Neutron :: Bomb

by John Calian |
Topics: Address Book | Blackberry | Calendar | Contact syncing | GMail | iCal | soocial

(Continued from previous posts)

Objective: an automated, elegant way to keep calendars and contacts synced between numerous devices and 'in the cloud' services, for those of us who use multiple devices and operating systems (specifically those of us on Mac/iPhone for personal use; Windows and Blackberry for work, using Exchange).

Devices: Macbook Pro (MBP), iPhone, PC laptop (Windows XP) and Blackberry Pearl (BB).

Software: MobileMe, Google (Gmail), Soocial, Mac iCal, Mac Address Book, Outlook, Exchange

The picture above shows the current set up. You will notice the MobileMe and Google are redundant. I am in the process of cutting off MobileMe and the $99 a year Apple charges me to keep in sync. And one item I dont have pictured is that I sync Address Book with Yahoo Mail, just as another back up option.

At home I have my MBP, at work a Lenovo X60 laptop. Because my company will not open up Exchange server to iPhones, I carry both an iPhone (for calls) and a Blackberry Pearl (for email). Plus, the iPhone really is the device for all other information and gaming.

Calendar: I now have one calendar, and it is totally in sync. I can create/edit/delete calendar events on any of the four devices or from Gmail calendar (I am using Exchange on the PC). Almost perfect syncing, as sometimes (depending on where I start an event) my Gmail user and my Outlook user are invited to the same event, but that is not a big deal.

Contacts: Keeping contacts in sync has proven to be a pain in the @$$. But, I finally have pieced together a workable solution. The picture below depicts the connections currently running:



Syncing between the Mac/iPhone and Google is simple, as the MBP and iPhone sync anytime you are using them (on the MBP, as long as Address Book is open, it syncs with Google; the iPhone is always syncing).

The Blackberry stays in sync with the PC using the Blackberry software, so whatever is on the PC is on the BB.

The part that was difficlut to nail down was the Google to PC syncing for contacts. I tried various pieces of freeware (OggSync, Go Sync, MobileMe for PC, etc.) and finally found Soocial (www.social.com). In theory, soocial wants to be your 'contacts in the cloud'. Great idea, and they are doing a fine job. But, once Google has a way to sync nicely with Outlook, I'll probably cut out soocial. Ideally Google is my one stop shop for contact/calendar syncing.

soocial: this is not perfect, as I have noticed some odditites when syncing (info is not exactly the same in Outlook as it is on soocial as it is in Google).

Issues with other choices:

• OggSync - simply never worked! This was the free version, not pro. I did not want to pay for any software (Yes, MobileMe cost $99; I paid that before I really jumped into this).
• Go Sync - the most I could do send some contacts from Outlook to Google. Could never do any other type of merge or sync; always got an error about negative count numbers?#$%
• MobileMe - the idea is great: sync Outlook contacts to MobileMe. BUT, does not work with Exchange contacts! That is the catch. Had this worked, I may have kept up with MobileMe.
  

Final thoughts: I really like using Google, because it hosts my personal email address, calendar and contacts, and is always on and free. Google simply needs to create a solution for contact syncing like it does for calendar syncing and we should be all set. Right now, though, all the places that hold my contacts have some different names for fields, are missing some fields, etc. Its not perfect, but its getting close. Every time I get frustrated, I remind myself of exactly what Im tryingto do and sit back and smile: I'm trying toget Google, Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry to place nice together!