1. I use mainly 3 iDevices – MacBook pro, iPad 1 and iPhone 4.
2. I sync my contacts with Google contacts (through iTunes, not over the air), Notes using my iMap email account, and use Google Calendar for my appointments.

And my problems with ICloud:

1. If I switch on Contacts in iCloud, it shows me all my 1700-odd contacts twice on my MBP.

2. I cannot sync my contacts with Google then. Which is not good because not only does Google Contacts serve as a nice “non-Apple” back-up of my contacts, it gives me all my contacts for use with my gmail account. If I sync with iCloud, I will not have my updated contacts in gmail.

3. Turning on iCloud for calendar moves my Mac calendar to the cloud. Which is fine, but the reason I use Google calendar is because it allows me to invite attendees when setting up a meeting from my iPhone. Which a regular account on the iPhone does not allow, god knows why! So it does not help me eliminate google calendar.

UPDATE: Actually with iCloud I can now invite attendees for meetings from iPhone, so I have moved from Google Calendar to iCloud Calendar.

4. Mail and Notes requires me to set up a .me account. Can do without another new account. Am happy with my office, gmail, hotmail and tandon.org accounts. So my office iMap account works fine for these. Notes on iMap works exactly like iCloud and syncs across all my iDevices.

5. Back on the cloud: nice idea but I like the convenience of having a back-up at hand locally whenever I need it (and I HAVE needed it from time to time), whenever I need to retrieve and old SMS or data. So i prefer to back up through iTunes sync. Plus with backups on, the 5GB free limit gets used up pretty quickly.

So for now, I am only using iCloud for PhotoStream and Documents (mainly keynote). Maybe iCloud requires a mind shift and change in habits. Will definitely revisit in a few days.

What’s your experience like with iCloud?

Cause, while that would certainly have been a distressing experience, there are 2 sides to every story, and here are some possible sides:
http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/delhi-high-court-blast-11-killed-76-injured_730261.html
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/twin-blasts-in-mumbai-15-injured/167291-3.html
What Shoshana went through, and all the attendant “ills” like the racial profiling, are an unfortunate outcome of the times we live in. And as soon as we recognise that it is only an attempt to secure ourselves against acts like the ones in Delhi and Mumbai, and Karachi, and Bali, and Kabul…we will develop a greater acceptance of the circumstances. Are these attempts perfect? No, not at all. But its funny, sitting here in India, we always quote the US example, that at least they responded with an iron fist and there has not been a single attack on the US since 9/11.

Would I like to go through such an experience? No. But is it better than being blown into smithereens, because we were not paranoid? Is it better than a child, spouse, parent, sibling, friend meeting an untimely and horrifying end, or worse still being crippled for life? Umm, let me think about that!

And so I would like to raise another question. How much of our discomfort, outrage and anger against such situations is a result of our own fragile egos? I mean, what is this American obsession with Civil Liberties, and Rights, and Freedom? All noble constructs, but are they higher than the Greater Good? Have we distorted the meaning of all these to imply a lack of tolerance of individual inconvenience? From Shoshana’s account, while it must certainly have been a very unexpected, harrowing and uncomfortable experience, and the initial anger is absolutely justified, it does not seem like there was any intentional discomfort or pain caused, or even any rudeness or aggression on the part of the staff. They seemed to be professionals doing their job.

And what is so humiliating about a strip search as long as it is conducted professionally and is deemed necessary? Don’t we comply with medical procedures requiring the same? Even if after the procedure we find it was not necessary but just a precaution? Isn’t it the same case here? Just because WE know we are not guilty, we feel outraged and violated? Wouldn’t a realisation of the reason for the same, and a tolerance for the cause of the greater good, change one’s view about this?

To summarise, all I am saying is, while we must definitely be vigilant to ensure that the precautionary/preventive measures are not being taken too far, we also have to apply a similar vigilance to ensure that our fierce protection of our individual rights are not an outcome of bloated egos and self-importance, such that they become bigger than the Greater Good.

However 2-3 months into usage, we found the the performance of the site had dropped considerably. With barely 110-115 users, the site would often time-out, or worse, just would not record an entry. When we raised this issue, they said they would try and work on it. In the meantime, we had to suspend use of the PMS.

Eventually, they admitted they will NOT be able to resolve the problem (which in itself was surprising considering it is a cloud-based project management system and availability is a prerequisite), and themselves offered to provide a refund.

We even suggested that we could then perhaps opt for upgrading to the next version where we can get the source code and install it in our own network. The fees already paid could be adjusted against the same.

