Build your own portable PIM with Open Contacts and other portable programs
The following content has become obsolete, please refer to
Web and Life: Build Secured and Portable PIM
A PIM program (Personal Information Manager) consists of address book, calendar, to-do list and Email client. You may used some integrated solutions like MS Outlook or Lotus, or a distributed one like those described below.
If you need to move around, you might be ever thinking of portable solutions. PDA/Pocket PC, laptop computers, or portable devices (memory stick, USB memory flash drives, iPod, smart phones etc.) can all be good candidates.
Some people may want to use a portable device to carry their personal data as well as application programs, then plug the device to a computer they can use. Eventually they don't need to worry about data synchronization. And after unplugging, none of the personal data is left behind.
Open Contacts
Contact management. The program was designed to be portable.
Email client. Keep all settings and Email data in the portable device. When selecting Email launcher as default Emailer of Open Contacts, Open Contacts can pass email addresses to Thunderbird. Open Contacts will talk to Thunderbird installed on the host machine, or current running instance. To to make sure Open Contacts talk to Portable Thunderbird, run Portable Thunderbird first.
Calendar and tasks manager. Take your calendar and tasks with you.
Web browser. Maintain all bookmarks, history, extensions and plug-ins in the device.
You may want to further secure private data on you USB memory flash disk by using Truecrypt, and we have developed a set of scripts that can simulate the features of U3 drives.