Well, and I permit buffistas.org's cookie explicitly, but I still clear it every night. That's all I'm saying, is it's a cross-site cookie, so if you are trying to avoid google for that reason, this won't solve it.

And you don't have to use the toolbar. You can use the search site just on its own.

Liese, how do you balance an Android phone with eschewing Google?

It's an issue. One that I didn't know I was getting into when I bought the phone. So far I have solved it by registering a second gmail account, and associating that one, rather than my phone one, with my g-related stuff.

However, I feel I am on the brink right now, and that I will either tip to one side and eschew it entirely except for the required account for the phone, or I will tip to the other and succumb to the inevitable and use it for everything.

Like right now, Astrid is associated with my kprinkle gmail account. So I have to decide if I want to strip that off or not.

It's tempting to just use it for everything, but I don't know.

t facepalm

Duckduckgo, not Go Dog Go! Right.

I have given up, a lot, on most corporate issues (that Amazon thing still sticks). I do have 6+ google accounts, so I'm not really all that worried about privacy issues there. Google knows some of them belong to the same person, but not all.

So far the balance between optimising my life and their "moral" (because I don't believe any company over a certain size has anything of the sort) stance tips well in favour of me using their products. I feel comfortable taking part of the places where tracking me is useful to me, and breaking the links where it's not.

I still clear it every night

Why?

The negatives are: it uses cookies, so if you're leaving Google for privacy reasons, this might not be an acceptable solution.

Sort of. I never set up a profile, but I've been thinking about moving my blog for awhile and I've never really liked Reader. Plus, Blogger is the only non-personal entity associated with my gmail acct and that has always bugged me. And, I figure at some point they will actually force me to set up a profile.

My calendar needs are pretty basic, I could just go back to Yahoo, which is my email for everything that's not personal. I need an actual calendar less than the reminder emails that come with. Of course, I could also do something radical and figure out how to use the calendar on my phone.

megan,

the other thing you might want (if reminders are your thing) is followupthen.com

that service is a LIFE saver for me. I paid premium after using it for 2 weeks.

LeN, what does that do that Google or Yahoo appoint reminders don't?

By the way, since I never hesitate to criticize MS for stuff they do wrong, let me praise them for something they got right in outlook that most calendars either don't consider or consider as an afterthought - use as an appointment books.

There are lots of professions and trades that need to schedule hour by hour, even minute by minute, not just occasional meetings and events: medical professionals, plumbers, real estate agents and so on. Outlook made it part of their core functionality, including not only settings that let you protect against double entry, but ability to do heads on data entry. A decent data entry interface for a calender is needed when you are entering two dozen or so appointments per provider per day for 20 providers. At that point, too many extra key strokes per appointment moves from PITA actual productivity sink. Outlook does well on this, and since most calendars don't Microsoft deserves full credit.

ita,

fut will allow me to send an email for a particular time and/or date and then I can forget about it until such that time the email comes back and reminds me to do whatever. sure, google/yahoo have reminders, but I don't necessarily need reminders for events, I need reminders of: you sent someone an email and it has been 2 weeks, check back. I need to write a letter of reference for someone, what is the information for it.

the premium version allows for attachments.

Interesting, LeN. I make zero duration appointments for those, with a reminder email, if the alert from the task app isn't enough. Astrid has a function to put a task on your calendar that helps accomplish that.

I do wish Astrid allowed for attachments, though. I sent them an email doublechecking that, and I don't remember hearing back. It's my biggest want for the app, which, if it would synchronise a bit more predictably (50% of my updates are from the phone, 50% from the tablet) would be pretty close to all I ask for in a to do list app.

I just have to start meeting deadlines. However annoying any app gets, there's only so far they can go. Perhaps a Shocknife integration?

I can't work out how to, in the current version of Outlook, to convert an email into a task or an appointment. I can set a flag and a reminder on an email, but I want a proper task sometimes. And I'd love if I could set up a rule that acts on incoming emails and turns some of them into a task automatically. That would rock. No one in my office sends tasks but me. I'm trying to lean harder on that for organisation there too.

it does not work for me to have anything in my calendar that is not an appointment. I tried that strategy once and after 48 hours I nearly screamed in frustration. I much prefer having a calendar and then a separate list of todos. It isn't particularly efficient, but my brain likes it better.