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SyncML May Make Handheld-to-PC Links Easier
diggem writes, "I don't personally have this problem (YET!), but I know people who do... too many PDA-like devices, all with their own desktop syncro software which isn't usually compatible with other sync software. A new proposal is trying to correct the problem. It's called SyncML, an XML-based spec for sharing data between portable devices, your computer and the Web. The initial draft has backing from Palm Computing, Nokia, Psion, Motorola, Starfish (Motorola subsidiary), IBM and Lotus (IBM subsidiary). So it looks to have fairly significant backing. Cool!
"
The (/.) article makes a big deal of non-interoperability of sync software, but I see (at least) two larger applications.
First is the obvious: an open (?) spec mean all devices can sync with all OS's.
with each other. This would be an absolute godsend!
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Here is the result of your Slashdot Purity Test.
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
the white paper on their site talks of "any-to-any" synchronisation, but the only listed options are
- Synchronize networked data with any mobile device
- Synchronize a mobile device with any networked data
what happened to- Synchronize a mobile device with a mobile device
it'd be nice to be able to synch the phone numbers in my mobile with the addressbook in my Palk without having to go through a desktop system...One year ago, I bought a Psion IIImx. It was a cool PDA, with a 28-Mhz processor, backlight, it didn't eat batteries to quickly.
;)
It was a very cool toy. But the lack of this kind of synch-tool killed it. I've resold it.
It let me a bitter taste in the mouth. The utility given with the package "PsiWin 2.2", not only was Windows(or MacOS)-only, but was buggy as hell !
I never was able to make a real synch. Some tests were, but a real-life synch was nearly impossible.
And, worse, there was no synch utility for Linux at that time ! Just some less-than-alpha-file-tranfer utilities.
So, now, my appointments are back, as before, in the safest location I could imagine : my memory !
Stéphane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
...when people only know what Lotus is if you refer to it as an IBM subsidiary. :)
:)
Anyway, call me crazy, but this is the kind of thing that does not take the backing of seven industry leaders to be worked out. We all remember the aberrations that have resulted from design by committee (*cough*COBOL*cough*). And needless to say, much cooler things in terms of markup languages have come out of individual or small-group efforts (TeX, anyone? LaTeX? MusiXTeX?). So I think that instead of having the industry leaders battle about language features for a decade, ending up with no result to speak of (as has happened many times with this kind of thing), they should simply hand the project to, say, IEEE or IETF or whatever, and then take whatever has come of it and implement it as-is in their own devices.
Yeah, that looks about right. Feel free to flame.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I really don't understand the need for people to jump through hoops (registration, etc) in order to have a look at the spec. We're in dire need of something like this, but if they're serious about it being an open specification, why not start open?
Please fill in the application form and you will receive more detailed instructions of the membership application process.
Has anyone went through this and had a look at the specification? What exactly is the membership application process? I personally would've liked to have a look at what's been done already without registering and all.
What I cannot figure out from the web site, however, is if the new standards include physical connections as well as data. I would not mind in the least if all the devices came with some varient of a USB port, which would mean I could connect all of them with the same cable, especially as I can see using something like a flash drive with all of them. (Store MP3s for my rio, photos from my camera, numbers for my cell phone, software for my mindstorms, and backup my palm pilot.)
Hopefully Lego joins the group.... :)
Hmmm. It's be nice if Sony did something with the Aibo along these lines. Attach the cable so it looked like the leash, throw a huge flash drive in that monster, and let it follow you around, especially if you could store all the equipment in saddlebags on the Aibo...
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No Zen is good zen
I don't know about the others, but Palm has three different, mutually incompatible, docking stations with which to synchronize different Pilot models with PCs. Which becomes a problem when you've got people using different Pilot models and sharing a PC.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Dude, it's a markup language specification. Even more, it's a XML DTD: it's text-based. There is no way they can make it "closed source"!
