Or, you should be able to create a new policy with this checked, and apply it to each user’s mailbox directly (Recipient Configuration->Mailbox->right-click user, Properties->Mailbox Features->Exchange ActiveSync->Properties and then select a profile, and make sure ActiveSync is Enabled). Regardless, once Exchange is configured correctly, it appears that you need VersaMail 4.0.1 in order to connect to ActiveSync properly with Exchange 2007, and even on the Centro (where it may have already been installed), reinstalling it with this method fixed my problem. The update is supposed to be for the Centro, but I read several forum posts I found via Google that said it worked on the Treo 755p just fine (one had VersaMail 3.5.5 installed, the other had 3.5.4 installed), and it did for me. YMMV, don’t blame me for problems!

1. Open Email (VersaMail) on the phone and add a secondary account if only one exists (a dummy POP3 account is fine, just enough fake info that the account will be created, it doesn’t need to be checked but you can’t delete an ActiveSync account if it’s the only account).
2. Delete the Exchange ActiveSync account that is not working, leave the POP account in place but no need to verify/check it (it’s just a dummy account).
3. Tap the Home button to return to the phone’s Home Screen.
4. Go to http://ws.palm.com/mypalm/MyPalmGenericUser/ControllerGeneric.jsp?&action=showbonus&productName=CENTRO690P
5. Click Learn More under Palm VersaMail (Not VersaMail Personal Edition), link: here
6. On Treo device, open Web browser, type this URL into address bar: http://dl.svs.palm.com/bonus/VM40_Installer_Stan.prc (capitalization matters)
7. Hit Yes to confirm the download.
8. Hit Yes to download to Device.
9. Hit Save and Open.
10. Wait for file to download, it’s 1.21MB.
11. Hit Yes to accept the .prc file into Applications.
12. Will return to Home screen with new application icon called Install Email selected. Run it.
13. Tap the Update Now button on the screen that pops up titled “VersaMail 4.0”
14. Hit Accept to accept the license.
15. Wait for installation to complete; the phone will restart automatically.
16. Re-add the “Outlook (EAS)” Exchange account to the Email (VersaMail) application. Make sure to use “domain\user” format for the username field.

Make sure to hit Test and make sure it’s successful, then continue with the initial sync. This all assumes that you have a certificate installed on your Exchange 2007 server that functions properly with Palm OS devices; e.g. that they trust the certificate root and the certificate is not in the incorrect format and it doesn’t have SANs (Subject Alternative Names) like a UCC cert. But I covered this, and why I’m using RapidSSLOnline.com, in my last post, Palm Centro and GoDaddy SSL Certificates: Fixed! so you can read more about the server side there.

My Palm devices are all on the Sprint network, I don’t know if the same steps apply for Verizon, AT&T, or other providers, although it’s likely they would.

It worked for me! That’s why I’m writing it out here so I remember how to do it when someone else has issues, but I hope it helps others as well. I know I saw a lot of forum posts discussing Palm and ActiveSync (and I’ve run into plenty of issues myself in the past that I’ve had to deal with). Frankly, I will be very happy when PalmOS devices are dead…the Palm Pre is a good replacement, and the iPhone is an even better one. Windows Mobile I haven’t used enough to have an opinion on (it will likely stay that way), and BlackBerry I’ve only used enough to know that the pain of the last two weeks trying to solve a BlackBerry issue that mightbe solved now and might not be, isn’t worth it, but if you have to support it, the features are there if you can get them to work. But my BlackBerry and BlackBerry Professional Server woes are for another post, if I find time to write it :-)

So I make it through the renewal process, which required generating a new CSR (Certificate Signing Request) for a brand new certificate from the server since the original one had a bit length of 1024 and GoDaddy only accepts 2048 to 4096 bit lenghts (this is a new requirement). After completing the process and getting the certificate installed, I got a nice helpdesk call from a user this morning who has a Centro: “SSL certificate not accepted due to possible expiration.  Check device date & time and re-sync.”

Joy oh joy, exactly what I’d been looking for, another problem and wasted time!

OK, enough sarcasm (but really, can you ever have enough?). Time for Google and Daryl Hunter from the Church IT Roundtable! Although GoDaddy auto-renewed my SSL certificate, I was actually contemplating buying one of their UCC certificates to be ready for when we went to Exchange 2007. Fortunately I read Daryl Hunter’s post about Exchange 2007 without UCC certs, and stuck with the regular certificate for now, because per Palm KB article 43375, certificates with Subject Alternate Names (SANs), such as UCC certs, are not supported at all on Palm devices (“SSL v3 certificates which rely on the Subject Alternate Name field to do load balancing across virtual site names do not work with Palm OS devices.”). So a UCC cert isn’t even an option for me, but it’s cheaper to do Daryl’s method anyway! For now I don’t have to worry about it, since I just have Exchange 2003 for now, and that’s not the present issue (but we will likely be on Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 by the time the certificate expires). Additionally, the same article (which has a tool for installing new trusted root certificates on some Palm OS devices–but I didn’t want to mess with touching every single Palm OS device here! And, the tool works on Windows 2000 or XP only, not Vista (and I’m sure not Windows 7 either)) specifically states that, “GoDaddy Class 2 certificates do not work with Palm OS devices.” Time to drop GoDaddy!