However, after that we NEVER heard from them. There was no response to any of our emails or phone calls. It was then that we realised we are dealing with more of a shell than a company. There are NO proper contact details on the website – the link just leads to some anonymous info@ email ID. There is no background on the company, the owners, management etc. During the course of our interactions on support, we only had the contact of one Ben Prendergast, who refused to respond to emails or phone calls.

After 3 months of futile attempts, I finally sent a DM to their Twitter Account (http://www.twitter.com/copperproject) to which I finally got a response. Shockingly, they FLATLY REFUSED to offer a refund and claimed they had “retracted” the refund offer and that we were harassing them by continuing to follow-up!!! We had, of course, received no such email, so we asked them to forward the email. Which was again met with silence. Cos obviously the cheats never sent the email and were now hiding behind lies.

The failure of the Copper Project PMS can be understood – not all products are killers. But the attitude of the company, the anonymity of the management, and most of all their string of lies and lack of accessibility, were shocking to say the least. Trust and confidence is the bedrock of any successful relationship, and Copper Project clearly does not care for these values.

Besides the fees paid for a product that does not work, we also lost considerable time and effort, and of course all the data.

We have since started using Zoho Projects and are so far quite happy with the product and the support response times, although its only been about a couple of months.

GOOD:

1. New notification format is nice – certainly not new and does not change my life, but far better than existing formats, and very nicely executed.
2. Reminders app is cool – again, should’ve been there from the start, but better late than never.
3. iMessaging – not had a chance to use yet cos I guess it needs the other iThing to also be ios5.
4. Twitter integration – definitely handy. Beats having to open another app to tweet a page/photo etc.
5. Wireless Sync – not operational yet, but look forward to it, I suspect it will be much slower if there are apps/music to sync.
6. iCloud backup – works seamlessly in the background but haven’t really tested across devices yet.
7. Access Camera through DoubleClick – still on the old habit of launching the Camera app, but I’m sure this is handy once I remember to use it.

1. It has definitely affected performance. The phone is slower by at least 10% when accessing multiple functions, “stutters” when handling transitions, and sometimes even shows, for a fraction of a second, a screen which has since been closed. And I am not a heavy multi-tasked either, and make it a point to kill apps not required. Hopefully they will fix this in the final release.
2. Camera: Now that I can use the Volume button to click, it would have been nice if that bar on the screen with the click button and still-video switch could be “hidden” so I get the whole screen as my viewfinder. Common in most other large screen phones.
3. Camera: When you use the Volume button to click, the Camera lens (and Flash) is positioned on the lower side. A camera lens and flash should under most circumstances “look down” on the subject from the upper end of the device.
4. There’s an irritating message that pops up on every phone call about this being an “unsecure call” and would I like to continue! And the only way to get rid of it is to click on Ignore. There seems to be no way to de-activate that.
5. Mail: Text formatting controls (Bold, Underline etc) are handy but unwieldy.
6. There are also reports of Battery life being hit, but between 3G and a nearly one-year old device, not sure how much is the exact impact of iOS5.

All in all, iOS5 does not change in life in a very big way, but is more of a good to have, provided of course, they sort out the impact on performance for iPhone4. I would have been much happier seeing what in my opinion would have been really handy features, that again should have been there from the start:

1. Ability to create shortcuts to frequently accessed settings, songs, pictures, phone numbers – anything.
2. Widgets – nice to have.
3. Ability to invite attendees to meetings in iCal WITHOUT the need for an Exchange account. Can’t see why I can’t do the same with a POP3/IMAP account.
4. Some visual notification when the phone is asleep – LED around home button?

Look forward to iOS 6

Don’t get me wrong, I want to see Ajmal Kasab get the severest punishment for his crime, as much as any other Indian. And of course, there have been many times when I have wondered why we are wasting emotional energy, time and money and not just getting on with killing him.

But when viewed from the eyes of the very “civilised way of life” the West has always preached, I think we have demonstrated the epitome of that very way of life. Sure, we may be bungling the execution as usual, in that we could expedite the whole process, make it more efficient, and so mete out punishment as early as possible. But the intent and principle, to my mind, is sound.

