exchange

Hacking Android/Cyanogen Email in KitKat and Lollipop
[17:51:38] matt [wronka.org]/Psi.cor Work switched from Zimbra to MicroSoft Exchange some time back, and I've stopped synchronizing my calendar with my Nexus 4 since then (instead using my Handspring Visor Edge). The reason was straight forward: the MicroSoft server wanted the ability to wipe my entire device.

This seemed like overreach, and after talking with people in IT, it wasn't intentional, it was just the default. The changes in the AOSP code are pretty straightforward to disable this. I've posted diffs for both KitKat and Lollipop: http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/android/cyanogenmod/

The KitKat changes also include some clean-up of CM code I didn't find useful (CMUpdater, CMAccounts), these aren't in CM12 yet. If you'd rather cherry-pick the changes for CM11 or AOSP 4.4 there are two AOSP applications to patch: http://matt.wronka.org/stuff/projects/icpp/android/aosp/4.4/

It looks like a lot of refactoring went into the Exchange services in 5.0, the patchset is smaller, but there's a new issue as reported to horde: https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/13702
I can confirm that this is an issue with Android 5.0—the effect is that the device appears to sync, but when it is about to complete it removes all data it received. I have not looked into fixing this yet but appears unrelated to Horde itself.

For now, full builds are at:
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-12-20141204-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-mako.zip (Nexus 4, Android 5.0/CM12/Lollipop)
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-11-20141122-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-mako.zip (Nexus 4, Android 4.4/CM11/KitKat)
http://hume.matt.wronka.org/~matt/tmp/cm-11-20141114-SNAPSHOT-CNJ-crespo.zip (Nexus S, Android 4.4/CM11/KitKat)

HP Touchpad
[16:17:55] matt [wronka.org]/Trip I've finally upgraded my Touchpad to WebOS 3.0.5 (I leanred with the 3.0.4 update to wait at least two weeks for the patches to be updated), and transferred Touchpads to my parents for Christmas.

Previously, I used the Touchpad tablet as a means for carrying a Debian computer around with me (using the Debian chroot). This allowed much greater flexibility, but the XServer didn't have ideal touch-support. It also completely lost the informational-messaging infrastucture built into WebOS.

Shortly before updating to 3.0.5 I started using my tablet more often for work business, synching with Exchange and configuring the mail client. I've also got it synchronizing with my personal schedule, and in general it's very good at those things.

Drawbacks to the standard usage:
a) no encryption. I wouldn't want to go through customs anywhere with my touchpad, especially not the US.
b) no PGP support in the mail client. The "flagged only" option doesn't seem to do what I expected (it's not showing anything; I'd expected it to sum-up all of the starred mailboxes).
c) Exchange synchronizing doesn't work at all unless you say to synchronize eMail. This seems odd, especially since my exchange system doesn't even synchronize eMail, but after telling the Touchpad to do this it works fine.
d) WiFi kept dropping out on an WPA2 network. Telling it to turn-off WiFi when asleep caused it to be smart enough to re-connect.