Daryl’s favorite SSL certificate vendor (and now, mine too!) is RapidSSL Online. They sell certificates from RapidSSL.com for $17.95 per year (or cheaper, for multiple years), and they’re single root certificates (which menas you don’t have to install intermediate certificates on your server). While RapidSSL Online is cheap, RapidSSL.com directly has a 30 day trial certificate you can sign up for to test for a month, and this is the way I went. When that certificate expires I’ll be purchasing a multi-year certificate from RapidSSL Online, but I wanted to make sure it would work, and it does! I don’t know for sure, but it appears that RapidSSL.com is the company holding the root certificate, while RapidSSL Online is either a reseller or a sub-company of the parent selling the certificates at a discount (the RapidSSL.com certificates aren’t expenive but still cost a lot more than from RapidSSL Online!). Either way, RapidSSL Online claims that their RapidSSL certificates are issued by RapidSSL.com so they should be the same (I haven’t made a purchase yet), and Daryl Hunter has used RapidSSL Online successfully for years across multiple installations.

I generated a new CSR for a new certificate, again (just like I had to do for GoDaddy). I installed the free certificate on my Exchange server’s IIS (I also then exported it and imported the .pfx file onto my ISA 2004 firewall since it does the authentication up front for external clients, but that’s a pretty unique case and in most cases you want this done on the Exchange server). They were right, it’s just a single root on the certificate, signed by Equifax! I had my Palm Centro users (two had complained by this point) try syncing again. It worked! My iPhone also works fine still, and I haven’t had any negative reports from the four Palm Pre users here either. None of my users have Windows Mobile, and my one Blackberry user connects though Blackberry Professional Server rather than with ActiveSync.

So, adios GoDaddy SSL; fortunately they will refund all but $15 of my certificate (for processing since it was issued), and I’ll still come out ahead with RapidSSL Online (GoDaddy was $60 for two years, while RapidSSL Online is only $70 for five years!).

One thing I’ll have to be careful of when I go to Exchange 2007 is that once I use Windows Server 2008 to generate the CSR, it appears I will need to go to extra pains to make sure the CSR is in Printstring format instead of UTF-8, as Palm OS doesn’t support UTF-8 certificates either (Server 2003 uses Printstring by default). Daryl located this useful post while helping me troubleshoot: Ranting about Palm Centro Versamail ActiveSync and SBS 2008. Useful info, I’m sure I’ll be going back when it’s time to renew next time and Server 2008 is in place. By then, I hope we are Palm OS-free; although I loved my Treo 600 and Treo 650 both, the web is littered with forum and blog posts from people who have SSL issues with Palm OS devices (the Palm Pre and Pixi are much more flexible and up-to-date with the Palm WebOS). I was happy GoDaddy “just worked” in the past, frustrated that they “just didn’t work” this time, and happy to save money and move to a company that’s quicker/faster/easier!

The problem that some people didn’t realize at first when they posted this update method, was that the .ipcc file also changes an option that disables Visual Voicemail and Missed Calls, at least in some cases. I don’t recall which of the many sites it was where I read this, but the solution is quite simple for anyone out there who might need it. From the Home screen, navigate to Settings->General->Network->Cellular Data Network. The section called Visual Voicemail has a field called “APN” and if it’s set to “wap.cingular” and you use the US iPhone carrier, that appears to be what’s causing problems. The “APN” field should read: “acds.voicemail” (without the quotes).

Note that this is for informational and troubleshooting purposes only and changing any of the settings or files here is not something I endorse. Tethering is a service that you may or may not be allowed to do and is between you and your service provider; please refer to their agreement terms for details and specifics. I didn’t come up with the solution above, I just happened to read it somewhere and I’ve been contacted by a couple of people who mentioned they had problems that were fixed when I pointed out the above change that I read about somewhere.

These are some text messaging services that may be useful:

• http://texthub.com/ (another church where I know the Church IT guy, I forget which one, is using this)
• http://www.jarbyco.com/ (Granger Community Church has used this, as have a few others)
• http://www.textmarks.com/ (Granger is using this some too and we are planning to use it at Lakeview at least among staff if not generally)
• http://www.polleverywhere.com/ (this lets you show poll results on the screen that people text in, but I donâ€t think it does mass texting—Jarbyco can do this too I think, at least where people sendin questions via text message and you can have someone put them up on the screen)

Iâ€d start there and see where it gets you! Should be cheaper than phone tree most likely, def. cheaper than mailing postcards and youâ€ll probably get more teen response than from either of those anyway :-) [remember this was an email to the Youth dept.] I would start testing with a small group if youâ€re going to test multiple services, so you arenâ€t switching everyone from one system to another just to test…like set up 4-5 students with one service and see how you like the service and price before putting everyone in.