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Gee, I wonder why Microsoft or any of their CE device manufacturers aren't part of the initiative. Perhaps because this movement is exactly the development that threatens any sort of monopoly on wireless applications. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Personally, I'd place my bets on the non-Windows CE camp.
-Andrew
Dude, it's a markup language specification. Even more, it's a XML DTD: it's text-based. There is no way they can make it "closed source"!
Hex dump of Word document is a text, too, yet it is still proprietary. XML solves a non-issue with parsing of data, but parsers are dime a dozen with tools like lex. Real problem is that handling the data models that include relationships between objects (including semantics) is still hidden in proprietary as hell code.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
For those who don't know how CE synchronizes, it essentially establishes a PPP connection between your desktop and your palm sized device through some semi-special software on your Windows machine. On Windows NT, it forces you to install RAS if you don't alreay have it installed (read: must reapply service packs afterwards) and then whenever the machines are hooked together, I've found the networking of the boxen stumbles for the 30 seconds or so that they chat with each other. I guess there is enough bitching to do about the CE synchronization method, but I can state that it does work though I don't care for it. The Palm pilot, on the other hand, works very nicely and transparently from the rest of the computing world.
So how does this apply to the proposed synchronization method/standard? On my machine, I have five pieces of software installed for the purpose of keeping my personal organizers in sync:
- HotSync (palm low-level software for the serial port)
- ActiveSync (CE low-level software)
- RAS (for ActiveSync to work)
- Outlook (CE doesn't come with its own lightweight software like the Palm does [read: Palm Desktop])
- Desktop to Go (for syncing the Palm with Outlook)
Now with this new software, I could get rid of ActiveSync, RAS, Desktop to Go and HotSync and POSSIBLY Outlook if they provide a lightweight storage and manipulation program. Now granted, I would have to install a new piece of software for the new synchronization program, but hopefully the one piece of software would be able to differentiate between the CE device and the Palm device and I wouldn't have to have additional programs installed.So it would be nice to have less software on my machine to keep my machines in sync. Now if only this thing (read: whatever software comes about based on this standard) could also work with Bluetooth, I'd be set :)
My two cents; no refunds.
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Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Wouldn't it be nice if these PDA's had an Cat-5 adapter on them, and you could just set up a network with it, and your computer would just think its a regular computer its sending and recieving file from
An only slightly off-topic rant:
.cgi extension (sd finds sdforum only if it's in the same directory and called sdforum.cgi). You will need Perl, and you will need the CPAN modules libwww-perl and XML::RSS. Now open your Web-browser and visit sd.cgi. You should see a bullet-list of articles. You can then click on any one to see a VERY cut-down version of the feedback page. If that works, you're on to the next step.
I have a PDA (a Handspring Visor) and use AvantGo to view Web pages on my way to work after syncing up first thing in the morning. My commute is 1+1/2 hours on public transportation, so I have plenty of time to read.
Ideally I would like to read Slashdot, but all of the AvantGo-channel-ready Slashdot hacks out there only show the articles, not the talkback. I tried setting up my own page through some CGI that parsed the rdf, and created links to the Slashdot-FAQ-suggested version of the pages, but even with threshold=4, plain=1 and boxes=0, the HTML is way to long in many cases, and it's certainly too ugly on the PDA screen.
Well, I'm a coder, I got around it, but I don't like the fact that I had to parse the feedback page in order to do it. Slashdot should have support for such browsing. I would even happily download the banner-ad, if it meant getting a VERY simple HTML version of the page.
If you want my solution, grab sd and sdforum. Put them in your cgi-bin directory and rename them so that they have a
If you use AvantGo, they give you a nifty little javascript-button that will set the current page in your list. Use that on sd and you're done. If you use Pendragon Browser, use their user interface to add the URL to sd. For other off-line browsing applications your milage may vary.
Please, even if you manage to find where I keep sd on my system, don't use it from there. I don't have great bandwidth, and I don't want to be in the business of being a Slashdot-for-PDA mirror (I'm not even sure of the legalities). If I have to move it to stop people from using it, I will.