Contacts > Sync > Yahoo! Autosync

I wrote earlier that I was looking for a personal "Holy Grail of Synchronization" to keep my contacts on my Palm device in sync with my email. I was fully willing to move to whatever platform gave me that option and I was rooting for Google since they already had an API for their Calendar web application. I am still a fan of Google's Gmail, but I still stand behind my previous statement that Yahoo Mail provides much more features that I can't leave behind if I switched.

Of all the features I want out of an email client, integration with Palm devices was my number one. Yahoo came closest with their Intellisync product, but the product was outdated and no longer worked with the majority of Palm devices. Intellisync tried to be part of Palm's HotSync process, the process by which the Palm would synchronize information with information stored on the computer. Adding Yahoo's Intellisync product slowed down the HotSync process so much that often the HotSync itself would timeout and fail. Eventually Intellisync stopped working altogether as new Palms came out or an update to the HotSync tool was released.

Nothing happened for years afterwards, but there was always people looking around for some sort of solution to the problem. A few articles were written, some buzz after Google released an API for their Calendar, but still things stayed the same. Eventually I wrote a blog post about the issue as well, where I suggested that someone just export the contact information directly out of Palm Desktop instead of using the HotSync process. Well, it appears that someone (I'm sure it was just a coincidence) was listening, and this time it was Yahoo.

Yahoo quietly released an update to Intellisync; well it's more like an entirely new product, called Yahoo Autosync. This tool does almost exactly what I originally suggested: it will export your contact and calendar information out of the Palm Desktop (avoiding the HotSync) and sync those setting directly with Yahoo Mail! I was so ecstatic that I could barely contain myself. Finally the tool I was waiting for!

Actual Experience

After downloading the tool, I had some initial problems, which I will post here in case you've run across the same issues. As usual, I wrote to Yahoo about the problems and got an automated response basically telling me that it's a free product and I'm on my own. I guess I could have written back and said my $25/year for Yahoo Plus did in fact qualify me as a non-free user, but that's not the point.

The first limitation I noticed was that it appeared as if the Calendar sync didn't work at all. Turned out that if I limited the time span for it to sync that I finally got a successful sync (limited to 30 days). I also originally installed the program on the D drive, which I believe also caused some errors until I uninstalled and installed on the C drive. That might have more to do with the discovery that Calendar syncing wasn't working, but I thought I'd mention it in case someone runs into the same problem.

I've also noticed a few contacts disappear here and there. I'm not sure when it happens, but it all started when I told the Autosync application to do a Two-way sync between Yahoo and Palm instead of a one-way Palm beats Yahoo role. After a couple of times when I picked up my phone only to find someone I call quite often suddenly missing from my contacts list I switched back to One-way sync from Palm Desktop to Yahoo.

Other Thoughts

I'm also a bit surprised that this tool hasn't gotten more recognition from the blogging community. The "Holy grail of synchronization" blog from a year ago was a huge hit, but the steps involved were crazy. It almost seems as if Yahoo doesn't stand a chance against Google because a certain population is so enamored with Google that they refuse to use any other service. It's almost as if they hear silence every time I mention the word Yahoo.

I love Google, and I really like Gmail, but I know at the end of the day that I need certain features and I'm not willing to jump through a bunch of hoops to get them when another service provides them easily for free. When are we going to see a little retro-feedback for Yahoo already?

-jj

Local Google Docs Server

The other day I decided to try out Google Apps. I work with a few remote developers and it seemed that looking into Apps was worth my time. After trying it out for a few days, I'm considering using this tool as our developer document manager.

Google Apps basically wraps a bunch of Google's online applications under an umbrella of an organization or company. All users under this umbrella can email each other, share calendars, documents, and a few other things.

For the most part, I am only interested in the Docs application. It allows you to store documents, share them with other users, keeps a history of changes, and you can edit the documents directly in the browser. Oh, and don’t forget you can export those documents to your computer in a number of different formats (MS Office, Open Office, PDF, HTML, etc). Currently it can handle: word processing (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), and presentations (PowerPoint).

I have a few complaints – the document organizer doesn’t allow you to share folders. In fact, folders might as well be tags, because they are only useful for organizing things for yourself (your folders do not show up for other users in your system).

I would love to introduce this kind of tool to my client, but I already know the answer. They would want to own the content by hosting the Google Apps application on their own intranet server and I can’t blame them. Keeping an application like this behind a company firewall makes everyone feel a little safer. I started to look around for some sort of equivalent online document editor, but I can’t seem to find anything that allows you to use it on your own server.

In fact, I haven’t even found any open source tools for editing documents online at all. I’m kind of surprised, because this kind of functionality could be a huge addition to other projects. Imagine an open source online document editor like Google Apps that could be used in other projects. Wikis could use the document editor object to allow users to easily edit pages instead of coming up with these strange markup languages. Heck, shouldn’t Google be using their own Doc App within Blogger? It seems much better than Blogger’s online editor.

I heard the other day that Microsoft will be creating their own online Office tools. One would hope that they would incorporate this technology within SharePoint. I can’t stand opening documents that are stored in SharePoint, it takes forever and seems like such a hack to save the open document back to the server. Of course I heard they will require the user to have Office installed on their local computer. I guess this shouldn’t be a huge deal for corporate users, but you can’t help but think that this is just another limitation that will cause the tool to be useless.

I guess I’ll just take the "wait and see" route until something better comes along.