Motorola / Motoblur, Flipout and photo upload to Picasa

Ok, so it's not exactly rocket science: you take a photo, and choose to either 'share' it or 'quick upload' it.  This is on the Moto Flipout (sure my old Dext worked ok).

Try #1: choose "quick upload", which seems to use the Motoblur social thing to kind of proxy it out to Picassa (i.e. picasaweb).  That doesn't seem to work, since it says there's no data connection available after rumbling away for a while.  It lies.  The forums suggest it's a size issue, which, if true, is stupid.

Try #2: try to share, then choose Picasa (I have a Picasa account setup).  The goes through the motions of uploading - a nice red bar in the notification bar, but also fails.  With no real error.

The way to make it work is to go in Galllery app, open Menu and choose 'More', then 'Settings'.  In there is an item called "Quick Upload Album".  Choose that, and choose email.

In the meantime, head over to Picasaweb and it's settings.  In there, enable upload via email; where you need to give a secret word.  It gives you a nice email address of the form user.name.secretwork@picasaweb.com   Save the settings!

Go back to your phone, and add that address for the quick address album.  All quick uploaded photos nicely appear in your picasaweb dropbox.  Without comments, and without a choice of another album.  And it probably sends via your default email account (i.e. probably not your google one).  But, it works.

(the alternative of course is to 'share' via email, and you have to compose the email, but can choose the subject line to relate to the album.  'quick upload to email' is a one-click operation)

[sort it out eh Motorola?  firmware update would be nice...]

Nokia N97 how-to, hard reset

Ooh, no.  Don't like that.   Aah, nasty.  Like using a handset 5 years ago.   Where's my HTC Magic?

But, instructions for Nokia N97

1. take out of box, charge it up
2. start using it
3. become frustrated
4. become annoyed
5. hope it'll get better
6. realise it won't
7. type *#7370# on dialler
8. type in 12345 as lock code
9. be happy all data is removed...
10. send device back to dark hole from whence it came
11. use nicer phone

Sync google calendar & outlook

So, the obvious choice is google's pc client, which is free.  But, and it's a big but...  it doesn't seem to work very well.    I need to to get calendar onto an android phone...  sending to google/cloud is a bonus too, so i've discounted the more direct android/exchange programs.  I also only want calendar sync too, not email, etc.

The obvious issue with google's tool is that outlook calendar events that were not created by you are not synced.  These would be events to which you've been invited by someone else (as organiser), and they obviously appear in your outlook calendar.  I have a lot of these in my work calendar...  

[a quick google search should find all this stuff...]

This has a relatively easy fix; add your outlook email address to google, authenticate it (usual 'click here if it's you' type thing) then use that email address as the login for the google pc client (with your normal google password, which is a bit weird).

I find this doesn't seem to work so well, odd things keep being missed.   I've recently installed the free SyncMyCal instead.  The free version only does 3 days, and is manual only (ie no timed sync) but it seems to work nicely.  I'll give it a go for a few more days, and see if I shell out $25 (= £17) for it...

(I don't know if it's just me, but when you start some weird 3 way sync, eg outlook <> google <> phone something always goes wrong and you have to kind of tinker to make it work, at which point it's fine...)

Palm OS PmTraceDatabase causing hotsync to fail...

see here .

sorted.

Hard reset on Palm Centro

I always forget this...

1. take off battery
   
2. hold red power button & insert battery
3. palm logo appears, and scroll bar creeps along...  keep holding.
4. screen blanks, palm logo re-appears
5. let go of power button now!
6. reset instructions on screen, press up (yes, oui, ja, etc..)

Windows mobile 6.1 & exchange activesync

That is, when you sync your exchange over-the-air, via GPRS / 3G whatever...

For some reason - a bug no doubt - wm6.1 wouldn't sync and gave me error 0x8503001C. It seems a lot of people have this, and there's a lot of google results which suggest all manner of crazy solutions. This seemed to happen only with either email or calendar chosen.

Mine? don't sync with the webmail address (of the exchange server), use the 'proper' address for it. This, unfortunately, requires you to setup a specific work connection (i.e. a private APN, not the normal internet connection), which causes other hiccups. Saying that, it does work with direct push, which webmail address didn't.

Oggsync, Exchange

Usual routine is this; sync pocket pc with exchange OTA, then use oggsync to sync this to google calendar. (Yes, I could use google pc sync software, but I can't install it - corporate pc nonsense..)

Just upgraded phone. BEFORE running 2 way oggsync on the new phone REMOVE the google calendar, else oggsync will create duplicates of everything.

So, new phone - sync with exchange - remove google calendar - sync with oggsync first time.