I later ran into another service worthy of comparison: http://www.churchtextingmanager.com/. I’m sure there are others out there. Other than light testing of Poll Everywhere and TextMarks, I’ve not used any of these services personally or professionally and can’t vouch for any of them, but it’s probably a good list to start your own research!

Prior Todo System Attempts

The result is usually “cool,” and I might use it for a day or two. And then, I forget about it. (I use and love the HelpSpot helpdesk software (Lakeview is even a HelpSpot case study!), but there are tasks (and projects) I’d like to manage outside of requests in the helpdesk, and that’s just an at-work solution.) Now that I have an iPhone, although it comes with no built-in task managment program (why? Beats me), I figured someone would have made a system I could use on my desktop, laptop, and iPhone to track todo lists at home, for Lakeview, and for the Indianag A/G District Office where I work one day per week. And when I’m somewhere else, I don’t really want to see what I have to do anywhere but where I am! And oh yeah, I’d like subtasks support, tagging, sorting, searching, start and end due dates, and due time with reminders built in, and probably a few things I’m forgetting. And can you make it free while you’re at it?

I’ve already mentioned that there are a lot of online todo list web applications. On my renewed search for iPhone-compatible todos, I tried the very well-known Remember the Milk service. It has a nice interface and I thought it might just be as good as everyone seems to think, and it had an iPhone interface. Which I never tried, because although there’s a trial, you have to pay for a Pro account to use the iPhone-optimized webapp; I think it’s $25/year and you get a few other benefits as well. But I kept going back to my preference for “free” and wondered if someone else was doing it better. I’ve bookmarked some of my findings using my Delicious keyword “todo”

The other one with a funny name: Toodledo

I don’t recall exactly how I discovered it, but it was probably a Google search or a post comparing services that led me to Toodledo. The name almost turned me off from looking at it at all. It’s a nice play on words but not as “professional” sounding as I was looking for. But hey, Remember the Milk isn’t all suit-and-tie sounding either, so I gave it a shot, especially because it had a free iPhone interface called Slim. The well-done feature comparison chart also helped to convince me to try it out, given it’s completeness compared to every competitor listed (granted, the chart is a bit out of date per a few forum postings especially in relation to Todoist, which I tried briefly after I was already using Toodledo (always on the lookout for something closer to perfection :-) and if you like using the keyboard extensively it may be an excellent option, although I’m not sure about an iPhone version). Of course comparison charts are intended to be biased towards the company making the chart, but the list of features Toodledo had was impressive by itself.

This is going to get long, so for more information I’m breaking the rest out after the jump if you’re reading this on the web!

And then I gave them money

After customizing the fields I wanted to use (most of them, it turns out) and playing with the Contexts feature which lets you save a location or context for each todo item, I started to actually put a few tasks in for the next few days to get a feel for how to use it in a daily workflow. It clicked. I still find some interface things to be not as easy as they could be, but I like Toodledo so much that I’ve purchased a Pro account for $15 per year to unlock some additional features. The fee is more reasonable than any other pro account I’ve encountered for task management, and although my preference is of course for stuff that’s free, the Pro account just added enough value at a small enough price to make it worthwhile (subtasks and longer completed-task history retention were the two that put me over the edge, but the Scheduler and Stats features are also nice). However I haven’t seen the need for a 1GB file storage area that doubles the price, so I stuck with a Pro rather than a Pro Plus account; the file storage and going from 2 years of completed-item retention to forever are the only additional features for the upgraded plan.

Sidenote: Project Management Still Elusive

The definition of what I look for in a productivity app keeps changing. Universally available todo lists with all the features I’ve mentioned were the biggest need I had and Toodledo fills that void nicely. Some people, especially those using the GTD system, use Toodledo to track projects (GTD defines a project as “anything requiring more than one specific action to complete” while I both like that and have an additional one, something like “something I want to get done including collaboration with others” or something along those lines). Toodledo provides task sharing (read-only unless the other user has a Pro account) and you can use Toodledo’s Projects field to track GTD-like projects, but at work I’m still missing something between todo list and helpdesk.

What I’m looking for is Project Management. Something like Microsoft Project without the complexity, on the web, for one to several people working together on multiple projects to use for tasks and collaboration. There are nearly as many options in this space as there are todo list services! The most well-known of these is probably 37signals‘ Basecamp and their associated services (like Backpack, for todos and calendaring–but it’s not free!). Basecamp is nice but their free account only allows for one project, and their paid accounts are more than I’m willing to shell out for right now, and they don’t offer non-profit discounts (I asked). That’s OK, copycats are a dime a dozen, but the problem is finding the one that does everything the way I want it to, at the right price! Unlike Toodledo, I’ve not discovered the perfect-enough solution for this yet, but I’m still looking. My biggest concern is that most project management systems include their own todo list system, and I want to make sure I don’t split my nice Toodledo system and have to check two separate todo lists all the time! I’m keeping this in mind as I evaluate.

