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I’m looking forward to the Palm Pre coming out and, as such, I’ve been looking for a way to have all my contact info, calendar and email online.
I also wanted to this because I have a desktop machine, laptop and work computer that I use Thunderbird on and wanted to keep my info sync’d.

Well, thanks to a few of the great developers I now have my Email, Calendar, and contacts in Thunderbird syncing to Google, here’s how

Email:

This is the easy part.
Sign up for a free Gmail account and set up Thunderbird to connect via POP3 or IMAP.

I prefer IMAP since I use the three computers, IMAP will mark things as read when you read them, allow you to flag items, etc.. POP3 shows everything as unread on all the computers.

Calendar:

First of all, Thunderbird does not have a calendar built in when you first install it, but there is an EXCELLENT AddOn called Mozilla Lightning.

Mozilla Lightning

There is also a stand alone calendar application called Sunbird if you don’t want to have it integrated in to Thunderbird.

Now that you have the calendar installed, how do you sync it with your Google Calendar?
That’s where ‘Provider for Google Calendar‘ comes in.

This is a fantastic plugin that allows you to have read AND write access to your calendar.
Whatever changes you make in Thunderbird show up on your Google Calendar, whatever changes you make in Google show up in Thunderbird.. it’s a beautiful thing.

Contacts:

This gave me a little trouble.
It took me a little while to find a plugin that would work well for me.

I first tried a plugin call Zindus.
I had that installed for about a week and thought it was great, but then realized it didn’t sync any addresses, just phone numbers and emails.

After doing some reasearch I found that you have to turn on the address option, but it will store your addresses in XMLish format in Google.
The problem is that Google Contacts stores addresses as one big text field, rather than individual fields for street, city, state, etc… I assume this is to make it “international friendly” which is a good thing.

Well, this format didn’t work for me, so I went looking again.

This time I found the ‘Google Contacts’ AddOn and this one worked MUCH better for me.
Except for the address portion, it’s basically zero configuration. It will detect the accounts you already have setup and go and grab you contacts.. very nice!

Two little gotchas:

1. In the ‘General’ tab I had to set the number of contacts to download to 500. I thought I could leave it as zero and it’d just get everything, but it didn’t download all my contacts that way, BTW I have no where near 500 contacts.
   

   Google Contacts General tab

2. You have to turn on address conversion and change the way you want it to be displayed - either character delimited or ‘use a line break’, I use comma delimited. If you look at the address in Google it’s one long string with commas between each portion of the address, but in Thunderbird on all the computers it displays correctly.
   

   Address conversion

So now all my stuff is syncing online, it looks the same on all my computers running Thunderbird and I’m a happy camper.

The best thing is that I can use Thunderbird on any OS, as long as I have the plugins, and it will all look the same.

My latest obsession is the Palm Pre and I have been scouring the Internet reading everything I can and watching all the videos I can.

There have been a lot of interesting posts about the device, but one thing I’m getting annoyed with is the complaints about release date.

Palm has said that it will be out the first half of ‘09, period.
I actually am OK with the fact that there’s no more concrete date than that, if they need more time to ensure a stable device then I don’t care if it’s released the last day of June.

That view is not shared by most of the posts I’ve read.
I’ve seen numerous posts about people complaining there is no release date yet, how they’re going to go buy some other phone because they’re sick of waiting, etc…

The end of June isn’t even here yet, it’s not even MAY yet, how can people be so annoyed that it’s not here yet when we’re still about two months away from the deadline.

Stop making up dates, stop trusting in the rumor mill and just wait it out.

I’m more excited for this phone that I can put in words, but I’m not expecting it to be out before the end of the year (like Palm said), any earlier is a bonus.

As you may, or may not, know the Palm Pre is rumored to be coming out on May 16th.

A lot of people were super excited about this phone when it was first announced, before the iPhone 3.0 announcement, and are still super excited even after the 3.0 announcement.

I own an iPhone 3G now.. well sort of.. I won’t go in to that whole thing again.
Ok, so I own an iPhone 3G now and LOVE it but I am still, most likely, going to switch to Sprint and the Palm Pre when it’s released. For me there are a few key factors that set it apart from the iPhone:

1. Multitasking - Being able to run applications in the background, get notifications of chat requests etc..
2. Synergy - Combining all my different data from all my different sources in one central location, that’s HUGE.
3. Access to hundreds of thousands of PalmOS apps
   • The new OS, WebOS, will not be able to run any PalmOS apps, however, an application called ‘Classic‘ is being developed by Motion Apps that will allow you to run all those PalmOS apps / games on the Pre.. very cool stuff.
4. Unobtrusive notifications - If you’re doing something, say looking at your calendar,  and a reminder, chat request, new call, etc… comes in, you can act on that notification without leaving the app you are currently working in.

For me these advantages out way the disadvantages, such as 3D games.

I got a few 3D games for my iPhone and, while it’s cool to be able to show it off, the phone is not the ideal platform for these types of games.
The touchscreen only just doesn’t lend itself to a very good control experience.

I’ve never played any of those 3D games more than once or twice, I have a computer, Wii or Xbox360 for that.

The kinds of games I play on my iPhone are things like Blackjack, Sudoku and some 2D games. Those ‘casual’ types of games will be available on the Pre.

To be honest, for what I use my phone for, I can’t think of anything else that the iPhone has over the Pre other than the hardware accelerated 3D games..

I’m just as excited about the Palm Pre now as I was pre-iPhone 3.0 announcement!

I just wanted to write this to apologize to everyone for the site downtime we experienced today.

There was an issue with configuration of the web server that has been resolved now.

We would like to thank you all for your understanding.

As many other people have been, since it was announced, I’ve been obsessed with reading everything I can on the Palm Pre

With the Pre comes the whole new WebOS, a completely brand new operating system.
Among many other things the OS treats applications as ‘cards’ that can me shuffled, flicked off the screen to close and represent your currently running application.

Well, a little bit ago my iPhone died so I’ve been using my friend’s Treo 650, so that’s how I came accross TealOS.

TealOS is a WebOS-like launcher for the Palm that kind of gives a glimpse of a portion of what’s coming with the upcoming Palm Pre.

Loading the launcher is just like any other application, you just install the prc, through HotSync, on your Treo or Centro and launch it.

When you first run it, it will set itself as the default launcher, but that can easily be undone through the ‘Tool’ Menu

On initial launch you’re greeted with the main launcher window that has status at the top such as; Time, mute icon, bluetooth status, signal bars and battery status.
Along the bottom is a quick launch bar that has, by default; phone, Contacts, Messaging, Calendar and Launch window.

The application buttons launch directly into those apps, where the launcher icon brings up the full screen launcher. You can also access this launcher by swiping up from the bottom of the screen to the top.

What about the ‘wave’ launcher that’s on the Pre?
Yep, it’s there too.. animated and everything and it looks beautiful.

The great thing is that all of the launcher options are 100% customizable, in that you can add whatever apps you want to the launchers!

When you launch an app it launches as it normally would, then when you exit the application it shows as the ‘cards’ like on the pre / WebOS.

Once you’re at the card window you can move them around, move back and forth between them and flick them up to close the app.. all the cool stuff you saw in the Palm Pre videos.

I’m using it on a Treo 650, so it’s a little sluggish at times, but it’s still a VERY well done launcher and they put a lot of time into the design and customizations; there’s menu items for just about everything.

There is a downside:
Palm forced teal to stop selling the app so, as of March 30 2009, you can no longer buy it.

It can, however, be found out on the net if you know where to look, but you’ll have to figure that one out yourself.