UPDATE: I did some searching and found out that there actually is an Internet contacts sync protocol! It is called CardDAV. From a post I just read “… iOS supports CalDAV natively and setup is relatively easy via the Settings app.” Again, Apple is ahead of others and kicking ass in this area.
It looks like one really cool project is OwnCloud which it turns out is supported by Dreamhost. Have been checking and it looks like Hostgator are pricks about this kind of thing. Their opposition to users with shared hosting accounts is: “Section 2 of the ToS states:
Using a shared account as a backup/storage device is not permitted”.
That’s odd. Because if your personal information logos data consists of for example http, e-mail, or other files then you can do what you want. But if the bits of data comprise contacts Oh no! that’s against their ToS.
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One thing that I find almost unbelievable is how neglected one of the most absolutely essential, vital functions of personal information appliances is: that of contact management.
Contact management is up there with the top several ultimate killer apps for personal information technology devices which probably began even before the personal computer’s introduction in the 1980’s, with dedicated electronic rolodex-type devices. The other ultimate, all-time killer apps for personal information appliances are word-processing, spreadsheets, and e-mail. The most recent ultimate, all-time killer app for personal information appliances is telephoning. This one is coming. I hope everyone is ready for it. Its long overdue and high-time that the monopolistic tyranny of all major carriers gets shattered and blasted into pieces. After telophoning comes it hopefully will no longer even be called telephoning and all the concepts and ideas about telephones that people have will be thankfully dumped because they are all bullshit and lies which support tyranny.
Getting back to contact management, I find it hard to believe that it is not considered one of the central things for any serious project. Contact management has to be at the core of personal information logos which takes place on electronic personal informaiton appliances. It has to be. It is so basic, so fundamental, that I cannot conceive how it could not be perhaps the most essential thing that occurs on such devices.
Think how it relates to all other functions people perform on personal information appliances. To communicate with another person – via e-mail, chat, phone, or any other way involves that person being a contact.
But we live in a time of personal data tyranny as we are being abused by major companies which are trying to force their shit down our throats at every turn. Every function that we want to perform on our devices they use as an opportunity to take advantage of us and fuck us over.
I think I wrote before about how under Windows 8 they tried to force users importing photos from their cameras to use the new “Photos” app which is basically a front-end for their own, proprietary, cloud photo and image-sharing site. That is bullshit. It should be illegal. Companies should be sued and held accountable for such shit.
Everyone is doing this. All the companies out there and the systems they create: Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. They are all conniving fucks and need to be stopped before they fuck more shit up.
Today I was exploring and trying to figure out the best way to be able to keep my contacts in sync between my PC which has been running the Thunderbird e-mail client, and Google Contacts which is a part of Gmail. What I saw is that the situation is absolutely pathetic and people should be disgusted at how they are being screwed.
First of all, to be able to sync contacts from the Thunderbird address book with Google Contacts there are two Add-ons available. Yes, that’s right people: They are Add-ons. The people who make Thunderbird must be on drugs because how could this not be considered an aboslutely vital function of Thunderbird in this day? How?
If this alone seems crazy, only a short time ago Mozilla was getting ready to ditch Thunderbird, to stop developing it. What?!? I’m not even going to go into how inane this is. Its beyond comprehensible. If anything Mozilla did was to perform at least one function and one function only, that one should be contact management which can sync with the billions of devices which people actually use for their contacts, i.e. their phones, which are using either Gmail and/or Apple.
Everything else can come after that. Browsing the web, actually composing and sending e-mail etc.
The sorry state is that there are only two Add-ons which provide sync functionality with Google Contacts, and one of them, Google Contacts, sucks. The other, gContactSync, is a project being run by only one guy. The most essential thing that you can do via Mozilla Thunderbird in the year 2013 is possible because of a side-project of one guy via the Add-on he develops which doesn’t get a lot of resources dedicated to it.
Fuck this. This is bullshit.
I started searching and thought, what other decent e-mail clients are there? The only other one that comes to mind is Outlook. Puke. Like I want to have to use any more Microsoft products than I minimally have to.
But I decided to try it. Search for “sync Outlook Google Contacts” and you will find the page for the nice, shiny, “Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook”. Go to the page, read the information, install it. And then realize that it is fucked because, as they forget to mention on the shiny page, its only for the business version of Google apps. If you’re one of the billions of regular Gmail users you’re fucked. It will not work.
I then did some more reading and found another e-mail client called Postbox which got good reviews. Well, I installed Postbox. It looks an awful lot like Thunderbird. In fact, I would basically say it is Thunderbird. I don’t know what the license is with Postbox or with Thunderbird, but its clear that to a major extent Postbox is highly based on Thunderbird to the extent that the interface is almost indistinguishable from Thunderbird.
And what about contact sync with Google Contacts? Again, here we are on drugs, because the only way to do it is via an Add-on. I installed the Add-on and it was vastly more crappy than gContactSync so I ditched Postbox and went back to Thunderbird and gContactSync for another try.
Basically, at this time, Thunderbird and gContactSync are what I’m using, and basically it works.
I’m not an Apple user, but I’m guessing that contact management is one area where Apple kills the fuck out of other platforms and applications. To be able to use e-mail (on any of your personal information appliances), create and manage contacts, and conduct other forms of correspondence and just have the contacts seemlessly sync between the devices is a major thing. It is worth a fuck of a lot of money and a large amount of time.
By the way, the only reason I’m using a Gmail account for my contacts is because there is no universal, standard system that works for it the way for example IMAP e-mail works. This is a serious problem and needs to be addressed. If you pay for an account with a hosting company like I do – about $80/year – I’m able to have my own e-mail accounts with my own domains because the hosting company provides the IMAP service as part of the hosting package. It also includes web hosting which is basically the same thing for HTTP protocol. We need, we absolutely need another protocol like HTTP and IMAP for contacts. When you get your own account with a hosting company it should be a simple matter to set up your contact management server/client just as you do a mail client.
One way to do this would be to extend the existing IMAP specification to include contact management functionality. Or else a whole new protocol needs to be created and a daemon and clients developed to handle this protocol.
Another thing that keeps me hooked on Google Contacts is Google Voice, which is vastly better than the alternatives now. But the case with Google Voice is exactly the same as that with contact management. Phone functionality should be something that can run independently. The protocols that handle phone communications should exist and such functionality should be part of functionality provided by a hosting plan which provides the backend daemon to interface with your clients. A future where voice functionality is only possible through giant companies is a sick one.
How can these things not be comprehended by others?
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