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Ubuntu One Gets iPhone App For Contact Sync
oneone writes "Canonical is bringing its Ubuntu One cloud service (which we discussed last month) to handheld devices with a new mobile contact synchronization feature that is powered by Funambol. Canonical's Ubuntu One application for the iPhone is now available from the iTunes Music Store. Android and other mobile operating systems will be supported with Funambol's standard client application. The mobile sync feature is currently in the beta testing stage but will be generally available to Ubuntu One subscribers when Ubuntu 10.04 is released later this month. Canonical says that it is boosting its Ubuntu One server infrastructure in order to support what it anticipates will be record loads."
Good for Canonical... a major pain in modern consumer electronics is data/metadata sync, and one that's worth paying to have solved properly.
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Android and other mobile operating systems will be supported with Funambol's standard client application.
That was right there in the summary.
but not for Android? open source much?
?
Android and other mobile operating systems will be supported with Funambol's standard client application.
What about the people who own an iPhone, run Ubuntu, but don't use iTunes?
Is there going to be a way for them to install the application? Keep it up to date?
|plastic....or gasoline?|
Just so everybody is aware, the servers are quite overloaded at the moment, so expect all kinds of timeouts. We didn't expect so many testers :)
We will be slowly bringing it back in it's feet, so patience is welcomed.
How about being able to sync with machines in my house without having to go OUT of my house? Surely the average Linux user isn't so sold on 'the cloud' ?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
And what does contact syncing between devices has to do with always-on lifestyle?
If you bothered to read past the first sentence of the summary, you'd notice that Android is mentioned as already being supported.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Android... needs... more contact sync?
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
Are you asking about the market finding it acceptable or about it being socially acceptable? Your post isn't very, and maybe it's because, and in some cases, and in some places, this is acceptable, your comma use is, and I mean no offense, confusing, clear.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Is this the beginning of their move to (mostly) pay product model, like Red Hat did after they used the OSS community for all they could?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How can anybody assume that i would willingly upload all my contacts?
Wait.. was this custom written for you?!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. I see this all ending up on spokeo.com
"Always-on" is still substantially a feature of teenagers, girls especially, twitter enthusiasts, and the poor bastards responsible for keeping uptimes up; but I'd say that "always synchronized" is, if anything, an underserved demand.
At present, if you want your data to be there when you need it to be, you pretty much have to be a bit of a gearhead(not a huge gearhead by any means; knowing about dropbox is way less techy than having your own git repo or secure WebDAV share, or whatever) or you have to engage in frankly infuriating amounts of error-prone manual labour.
File propagation among the people generally is still(even among the youth) at the level of "emailing it to myself", with all the version errors and minor fuckups that that occasions. Synchronizing bookmarks? Pretty much doesn't happen. Cell contacts? unless you can swap the SIM, or have them do it for you at the store, people pretty much just retype them. Bloody dark ages stuff. Even the cases that should work by now(DLNA media sharing in a closed LAN, all devices trusted, is still rather rough around the edges). Even the trivial case of somebody who has a desktop and a notebook/netbook still isn't really there yet. You either sign up for something like Dropbox, which is easy and cheap/free; but depends on an internet connection and is potentially privacy problematic, or you drop fairly big money(Windows Home Server/Small Business Server), or you do it the gearhead way(any one of dozens of permutations of NFS or SMB, or webDAV, or a revision control mechanism, plus a helping of Linux Fu), or you basically just let the two drift apart, occasionally using a flash drive or emailing something to yourself. Pitiful.
Not everybody wants to be connected all the time; but I'm not sure I can think of anybody who wouldn't like having their data and files and bookmarks and whatnot there when they want them, wherever "there" happens to be(within the limits of privacy and security, of course, for the few people who think about that stuff).
Silly you, you expected someone with a uid that low to read anything past the page title?
It provides online/realtime backups. If you don't see the advantages of that, turn over your geek card.
This has nothing to do with "socializing" or whatever you're rating about, it's syncing between your apps/devices.
Dilbert RSS feed
Then users could sync all their data (calendar, email push, tasks to phones that have that) as well as contacts.
I thought the GPLv3 was incompatible with App Store distribution.
I haven't seen anything in the Affero addition that would clear the Tivoization, DRM, etc. clauses.