Ideally, I’d like a system that coworkers helping me with projects as well as volunteers can log into and update with research findings, progress, and that sort of thing. The ability to collaborate with volunteers is one of the driving reasons I want a web-based system! Projects in this context might be things like:

• Upgrade Microsoft Exchange to 2007 from 2003
• Run wires to X for Y purpose
• Use compressor to blow dust out of all desktops (recurring)
• Upgrade all or most servers to Server 2008 from Server 2003
• Purchase and implement a SAN solution with virtualization

Centrally managing a list like that would be much better than me having to come up with it off the top of my head like I just did! Yes I can just write down a list, and I have a few of those, but that leaves out the collaboration opportunity. One of the few entirely free options I’m contemplating is called ClockingIT. The interface doesn’t seem as clean as some competitors, but it has many features including a Wiki, chat, forums, and files, along with reporting and charting options. And the price is right.

This is one of many possibilities several of us in the Church IT IRC channel (#citrt on the Freenode IRC network) discussed a week or two ago when we went Googling for project management options. No one in the group has a perfect solution but several have none (hence the looking!), and others are using things like Basecamp, Sharepoint (WSS) or Microsoft Project. I refuse to get sucked into using Sharepoint and the other two I’ve already eliminated for reasons above, so that’s why I’m still looking! I’m tracking things that show some promise using my Delicious keyword “projectmanagement” if you care to browse. For churches, TeamWorkLive stands out as another very nice option, although the price is too steep for me right now. I can see this being a great all-church-staff project management tool, if everyone gets on board and you’re OK with the $200/mo for 50 users (or $150/mo for 25 users…there are other plans too).

My Toodledo Workflow

My District Toodledo context (click to enlarge)

This is a brief overview of how I use Toodledo. I have most of the fields except for the sharing-related ones enabled. I used Google’s Chrome browser to create an “Application” out of the Toodledo website so I can easily open a separate Toodledo-only window, preventing it from getting lost amid my many tabs (no, I’m not kidding! Too many tabs to provide an exact count right now though…). I have the same setup on the desktop I use at each office and on my laptop, and I have an iPhone home screen icon set up for the Toodledo Slim iPhone webapp interface (I’m also presently using the Appigo Todo native iPhone app, which is nice, but it is missing several features including subtask and context support that prevent it from being as useful in general, even though it syncs well with Toodledo. Appigo has said they are working to add these features in the near future).

Basics

I have Toodledo set to default to the Contexts tab, since you can select any of the fields to start with by default. This lists all the Contexts I have set up in tabs across the top of the screen, and I can easily select which one to view (the number of tasks in the context is shown in parentheses on the tab but that can optionally be hidden). The main contexts I have (plus a few infrequently used ones) are: Any Computer, Lakeview, District, and Home. I default to sorting tasks by Importance and then Auto. Importance is a foruma defined by Toodledo that takes into account both the priority of a task and how soon it’s due, and assigns each task a numerical value of “importance.” The higher-importance items are shown at the top, and for each task the due date or priority is displayed at the right side (whichever is the reason for the importance level is displayed, due date or priority, per task).

A quick scan shows me what I need to do today and I can pick a next action to work on based on only tasks that I can do (that are in the context I’m presently in; at Lakeview for example). I have keyboard shortcuts enabled which lets me type “n” to create a new task quickly, and I can tab through the fields to set the folder, start and due dates, priorities, context (defaults to the context I’m in) and other settings as applies to that task. The Folder field I’m using kind of as a categorization field and kind of as a “project” field, I’ve not decided 100% how I’m going to use it yet. But that’s an example of flexibility; I can use the Folder field for whatever I want however I want to! There’s also a Tags field which allows for multiple, comma-separated tags which you can view and sort just like any other fields. I’m using tags sparingly right now, but will throw “web,” “order,” “blog,” for categorization, or a person’s name (like my boss) to create an agenda to talk to that person about the next time I see them.

Subtasks

Subtasks, which are a feature of the Pro account I paid for, are nice but not as easy to use as I’d like. Without seeing or using it I’m not sure I could explain it very well so I won’t try for now. Suffice it to say the usability of the interface for subtasks has a ways to go to make it as efficient or easy to use as it needs to be for me to get much use out of it. Like others on the Toodledo forums, I would also like to see the ability to assign an order to subtasks so as each was marked complete, the next one would be “active” until it was complete, and so on. This would make tasks with subtasks very usable as GTD “projects->next actions” which I would like to get into more in-depth as I work toward trying to implement GTD myself (I am currently trying to use some of the GTD concepts but I haven’t dived in to the program all the way). I presently have 55 active todo items in Toodledo, which is the important suff I can’t forget but is not close to the full brain dump GTD requires to really work well!