I refuse to believe that the US of A has the clout and balls to go into Pakistani territory and conduct a commando operation of this nature, but cannot use the same clout to just give Osama up or force them to cooperate in finding and apprehending him? The episode reeks of a clear intent to find an eliminate Osama with an eye on pandering to popular emotion, especially at a time when the Obama administration is up s**t creek. Not to mention all the obvious questions around what exactly happened that night? How did FOUR choppers come near the home and no one even HEARD them and sounded an alarm for Osama? One of them even crashed in the compound, for chris’ sake! Have the Americans developed stealth technology such that aircraft self-destruct in silence? And no guards, no security, no other casualties????

Shouldn’t the country that preaches civilisation and fundamental rights etc give an account of how they ensured that they made every possible attempt to capture him and bring him to justice?

Sure, we have a lot to learn from the West in terms of national security administration and justice, but it surely doesn’t seem like a one-way street.

What do you think?

How you doing ? I’m stuck in London with my family, We got mugged at
gun point last night, all cash,credit card and cell phone were stolen
off us, Thank God we have our life and passport saved…We are having
problem in settling the hotel bills i need you to loan me 1,200 USD
to sort out the hotel bills and also take a cab to the airport, You
can wire the money to me through western union all you need is Name on
my passport and location below i will appreciate any amount you can
wire to my info below.
Name: Jason Tyson
Location: 30 Leicester Square, WC2H 7LA, London United Kingdom
Amount: 1,200 USD
I will definitely refund your cash as soon as i get home.As soon as it
is done, kindly get back to me with the western union transfer
details.
With regards,
Jason.

First things: I live in Mumbai and pre-ordered a SIM-Free 32GB Black iPhone 4 from London (GBP599 less VAT of GBP60 ~ Rs37500). Just the day after I received it, it was launched in Singapore and Hong Kong at a much more attractive Rs 35,000 or so (SIM-free 32GB).

I can safely say that so far, this is among the best phones I have owned. It carry’s over most some of my known grouses with the iPhonec(written about here and here) – a huge irritant being inability to invite attendees for a meeting or accepting invites, simply because it should be so easy to do – but now that I have accepted them (and some of them have been resolved), this phone is great.

1. Immediately upon holding it, it felt a bit heavier than the 3G, but also much sleeker. It is much more comfortable to hold, since most of the “bulge” of the 3G/S has been cut out. Overall form factor – 4.5/5 (the Nexus 1 did feel better in the hand).

2. Absolutely NO antenna/reception issues – so far!! In spite of simulating death grip etc.

3. The biggest joy factor for me is the speed. This phone is FAST and how – this has been a pet peeve with most smartphones I have used. This feels faster than the Google Nexus 1 too, which I believe had a 1Ghz processor. Even browsing seems faster, which I guess is because my older phone (3G 16GB) was simply not parsing the data fast enough.

4. The display is everything its been made out to be – sharp, crystal clear, and as a result also unforgiving on lower res stuff. Its apleasure just looking at the phone. I usually like to keep brightness low to conserve battery, but it feels like a shame to do that on this phone.

5. Multitasking is great, though yet to fully explore it. Although I sorely miss the ability to customise a double-click on the Home button. I had set it as a short-cut to Search which was really convenient when looking for a contact to send an SMS to or call. Now double-click by default pulls up the open applications task bar so I have to go to home screen and then slide right!!

Also yet to explore Camera (still and video) which I am really looking forward to. Will try and post some pictures/videos.

Verdict: If you were considering the iPhone even ever so slightly, go out and take the plunge. As a friend put it “Its great, don’t believe the negative publicity.”

Update 05 Aug: Made my first Facetime call. Very brief one since the cellular line/network was bad but overall worked just fine and very easy.

1. Make sure Wi-fi is on and connected.

2. Call another iPhone 4 from your iPhone 4 as you normally would. The “calling” screen will show up with all the options – mute, speaker, add call etc. The only difference is, in place of “hold” is an option called “facetime”.

3. Once connected, the Facetime option becomes active (clickable). Click it and your camera turns on, and depending upon who’son the other end, so could you . Injoy!!

UPDATE: Day4 and the dreaded yellow spots have appeared on my screen (pretty sure they weren’t there when I got the phone). Its quite severe a yellow band running vertically towards the right of the screen, and another faint one in the center . Forums say its a bonding agent and the spots disappear. Fingers crossed else its warranty cashing time.

UPDATE 8th August

Did notice an instance of the antenna problem where 5 bars came down to 3 in death grip. No impact on performance but could be if there were fewer bars to start with. However the problem IS there. Yellow band seems to be getting worse, or maybe I’m just noticing it more!!

