For the last 6 years or so I've been hosting my own IMAP mail server and this evolved from just running an IMAP server on Linux to having a the full Zimbra collaboration suite in the end. Of course it is fun to do this, you learn a bit. However, it does take time and resources to do it properly and the guys at Google can all do that for you: Google Apps. You can use Google Apps for free for your familily and get Email, Calendar and much more functionality. And what's best: you don't have to do any maintenance, simple use it. One point to take note of, you do need a domainname, but who does not own a domainname nowedays?

Of course there was the migration question... there was close to 10G of mail stored in my server (split over multiple accounts) and we did not want to loose that. How to get this into GMail? Several blogs posts suggest to simple use your desktop mail client (Mail.app on OS X, or Thunderbird) and then simple copy the mail (folders) from one IMAP account to the other. Sure works, but when I tried the copy process stopped several times due to a time-out... and then it was not clear what was copied and what was not copied yet. Time for a more robust and scriptable solution, enter imapsync. Imapsysc is a Perl script that can keep two IMAP accounts in-sync. It can be run multiple times and then will only copy the messages not available on the target server yet. So that also makes it perfects to do a phase by phase migration (first copy all existing mail and then just before you switch over to the new IMAP server, do a last - quick - run to copy the few remaining messages.

I've been using Google Apps for ~2 weeks now, am I happy with it? Definitely, here a couple of reasons:

• the web ui for mail is great and I'm more productive processing tons of mail. After setting up some filters it is much easier to quickly archive mail and by assigning colors to filters I can quickly spot the important new mails. And of course, searching is a breeze... I have hardly used my regular mail client (Mail.app on OS X) since I switched.
• Using SpanningSyncI can perfectly sync my Google Calendar with iCal on multiple Macs and keep them in sync with my iPhone. With Zimbra I also managed to sync them (see earlier post) but one big drawback was that the calendars hosted on Zimbra were read-only on iPhone... not very convenient when you have to move an appointment.
• We can easily share calendars within the familily
• I have to worry less about making backups (although to be honest, I do consider to set up something... better safe than sorry)
• You can manage multiple mail accounts from 1 Google Mail account (but... see wishes below).

Wishes:

• When using Google Mail to send mail from another account it includes a header saying "gero@googleapps.com On Behalf of gero@othermaildomain.com" (where googleapps.com would be the primary domain on Google Apps that you registered and gero@othermaildomain.com some other mail account). The annoying thing is that some mail clients (Outlook of course, who else...), show this header to the user. According to Google they do it this way to prevent mail from being tagged as spam. And although there is definitely truth in that I would like ot have a setting to enable/disable this behaviour. Escpecially when managing multiple domains on Google Apps it should be possible to get rid of this message. The problem is that Google tags one of you domainnames as primary and the when sending mail from another domainname (that is hosted on the same Google Apps mail account) it also includes the "On Behalf of" header.
• Todo list support in Calendar would be nice.
• I still need to using my regular Google account for services like Google Reader, iGoogle, etc. The list of services for which you can use your Google Apps account is less than the list of available services to regular Google accounts.

iPhone firmware 2.0 has been out for a while (2.0.2 already) now. A while back I posted my favorite 1.0 firmware apps and now seems to be a good time to compare that favorites list with my 2.0 firmware favorites. Back in the 1.0 days all apps were jailbreak apps, but now it's a mix of jailbreak apps and 'official' apps from the Apple AppStore. All jailbreak apps are installed using Cydia (see iphone-dev team). Looking at the list you can see that most apps are from the AppStore, so the iPhone SDK makes it possible to create usefull apps.

