5 Steps to the Ultimate desktop & web integration

If you are like me, you too would have one main pc where you spend most of your time. I always had a lot of software installed on my pc – for email, for browsing, for my calendar and my daily dope of feed. I had setup each of these as per my tastes and just loved the configuration.

But then early this year, I heard a lot of positive comments from my ‘into it‘ friends about how everything is moving on to web and kind of promise these services hold. I was really excited by the potential of these applications and decided to jump the bandwagon and give them a spin. So

• Thunderbird got replaced by gmail’s web interface
• Mozilla calendar got trodden by Google calendar
• Feeddemon gave way to Google Reader
• Firefox bookmarks moved over to del.icio.us
• MS Word and Excel got replaced by Google Docs

I used this configuration for some months and realized that advantages were just enormous. I could work on a strategy document at home and it would be waiting for me at work place in exact same shape the next morning. It became a breeze to share my stuff with friends. Breeze – just one click and all of them would get notified. Bundles of work hours saved. I was basking in a glow of satisfaction wondering why didn’t i move earlier. I was Webbified now … why not earlier?

I got the answer very soon. It stayed all webbified for some time before I started missing the user experience and features I was so used to. I couldn’t access and reply to my email when I was offline, I was required to connect to internet before checking my appointments, Feeddemon was just too good for Google reader, del.icio.us was never as powerful as browser bookmarks and MS word and excel offered editing possibilities which Google docs will still take some time to match.

But then I did not want to let go the advantages offered by these services. I wanted user experience and features of my desktop applications but wanted access to my work/feeds/emails even when I access them from some other pc. Simply put, I wanted the best of both the worlds – a hybrid approach … I started researching and that’s how following came into picture -

Thunderbird – Gmail integration

Thunderbird is a wonderful application for email. Most importantly, it’s free and its opensource . Add to that power of numerous extensions, and it truly becomes a world beater. I reverted back to this superb piece of software for my email access but not before doing some custom settings.

First i moved to IMAP instead of POP that i was using earlier. Gina has some very detailed instructions on lifehacker how to do it. In a nutshell, enable imap inside your gmail, set your sent mail folder in thunderbird to one in gmail, set drafts folder to one in gmail, combine gmail spam with Thunderbird junk mail folder and once you do all these you are ready to thrill.

Whatever changes you make to email in thunderbird would also appear in gmail and viceversa. So a mail that you read in thunderbird stays read in gmail, a label that you applied in gmail web’s interface appears as a folder in thunderbird and any mail marked as junk is junk in both interfaces. This seems like a true integration for email.

But … there are some more tweaks we need before we can truly claim that two applications are fully integrated … after the first step emails are integrated, contacts are not … here is where thunderbird extensibility would come to rescue. Zindus syncs personal address book in thunderbird with your google contacts. Just mention your email id and password. Hit ok and you are done.

You can go to Preferences to import all your contacts into thunderbirds addressbook immediately or just let the time take its own path.

Once you do this, now you have a truly integrated system for your emails. Whatever actions you do in Thunderbird would be reflected in gmail and viceversa.

Mozilla Calendar – Google Calendar Integration

I am a self professed open source software lover and everything else being equal, open source would always get my vote. Hence it was no wonder that i was using Mozilla calendar before moving on to Google calendar. While looking for hybrid solution, Mozilla got my vote. Since i was using Thunderbird already, i just went to Mozilla addons store and installed Lightning, the calendar extension for Thunderbird. If you don’t use Thunderbird yet, i would recommend that you give it a try. In other case, you may want to give a spin to Mozilla Sunbird the standalone open source calendar application.

Once you have installed Lightning, you would see a calendar tab inside your Thunderbird application. When  clicked, a full-fetched calendar application pops up. You can use this to maintain a list of your appointments, set reminders, set a to do list. Everything that Google reader does but without it being webified.