iPhone

The iPhone interface is mostly full-featured but obviously limited in the amount of information it can display at once, and the lag time for the webapp to refresh is occasionally annoying. However I use it to enter new todo items at least as often as I use a computer, I think, and I edit and mark tasks complete on it as well (it’s nice that I can review pretty much anywhere when I have downtime, without having to be in front of a computer!). The biggest benefit to having an iPhone interface is that I’m more likely to follow through and use the system the more contstant and “anywhere” my access to it is. I don’t want to rely on something that goes away when I’m not at my computer; that’s when I need to be reminded what I need to do the most! Especially as I’m running around the building away from my office. Between Appigo Todo and the Slim webapp, I get what I need to out of the iPhone side of Toodledo access, but it’s not perfect. I am looking forward to the Appigo Todo updates that will add Contexts especially (and subtasks!), and Toodledo developers themselves have mentioned in their forums that they are looking at iPhone native apps themselves but have not released any details about when to expect anything concrete to materialize.

Other Ways to do Toodle

Some other ways that Toodledo provides to interface with their system are email, Twitter, and Jott. I have enough ways to add and view tasks on the go that I don’t think the Twitter integration will be very useful to me despite my extensive use of Twitter. Jott is an excellent service that I’ve used for a long time off and on, but recently they switched to a paid model and left beta status. Basic Jotting is still free but connecting to productivity services like Toodledo requires a paid monthly subscription now. If I get desperate enough to need quick voice-to-todo translation I’ll contemplate a subscription; until then I may use the iPhone Jott app to capture quick items that I can manually enter as a Toodledo task later. Email is one piece that I haven’t really gotten into the swing of using but should be pretty powerful, because you can forward an email to your secret Toodledo email address, changing the subject to the actual todo text (add exclaimation points to bump up the priority, and @context to set a context) and the body of the email becomes the task’s note. This should make creating tasks from emails quick and painless, but like I said I just haven’t started using it heavily yet, even though I need to. The same command-shorthand works to create new tasks via Twitter using a Direct Message, by the way.

There are several other ways to get information out of Toodledo, including iCal subscriptions, Vista and Apple dashboard or sidebar widgets, a Firefox extension and sidebar (the sidebar uses the same Slim interface as the iPhone), and there’s a third-party Outlook Synchronization Tool that does just what it sounds like, using the Toodledo API. I tried this (it does work!) since I use Outlook but the lack of contexts turned me off and I’ve tried and failed to use the Outlook Tasks feature for tracking todo items, so I’m not sure why I wanted to try again :-) You can display your tasks in your Google Calendar in at least two ways (as a drop down item each day to see tasks due that day, or as actual calendar items if you’ve set a due time as well), and you can get text-message or email alerts about an hour before a task with the due time field set is due (for now, you can’t configure how early to remind you, and if on, all tasks with a due time will remind you up to the maximum number of reminders you want per day).

Conclusion

Is Toodledo what I’m going to use long-term? Well, I’ve spent about $25 on Toodledo Pro for a year, and the Appigo Todo and Notebook iPhone Apps. I’ve been using the system for about a month I think, successfully, and with money invested I (hope) I’m nore likely to stick with it longer. Only time will tell! It’s full-featured yet flexible, but it doesn’t quite provide the collaborative project management that I’m also looking for, which may end up being another tool to juggle when I find the right one, rather than replacing Toodledo. Sometimes you just need a nice, smart, flexible list to give your mind some sanity by offloading the “stuff” to the system.

That’s the premise of GTD, and Toodleso is my favorite implementation so far. I just have to be careful to avoid something I recall reading on Merlin Mann’s 43folders blog a while ago (I’m not sure what article) that mentioned it was too easy to spend more time looking at, examining, and setting up a system that you more busy with that than actually using it! I agree, that is easy to slip into sometimes! I guess I’ll just have to stop and use this for while!

It looks to me like the issue is the prongs break off in a power outlet sometimes. I move my adapter daily (until I get a second one so I can keep one at work and one at home) and haven’t had any issues. I’m not going to stop using it as they recommend, but I will be on the lookout for any problems and if it does break off, I’ll make sure to notice and take action to prevent any injuries or issues. If you can’t manage to do that safely, sure, stop using it and charge via USB all the time :-) Don’t blame me though, officially I’m telling you to stop using the adapters now and wait until October 10th to get a new one. Go ahead, I’m sure you’ll always be close to a USB outlet to charge your phone a few times a day!

Thanks to whoever I follow on Twitter who brought this to my attention; I’m not entirely sure at this point who it was. If you haven’t seen it here, you probably live under the tech news rock that I do much of the time (tech news can suck me in, so I often stay away for lengthy periods of time!).

I’m using the free WordPress app to compose this post on the iPhone and it seems to be pretty solid so far but it needs some more features like page editing capabilities and not just posts. In time. For now it is good!

AT&T iPhone Status: Shipped!

