contacts with misphit, have it all backed up relentlessly, and be able to access it from anywhere on every device I want. In other words... all the promises Google makes for using their services, but without having my personal information held hostage and potentially (ab)used for purposes I'm not comfortable with 3.
I just have to get the contacts part working now.
1. I do nightly backups of my server, but store the dump files on a spare disk in the server - not offline, and definitely not off-site backups. Another small project of mine is to automate encrypting dump files and storing them on Amazon S3, as well as write a script (stored in that same S3 bucket) to do restores from there.
2. Unlike my calendar, which I'm okay with storing on the server and accessing on my phone via CalDAV, I want contacts to be available on my phone when GPRS, 3G, and WiFi are unavailable. So they'll be stored in both places but synchronized.
3. They have plenty of information on me already, like most people, and I don't mind that so much (and can't really do anything about it). Still, there's a line, and I don't trust them to stay on the "not evil" side of it.
After a lot of digging and researching in my [copious] free time, I've finally hit upon eGroupWare as a pretty decent replacement. My calendar is stored on my server (which is backed up very basically at the moment 1), and is accessible via a halfway decent web application, my iPhone, and even Thunderbird (via the Lightning plugin). Similarly, I hope to have SyncML sorted out, so that my iPhone contacts are synchronized with eGroupWare 2, and then accessible also through the web and in Thunderbird (I'm still looking at options here).
There are some bugs with eGroupWare for sure: there seem to be some serious inconsistencies in the way timezones are handled, SyncML has been a complete failure so far, and the integrated mail client is much less user-friendly than RoundCube (which I've been using for quite a while). However, it's got potential and I think I can work through the bugs with enough free time.
The payoff, though, is being able to share calendars and contacts with misphit, have it all backed up relentlessly, and be able to access it from anywhere on every device I want. In other words... all the promises Google makes for using their services, but without having my personal information held hostage and potentially (ab)used for purposes I'm not comfortable with 3.
I just have to get the contacts part working now.
1. I do nightly backups of my server, but store the dump files on a spare disk in the server - not offline, and definitely not off-site backups. Another small project of mine is to automate encrypting dump files and storing them on Amazon S3, as well as write a script (stored in that same S3 bucket) to do restores from there.
2. Unlike my calendar, which I'm okay with storing on the server and accessing on my phone via CalDAV, I want contacts to be available on my phone when GPRS, 3G, and WiFi are unavailable. So they'll be stored in both places but synchronized.
3. They have plenty of information on me already, like most people, and I don't mind that so much (and can't really do anything about it). Still, there's a line, and I don't trust them to stay on the "not evil" side of it.