Generally it has worked very well without issue until recently when a weekly meeting suddenly appeared daily in my iPhone calendar.  Every day at 11:00AM or Weekly IT Coordination meeting!

I compared the meeting entry against what showed up in my Lotus Notes calendar on my laptop and viola… no such daily meeting was displayed. Only the correct once a week meeting.   I knew at that moment I had an orphaned calendar entry the Lotus Notes was ignoring but CompanionLink saw the entry in whatever Notes view it was using to sync the data up to Google. 

I discovered that in the Notes 8.5 client I could see the calendar entry causing the issue in the Views By Chairperson view but I could not delete the document no matter what I tried to do.  I would get a couple of different error message and Notes would try to repair the calendar entry and then error out again.

At this point I decided I needed a heavier handed approach.  I backed up my mail/calendar file locally and the right clicked on the calendar entry in question and displayed the document properties to be able to note the document ID.

Next I asked my friendly Notes Developer to whip me up a Notes Agent that would programatically delete the document by referencing the DocID.

The Notes Agent was created as a Private Agent in my mail (calendar) file and set to run from the actions menu with a target of None.

The Lotus Script looked like this (the long Alpha number is the document ID of the rogue calendar entry I am deleting) :

Sub Initialize
Dim doc As Notesdocument
Dim db As Notesdatabase
Dim session As New notesSession
Set db = session.currentdatabase
Set doc = db.GetDocumentByUNID(”C278821541C999D785257685006E8DAF”)
If Not doc Is Nothing Then
Msgbox(”Document found!! ” + doc.Subject(0))
Call Doc.Remove(True)
End If

End Sub

I the agent and then ran CompanionLink and re-sync’d my calendar and the problem was nearly instantly corrected!

Today I finally got around to adding a 8-port switch to the single wired LAN connection in the living room.  This allowed me to switch the Apple TV and PS3 from Wi-fi to a wired connection on the switch and also connect my DirecTV DVR to the network for the first time and use DirecTV’s on Demand service.

I’ll try to slap together an updated diagram of the LAN and structural wiring in the next couple of weeks.

I haven’t picked up any games yet for the PS3 but I borrowed John’s Uncharted Drakes Fortune and have still been bothered by the controllers feel especially the triggers when compared to the Xbox 360 controllers.  I ran across a product online called “Real Triggers” that looked like they might address the lack of an easy to reach trigger… then last night in passing through Best Buy they had them in stock for the same price I saw online…

The controller still isn’t as comfortable as the Xbox360 controller in your hands but the trigger problem is resolved.

My initial impressions are very good.  The construction of the console is solid.  The overall size is my smaller compared to the Xbox 360 especially when you consider the PS3’s power supply is built-in and the Xbox still has a huge external brick.  I like the fact that Sony fully supports an end user upgrading the hard drive on their own and includes directions to do so in the user guide.  The wireless is built of standard Bluetooth whereas the xbox uses a proprietary 2.4GHz wireless connection.  The cabling on the Sony is also a standard mini-USB to USB cable whereas all of the cables to the xbox are completely custom.  The only clear cut advantage the Xbox has over the PS3 at this stage is the xbox controller is much ore comfortable in the hands than the playstation controller.

Last night I watched a Blu-Ray disc on it.  Amazing!

[UPDATE: 9/20 - The new PS3 Slim is super quiet compared to the Xbox360 and from what I've read online considerably quieter than the original PS3]

Engadget PS3 Slim Review

I received the upgrade for my MAC on Friday morning.  45 minutes later the system was upgraded with no hassle and no issues.   Got back nearly 15GB of disk space to boot!  It’’s a little thing but I love the new Expose feature where it is applied by a certain application by clicking and holding on any application icon in the dock.

For $29 is was a no-brainer!

The app itself isn’t perfect.  The Digital Zoom is just that… a digital zoom.  It makes most zoomed in photos pretty noisy but this isn’t much different than what happens on a digital zoom on a digital camera.  I ifnd the Big Button and Timer functions helpful for when I want to be included in the photo.

