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This evening I plan on migrating my contact list across from Gmail to iCloud. I’m sick of the “bucket” style google uses with it’s loose assignment to fields and random changing of data in my contacts list - the most annoying of which is that it keeps losing my own contact details.

Why iCloud

This one is pretty simple, I’ve subscribed to almost the entire Mac culture, I have an iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, Mac Mini and AppleTV 2. Switching across to another Apple product is a no-brainer for me. Perhaps not the best reasoning so lets go with a real argument. I primarily use contact details from my mobile (which is an iPhone) and I think my iPhone is going to best sync with iCloud than another other service where Apple needs to piggy-back on other protocols (eg, ActiveSync) and therefore loses data fidelity.

Why not move everything?

Perhaps this section should be titled “Why not move my email provider”. I currently use a Google Apps mail account utilising my own domain name. I don’t really want to get a me.com email address and have to provide everyone with my new email address. It is very nice to keep my email address completely independent of my mail provider as I can change providers when I want without having to inform anyone who has my email address.

Won’t there be a disconnect?

Gmail has a really nice way of knowing everyone’s email address without you manually adding them to your contact list. It does this by keeping track of everyone you’ve emailed any everyone who has emailed you. As the only real reason you need a synced contact list in Gmail is to allow you to email people easily this fancy footwork from Gmail will allow this to continue happening without keeping the two address books in sync.

What if I want to keep them in sync?

From my research so far this isn’t possible. iCloud uses a proprietary communications protocol from what I gather and therefore there is no easy way of syncing. Additionally this would negate the benefits of switching to iCloud for this as Gmail is likely to mess with you contacts and those changes would then get populated across to iCloud.

‘Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
Not a program was working, not even a browse.

The programmers were wrung out, too mindless to care,
Knowing chances of cutover hadn’t a prayer.

The users were nestled, all snug in their beds,
While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.

When out in the lobby, there rose such a clatter,
I sprang from my tube, to see what was the matter.

And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a super programmer, oblivious to fear.

More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name:

On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!

His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
From weekends and nights, in front of a screen.

A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know, I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
Turning specs into code, then turned with a jerk.

And laying his finger on the “GO” key,
The system came up, and worked perfectly.

The updates updated, the deletions deleted;
The inquiries inquired, and the closing completed!

He tested each whistle, and tested each bell,
With nary a crash, and all had gone well.

The system was finished, the tests were concluded,
The clients last changes were even included!

And the client exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt:
“Its just what I asked for, but not what I want!”

Not sure of the original source, I’ve copied it from http://www.physiology.wisc.edu/comp/humor5.html

Merry Christmas!

With some serious style Plex just posted this image on their blog, no text, just this image, says it all really.

I’m using Plex on my mac mini and loving it, the teasers Plex team have released for Plex Nine look awesome, I’m particularly excited about being able to manage my library from a desktop application rather than using the Plex TV interface which is aimed at consumption of media.

Google has signed a deal with NextEra to purchase electricity from their wind farm in Iowa for the next twenty years.

This sort of long term deal really paves the way for alternative fuels. Of course current technologies do not make wind or solar energy viable alternatives to coal or nuclear power in main stream energy provisioning. This is, however, a huge step in the right direction; the funding Google provides to NextEra can be used to expand operations, improve technologies and perform further research. For those interested in the details, Google will be using 114 megawatts of renewable energy from NextEra.

Via of Engadget