LinuxTag is looking for projects to participate in this year’s exhibition. The Call for Projects contains everything that project members need to know about the conditions. Sharpen your pen and send us a substantive description of your project! Despite the deadline ends March 24, 2010, we operate on a first come first serve base - don’t loose time! Read everything about the application process in the Call for Projects.

Thank you Elke for giving LinuxTag back its familial feeling. Without you counting crusty rolls, slices of cheese and sausage, and even grams of butter LinuxTag would not be able to serve such a delicious lunch since two years. Furthermore I would express my thankfulness to all volunteers making not only the Brötchen-Marathon but every year’s LinuxTag such a successful event.

Read more about the project’s lunch at O’Reilly (German only).

The official announcement is available in German from our Wiki. Basically we urge everyone interested in our event to take this chance to get in touch with us and discuss one’s ideas how the event should improve or how one would like to contribute to it. So if you have an idea, want to join our team or just have some good words, please get in touch: reboot@linuxtag.org.

PS. I myself have not made a decision how I will participate in the upcoming LinuxTag next summer. Due to a lot of discrepancies in the last three year’s work with our actual partner, I will most likely play a role behind the scenes and work on the conference program.

The thesis has been submitted April 17th and I am now awaiting the reviewers to grade it. As soon as I get my mark,  I will publish it including the source code.

Moving from two places - Nuremberg and Spiesen-Elversberg - to abroad has been quite stressful. Therefore I had to reduce my involvement in several projects and I expect to be able to join these activities not before July. I will post first impressions from Oxford soon.

In case you would like to stay in touch: my german landline number should work fine, otherwise send me a few lines and I provide you my new contact details.

Income from the participation of profit-oriented companies allows LinuxTag to finance a professional platform where open projects can present the broad diversity of free software to the public. LinuxTag is looking for projects to participate in this year’s exhibition. The Call for Projects contains everything that project members need to know about the conditions. To participate, send a substantive description of your project by March 24, 2009.

As expected set-up is quick and easy, even directly from the iPhone, and it works even though the beta state rather. As long as your contacts do not have more than one mobile number. But there is at least one new problem to solve: how to get Apple Adressbook sync again with Gmail?

Since Mac OSX 10.5.3 there is a new feature that enables Apple Address Book sync with Gmail by using the Google Data APIs Objective-C Client Library - not only for iPhone and iPod touch owners. It works very well, although not all fields are synced correctly. Maybe this is the niche commercial solutions like Spanning Sync.

However to re-enable the “Sync Now” function, i found a two command solution at Google mobile help. By default, the sync client for Google is an “app client”, which means it requires some other address book to run (MobileMe, Yahoo, Exchange or an iPod contact sync) to run. To enable Google sync client to operate as a full sync client, you have to change the client type from “app” to “server”. This will enable the “Sync now” button and will make sure Google sync is run every time a sync is run.

To change the Google sync client type, open a terminal window and type (one line)
sudo defaults write /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Resources/ClientDescription Type 'server'

Then type the following one line command to restore the permissions on the plist file:
sudo chmod 644 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Resources/ClientDescription.plist

You can now go in Address Book’s preferences and enable Google contacts sync, without needing to enable Yahoo sync or plug an iPod for sync to work. Optionally go into iSync > Preferences and add the iSync menu to your menu bar. This let’s you see when it is syncing, and sync it manually.

Of course you can also initiate the synchronisation using the command line. Use this to run it periodically using launchd or cron:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/GoogleContactSync.framework/Versions/A/Resources/gconsync --sync gconclid --register 1 --username user@gmail.com --password PASSWORD --syncmode fast

Wonder why this is a so mac centric post? On my Linux workstations I am using Sunbird in combination with the Provider for Google Calendar plugin and the Google contacts extension for Thunderbird since ages without having any trouble. But getting the the Apple stuff to work right with Google took me quite some time. Kudos to Michael Shick!

Find more stunning designs at designboom.com.