
Moving your Contacts and Calendar Away from Google - mikeratcliffe
http://www.flailingmonkey.com/2013/03/26/moving-contacts-calendar-google/
======
Karunamon
This seems mighty kneejerk-y. A duplicaton issue causes your contacts to
disappear, therefore you should move your contacts and calendar away from a
service that probably has better engineers, better backup, better redundancy,
and better uptime than any one of us could possibly muster, and onto a
somewhat immature product with worse functionality and integration which is by
no means immune to the same kind of problem?

Yeah.. see, I don't think the author has thought their cunning plan all the
way through.

I understand the anti-google sentiment is at an all time high after the Reader
shutdown fiasco, but let's stay rational, here!

~~~
spinchange
What about Google shutting down the open standard for syncing contact and
calendar data across platforms?

I don't ask this as a form of "anti-Google sentiment," but as a legitimate
question. The announcement that they would be phasing out ActiveSync support
at the end of last year coupled with the announcement just made that they were
doing the same for CalDAV/CardDav (when they announced the end of Reader)
indicate they're "silo-ing" the service somewhat. Unless I've missed
something, it's still not clear that iOS/iCal calendars are going to sync with
Google's unless they "whitelist" Apple.

It's not a "cunning plan," it's self-preservation and keeping your stuff
working or at the least not being at the mercy of a commercial concern who
demonstrates a willingness to break it even for _paying_ customers.

~~~
Karunamon
>It's not a "cunning plan," it's self-preservation

Fair enough, and I can see the value in keeping a local backup just for
redundancy and convenience purposes (being locked out of my Google account for
whatever reason would _suck_ ), but using it as your daily driver?
Ehhhhhhh....

As far as shutdown fears, though? Calendar, Contacts, and Gmail are the core-
est of the core products. They're tied directly into the Android ecosystem as
well. Reader was more or less a niche product.

Google isn't going to shut down any of the holy three applications which make
up the entire backbone of their mobile OS's PIM functionality. Any such fears
are completely irrational.

~~~
sentenza
Are you really sure about calendar being a core product?

Because the userbase size (without knowing what it actually is) probably isn't
all too different from that of reader.

It will probably be around forever as a part of google apps, but the free
calendar for everybody might eventually face the chopping block.

~~~
reeses
As part of google apps, it's a mediocre solution. It's not good for
collaborating with people outside your organization (clients, patients,
whatever else ends in -ients) but it's _just good enough_ to prevent me from
going with a hosted Exchange solution or to go back to administering our own
infrastructure. I suspect it's prioritized to remain at that level.

------
mhw
So the actual article title is 'Moving your contacts and calendar away from
Google', not 'Move your contacts and calendar away from Google' as it was
posted here. Less of an instruction/warning than might be expected, and more
of a how-to guide.

~~~
mikegioia
I came here to say the same thing. The two titles are actually completely
different topics (ha)!

------
lucb1e
Nice URL and _"Error establishing a database connection"_. I smell Wordpress.

Here's a cached version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.flailingmonkey.com%2F2013%2F03%2F26%2Fmoving-
contacts-calendar-
google%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.flailingmonkey.com%2F2013%2F03%2F26%2Fmoving-
contacts-calendar-google%2F&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

~~~
Yuioup
Cached by Google, no less.

~~~
Sunlis
Not bad for an "advertising company".

~~~
niggler
How does the way back machine and other sites compare to google cache?

~~~
Groxx
In my experience, other sources tend to have significantly better caching
(google's don't even have images), (archive.org) multiple versions, but way
way slower to pick up new content.

------
UnoriginalGuy
I like ownCloud but it is very immature.

I mean it looks very snazzy right when you first install it and start to use
it, but has a lot of little issues hidden under the surface.

Couple of examples: Randomly deleting files because it got confused. Infinite
loops. Essentially unusable on Windows servers (don't even try). etc.

As I said, I like OwnCloud, and I think it has a very bright future ahead of
it. But it isn't "there" yet. I'd never use it in an enterprise in its current
state.

