Rethinking Personal Information Management - Advice and Ideas needed
For a little while now I have been slightly concerned that
contact/address book management and calendar management is somewhat
exposed - in that it only exists in my iPhone.
My contract for the phone comes to an end shortly and I will be making
some changes - I may keep the iPhone, but I could just as equally switch
to an Android model of some form. I think the time has come to do some
strategic planning on how I should really manage mail, contacts and
calendars.
My current situation is as follows:-
Mail:
I have a small home Debian Squeeze server running Exim (and anti-spam
measures such as spamassissin) and Courier Imap providing e-mail
accounts for me, my business and the rest of the family. I can access
this inside the home via imap and from outside the home with imaps.
This has been a long term stable platform for me and I am unlikely to
want to change it. This machine also supports my external web sites, so
could be a good platform for other stuff
I use Icedove for my mail client on my desktop - although I am not
wedded to it, I am reasonably happy with its e-mail reading facilities
especially as considerable junk comes through the spamassassin filters
but its junk filters seem to catch all the rest (and as far as I am
aware I haven't seen any false positives).
On the otherhand, my address book in it is a mess. It seems to be full
of junk related (probably) to adding addresses from people who have sent
me stuff.
External to the house I read my mail on my iPhone and that seems fine
for me. It took a while to get imaps working and appropriate
certificates loaded (self signed) and it would take a similar amount of
time to figure how to do it with a new phone, but I am sure that is
feasible.
Contacts:
My master contacts list is in my iPhone and it is that I would use if
asked to find an address, telephone number or e-mail address. It is also
where I add new contacts when I get them. However, scarily, because it
is a manual process to sync the phone, I don't do it very often and even
if I do, its hidden inside my windows laptop, which I hardly ever use.
Calendar:
My master calendar (including my list of birthdays - so important
personal data) is also in my iPhone and at the moment that is the only
device I use for entering meetings or other events. Again is it only
backed up when I do the occassional manual syncing with itunes.
What I would like to achieve.
My mail server (which is also a server for lots of other stuff) has
automated scripts which backs stuff up overnight - and indeed is where I
collect information for offsite backups too. I would ideally like to
hold the master of my calendars and contacts there too, so they could be
included in this automated backup process. An acceptable alternative is
my desktop which is also Debian and also backs up stuff automatically.
However it is still essential that the main user interface is my mobile
phone - I have to check and setup appointments whilst away from my
computers.
I would like better integration between my mobile phone and my desktop
environment in terms of calendar and contacts. In other words, I would
like to be easily able to see from my desktop what appointments I have
set up, and when I need contact information it should be accessible.
This can be a web interface if appropriate.
However I am quite confused about what is out there and whether I need
any of it.
I run Gnome on my desktop, but have never really got into Evolution.
Why does it have something called a data server? Can you sync phones
with it?
There seems a whole raft of groupware server packages out there
providing (I think) a web interface to e-mail calendars and contacts. Is
this the way to go?
My iPhone is difficult to sync to other than a windows based copy of
iTunes. I am not wedded to this phone and could consider an android
alternative if that could achieve my objectives.
--
Alan Chandler
http://www.chandlerfamily.org.uk
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