Best syncing option for me?

Scott R

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Hello, I (and my wife) were long-time Palm OS Treo users and my wife used to use MS Outlook on her laptop to also keep track of notes and calendar information. In addition to buying us each new iPhone 3GS's recently, I also bought my wife a new laptop and purchased Office 2007 student/home which does not come with Outlook. I probably have an old version of Outlook that I could dig up to install on her new laptop, but I'd rather just have her use something like Windows Live Mail (previously called Outlook Express) for her email and some other solution for notes and calendar syncing. I'm thinking that I'll go with Google Calendar, but what about syncing notes?

We need something that will allow creating notes on either the iPhone or the PC (via a dedicated app or web interface). Right now I'm leaning towards either the free app gNotes which syncs (immediately) with Google Notebook, or NoteMaster ($3.99) which syncs (manually) with Google Docs. The latter also supports having images embedded in the notes.
 

Scott R

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One more question for those of you with Google Calendar experience. I set up my wife's Google account, and set up her iPhone to sync with Google Calendar using Microsoft Exchange, but it doesn't look like it automatically pushed the existing calendar info on her iPhone up to Google Calendar. Any way to get it to do that?
 

Alli

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Hi Scott. I'm also an old Palm Treo person. I hated Outlook, so was perfectly happy not to be tied to it for any reason.

I use Google for my calendar and contacts. I also use Google docs, and am using an app called Awesome Notes to sync my notes to my Google docs to complete the experience.

If you set up Google as an Exchange account, it should push your contacts/calendar without your having to do anything. Mine works flawlessly.
 

Scott R

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New calendar entries are pushing (from iPhone to Google and from Google to iPhone), but old iPhone calendar entries did not push up to Google.

Also, another problem...the contacts on my iPhone are now duplicated. :( On Google Gmail, I only see the contacts once.
 

Duvi

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I use Evernote. It's free and you can pick it up in the app store.

There is a desktop application to go with the iPhone app for syncing.

@Alli.. are you cheating on Evernote? Lol.
 

Alli

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I am cheating on Evernote. Shhhhhh. I can't afford a lawyer.

I use Evernote and Google Docs in different ways. :p
 

Scott R

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I checked out Evernote, and while I liked how it could allow for images, text, and/or voice memos, I didn't like how it forced you to choose between one of the three. I would prefer the ability to have a single "note" which could contain text, images, and an audio recording. There was also something about the flow of using it that I didn't like, but can't quite put my finger on.

I've found that gNotes gets the job done for simple, free, text notes and I like that it's syncing (immediately, I'll add) to Google Notebook. Since I'll be training my wife and myself to use Google Gmail to manage contacts and Google Calendar to manage our calendars, it feels right to get us onto a Google product for managing our notes as well. OTOH, Google looks to be phasing out Google Notebook, and gNotes is pretty basic.

As I mentioned earlier, NoteMaster uses Google Docs, and allows for embedded images, but it requires syncing manually and it costs money (not a problem should I choose to go with it, but while I research things it means I can't actually play with it since I'd prefer not to pay for something only to end up going with some other product).

BTW, I think I got our duplicate Contacts issue resolved, but I still don't see a way to import previously created calendar entries into Google Calendar. I don't think this should be a big deal, though, as I don't think that either of us have many future-scheduled calendar entries (most of them are probably birthdays, so we can just manually recreate them).
 

Alli

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I'm going to take a look at gNotes.

Not sure why you're having such a hard time with the calendar stuff. Do you, perhaps, have multiple calenars in your Google account?
 

Alli

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Alrighty then....

I have just looked at gNotes. First comment - gosh, I didn't know Google had a notebook separate from Documents. Seems rather redundant.

I have a tremendous number of things in Docs, so I would prefer to sync with Docs.

As to Evernote, you can mix images and text in a single note. You can drag stuff into an existing note, too. Mixing media in a single note is great. Evernote is still the big winner.
 

Duvi

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I've found that gNotes gets the job done for simple, free, text notes and I like that it's syncing (immediately, I'll add) to Google Notebook. Since I'll be training my wife and myself to use Google Gmail to manage contacts and Google Calendar to manage our calendars, it feels right to get us onto a Google product for managing our notes as well. OTOH, Google looks to be phasing out Google Notebook, and gNotes is pretty basic.

You may want to read the reviews for gnotes. One user stated that you have to agree to a new TOS.

izenmike said:
Before the last update, it was my go-to notepad. With the new TOS, now it must be registered with your email address that will be "provided to its marketing service" A nice way to say "spam" list. Thanks, but no thanks. Deleted.

Not sure if it matters, but definitely something to look into.
 

Scott R

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I think the problem is that we already had calendar data on our iPhones prior to making use of our Google Calendar accounts (in my wife's case, I only just yesterday set her up with a gmail account). If I go into the Calendar app on the iPhone and then tap on the "Calendars" button in the upper left, here's what I see:

- All Calendars > (this is the default view)

On My iPhone:
- All on My iPhone > (red circle - this is all of the old calendar info that was/is on my iPhone which did not push up to Google Calendar)

myemail@gmail.com (Exchange):
- All myemail@gmail.com >
- US Holidays > (yellow circle)
- myemail@gmail.com > (blue circle)

So, again, my problem is that I have old events (and events in the future which were created in the past) on my iPhone. These show up in red on my calendar. These did not push up to Google and I don't know if there is a way to get them to do so.
 

Scott R

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Duvi, I guess I figure that I'm going to get spam anyways, so I don't worry too much about that.

Alli, I wouldn't recommend switching from Google Docs to Google Notebook since Google has stopped development of Google Notebook. I'm new to both of their products, but from reading their blog entry about it (back in January), I see a lot of replies from die-hard Google Notebook users who still aren't happy about it. I haven't used either one much, so I don't know what the suposed advantages of Google Notebook are.

As for Evernote...it looks like when creating a note, I have to choose up-front whether I want it to be a text note, a photo note, or a camera roll note. With the latter two, I can add text, but with the first (a text note), I can't add a photo. Not within the iPhone app, anyway. Let me know if I'm missing something. Whereas with NoteMaster, I'm pretty sure I can add one or more photos to my text note later on. The fact that it syncs with Google Docs (albeit manually), also seems preferable to me.
 

Alli

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Maybe it's a limitation of the mobile version. I would think it would be more trouble than it's worth to try to handle mixed media from the iPhone to start with, but you can certainly view them from there.

Perhaps it's something they might consider in a future update. If Twittelator Pro can import new photos, camera roll photos, or voice, then surely Evernote will be able to eventually.
 

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