~~~
eddieroger
That's discomforting, because I just installed it. I don't really need or want
the filesharing bits, but a shared family calendar has been a holy grail for
my family for a while now, and this seemed to be the quickest and closest way
of doing it cross-platform.

~~~
Terretta
> _a shared family calendar has been a holy grail for my family for a while
> now_

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with clicking the "Share" button on an iCal,
sorry, iCloud Calendar? My family (incl those on Windows) finds this works
well.

~~~
eddieroger
I suppose nothing other than I didn't know that existed. I'd fall back on the
old "I like owning my data," but I will take ease of setup for a company I
trust. So, looking in to that tonight.

------
kailuowang
In software development term, this is probably an over engineering. Spend all
the effort to setup your own data cloud before it becomes a fact that you
really need it, that is, Google decides to change their cloud service so that
it's no longer usable to you. Of course you could argue that what if one day
Google simply disable the data exporting feature without any notice, in that
case you would have no time to migrate. I think that risk is low enough for me
to live with.

~~~
mhaymo
Google's service is already problematic in that it compromises my privacy and
the privacy of my contacts. I'd rather not share my schedule with Google, and
I feel uncomfortable putting additional information in my contacts knowing
that it will be synced to them. I've certainly never been given permission by
my friends to share their home address with Google or any other company.

------
antihero
Is there something like ownCloud that uses Python/PostgreSQL? I don't really
want to pollute my server with MySQL/PHP.

~~~
jimktrains2
This type of mentality is poisonous. You're not "polluting" your server. It
doesn't add anything to the discussion; all it does is troll and set up flame-
wars.

There are other good reasons to want something written in your own pet
language (e.g. "I want to modify it". "I don't want to learn how to admin
MySQL", even), but just claiming "pollution" isn't a good one IMO.

~~~
adestefan
Why the wording wasn't great, it is a valid concern. If you already have a
server running Postgres, then maintaining a separate MySQL install really is a
pain, especially when it comes to being up to date on security.

~~~
jimktrains2
Which is fine. It's the idea that software can "pollute" is absurd. Give
reasons and arguments, not slander.

Already having a python/postgres stack is a valid reason to want a piece of
software that runs on it. Just saying php/mysql "pollute" is a terrible
mindset.

It's like saying "I won't pollute my mind with German" instead of "I have no
use for German in my everyday life". One is very trollish, the other is a
valid point.

~~~
reeses
I think "pollute" conveys the idea much better than the German example. Yes,
it can create an emotional conflict, as you've demonstrated.

However, I would say that adding PHP and MySQL to a public server just
increased the attack surface as well as operations management overhead. In my
eyes, that is an increase in risk/cost/etc. for that server. That justifies
"pollute", "infect", "degrade", etc.

------
ses
One of the problems with using a self-hosted alternative like this is the fact
that Google open up a lot of their services through APIs which other
applications then consume. A web app I wrote a couple of years ago is one
example (meetingShed). This easy integration with other apps opens up a lot of
possibilities, but is there an alternative with ownCloud? It would be really
interesting to see if a solution could be developed to expose self-hosted
services (dynamically located) through a publicly accessible API (statically
located).

~~~
micampe
Can't read the article right now, but for contacts and calendars we have
standard public APIs: CardDAV and CalDAV. Too bad Google just discontinued the
latter, weirdly enough just a few months after finally supporting the former.

~~~
pyre
Unless something has changed recently, there isn't much information about
Google's CardDAV implementation. I had to find a reference on a mailing list
for a CardDAV implementation to even figure out what Google's URL structure
looked like.

I couldn't figure out a way to list all contact lists. You had to know the
name of the list and use it in the URL. Even at that, you can only access
contacts in "My Contacts" or other groups. There's (seemingly) no way to
access "All Contacts".

CardDAV is 'supported,' but not very well. It's definitely a second-class
citizen.

------
jvdh
"Click “Advanced” and select your database options. A MySQL DB will be way
faster than a SQLite DB."

Do you really think you can really notice the microsecond that MySQL will be
faster than SQLite? We are talking about a database that is going to host
what, maybe 5 megabytes worth of data?

We are talking about calendars and contacts here, this is not stuff that you
will sync every second, and will not contain large amounts of records.

Hosting this stuff in an SQLite database makes things like backup and security
a whole lot easier. You don't really need a complicated database server just
to store your phone numbers...