Homeshare on iTunes is amazing. So from the Windows PC iTunes, I can see the music Library on my Mac (which is sort of the computer where ALL music resides, so acts like a Server), and can play, and even import the music on to the Windows PC. And because all users on the Windows PC are sharing the same iTunes Library using Junction, they can each do the same without duplicating each other’s efforts.

Worth the 1 hour it took to figure out, configure and debug.

While I understand the Bandra starting point was not the main hub, the organisers should have got some basic facilities in place. Signages to get to the holding area from Mahim causeway were absent. Not everyone is familiar with Bandra Reclamation, especially after the flyovers and various exits.

The holding area again had no signs as to which way the race starting point was. There were no announcements, no organisers to hold things together and answer queries. Nearer the exit gate, there was a perfect recipe for a stampede just before the gates opened. Many runners had gathered close to the gate in the hope of breaking away from the crowd early and when the gates opened without any announcement, the participants were obviously keen to get started.

There were no water stations along the sea link, which proved to be a much worse problem for the 42k runners since they were at the sea link after around 22-23km of running and the sun was up and out by that time.

Route management was bad. People were simply jay walking along the road. Changing direction or slowing down is very difficult when you’re running in a rhythm and having to dodge people is the last thing you expect in a Gold Label event. What’s worse, even the cops and organisers were frequently plying their vehicles on the track, and actually honking at the runners to move out of the way. Admittedly they must have good reason for having to get some place, but it seemed to be too frequent and with not much care for the participants.

And then there was the so-called entertainment at Marine Drive. Great idea and some of them really motivate you, but I think we could have all done without the village style loudspeakers, blaring Radio Mirchi on full distortion and overdrive near the Marine Drive flyover and at Churchgate!

Many of the water stalls/energy drink stalls had run out of water or simply wound up before the 42k runners had completed their course within the permitted limits.

None of this takes away from the excitement and charm of the event. Mumbai is lucky to have such a grand event and credit to the organisers for bringing it to the city. However, after 7 years and with an increasingly elite profile, one does expect that the event will be used as yet another opportunity to showcase India’s growth and development.

As always though, the really bright spot in the Mumbai marathon is the crowd support. Their participation in not just coming out early in the morning to cheer the runners, but even volunteer drinks, snacks, pain relief sprays etc along the way makes all the difference.

Thank you Mumbai.

UPDATE 3 Feb: I have sold the N1 and switched back to the iPhone. It was a tough decision mainly on account of the better hardware and openness of the N1, but I just could not be bothered to wait for yet another new kid on the block to catch up with features that have been standard on phones for years!!

PROS:

1. Amazing screen – great resolution, clarity and touch sensitivity. Slightly larger at 3.7in v/s 3.5 of the iPhone. Sharper than iPhone, as good in terms of touch sensitivity. And scratch resistant!! Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpGAW6L5x8U.

2. Slightly Smaller: Lighter and slightly smaller so fits better in your palm, and against your ear.

3. Brilliant Customisability: A point sorely lacking in the iPhone. You can create shortcuts for any of the phone applications and widgets available, plus of course any that you download from Marketplace (like apps downloaded from app store). So if I want a shortcut to WiFi or Ringtones, or even to a particular song, I can set it up on my home screen. The widgets are great – there is one for calendar so your day’s appointments are displayed (I hated the iPhone for not providing visual appointment alerts), and very nice Power Control bar to quickly turn on and off power hungry features like Wi-Fi, BT, GPS etc., another one for search with Voice Search integrated. Others for weather, stocks etc. Really Nifty.

4. Set-up is a cinch – as good as the iphone in MOST departments – though painful in some.

5. Great accelerator – Much more responsive than the iPhone. And an option to turn it off.

6. Faster – 1Ghz processor really shows its mettle, although I imagine the 3GS would be pretty close.

7. Better Wi-Fi radio: I get a much stronger signal and data connectivity on the N1 WiFi than on the iPhone.

8. Sleep Mode Notification: Big problem with the iPhone – if there is a missed call or message, there is no LED or other notification on the phone if your screen is off. So you could go for hours without noticing there is a missed call/message. Further I often found that on the iPhone, after a while, or if some other event occurs, even the on-screen notification goes away, so it can be a while before you realise you’ve missed something. The N1 has a glowing Trackball, plus a notification on the status bar that stays till you read the message/call.

9. Mail works like Sync, instead of mailbox: I used to prefer this feature in my SE P1i, where if I download messages on my phone, and then subsequently in my Laptop, doing another download from the phone erases the messages already on my phone and downloads new ones only. On the iPhone, the old messages stay on the phone and you have to manually delete them. I don’t want to clog up my phone with old messages and just use it to access new ones.

