Migrating data from Palm TX to Nexus One

I’ve used Palm OS for the past ten years, starting with a stone-age [Handspring Visor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handspring_%28company%29#Handspring_Visor), continuing with an elegant Sony [Clie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLI%C3%89), and ending with a well designed [Palm T|X](http://www.palm.com/us/products/handhelds/tx/). The calendar and the address book kept me organized. The failure of the digitizer in my T|X pushed me to find a replacement. I considered the iPhone and Palm Pre, but chose the [Nexus One](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_One).

Once the Nexus One arrived, my task was to find a way to migrate my calendar, contacts, and passwords.

A coworker recommended [GooSync](https://www.goosync.com), which he used to move from a Palm TX to a Motorola Cliq. From the description of GooSync, it sounded like neither the free version or the paid version would migrate all ten years of calendar entries over to Google calendar.

Google calendar supports import from an [iCalendar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar) file. Palm Desktop doesn’t export into iCalendar format. Jpilot on Linux does, but I found that the format is not compatible with Google’s import. So I synchronized my Palm TX with Evolution on Linux. Evolution’s iCalendar export was compatible with Google’s import.

Palm Desktop didn’t seem to be able to export in a format that Google’s contacts could understand. I used Jpilot on LInux to export each of my categories in [vCard format](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard), and imported them into Google one at a time. This worked well.

On Palm, I had used GNU Keyring to store my passwords. Android has [KeePassDroid](http://www.keepassdroid.com/) (among others). There was no easy migration path between the two. Jpilot on Linux has a plugin to display my GNU Keyring password entries. I installed [KeePassX](http://www.keepassx.org/) on my Linux box, and copied and pasted each password from Jpilot into KeePassX. When I finished, I copied the KeePass database onto the Nexus One.

I like the Nexus One. It’s slim, fast, and capable.

Trust, but verify

In [a comment](http://lwn.net/Articles/375051/) over at LWN.net, a reader pointed out that it’s a good idea to verify not just SSL certificate, but also doctors, mechanics, etc. He says, “it’s simply a requirement of a healthy society that it’s citizens have a healthy skepticism and be willing to put the effort into understanding what is going on around them. It’s not that you don’t trust them. Its that you do what you can, in your limited way, to make sure that you can trust them.”

Working around patent threats

Andrew Tridgell, author of Samba, says the best way to defend against patents in open source software is to 1. learn how to read patents and 2. learn how to rigorously work around patents

* [http://lwn.net/Articles/370615/](http://lwn.net/Articles/370615/)

Open Source: Freedom from Anti-features

It’s good to remember that a benefit of open source software is freedom from anti-features. The wiki (the second link) has examples of anti-features. E.g. I wasn’t aware of the Vista anti-feature where it slows down network connections when it detects any sound playing.

* [http://lwn.net/Articles/370615/](http://lwn.net/Articles/370615/)
* [http://wiki.mako.cc/Antifeatures](http://wiki.mako.cc/Antifeatures)