Yesterday, my iPhone shipped to the AT&T store where I’m going to pick it up. It ships overnight FedEx, which I’m very happy about, because it means I can go in the store and pick it up today! I’ll be going after work this evening. The FedEx tracking number shows that it was delivered at 10:17am to the store, and I’ve confirmed that the phone will be available for pickup later this afternoon!

In order to not bore you with posts about iPhone apps that I find, I’m going to post most iPhone-related stuff over on my personal blog (which I’ve recently redone so there’s not much there), ExistDifferently. I’ll probably make a post or page here with a table of contents that I’ll keep updated as I write stuff, or I’ll pull in the posts in the sidebar. If you really want to hear about a ton of iPhone stuff here, let me know…but it’s going to be more for me than anything, since there’s already a ton of info out there if you want it!

So, I’m contemplating those new iPhones. Strongly considering getting one, but I have a few questions. Although the price came way down (now $199 for the 8GB version, and $299 for the 16GB version), the data cost goes up for the 3G service. Original iPhone data plans were $20/mo, but 3G service appears to be tiered at $30/mo for personal accounts and $45/mo for “enterprise” accounts. However, I have been unable to find any good definitions of the difference between the two accounts, other than who is paying for them. In the #citrt channel, Chris Green said yesterday that based on his research, ActiveSync was probably going to be avialable only on the $45/mo corporate plan. I can’t find any details other than price on the Apple or AT&T websites, but I’ve found one or two rumors of a similar setup with some Google searching, but those were some random posts on some forums.

While on the AT&T website, a customer service order chat popped up, and I took the opportunity to ask AT&T directly. They were less than clear, and I’m not sure I believe them, but here’s the conversation:

Michael: Welcome to AT&T online Sales support.  How may I assist you with placing your order today?
David: Actually I have a question. What is the difference between the personal and Enterprise data plans for the new 3G iPhones?
David: Other than $15/month?
Michael: I am sorry, but we do not have the information on the new iphones at this time
Michael: We will have that on July 11th.
David: You have enough information to say there’s a corporate plan for $45 and a 3G personal plan for $30. Why can’t you just define those terms?
Michael: One is business and one is personal
David: Yes but if I have a personal phone, will the Exchange ActiveSync feature work with an Exchange server?
Michael: Yes, but is will not be secure
David: That can’t be true, my ActiveSync account only allows for encryped SSL connections.
Michael: Ok, then you would not be able to use the $30.00 plan you will need the $45.00

Other than an uncanny ability to state the obvious (“One is business and one is personal“), Michael says quite plainly that ActiveSync will be possible but “insecure” for Personal accounts. This would have to be done in the ActiveSync client software on the iPhone, because I’m sure the iPhone allows SSL-encrypted web browsing on any data plan, and since ActiveSync is essentially encrypted SSL traffic, AT&T would be hard pressed (in my opinion, which I’m willing to have corrected) to sniff/block the traffic at the network level. I think they’d have to “remove the Use SSL” checkbox from the ActiveSync config on the iPhone itself based on account type. Or are they talking about the ability to remotely wipe the system only on the Enterprise plan?  I have no idea. But I don’t like the idea that only businesses get encryption; ActiveSync over HTTP is not a good solution for anyone, and it’s certainly not worth a $15/mo premium for essentially the same service.

I suppose only time will tell, unless one of my readers has better or more information than I’ve been able to find. If so, do share!

If a laptop user establishes a VPN connection to your corporate VPN server, and doesn’t use split tunneling (in other words, from the time they’re connected, all traffic goes through the VPN as its default gateway no matter what), assuming that you’re using a VPN client that verifies the identity of the server (rather than blindly trusting DNS, which is easily spoofable on a wireless network), the user moves from the realm of insecurity into a much more secure environment, similar to being plugged into your wired network at the office. Of course, then your office WAN connection has to support everything they do, including web browsing!

However, using a free or paid “VPN” service from a company that just turns your wireless connection into a VPN-enabled “wired” connection is only going to help thwart unencrypted wifi sniffing and other such attacks. Unless you also use SSL and other encryption technologies, those services are just giving you a wired internet connection just like your home connection rather than the easier-to-sniff unencrypted wireless. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not like an encrypted pipe into your own network.

Don’t discount unencrypted wireless attacks. It’s never happened to me, but if you hop over and read some of Security Monkey’s case files at you’ll discover that there’s a lot of bad stuff going on in the world on computers :-) Those case files are slightly modified true stories from this guy’s career! His old 2005-2007 podcast episodes are worth listening to for some cool security tips and tools as well, to digress for a moment!