All in all it’s well worth the 99 cents!

I work for a pretty large fortune 1000 company.   We have a farm of Blackberry’s you could shake a stick at… I even have one of the corporate provided Blackberry’s… We have an internal Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) that provides real-time access to my Lotus Notes email and calendar.

The problem here is that I also have a personal cell phone that is truly what I carry ALL the time.  It’s an iPhone 3Gs and my company doesn’t recognize or support iPhone’s in our environment.   So a server side real-time solution is not possible, I have found a round-a-bout way to sync my Notes calendar from my corporate laptop pulling the data from my local Lotus Notes client.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Lotus Notes client installed locally
• Access to your mail file locally or on your mail server
• A Google account (and know the credentials – username and password)
• Companionlink for Google

How it works?
The Companionlink for Google publishes your Lotus Notes calendar up to the Google Calendar service (tied to your google account).  Publishing can be done manually when you execute the Sync utility manually or you can automate the syncronization function in the application settings.  Then on the iPhone side you setup a Mail, Contacts, and Calendar connection for your Google account that is configured as Exchange ActiveSync.   Once published the changes in the Google calendar are pulled down to your iPhone over the air and almost in real time.

Setup and configuration of Companionlink
Installing Companionlink is pretty straight forward but you will need to know both your Google account username/password and your Notes Client (Notes ID) password.  Whether you want to access your calendar locally or on the Notes server.

you start by specifying your Google account info

Next you specify your PIM – in my case Lotus Notes but the application also support a host of other

Next you specify where the Notes client is installed locally on your PC and supply the password to your Notes client.

Form the Notes data tab you specify where your mail is located and its filename as well as the name and address book if you choose to sync your contacts from Notes (which I don’t).

The Auto Synchronization tab is set to manual by default.  This is where you get it to update on a schedule.

The sync from Notes up to Google Calendar is not complete.

Setup and configuration in iPhone
This section now configures your iphone to pull down your Google calendar into your iPhone in near real time and over the air.

Pulling the Google calendar down into your iPhone requires you to create an ActiveSync connection to google.

Select “Settings”
Select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
Select “Add Account”
Select “Microsoft Exchange” (this is the activesync selection)
Enter in your Google Account information 0 the key is to set m.google.com as the server.

Overall thoughts on CompanionLink and limitations
Generally I love the product in that it works as advertised. Occasionally the CompanionLink application will prompt me for my Google account password again even though it is entered into the applications settings.  The only limitation with using ConpanionLink really is a limitation of the iPhone OS in that only one ActiveSync connection can be configured on the iPhone.  This means if you are already syncing with Exchange this wouldn’t be a solution for you but chances are if you are syncing Exchange you don’t really have a need for a product like CompanionLink anyway.

For the third time our xbox360 has failed.  The first time was a E74 video related failure 2+ years ago, then the DVD drive failed and now for strike 3 the infamous 3 red lights (aka RROD).

Fortunately each time the failures have been covered under warranty and no out of pocket expenses have been incurred.   According to Nielson statistics were are anything but normal in terms of the number of 3rd party games for the 360 we own and we love xbox live but if this thing fails again and it costs me money, they’ll be a new Sony PS3 slim at my home and no xbox 360, because the fact of the matter is Sony may have botched the introduction of the PS3 but the thing is well built…

The one hiccup and major annoyance I had was when I copied over my iTunes library, everything worked fine except that my ringtones didn’t show inside iTunes.  They were physically there but the iTunes Library didn’t see them.  I instantly fell back into my former PC way of thinking.  I found where the underlying folder inside the operating system was where the ringtones were stored and the ringtones were already there.

The solution was so simple techy guy would have never discovered it without Google.   Take the ringtones and drag them to the Ringtones view in iTunes and whammo.. they’re back and working!

Hopefully it will now actually stay working.