~~~
reeses
Some people have the pathological habit of creating meeting requests and
attaching 500KB+ spreadsheets, project plans, Word docs, etc.

It's best when they send it as a recurring appointment and then send an
"updated" version in a separate email.

~~~
jvdh
Still the performance of the database is going to be negligible if you take
the network (probably wifi/cellular) and mostly background syncing into
account.

------
rdl
While it's patent/licensing encumbered, I still prefer ActiveSync based
solutions, just because they do good push for iOS/Android, are easy to manage,
give you "free" lightweight MDM functionality, etc.

There are a few open source ActiveSync tools (which may be in violation of
Microsoft IP), but I just use a commercial one (for work). Still thinking of
screwing with the free ones for a personal server vs. strictly IMAP.

~~~
traxtech
Do you mind citing a stable open source ActiveSync solutions ?

~~~
rdl
z-push is probably the best.

~~~
traxtech
Thanks. I'll try it soon.

------
modernerd
I moved to <http://www.atmailcloud.com> and have been really pleased with it.

It's $2 per account, you can host multiple domains under one control panel, it
has email, contacts, and a calendar under one roof, and offers iPhone/iPad
provisioning as well. You can also create subadmin accounts if you want to
delegate responsibility for a certain domain to someone else.

~~~
bdowney
Thanks for the info. I'd happily for a service like this than rely on Google's
"free" stuff that they might the plug on any time they want to push their
useless G+ crap.

------
EvanAnderson
I've self-hosted my calendar using DAViCal (<http://www.davical.org/>) since I
got my first iPod Touch. My wife and I use it to host shared calendars that we
access from our phones. I run it on a cheap box I own but it would be just as
easy to host it on an inexpensive VPS. Backup is a Postgres dump taken daily
stored locally on the server and rsync'd to two other machines in separate
physical locations. It took a couple hours to set up but has been trouble and
attention-free for years.

------
uslic001
Any similar setup that uses IOS phone instead of Android out there? I am tired
of contacts going missing from IOS and Google or 4 copies of all my contacts
showing up in both IOS and Gmail. I lost all my contacts in IOS when I
upgraded to the iPhone 5. Then I had a bunch of contacts that I did not want
in my contacts populate my IOS contacts when I linked my Facebook account on
my IPhone 5. It is even worse on my Windows 8 notebook as I have 5-6 duplicate
contacts for each single contact as it imports from IOS, Outlook, and Gmail.

~~~
hbharadwaj
Windows 8 allows you to merge contacts. Once you clean up your contacts on
Windows, it's pretty good. Well, at least, has been for me.

------
mfer
Loosing contacts can happen. Just this past week my father-in-laws contact
info disappeared from Google contacts. This isn't the first time this has
happened to me either.

~~~
lucb1e
Wtf, I've never had this happen. I would instantly stop using any service
where this happened (especially where it's not possible to decently contact
support).

~~~
mikeratcliffe
I can happen if you have a large amount of contacts. I had 500 before this
happened to me the first time.

~~~
juskrey
It also happened to me dozen of times, and it was nothing to do with google.
Just plain random touchscreen messing in the jeans pocket.

------
nonpme
Thanks for the article! I didn't hear about ownCloud (or similar projects)
before, I'm already reading manual
(<http://doc.owncloud.org/server/5.0/admin_manual/>) and will be installing
ownCloud on my VPS today. I had doubts about giving Google (or any other
company) so much of my data (not only emails, but schedule, contacts etc.) -
now I found a great solution. I love HN.

------
sn
What you're looking for is syncml: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SyncML> the
wikipedia page lists various clients and servers. On Linux (well, ubuntu at
least) sync-ui will sync evolution with a syncml server. After a lot of
searching for solutions to use with my n900 I chose memotoo as a provider.
There is an preconfigured syncml android client for memotoo.

------
mark_l_watson
Nice idea. I have just gone through the minor hassle of switching my blog off
of Blogger and relegating Gmail to my backup/secondary email service - all in
the spirit of controlling my own stuff. I only calendar share with my wife, so
setting up something like this is probably something I will do also.

Any JVM based open source projects? I would rather not deal with PHP.