1. IntelliScreen (Cydia, commercial): Provides an overview of your upcoming appointments, sms-es, mails, etc on the "Slide to unlock" screen. Hands down my favorite app, having 1 click access to this overview is really convenient.
2. EasyTask (AppStore, free): Manage your ToDo's and sync them with the EasyTask (and iCal) application on the Mac. The iPhone application is free, but the Mac apps is commercial (~$20). It's not the perfect app, but does the job. OmniFocus is an alternative, but both the iPhone and Mac app are commercial and you'll have to pay a bit more for that combination. By the way, why on earth doesn't Apple support this out of the box???
3. Twinkle: (AppStore, free): Was already my favorite Twitter app in the 1.0 days and is now available through the AppStore. What I like about it is that you can see tweets of people in your area.
4. WifiToggle (Cydia, free): Toggle Wifi connection on/off with one click.
5. Dock (Cydia, free): An alternative way to navigate through all the apps installed and quickly start them. Especially easy if you have many apps installed and get tired of swiping through all springboard pages and reorganizing the apps on the pages. It does require some practice...
6. NetNewsWire (AppStore, free): Nice RSS feed reader that syncs with NewsGator and NetNewsWire apps on Mac.
7. Palringo (AppStore, free): Chat application that supports many protocols (AIM, Jabber, MSN, ....). Works really nice.
8. Wikipanion (AppStore, free): Quick access to Wikipedia, easier than using the Safari browser.
9. Remote (AppStore, free): Control iTunes on the Mac with you iPhone. Great fun!
10. BuienRadar.nl (AppStore, free): Want to know where the rain is and if it's coming your way. This app shows you (only interesting for The Netherlands though). Used it during our lats holiday to find out that the only rainclouds in The Netherlands were right above us :-(
11. Teletekst (AppStore, free): Access Dutch Teletekst in a convenient way.
12. MobileTerminal (Cydia, free): Terminal apps that I typically use to log into my server @ home if I need to restart something (and there's no other way to log in). Don't use it often, but it did save me a couple of times.

And then there is a bunch of funny apps that do not really add that much value on top of the above ones, but it just fun to show off:

• Twittervision (AppStore, free): Shows Twitter Tweets on worlmap as the occur in realtime. (and acts as a Twitter client.)
• Labyrinth (AppStore, free): Move the ball through the labyrinth with dropping it in the holes (uses the accelorometer of course)
• PhoneSaber (AppStore, free): Turns your iPhone into a light sabor... well sort off. It was pulled from the AppStore.

I currently own a KiSS DP-558 and although I'm quite impressed with the features included I'm not so happy with the overall stability and quality of the device. I've got it for less then 3 years and did have several defects and recordings often fail. Recently it also started mixing random colors while playing back a recording. About time to replace it.... preferable with something that has similar functionality, which is:

• Record TV (also while watching another channel. I'm adding this remark because when using putting a recording device behind a single tuner SettopBox you only get one channel out of the settopbox which you can then watch and record and I want to be able to watch 1 channel and record another)
• Stream music from Mac Mini over network connection
• Stream movies from Mac Mini (many formats) over network connection
• Stream photos from Mac Mini over network connction
• EPG with option to select programs for recording and also to specify which programs show always be recorded
• Play DVDs and CDs

(For streaming from the Mac Mini I'm using the KiSS MacLink software)

On top of the above requirements I'd like to switch from analogue TV to digital. I checked if may cable provider (Ziggo) has a settopbox that would match all above requirements, but unfortunately not...

After some googling it appeared to be not so easy to find a similar device... The TiVo2 boxes in the US look really interesting, but TiVo2

• is only available in US in NTSC format (need PAL in The Netherlands)
• require a service subscription (which I would seriously consider to subscribe to if it was available in NL), luckily the Dutch TiVo community has a way to get it to work in NL, but only for TiVo1 boxes. But t looks as if TiVo1 boxes can't stream media from a computer.

Another option would be a Dreambox, but the lack of documentation makes me wonder what functionality is really included out of the box. Looks like it needs some additional work to be able to stream media from a computer.

Apple TV is also an options, but that would only cover the streaming requirements and not the recording and DVD/CD playing...

And lastly I could build a mini PC myself that has all I need, but I'd prefer an out the box (or boxes) solution that does not require me to hack something together and support it for the rest of the family. Ease of use is also a requirement...

In summary... looks like this is going to take at least 2 devices to realize the same functionality now provided by the KiSS DP-558

• twin tuner settopbox/PVR
• device for the streaming from computer and playback of DVD/CDs

But which ones??? Any suggestions or recommendations? 

[English below]

Voor het grootste gedeelte lekker asfalt en mooie rechte stukken. Het viaduct van Harmelen richting Montfoort over de A12 kun je lekker op volle snelheid afdalen: mooi glad en geen kruizingen onderaan. Verderop richting Montfoort zit wel een stukje met slecht asfalt, het fietspad is wel redelijk glad, maar te smal om je te skeeleren. Langs de provenciale weg van Montfoort naar Woerden is het weer heerlijk skeeleren. De route kan gecombineerd worden met de routes die langs Oudewater gaan.

Mostly well paved and long straight roads. The descend off the viaduct from Harmelen to Montfoort can be done at full speed. Well paved cyclepath and no crossings at the bottom. Close to Montfoort there is a section with bad roads, the cyclepath on the side is OK but unfortunately too small to strech out. This route can be combined with the routes that pass through Oudewater.