No more touching the phone to the desktop

So as I prepare for the imminent arrival of the iPhone (what you thought I was kidding?), I am taking the opportunity to re-evaluate my requirements in a pdaphone and how I can torque the iphone to deliver them. Speaking of pdaphone is anyone besides me ready to just call it a mobile computer yet and be done with it?

First getting back to basics - PIM - email, calendar, contacts. My updated requirement is strict and steep - no more touching the phone to the desktop. The data will live in the cloud, my complaints about privacy not withstanding. The phone and desktop are merely views (with timely caching) into that data (and additionally the desktop will back up the data). I expected the solutions for this to be fully baked a year ago, but we are still playing with half a deck honestly. After evaluating all the competition I have decided to back a horse named Nuevasync, http://www.nuevasync.com . They are the only ones to deliver OTA (over the air) syncing between Google and iPhone 3G for contacts and calendar today. Interestingly rather than SyncML they are using Exchange, thus requiring no phone software install. There are lots of tools for syncing Google to Outlook on the laptop (my backup solution and my desktop viewer).

Second is the extension to PIM - notes and passwords. Evernote ( http://www.evernote.com ) and eWallet ( http://www.iliumsoft.com/site/ew/ewallet.php ) win this category (thanks Bob!). One major bonus is eWallet, Evernote, and Nuevasync all work with Windows Mobile in addition to iPhone. So I can migrate and try them out today, and make a seamless transition to the iPhone shortly. Tasks is still up in the air, thanks to my dependence on and sensitivity to GTD. Basically it will be a lot of trial and error completely focused on eliminating friction, which is a fruitless task but oh well. I have looked at some of the junk to-do apps on the iPhone, and spent some time thinking about Remember-The-Milk, which has an iphone client and a lot of APIs. But it is not a perfect fit. I wish I had time to finish my home-made solution.

I use Google Reader for RSS feed reading, and there is a fine iPhone web client for that. Podcasts were going to be a problem as I don't want to have to sync with desktop iTunes to get them, but just today Apple released 2.2 with OTA podcast download support yeah! I already use a mobile website for the Bible ( http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/mobile ) so that should look even better on the bigger screen. As best as I can understand without actually trying it, Blogger will allow me to post including pictures from mobile basically via emails, which is fine for now.

Honestly everything else is gravy. Music, movies, games, great app-store apps for television management and remote mousing, etc. The big plus is Google Earth/Maps of course.

Some future post should really dive into the thorny tangle of accessing my desktop (data and remote control) from the (remote) iphone.