Steve's Community Page

This site isn't just about promoting Steve and his work and projects. It is always nice to give something back - especially if it sticks the boot in to some of the big boys at the same time! There are a few things that have annoyed me over the past years of running my business (only a few?). Mostly it involves crap service from companies who take customers loyalty for granted. Rather than give in to this, I would rather explore other options from the myriad of great companies who offer services for free, or for much less than these mainstream alternatives.

What really got me started on this crusade was realising that despite having (at least) two computers from Apple, if I want to synchronise my two computers, type a letter and organise my pictures, I have to pay Apple £69 for iWork, another £69 for iLife and £58 a year for a MobileMe subscription! All of this just to get functionality that should have been built in to the system software in the first place!

So, in the spirit of alturism and striking a blow for the put upon computer user (who might not be as good at internet research as I am) here is my list of Villians and the heroes that will rescue you from them! Most of these options are for Mac OSX, but some of them will work on Windows or evn Linux as well.

Alternatives to MobileMe

What really pisses me off about Apple's MobileMe (the internet and syncronisation service formally known as .mac) apart from the price of course, is the fact that Apple have removed synchronisation functionality from their system software to try to force you to use it. What I want to be able to do is to be able to synchronise information between my Desktop system, and my laptop. Yet even though, by definition, I am a multiple customer having two of their products, Apple force me to pay £58 a year AND have another unwanted email address.

Essesntially, MobileMe gives you an email address that can synchronise over more than one computer, a way of synchronising you Address Book, Safari bookmarks and iCal calendar. It also gives you 20GB of web storage and a few other things.

Are is there an alternative to MobileMe? Absolutely. Most of the components are available – mainly for free – from third party suppliers. They might not be linked in a flashy interface, but the functionality is all there!

Email

The major component of MobileMe is the email account that you can synch across all of your computers and devices. I enrolled for the MobileMe trial hoping that it would synchronise my Apple Mail program and various POP3 email addresses across two computers. Unfortunately MobileMe doesn’t manage this useful function, it just synchronises the single MobileMe account.

MobileMe is just an IMAP account. The only thing is that any IMAP account can synchronise across any number of computers as all of the emails are stored on a remote server.

Most ISPs offer the functionality of converting a standard POP3 account to an IMAP account. My ISP charges £10 a year, and I get to keep my existing email address! If your ISP doesn’t offer this functionality you can always sign up for a Google Mail account, which will synch across a number of computers and also has a functionality to push emails to a mobile device, such as the Apple iPhone.

Incidentally, any mobile device should be able to utilise any IMAP email account, giving full synchronisation across all of your devices. So basically you can get this functionality for free!

Synchronisation

Synchronising (or simply remotely backing up if you only have one computer) of safari Bookmarks, Address Book and iCal calendars is fantastically useful. MobileMe will do this, but a free product Fruux will do this seamlessly if you are using OSX 10.5.

Fruux currently doesn’t synch preferences and dock items, but in reality this is not an issue. I don’t want the same preferences and dock on my desktop system as I do on my laptop. Fruux also doesn’t yet support syncing to the iPhone or web access of your data, but this is under development. 

In the meantime, if you want to synchronise your contacts and calendar with your mobile phone, you can do this using bluetooth and the iSync application which is part of the system software. You might need special drivers (which if you have a Nokia phone you can download from the Nokia website) and it needs to be done manually but it works, and does mean that if you loose your phone and someone wipes the data it won’t wipe your home computer as well!!

Publishing calendars

MobileMe allows you to publish iCal calendars so that other people can subscribe to them and see what you are up to. This is a very useful feature, which luckily is available (certainly with OSX 10.5) using a third party server. iCal Exchange ((http://www.icalx.com/) is one such service which seems to work well, and is currently free!

Cloud storage

Another useful function of MobileMe is the 20 GB cloud storage. This mounts on your desktop, which sounds great but really is only a WebDAV access and many third parties offer this.   

Adrive offer 50GB storage for free, but this has to be accessed via a web interface, which obviously shows advertisements. If you want the WebDAV version that is virtually identical to MobileMe it is $69.95 for a massive 50GB! Even after that idiot Gordon Brown has ruined our economy, that is far cheaper than MobileMe and for 5x more storage space (remember the default for MobileMe is 10GB for the email account and 10GB for storage.

So, as you can see, most of MobileMe is available in better form from other suppliers, often for free, but certainly for much less than Apple charge. You also have the advantage of picking and choosing the constituent parts that you want, and not have to pay for all of them, including the annoying MobileMe email address. This is marginally less annoying if you are a legacy subscriber, and still can use the @mac.com version.

That isn’t to say that MobileMe isn’t very good: it does perform well and it does look good. If you don’t have a computer, or regularly use internet cafes and want to have the a Mac style access to your documents wherever you are then it might be very useful. If you have a work and home computer, or even a laptop and just want the same information on all of them then it is a waste of money. I just object to being forced into paying extra for a functionality that should be built into the system software anyway - even if it only synchronises over a local network.

Alternatives to Microsoft Office

If you use a Mac, then you will know just what a turkey Microsoft Office is under OSX. Is there an alternative to Microsoft Office? Well, you could use Apple iWork, but what really pisses me off is that Apple expect you to buy one of their cumputers, then pay around fifty quid just so that you type a letter. The least that I expect to be able to do with a new computer is to type a damn letter withut buying software! It is the same now with their picture storage program, iPhoto. With the new system software you don't get this included, rather you have to by the ridiculous iLife for about another fifty quid. This is a suite of programs that assumes that you will want to make music in your garage if you want to store pictures! Anyway more on this llater. Now you have to ask yourself: is there an alternative to Apple iWork? Yet again, we sprint to the rescue. NeoOffice is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Office and iWork. It is a bit clunky at times, but compatible with all Office programs. Based on the free open source OpenOffice, which has even more functionality, these programs are regularly updated by good souls around the world, come in many different languages and will work on just about any computer platform!

Alternatives to MSN Messenger

Whilst you are trying to chuck all of the Microsoft programs off your Mac, how about MSN Messanger? Is there an alternative to MSN Messanger? Yet again, a bit of internet research says yes! Check out Adium, a neat little program that links up to your MSN acocunt, as well as Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook and a host of others!

Alternatives to Skype Mobile

Skype is a great product. Really useful and a cheap way to contact people. I even bought a wifi enabled phone so that I could make Skype calls on the road and save some cash. So what is the problem? Well it seems that the free program Skype Mobile, isn't actually free. If you receive a Skype to Skype call, with Skype Mobile, then you actually get the cost of a Skype to Mobile call deducted from your account. You even have to pay for a local call when you make a Skype Out call - even if you are connected via a free wifi connection.

So, is there an alternative to Skype Mobile? Luckily, yes! I managed to track down a free program called Fring that not only allows you to connect to use your mobile to connect to your normal Skype account, chat for free and even make Skype Out calls just wth your wifi connection, it also allows you to check a host of other connections. including MSN, Yahoo, Gmail and even Facebook!