Sometimes you need a specific thing. One of these for me is a synchronization
software between my Nokia e71 and Google calendar. Then I’d like to have
Roboform play with Chrome browser. And… and… (Roboform is a catchy
utility that stores passwords and feeds them into your browser when you need
them).

In this story I describe how I spent an hour doing “installation” instead of
actually using the software. The plain need to have a software on my phone
turned out into an adventure where passwords, websites, ftp programs and what
not play a big part. Having moved on from the software based solution into
a web-based one was no help. I kept receiving synch errors.

It actually brings light to the bigger problem of these
giants (Nokia, Google) not being able to co-operate enough so that users
would benefit from the situation. It seems Nokia phones don’t have a decent
software for calendar synchronization. Please correct me! I would so much like
to be wrong in this case. What my experience tells is that trying to search
for good software and getting it right is sometimes a horribly frustrating
experience.

Each one of the installations is an adventure. You can never quite be sure
you will reach the target. It took about 20 years for Windows software
installation process to settle down and get standardized. Mobile phones have
a head start. What I’ve gathered is that there are some sort of standards
right from the beginning for eg. Symbian installations. I really liked exploring
the Nokia e71 right from the beginning, since there were much pre-installed
software. I liked Widgets. -ED. It turned Ovi.com, me not like! I haven’t digged into it but I really do miss the ease
of use of Widgets.

I’m probably the only one on this planet to be specialized in doing things
the hard way. Or then tech really is complicated. I want Calsync60 on my
Nokia phone. It’s available on the network, and I’d like to just download
it directly to my phone, since I don’t have the sync cable nor working bluetooth.

Well, turns out I can’t find a .SIS installation package on the whole net.
All articles point to this one location, which has a .zip file. It contains
two things: the real installation package (a .sisx) and an information file (text).
It’s plain irritating that software installation is this laborious.

I next need to install Filezilla to get ftp connection. So downloading yet
another 3.8 megabytes. After installation, I connect to my own site in order
to store the installation .sisx there. Need login information, which I rarely
use. It’s on another machine, stored in the Filezilla profile. Well, a couple of
minutes later I had my installation package on my server, ready to be downloaded
to Nokia. I took it. The download went fine. Then, it opened the .sisx into
notepad. And crashed (jammed). The phone didn’t respond to power off anymore.
So I took out the battery, and booted that way. It’s amazing I’d spent approx. an hour trying to get a single software into my phone. This must be on the hot agenda with
Nokia. They’re really in trouble with software installation usability. It ain’t
satin smooth exactly, as this story has revealed. I hope they get it right with whatever the solution is. Because it’s getting more important by each day.

The good working solution was to do installation of PC Suite, and then install
the .sisx package from a local directory. Because PC Suite makes your PC understand
the file extensions, thus it identifies the file correctly and you can install the
software to your phone. I should’ve known and skipped all the extra steps, but you
never know unless you try. 🙂 But wait. The story goes on. I had to tweak my phone’s
date and time back to 2008, so that the Calsync60 didn’t expire. And thus the calendar functions of course deteriorated. Putting it back into proper date,
the software wouldn’t play ball anymore. I was stuck.

Back to software business..

I dream of a system where I could just tell what I want, and the right software
would be offered. Today it’s a lot of googling around and checking the details
when you need something. And there’s often a big negative surprise about an
installed software: it has some viral marketing, crippled functionality,
time limitations, and most often functional mismatch. But I don’t know whether
software could be put into a feasible property matrix. Like: I need sync between
Nokia e71, and Google Calendar, no limits, free of charge. The system would weed
down possibilities according to my criteria.

And please, make installations easier. Away with the certificates hassle, away
with searching all day along, and coming up with strange circumventing. I don’t know
how, but installation of software should be completely free of location, circumstances, whatsoever. It should be as simple as breathing.

I would just like plain software, nicely packaged, easy to look it up, so that I could enjoy it as soon as possible. There, the challenge has been thrown!

EDIT: on 25th June 2009, in the morning, I got GooSync.com to work with my phone.
The previous systems error (not giving much clue) was due to the lack of connecting
my profile with my Google Calendar. So perusing the user interface at Goosync I noticed there was a kind of to-do list of things to do, so I filled in the information and thus authorized GooSync to access my calendar.