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewEula?id=365281620
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Well the summary is kind of badly worded to make it seem like Funambol only has one app. So instead of snarking at him for what seems like an honest (but mistaken) comment, here's a link to Funambol's Android client: http://www.funambol.com/solutions/android.php
The whole thing make very little sense really. Funambol has had an iPhone app since 2008, so I am unsure why Ubuntu is writing their own. Maybe to get some press? Maybe for some unknown technical reason? Hard to say. The Ars link makes it sound like they did it for marketing/branding reasons. Still a very cool platform though.
meep
Disagree, mod points are given to people with good Karma and therefore are obviously less likely to be wrong.
This has nothing to do with "socializing" or whatever you're rating about, it's syncing between your apps/devices.
I think he just hates Facebook because his HS girlfriend wouldn't agree to be his friend there a decade later.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
less likely to be wrong.
ROFL, having good karma is all about saying what other Slashdotters will agree with, and absolutely nothing to do with being right.
I have Excellent karma, so I should know... :P
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Thanks! Good to know.
The lack of a Windows client is the reason why I prefer a combination of Dropbox and Truecrypt.
that...low?
Will the appeasing of the hipsters every cease http://www.latfh.com/
Lots of companies make money by selling us a "license" to use the products they provide, rather than letting us buy the product itself. It's becoming more common, so apparently, someone out there has found a "better way for a company to make money than by having people pay them for a product".
Ok, you guessed wrong.
Sure, Google, Volkswagen, Boeing, 7-Eleven, Ace Hardware, Sherwin-Williams, and countless others write or customize software. Some even return improvements back to the FOSS community. However, these companies use software to make their money. The list goes on and together they make up the GDP.
Lots of companies, perhaps in absolute numbers 'sell' software. But compared to the companies that make their money in other ways, those that sell a license are functionally zero percent of any county's GDP. So stop yapping about business models that 'sell' licenses and let that meme die.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I guess that's where I'm going wrong - I have excellent Karma, and get mod points about once a year :/
You just need to look at the moderation on an Apple story, to see how bad an idea a "-1 Wrong" moderation would be, although I suppose it's already the case that people use Flamebait/Troll/Off-topic to mod down anything they don't like (in this case, doesn't support Apple). I have to browse these stories at -1.
How about a Symbian app, then?
Anyone know what "other mobile operating systems" are? (I'm presuming it's not Symbian yet, as surely that would be the main story, not the Iphone...right?)
How about a "-1, didn't read the article" and more importantly "-2, didn't read the summary"?
It's OK, mods, I know this will be -1 offtopic in 3... 2... 1... Do what you gotta do.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I agree with you, so obviously you're right. Sadly, I'm out of mod points.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I think GP was going for the William Shatner style of speech, and confused the comma and the exclamation point.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
File propagation among the people generally is still(even among the youth) at the level of "emailing it to myself", with all the version errors and minor fuckups that that occasions.
True, though I've noticed that more and more people use those "online disk" services like SkyDrive.
Personally, I just bought Jungle Disk subscription, which gives me an SMB share on top of Amazon S3 with pretty much no strings attached (you pay for monthly traffic, and you pay for storage used, and that's it). It also has a nifty client which can auto-sync local files with remote drive, which does two-way sync if you want it.
Synchronizing bookmarks? Pretty much doesn't happen.
Not until recently, but this seems to be changing rapidly as Chrome (which has bookmark sync built-in) steals market share away from Firefox - and it does also sync with Android browser.
Opera does the same between desktop browser and Mini, though arguably it's not so popular as to make a difference.
Cell contacts? unless you can swap the SIM, or have them do it for you at the store, people pretty much just retype them.
Smartphones these days typically integrate with some online service for that. My N1 does it for Contacts in GMail, so they're already shared between phone and desktop, and would be shared if I were to get a new Android phone.
I think the bigger problem is that every platform does it in its own way. So e.g. you can get bookmark and contacts sync between several PCs and phone if you go for Google all the way - Chrome & Android & GMail - but not if you use an Android phone, and, say, Opera on the desktop, and your own mail server.
Then what do you call it when people buy apps that serve no money-making purpose for the end user for their phones and other devices?
Usually it is called stupid. (Re-)read my previous comment. You will find in absolute numbers many such stupid practices. However, in terms of percentage of the GDP in any given country, it is insignificant enough to be inappropriate to bring up.
Most software is written by companies and agencies as a means to an end. Some write FOSS. Some build upon FOSS and even return improvements back to the FOSS community. These companies use software to make their money. The list goes on and together they make up the GDP. Talk of use of software will tread on Microsofter's toes, because it will lead to talk of benchmarking and suitability. It will also lead to talk about who software patents are a threat to, the end-user.
Talk of 'buying' software or renting software by 'buying' licenses is 1980's talk. Stop yapping about business models that 'sell' licenses and let that meme die.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.