apple, linux blog, music. a day in the life of wayne ward…

Since the purchase of the google g1 android i have entered the google cloud
This compromises mail / contacts / calendar / tasks / messenger
Now all this works out of the box with the android phone but to get it working with the linux desktop
You have a bit of twiddling!
At first i went for the evolution client as the new version with ubuntu intrepid has all the google services built in
Apart from tasks and notes so i settled for mail / calendar and contacts – now this set up easy but after using it for a while I noticed you can add notes and most fields dont work on contact details which is pretty damn poor which im sure they will fix over the next couple of months. So this worked in a fashion..

In comes thunderbird!! Now this is a lean bit of kit and is multi platform so this will work on doze etc!!
With thunderbird you just install extensions to make it connect to what you require.
Now the only thing that has no connection is tasks so this is how to do it – first setup a free account on remember the milk – on the google phone go into your market place and install todo which is free and add your rtm account so thats the phone end syncing with rtm easy!
Now for thunderbird you need the remember the milk provider which you need to sign up to download this but again thats free!
You get it here
Install into thuderbird through addons – restart thunderbird and add a new task calendar you will see a new provider for rtm in the list
You get the url from settings on the rtm login you created i used the the third one down. This will give you a link to click on to verify then complete the task and thats that! 3 way sync.
For contact sync you just add the zinus extension to thunderbird which you get from here
Google calendar support is here
Just add a new calendar and add your private calendar url from your settings in google calendar.
For your googlemail account go into settings and turn on imap mail.
In thunderbird add a new imap account – incoming mail is imap.gmail.com and outgoing is smtp.gmail.com
When added go into accounts change incoming imap to ssl and outgoins mail to tls
Now send and receive and whatch your folders and mail drop in!!!
For chat just install pidgin and add a new google chat account!!
Now all these plugins are a pain in the ass so watch this space as spicebird is on its way it almost ready take a look here
Now this has mail – contacts – chat – tasks – calendar with all of the google plugins plugged in already – although its in early days in beta its 0.7
now at the moment thundbird is the way to do but in a few months spicebird will be the way to go as its a easier setup and a better layout.
Also you can add google gadgets all in one place. Plus again its multi platform so keep your eye on it…..