So whats the secret sauce to make it webbified. What would make it sync seamlessly with Google calendar! The answer is this this extension. (Sunbird users need this) … Just install it and go to New – Calendar while in calendar tab. Select on the network and choose google.

Now go to Google calendar interface. Click on settings – calendar settings and click on private xml address.

Put this address in your google calendar location in Thunderbird and you are done. Now you have two way access to Google calendar. What you do in google calendar would reflect in Thunderbird and vice-versa.

Feeddemon – RSS Feed

Fortunately this was easy. Without a doubt, Feeddemon has always been the best desktop based feed reader in the world. You can download it from here, install it, import your OPML file for already existing RSS subscriptions or may just choose a default package.

Unfortunately, Feeddemon still doesn’t provide two way synchronization with Google reader which in my view is the best web based feed reader right now but they make up for this by offering the same with Bloglines as well their own service – Newsgator Online

You can go to tools synchronization options and enter your account details there. Select your time for syncing and hit ok and you are done. All your feeds are available at two places – your feeddemon installation in your pc and at your newsgator account.

This is not the perfect solution – but if i had to choose between a great webbified access (read google reader) and a hybrid solution which offered great desktop rss feed reading + managable webbied feed (read feeddemon with newsgator), I would chose the latter. Of couse, Feeddemon + Google reader would be the ultimate combination … Anybody at Newsgator/Google hearing ??

Bookmarks – The Foxmarks Way

Everybody loves bookmarks. They are quite an effective method of maintaining a log of what you like on internet. Especially if you are using firefox 3+, you can very easily organize them in different categories and give them ‘Tags’ … hence making them a breeze to manage.

The only problem is what happens when you move across the computers. What happens when you have to access that important page at your friends place and you dont have your laptop handy … or when you have just reinstalled your system … does it mean losing my preciously saved bookmarks everytime …

I was in this trap earlier … i was losing my precious bookmarks everytime i was reinstalling my OS … this was one of major triggers for me to move to del.icio.us but as any long term user would tell you, delicious is a wonderful service but its not as handy as your browser bookmarks.What we need is something that would truly integrate your browser bookmarks with their web versions.

You are in luck if your primary browser is firefox. You have an extension Foxmarks that can be used to provide a seamless integration between your browser bookmarks and their online version that can be accessed from my.foxmarks.com

Once you install this extension, you have to setup an account at foxmarks which fortunately only needs an email and password input, and you are ready to go. The first time the application, it would ask you whether it should start the synchornization and the whole process takes less than 30 seconds.

From then on, the whole synchronizaiton process is automatic. In case you don’t have access to your laptop, you can simply logon to my.foxmarks.com and access your bookmarks here.

All these bookmarks are stored in exact same structure that was used in firefox. A complete mirror copy of your bookmarks.

MS Word & Excel – ???

This is one issue which i still haven’t found the best answer to. There used to exist a service Docsyncer which held some promise but it shut its doors in June, 2008. Since then there have been lot of services like this and this

But one solution that has caught eye of some mainstream publications is syncplicity.

What does this company do – In their own words

What does Syncplicity do?

Syncplicity is effortless synchronization, backup, and sharing. Install it on one computer and all your important documents, photos, and music are backed up online, complete with remote access and aversion history. Install it on additional computers and Syncplicity will synchronize your files — your important files will be wherever you are.

Work on a presentation at home, hit save, and it’ll be waiting for you at work. With sharing, it’s a walk in the park to collaborate with colleagues or to share your high-res photos with your friends.

Essentially, this is much more than just a doc syncing company. Sounds like an interesting proposition but their is a sore point. Its not free … they do have a free option but that is limited to two computers in all.

Dropbox which is still in beta is another option. It works exactly like syncplicity i.e. syncing any of your files across computers.

None of these solutions is a perfect Doc syncing solution though. We are still waiting for one … anybody interested … ?

UPDATE – I have been using dropbox since past few days and it seems a good solution … easy and automatic