I don’t have a good answer; VPN connections to the office make internet run very slowly unless you have the WAN bandwidth to support fast throughput to and from all your remote users including web browsing! But that’s a much more secure way to operate. The number of ways wireless can be hijacked, sniffed, spoofed, and hacked, especially if it’s unencrypted to begin with, is downright scary! At the very least use SSL with verified certificates for anything you do of any importance (or if passwords are transmitted) on an encrypted wireless connection. As an IT guy, I can tell you (or myself) whether a particular session (POP3, IMAP, RPC over HTTP, HTTPS, etc.) is happening over an encrypted connection or not and can be careful. However, the average user is, obviously, not going to know or even care necessarily if Outlook is using POP3 unencrypted or via SSL, or using RPC over HTTPS securely. And if they log into Gmail, they’re not likely to know that although their password is always encrypted on login, their email is transmitted in the clear unless they initiate the session using SSL from the start (using https://mail.google.com/ rather than http://mail.google.com)./ Even if their email contains passwords and confirmations for other accounts!

Stuart mentioned WiTopia on his comment to Tony’s original post. I’d never heard of them before, but I’ve seen similar services to their personalVPN product. That service appears to be, like I mentioned above, just a way to get a “wired quality” connection to the internet over unsecured wireless. An admirable service and a worthy goal even with its limitations, but what caught my eye even more was their SecureMyWifi service. It’s still a wireless service but it has to do with your own on-campus wireless access. It lets you move away from using WPA with a Pre-Shared Key (PSK), also known as WPA-Personal, and use their RADIUS services to authenticate users individually to your encrypted wireless access points. It seems a bit pricey (to me–it’s currently a $99 setup fee, $99/year for one access point, and $14.95/year for each additional access point), but we have the same thing set up using Microsoft’s free (built-in on Windows Server 2003) IAS RADIUS server in-house. If you aren’t familiar with how to set it all up, the WiTopia service could be quite beneficial! They charge per access point, but at Lakeview we have a centrally-managed access points system with one controller that takes care of authentication. I assume that the WiTopia service is based on unique RADIUS keys for each access point client; since the central controller (currently running 12 access points) acts as a single client, it should look like “one” access point to the service. Whether or not this is allowed with their terms of service I have no idea; we are not likely going to use the service since I already do this in-house for free, but I would recommend reading the terms and/or contacting them if you plan on doing something similar to remain in the spirit of their offering.

One tip I did manage to track down (found this item on the pssh users archived mailing list) was that I could type a Tab character by typing Shift+Space (extensively useful for auto-completion in the bash shell on a full-sized keyboard, but even more so on a thumb board!). There’s a menu option to type a Tab as well, but that does kind of defeat some of the shortcut-ness I was looking for.

pssh does warn that it doesn’t use the best random number generator out there for encryption. I’m all for extra security, but for the few times I will use this I think a targeted attack that manages to crack my SSH tunnel is unlikely, and there are probably weaker links in our webhost-connection security than Secure Shell.

UPDATE: Chris Green linked to more details about the iPhone and ActiveSync straight from Microsoft. Microsoft’s Terry Myerson, VP of for Exchange, said, “We started talking with Apple about licensing Exchange ActiveSync before the launch of the iPhone last year. In fact, I met with Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller almost daily for a period of two weeks ironing out the details of the agreement. The result is a true collaboration between Microsoft and Apple.”

UPDATE at 3:15 pm: Apple has an Enterprise website for the iPhone including a beta signup to test the iPhone with ActiveSync using the iPhone 2.0 software! (hat tip to Jason Lee in the #citrt chat.)

Google also jumped on the synchronization bandwagon with its own Google Calendar Sync utility to keep your Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendar up to date (two-way or one-way). It’s not ActiveSync and it doesn’t sync with Exchange, but I can see a use for this even for personal use where friends have Google Apps set up and want to sync with their phones, but their phones will only sync with Outlook. Another, over-the-air option I’ve heard about is GooSync, but I don’t have any experience with that yet. It sounds good but I’ve heard mixed opinions. Thanks to Scott, also in the #citrt chat room, for this piece of news!

And don’t forget about the Church IT Podcast episode recording in just a few minutes this afternoon! (It’s at 2 pm Easter via TalkShoe on Thursday the 6^th, so if you’re reading this later–it may be over for this week, come back in two weeks!)

As you can imagine, the N800 didn’t get much of a workout at work and wasn’t a top priority at home, either. I even forgot the charger when I left work sick on Tuesday, and was left with a dead battery at home all day Wednesday!

I’ve still managed to give the device a pretty good workout, and it’s a very nice little system that has already been handy to have in my pocket on more than one occasion. The main limitation has been that the system is slow when loading large or complex websites, although it will still handle most of them. The onscreen keyboards (for stylus and thumbs) are much poorer than the thumbboard on my Treo 650, where I can almost touch-type at high speed, but the bluetooth keyboard is a huge improvement (over even the Treo usually) when I turn it on.

The HelpSpot helpdesk software runs a touch slow (pun unintentional but fully intended, I’m sure :-) but otherwise is almost completely normal in the Gecko-based web browser. The response field is not as wide as it could be (there are gray bars on the sides where it could expand but doesn’t), but it’s functional. All AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) appears to work properly. Gmail is also slow but usable. WordPress, at least my heavily-plugin-customized version, runs well except when composing a post, when the text editor is slower than molasses. in January. Switching to the WPhone mobile version is much faster and even easier to navigate on the smaller screen. Supposedly, WPhone is optimized to provide an even better interface on the iPhone than on other mobile devices that support AJAX, but this doesn’t carry over to the N800, although I am assuming the browser is more than capable. It’s probably an auto-detection thing.