~~~
tiziano88
Not sure that's a smart move, if you care about your data. Do you think you
can achieve better uptime and reliability than Google does with their
engineers and servers and distributed data centres? I mean, it sounds cool and
everything to do it yourself, but if you just dump all your data onto your
local server (or EC2 instance), it's just a centralised storage that can fail
any time, not a "cloud" any more.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Except that I use cron jobs to save my mongodb and postgres databases to S3.

The only thing I lose is perhaps being offline fr several hours if one of my
servers goes south.

------
jimktrains2
The only thing really stopping me from migrating to my own platform is email.
I've had many terrible experiences and heard many horror stories about running
mail servers, I just don't want to deal with it.

Suggestions welcome.

~~~
MattJ100
Mmm. I'm sure people have had bad experiences. However I run my own mail
server (and no others who also do) for myself, my company and a few other
domains I host with almost no effort. It's true I have fewer than a dozen
users, but I'm sure most people would be the same way.

I just upgraded it this weekend, otherwise I haven't actually had to touch it
in the 5 years since I originally set it up. Support ends for the Ubuntu LTS
release it was based on next month, and I chose to migrate to new server
software (dovecot) without much difficulty at all. I think anyone moderately
skilled with sysadmin tendencies could manage it.

A good guide is here (though I am not running the described spam or virus
filtering, and neither am I using EC2 myself):
[http://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-
ubuntu-1204...](http://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-
ubuntu-1204-postfix-dovecot-mysql/) \- there are many other guides online.

But I confess I personally have a gmail account that I use most of all. I
receive lots of mail daily, and none of the open-source clients (webmail or
otherwise) have managed to compare in terms of usability. Priority Inbox is
the most recent example of something that I would struggle to live without.

~~~
jimktrains2
What about other people's spam filters? That's the biggest problem I've heard
about is being blacklisted because of being an unknown sender or on some VPS
service or something like that.

------
__abc
If Google just made us pay for this service (individually without having to
create a Google Apps account) all our feers _might_ go away.

Why are business SO reluctant for a standards "pay for what you get" business
model?

------
pjmlp
Nice article. People should realize it is not a good idea to leave data in the
hands of third parties with commercial interests.

On the other hand, I see only technical people being able to escape such data
traps.

------
luanfernandes
What can we do for translated versions? I'm not a dev but my father uses
google calendar a lot because it's easy and intuitive but he knows nothing
about english...

~~~
mikeratcliffe
Actually, you can contribute to ownCloud translations at:
<https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/owncloud/>

~~~
luanfernandes
Thanks for that! I see it's almost 100% for pt-BR! awesome :) I'll definetly
try it soon

------
bernardom
Calendar is a bit harder, but storing contacts seems like an eminently
solvable problem.

Especially if you require dropbox.

What am I missing? Phone support?

------
gregorynicholas
this post is the worst.. A) never really had contacts "disappear", although i
definitely encounter conflicts with weird results (kind of expected).

B) use a shared host (justhost.com. lol) and php over google's infrastructure?
fat chance this guy is competent enough to know what the fuck he's in for down
the road..

------
mariuolo
Personally I use the free version of Zarafa for that. In any case I know who
to blame if things go south.

------
BerislavLopac
Remember Kiko?

~~~
polymatter
Were they a startup that was killed the moment Google calendar started?

~~~
mattsouth
<http://areallybadidea.com/selling-kiko>

------
wodow
<https://fruux.com/> is a great alternative.

------
twodayslate
Site is down.

will this solution sync with my iPhone?

~~~
cyxxon
ownCloud does sync with iPhone, yes. I am still basically on Google myself,
but did a trial install of ownCloud and it worked pretty much instantly. Just
add as CalDAV and CardDAV accounts on the iPhone, the correct addresses to use
is shown in ownCloud somewhere.

------
iamtherockstar
Android gained popularity because it was tied to Calendar and Gmail. These two
services were pretty pervasive already, and so became the default in Android.
When that happened, those two services became crucial to Android.

The fear that Contacts and Calendar will go away like Reader did (or, rather,
will) is irrational. Reader _barely_ had a mobile client version of it. With
Google reigning in the branding on Android and requiring that it be tied even
tighter to Google services, Gmail and Calendar became a dependency of Google's
mobile OS.

