Setting up Google Calendars in GNOME Evolution

Now that I'm starting to make more use of the notification, contact etc facilities of GNOME3 I thought I'd have a go at integrating my Google Apps provided Email/Calendar.  This is going to be a long day!

Connecting an Apps account appears to be a simple affair, most of the steps are the same as for connecting a regular Gmail account.  The only difference is using your full email address rather than a Gmail username.

As Evolution is not a supported client, I used the generic instructions.  This only includes instructions for setting up POP, which I've disabled on my account.  When enabling IMAP connections for my account, the web interface rather helpfully informed me that I need to use "imap.gmail.com" as a server.  Armed with this knowledge I set Evolution to use IMAP+ (I've heard that gmail supports push email with IMAP) and continued.  Please not that security settings are SSL (not TLS) and Password rather than PLAIN for authentication.



The tricky part for me is that I'm using 2 factor authentication on my account.  First step for this is to create an application specific password, this can then be used in place of your regular password when setting up the connection.

Generating an application specific password

And hey presto! We now have email!

Calendars are proving a little more tricky to get going.  By default, evolution creates a single calendar, which appears not to be connected to anything.  The partial solution I've found is to manually add each calendar.  Because the the infernal 2 factor authentication (starting to regret setting it up now!) I'm having to keep the application specific password on hand as I need it to retrieve my calendar list and add the appropriate calendar.

This all went well until adding the 3rd calendar.  At this point it refused to allow me to add the calendar, despite having all the appropriate details entered.  Can't be a bad password as it allowed me to view the friggin calendar list!  At first I suspected this was some kind of limit.  So I deleted calendar #2, can't add it again!  I can add local calendars but not Google ones.  Very useful!

After a few more attempts I found it was being temperamental - sometimes allowing me to add a calendar and sometimes now.  Finally, I think I've figured it out.  If I don't enter a name to give this calendar, before retrieving the list from Google - it won't let me add it.  Specify a name first (even a temporary one) - it can be added.  How strange is that?

The only other "quirk" I've noticed is that my default colour selection is overridden when a new calendar is added.  Going back in to change the colour will commit my ACTUAL selection.  Annoying, but not a deal breaker.

At long last, calendars!

Don't check the box marked "Mark as default calendar" - I did this with my main calendar and no entries showed up in GNOME.  I could be wrong, but changing this setting seemed to help.

Default Calendar - Caused me troubles!

The end result - I can now get my notifications on my desktop.

Something particularly useful is that selecting the current day will let you see your schedule for the week along with that days events.

I don't see this as a replacement for the web interface.  I see this more like my Android phone, it's another tool to complement it.  The web interface is very useful for when I need access to my calendars when I haven't got my phone with me.  My phone and GNOME are great for providing notifications.

I'm going to need to use this intensively for a while before I can say for sure whether I'll continue using this and how useful I think it is.  It's certainly much more of a faff to set up than an Android device.

Asus Transformer or iPad?

Having used my Transformer for a year now I've started to realise my next tablet will possibly be an iPad.

Don't get me wrong, the TF101 is still a nice piece of hardware and the keyboard dock is useful (I'm actually writing this blog on it right now!), I'm just not sure tje keyboard is such a big deal.  What I use this device for, more than anythin else, is web browsing.  For that I almost always use the Transformer without the keyboard.  This is something that a tablet is very useful for.  Furthermore, I'm not convinced that the 16:9 aspect ratio is that good in portrait mode.

The main gripes I have with the Transformer are:

• Poor battery life.  Compared to the iPad, the TF101 just doesn't deliver.
• Buggy Software.  Ice Cream Sandwitch has some nice features, unfortunately this doesn't make up for the buggy implementation Asus released.  On occasion the device gets stuck in a reboot loop, causing the battery to quickly expire.
• Sluggish - While a factory reset or new upgrade (e.g. ICS) runs smoothly at first, the device soon starts to become sluggish.  Screen transitions and web browsing suffer especially from this.  Sadly I've seen the same deterioation in performance on my HTC Desire-Z so this could be an inherent issue with Android.
• USB3 charging.  I don't know if the iPad has this issue, but USB3 charging means that I can't use my AA Battery based portable charger.  Not very good when I want to use the Transformer for entertainment on my next long haul flight.
• Poor video codec support.  The iPad has the same issue so not fair to point fingers at Google.

All that being said, I'm still planning on taking the TF101 to Japan in August as my Dell Latitude was a little too heavy and took up too muh space in my carry on bag last time.

Question for the long term is: Will the iPad do what I need and can I live with iTunes?

I'm hoping to get a few feature comparisons and differences from Bytey who has used the same TF101 and now uses the iPad3 as his tablet PC.