There is a Nokia N800 WordPress editor called Maemo WordPy which was a bit difficult to figure out initially due to a poor user interface and one or two limitations that should be fixed in future versions. It will do some cool things (in the latest beta) like upload images directly to Flickr and insert that into a post! However, I am using the web-based WPPhone for this post as I mentioned. Copying and pasting links is not the best experience on this thing, so I am going to cheat and do some hotlinking from my full-sized computer before posting :-) (And a bit of proofreading and editing, it turns out!)

Is it perfect? No. Nothing is perfect when you are looking for a 22″ widescreen monitor on a quad-core desktop that all fits in your pocket! But it makes some good compromises and performs well for what I want it to do, at a (very) reasonable price. (Amazon had it for $231 when I bought mine off of eBay for a bit more with an SDHC memory card and Bluetooth keyboard that Amazon also had for $50.)

I have contemplated the HTC Shift in the past. It does not appear to be released in the US yet, however, and the price when it is will likely be $1200 to $1500. That’s not bad for a 7″ screen UMPC running Windows Vista (and Windows Mobile!), but I’m ready to compromise: The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. It used to cost between $400 and $500, but Amazon.com carries it for about $230 right now because its big brother just came out, the N810. What do you get for the N810’s $440 that you don’t get for the N800’s $230? A slide-out thumb keyboard, an 8% smaller unit, and a built-in GPS receiver (that costs more to get full use out of).

But first things first…why get one of these things anyway? Well, I do have a laptop, a nice 12.1″ Core 2 Duo Lenovo 3000 V100 that I like very much. It’s small enough and light enough to carry from home to work and just about anywhere else, when it’s packed up. It’s my main PC at home; the desktop rarely gets used! However, my office is in a central-yet-distant location from nearly everyone else in the building at Lakeview, and since the middle of 2007 I’ve been using HelpSpot to track helpdesk requests. It is easy to work within HelpSpot when I’m at my computer, but I often must trek to the office of an individual user to help them with a problem (yes, remote control is an option sometimes, but hardware problems are another story and many times, demonstrating something to the user in person is much more powerful for training purposes). When I do this, I often get sidetracked by others needing assistance and, like today, may end up working on 4-6 different issues before I’m back at my own computer! By that time, I probably won’t remember half of the actual problems I worked on, much less all the details it would be useful to log for future reference.

My laptop is simply too heavy and bulky, even as small as it is, to carry around everywhere, especially if I’m carrying hardware as well. My Treo 650, on the other hand, never leaves my pocket unless I’m using it. However, while there is a mobile version of HelpSpot that is usable, I must log in repeatedly from my phone to use it, and the small keyboard and screen are not conducive to typing extensive notes. Enter the N800. It’s not a cell phone, but here are a few highlights that it does have:

• WiFi access (with a better radio than most laptops from several reports)
• Bluetooth
• 4″ touchscreen
• Gecko-based web browser supports nearly all sites that Firefox supports on the desktop (including JavaScript/AJAX) and has Flash 9 support
• Built-in video camera along with Skype and Gizmo video chat ability
• Google Talk (my favorite) and other IM services
• IMAP, POP3 and web-based email
• Multimedia playback in multiple formats
• Expandable memory using up to two SD cards
• On-screen keyboard with expandability using a Bluetooth keyboard for a real, touch-typing keyboard
• Linux-based system using the Maemo platform for free add-on software

There’s more, which I know after reading nearly ever review ever written about it, but that’s the gist. Mine is coming from eBay with an iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard (it’s only $50 from Amazon right now) and an 8GB SCHC memory card for less than it would all cost from Amazon brand new. I am very, very excited to get my hands on this thing! It will let me do a lot, but it should also solve my helpdesk logging problem: I’ll carry my N800 and keyboard with me, using it to log helpdesk requests as I work on them, giving me more detailed and time-accurate logs. Everything else it can do? Really, really tasty icing on the tiny tablet cake! And the N810? I want touch-typing, so the keyboard on that is just a nicety (especially with the touch-typable Stowaway coming with the N800 for me). The smaller size would be nice, but it’s not that much smaller, and the screen is the same size (both 800×480 resolution). The GPS would be nice but I’ve read reports that it’s slow, and to get actual directions on it costs an additional $130 to $200 or something. All three come nowhere near being worth twice the price! And the N810 only supports miniSD and microSD cards, rather than standard SD. The standard cards are bigger and cheaper.

The Nokia Internet Tablets are getting popular, too. Over at Amazon.com they were in the top three hot sellers over Christmas in the PC category! You can be sure of seeing some N800 posts coming up right here, and count on them coming right from the N800 itself!