Keeping everything in Sync

How many of us still keep a paper version of our address books up to date or any version at all? I have an my MacBook, my iPhone and an iPod Touch. Not many normal users I know think about backup plans if something goes wrong. One of the easiest ways to make this data not just accessable online when and where you need it but also to keep it in sync is MobileMe. That's great if you always work alone or don't need to share calendar info. If you do work in a team with other people and don't have any corporate servers hosting ical or exchange then Google's email, calendar and contacts will be just what you're looking for. I originally subscribed to MobileMe when it was still called .Mac and my intended purpose was to sync my MacBook with the server in case of major disaster and actually thought at that time that the web interface allowed editing of your contacts and calendars and was actually disappointed to find out that they were completely parallel. But I still had my contacts, calendars and keychain among other things syncing up to .mac servers for the convenience and peace of mind.

All of my calendars, contacts and MobileMe emails are up in "the cloud" and conveniently syncronised automatically with my iPhone and iPod touch "over the air". To keep all my iCal calendars in sync with my Google Calendars I use a program called SpanningSync. It also syncs my contacts to Google. This allows sharing of my calendars with co workers and keeping it all in sync with my Mac and iPhone.

STOP THE PRESS!

RT @ryanblock: I CANNOT believe that Google is offering free Exchange for iPhone users. Sooo awesome. http://bit.ly/4Ap3Hl

Google has just launched a sync service for mobile devices based on the Microsoft Exchange Active Sync protocol. At the moment it doesn't support Gmail push but that's been the most anticipated feature of Google's online services and I think we can take this service as a hint that Push email is not too far behind.

Spanning sync in this configuration replaces iSync in a MobileMe configuration. So as soon as Google Sync supports Push for Gmail accounts then anyone who doesn't need the web space, online storage or any other extras offered by MobileMe can go free with Google Sync.

I'm anticipating their move to get the desktop side of the updates to a push solution instead of interval sync. With that now said and done, Google has just changed the options for anyone considering MobileMe subscriptions.

Click here to save $5 on Spanning Sync!