Comments on: Keeping Gmail, Cell Phone Contacts and Apple’s Address Book in Sync

By: jomilla

jomilla — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 21:26:01 +0000

I have Soocial, and its pretty weak IMHO.

By: Astorg

Astorg — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:31:12 +0000

@Billy Iadd: I haven’t tested Soocial either. But it is only a contact management utility. It doesn’t do calendar items, which isn’t surprising as they are much trickier to sync and almost invariably generate duplicates when synced birectionally.

You don’t need to run Exchange on your own server. There are hosted Exchange plans where you get full use of a BES, costing about $10/month (yeah, MobileMe offers more for less, but then that’s your choice). I can hardly recommend one BES provider in particular, but just Google “hosted Exchange server” and you should get plenty of choices.

By: Billy ladd

Billy ladd — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:23:59 +0000

Thanks for your comments Gentlemen. I have sent a request to Soocial – I’ll give it a go when I get the invite. As regards an Exchange Server is this something I have to get up and running in the office. We all use individual PCs and Macs and a shared drive so have no server or for that matter a BES! Does that mean I will have to persevere with my current config (or lack of) until someone comes up with a solution for individuals like me?
I will have a look at Google apps in the meantime and see if it can help me.
I’ll update you with my findings
Bon Chance!

By: Astorg

Astorg — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:42:15 +0000

@Billy Iadd: The basic principle hasn’t changed since this post was written. The only way to avoid the issues you mention (duplicates, missing contacts) is to store ALL your items in one database and sync the various clients (computers, phones, webmail apps) from there.

Plaxo in my experience engenders duplication and deletions, and so does Spanning Sync. Using an Exchange server and accessing it from a Blackberry (using BES, not BIS) and Entourage is one solution for a Mac user. Another, of course, since the summer, is MobileMe which, despite the adverse publicity it has received, is actually technically a far better product than Exchange.

Also, now that Gmail and Google Apps can run under IMAP (which they couldn’t when this post was written, it makes sense to use them (with my preference going to Google Apps over Gmail because it means you use your own domain and can take your email address with you if you choose to change). It will work beautifully alongside MobileMe and iCal, Address Book, with no need for duplication iin any of your data.

By: Astorg

Astorg — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:37:32 +0000

@Billy Iadd: The basic principle hasn't changed since this post was written. The only way to avoid the issues you mention (duplicates, missing contacts) is to store ALL your items in one database and sync the various clients (computers, phones, webmail apps) from there. Plaxo in my experience engenders duplication and deletions, and so does Spanning Sync. Using an Exchange server and accessing it from a Blackberry (using BES, not BIS) and Entourage is one solution for a Mac user. Another, of course, since the summer, is MobileMe which, despite the adverse publicity it has received, is actually technically a far better product than Exchange (see a post I wrote recently about it here). Also, now that Gmail and Google Apps can run under IMAP (which they couldn't when this post was written, it makes sense to use them (with my preference going to Google Apps over Gmail because it means you use your own domain and can take your email address with you if you choose to change). It will work beautifully alongside MobileMe and iCal, Address Book, with no need for duplication iin any of your data.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:35:33 +0000

You might like to know about a new service called Soocial… it syncs EVERYTHING.

http://www.soocial.com Sign up to get an invite – I got my invite in less than a month. This thing works. Really.

By: Billy ladd

Billy ladd — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:21:02 +0000

This whole subject is a mine field! My situation is…….I have a MACbook with Entourage and the included iCal and Address Book which updates automatically between themselves. I also have a Plaxo account. I have an iPhone that syncs using iTunes. Then I have a Blackberry that Syncs through Blackberry’s software. Finally i have a Nokia N95 that I take on certain trips and that Syncs through iSync after a piece of software from Nokia installed itself. I also have an address book on Gmail but i dont sync it. Any thoughts on how I should manage all of this because invariably I get double or multiple entries all over the place in Calender and missing contacts in others.
I cant understand why there is not one default set of fields how ever large for any contact based app then life for the whole world would surely be a lot easier.
Maybe I should start from scratch and get a little black book??

By: colin

colin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:40:13 +0000

I wrote a post on this here
it all works great…

http://flatwords.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/i-got-my-soocial-beta-tester-password-today/

especially now with the iphone I just bought an extra usb lead for £2.95 and keep it plugged in at work so i don’t have to think about it, when i plug it in, its all sync-ed up.

Then Soocial does my contacts – busysync does my calendar
(pre iphone days – spanning sync did my phone calendar and contacts)

I’m so happy!!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:15:25 +0000

This is an old post, but it has some more recent comments and is still ranked highly for “sync address book gmail”, so I figure there’s still interest…

Syncman ( http://wateree.net/syncman ) does full, bidirectional synchronization between Address Book and Gmail.

I can testify that it’s a great product, but then again, I’m the developer… so you might want to just try for yourself.

By: Damian

Damian — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:17:39 +0000

Instead of using Gmail through the web interface, set it up to work with Mail via IMAP. Now you’re using your OS X Address Book for your contacts instead of Gmail’s walled-off and weird Contacts “system”. (Gmail’s system blows anyway, as it randomly adds addresses you e-mail, even if you have no intention of keeping them). So bypass it by using Mail/Address Book.

Now, if you use a bluetooth phone, and it’s no big deal to keep Address Book and your phone synched. And since Mail uses Address Book, you’re keeping only two things synched.

Now ideally Gmail would set up their address book better, and we could have a go-between to do what Spanning Sync is currently doing to keep iCal and Google Calendar synched.