I agree that you would need some kind of client app to run as a "front end" for web calendaring, etc. But I think there is a move towards format compatibility for this kind of thing anyway, on Macs and PCs. I tried Intellisync to synchronize my Outlook 2003 data with Yahoo's online services, and it worked fine. The problem was that the process was cumbersome; it took a few minutes, and it didn't have any automatic features that I recall, like background operation or scheduling. Given the relatively small amounts of data involved in PIM applications, the process of synchronizing data with web resources should be capable of a lot of improvement.
I'm really not seeing the move towards format compatibility you talk about -- and I was involved in developing calendar applications for years. I'm sceptical about the future too, as long as Outlook is the "standard" everyone works to be "compatible" with.
I agree that decent solutions for this are long overdue. Calendar data is exactly the kind of low-badwidth, highly structured, multi-device, use-on-the-go data that should absolutely be standardized -- everyone would benefit. I don't know how the problems could be solved without Microsoft playing ball, however:
The exchange format problem is pretty much already solved by iCal (used by everyone else but Outlook, at least the last time I checked)
client-server syncing is still an open problem: CalDAV (or maybe in some cases GroupDAV) is probably the way to go...
The exchange format problem is pretty much already solved by iCal (used by everyone else but Outlook, at least the last time I checked)
I don't know as much as you do about it, but I was thinking of iCal, even though Outlook doesn't use it. Frankly, I could pass on Outlook, although I keep getting MS Office and PPCs/PDA phones with Windows Mobile, so Outlook ends up being the default PIM, even though I don't use 90% of its advanced features.
In response to the post about not being online all the time, and therefore not benefiting from an online calendar or PIM: I think of the web-based PIM (whenever it's put together) as serving only a few critical functions:
1. data access from any networked computer
2. data sharing
3. data synchronization
There are a few apps taking advantage of this basic functional model. Like, there's a new Firefox plugin that allows you to synchronize your bookmarks and access them online from a web-based server. I think there's a move in RSS feed readers towards the same model, although it's not as far developed from what I can tell. And services like Box.net just allow file storage and sharing.
Now that I own a few PCs, the time I'm spending trying to sort through data archives and synchronizing data is increasing. I'm hoping that the internet can take over and provide some of the benfits of setting up a local server for this sort of thing with better efficiency.
A mail from the PR team of Nokia says that the webcast of the launch of the new tablet will be broadcasted from this address tomorrow at 8.45 CET (the link doesn't work):
A mail from the PR team of Nokia says that the webcast of the launch of the new tablet will be broadcasted from this address tomorrow at 8.45 CET (the link doesn't work):
