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Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android

whispersystems.org

21–30 of 32 posts

Re: Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android

#21

I'm trying it out now. Took 5min+ to sync my 180 calendar events and is taking forever (it seems right now) to sync my 1000+ contacts. I will try out for 30 day free trial, but I will only be paying the $5 yearly subscription if they allow distribution on the F-Droid repository since I prefer to not have Google Play on my phone. Open Whisper Systems has been frustratingly adamant about not wanting to distribute TextS…

Right now the initial sync does take an unreasonable amount of time, I definitely agree.

After first sync you will never have to experience a sync operation anywhere near the length of that but it is a bad first experience to have with the app. Very close to the top of my TODO list is "support bulk upload" which will cut the initial import time (and bandwidth) considerably.

Soon we should be able to upload entire address books and calendars in one POST request, working on it :)

Re: Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android

#23
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-Droid thing will certainly will not happen. Moxie, one of the core developers of the WhispherCore products, had a pretty argumentative debate on their forum and his own Github issues regarding their repackging of his software TextSecure. It was subsequently removed, due to his indirect request (he went so far as to say he did not approve, but did not directly instruct them to do so). Despite their workflow and…

Yup. I'm one of those that has to recompile text secure whenever there is an update. I'm hoping once F-Droid implements auto reinstall of updated apps, then moxie will permit builds on F-Droid. Point of correctness: F-Droid does not require root privileges to install, just that user allows "untrusted" sources in android settings. Most F-Droid apps don't require root privileges. Google play on the other hand is full o…

I know that to be the case, I was cribbing something I read from Moxie on the F-Droid Forum where he presented his view of Cyanogen, which was pretty inaccurate.

Re: Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android

#24

Will Flock sync calendars and contacts from multiple accounts, e.g., my personal Google account (gmail.com) and my business account (privatedomainIown.tld)? If yes, I will sign up right away. Next question: What about sync with CRMs, e.g., SugarCRM or 1CRM (or others, that's cool too)? I need two-way contact and calendar sync between my CRM and my Android device, I would pay you more than $5/year for it.

I'm trying it out for 30 days. So far this is what I've found. I'm syncing out of google into flock. My plan is to at some point delete all my contacts and calendars out of google. But we'll see. Yes it does allow syncing multiple accounts. And multiple calendars from the same account as well. Groups are not supported (yet as of v0.51) but hopefully this will change in the future.

Not sure about the answer for your other question.

Re: Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android

#25
post #17

I've had mixed success with CalDAV connectors for Android and a self-hosted server. The apps that I bought didn't support self-made certificates very well, or not at all (certificate pinning would be ideal). The best way was to create a new CA certificate and use that to sign the server cert. But after installing the new CA cert on Android, I got a non-removable notification that my calls and data might be monitored.…

That warning is really irritating, and I get the security concern but the fact that there is no way to silence, minimize, or otherwise hide that notification in any way bothers me.

I don't understand why there is no way of telling it "yes, thank you, I put it there, shut up already, even for a short while!".

Re: Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android

#27
post #9
post #3

1. Do I disable Google Sync services (gmail, cal, and contacts) and replace it with Flock? 2. Is my contact list and cal events empty until I enter a password to unlock them?

1. You can replace your Google sync account with Flock if you choose. You can import data from a Google account into your Flock account without destroying or altering the data in your Google account. 2. The Flock encryption is used for transmitting data to/from the server. On the device, we let the Android permission system take over from there, so you don't have to enter a password in order to see your contact or ca…

I will definitely pay for this, if it works well. Contacts and calendar sync are very important to me, and nothing else does it as well as Google, right now (as far as I know).

Feature request: Please support contact checkpoints. Some app accidentally deleted all my contacts once, and the only thing that saved me was Google's "restore contacts as they were X time ago" feature.

Re: Flock, Private Contact and Calendar Cloud Sync for Android

#29
post #17

I've had mixed success with CalDAV connectors for Android and a self-hosted server. The apps that I bought didn't support self-made certificates very well, or not at all (certificate pinning would be ideal). The best way was to create a new CA certificate and use that to sign the server cert. But after installing the new CA cert on Android, I got a non-removable notification that my calls and data might be monitored.…

That warning is really irritating, and I get the security concern but the fact that there is no way to silence, minimize, or otherwise hide that notification in any way bothers me. I don't understand why there is no way of telling it "yes, thank you, I put it there, shut up already, even for a short while!".

I read somewhere that it's a known bug that is being addressed. I'd like a fix too. My company wifi requires a cert installed and now the warning pops up on a regular basis.
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