10. Multitasking: The N1 supports multi-tasking with open apps running in the background and a shortcut to jump to any open app. However, there is no feature to “close” the app if you want to save processing power. Even the SE P1i had this much better.

11. I can access the SD card as an external storage from my laptop (USB mount) which is great so I can carry files etc.

12. I can delete individual entries from the call log (in the iPhone you can only clear the whole log).

13. It comes with an electric charger AND USB cable.

14. Camera with 5MP and Flash. Haven’t tested the quality yet though.

CONS:

1. No physical silent button: Though the N1 has a very nice way – similar to the “slide to unlock” of iPhone, you can slide the other way to turn off sound. So Slide l-r for unlock and r-l for sound off. Nice, but I prefer the convenience of a hardware button.

UPDATE: The Volume key also doubles up as a hardware switch for Silent mode, which is handy.

2. I like the single button simplicity of the iPhone. The N1 has a trackball (which I doubt I will use) and 4 soft keys for back, menu, search and home. I particularly like the search key shortcut on the N1 though.

3. No Speed Dial – there weren’t any in the iPhone either but I managed to find some apps.

(UPDATE: THIS CAN BE EASILY DONE ON THE N1 AS SHORTCUTS TO DIRECT DIAL. IN FACT ITS MUCH BETTER THAN iPHONE SINCE I CAN CREATE AS MANY SHORTCUTS (SPEED DIALS) AS I WANT AND HAVE A WHOLE SCREENFULL OF THEM).

4. CANNOT SYNC WITH COMPUTER: If the iPhone is guilty of not having great syncing with a PC (even for Mac, To Do sync is missing), N1 is worse because it syncs almost exclusively with Google apps for contacts and calendar. And believe me syncing with Google Calendar and Contacts has a long long way to go in reliability and simplicity. To sync the phone directly with the Mac you have to buy expensive 3rd part software (like Missing Sync). Even to sync your Mac with Google (and then your N1 with Google to make a neat 3-way sync), I had to buy Spanning Sync. Snow Leopard’s integrated Google Account sync is pathetic (it could be Google and not SL though). For a Mac User, the tight integration of the iPhone with the Mac is great. So is N1′s with Google, except I’m not yet ready for the cloud!! Because Google Contacts sucks, Calendar is slightly better. For instance for many of my contacts, I have used a Prefix (Mr. Ms. etc). On the N1, that gets filed under M!!!!!! And the mistake is not the N1, cos the N1 HAS a field for Prefix. Its Google Contacts which is terrible!!

5. Only 512MB built in memory with a 4GB MicroSD card. Far cry from the 16GB plus of the iPhone.

6. No Proxy Support for WiFi Connections: N1 does NOT support proxy settings for WiFi, a point of great concern when trying to access WiFi in workplace environments. The iPhone Wi Fi and proxy set-up is the easiest I have ever encountered.

7. No Internet Tethering: This was a huge problem with the iPhone which they later fixed. So far I believe the N1 has the same limitation. I do hope they fix it asap. UPDATE: I was able to fix this with an app from Android Market called PDANet though its quite complicated.

8. No NOTES or To-Dos: in the N1. Bad, very bad.

9. Many things are just much easier to do on the iPhone – like deleting messages/threads/conversations, composing a new message. It seems to be a trade off between providing more functionality and less clutter. The N1 provides more options, but due to that ends up being less simple. iPhone manages to provide quit a bit within a simple interface, though perhaps not as much as the N1.

10. Can’t take screenshots. The iPhone is just brilliant in this department.

11. Better keyboard: The iPhone keyboard is better spread with more space between letters and so accuracy is slightly better (maybe 5-10%).

12. Ability to Sync music with iTunes – definitely better than dragging and dropping MP3 files manually (like u did in 1995!!!)

13. I prefer the integrated mailbox of  the iPhone – where I can see Gmail, Yahoo AND my POP box mails. In the N1, Gmail is separate and POP mail is separate. And generally more difficult to navigate.

14. UPDATE: 24 Jan. You are not going to believe this. There seems to be no way of quoting the email when you are replying to one. I automatically adds the old email fine, but you cannot edit that text, copy-paste from it or reply in-line. How the hell could N1, which comes from the people who re-invented email, missed something as basic as this?

PS: Came across this article which I think is a pretty good comparison/analysis of the N1 and the iPhone.