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I suppose we'll play the waiting game till someone saves us :)
The only reliable solution for Mac users is to store all contact info on a hosted Microsoft Outlook Server (typically, at a coset of about $10/month). This can then be synced over the air with a BlackBerry. Email can be accessed either using Entourage (which acts as a Outlook client) or Outlook itself via Parallels. Of course Gmail and/or Mail can still be used to access the Outlook server email.
The advantage of this solution is that all data resides securely in one place (the Microsoft Outlook Server) and is never duplicated or out of sync.
http://www.plaxo.com/downloads/mac
Nope. I tried Plaxo, it was one of the costliest online mistakes I ever made. It so badly wrecked my contcat data, which I hadn't backed up, that I had to manually clean up the damage which took several hours.
As with all these synchronization tools, it claims to keep everything in sync but actually cannot deliver, and results in a huge number of duplicates being created. plaxo is actually worse than average because it corrupts data. Their forums are full of mesages from people experiencing such problems which never get answered by staff?
The whole point of my method is that there is no need to sync! Since the data is kept online, on the web, in a unique Microsoft Outlook Server database (I know, it sucks having to using Microsoft, but they really are the industry standard in this sector).
AddressBook and entourage can access the server as clients. The most recent version of Entourage can read and write (except for Tasks) while I believe AddressBook can only read. The mobile phone will sync seamless and over the air if you use a BlackBerry, this offers the tightest and most bug-free data synchronisation of all I have tested (use the BES BlackBerry Enterprise Server solution). Most other systems require you to sync your phone over a cable connection, and are unreliable.
So basically, the only viable solution is:
Microsoft Outlook Server for storing data + BlackBerry mobile phone with integration via BES + your choice of Outllok via Parallels, Entourage or AddressBook (but the latter at your peril and only one way) for managing data on your Mac.
It's a great little program that just does the job perfectly. Currently, it does not do contacts/addresses, but I think they're working on that so it might be one to look out for in the future.
Further to that, I just use iSync to sync iCal/address book with my phone.
Spanning Sync keeps my mac up to date, and then my mac keeps my phone up to date! Win!
Still waiting for THE KILLER APP !
If you are using a BES on your Blackberry AND (repeat, AND) you are connecting to the same Exchange server as the one linked to your BES AND both client applications are set to synchronize all emails with that server, then the "sent" folder in your Exchange server will necessarily contain the same emails, since it will be used as the outgoing server by both mail clients (Entourage and Blackberry). That's the whole point of having that setup which avoids having to worry about synchronization.
If your Blackberry-sent emails are missing when you connect to the server via Entourage, or vice-versa, there might be several reasons: one possible cause is that Blackberry and Entourage might use different outgoing mail servers (unlikely, but check this one first); another is that your Entourage mail account settings may specify that any emails you SEND do NOT get synchronized with the server.
If you need further help, message me using the online contact form on my website to gve me details of what you are doing (the link to do so is in the sidebar on the bottom of the Home page).
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.
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. ;-)
it all works great...
http://flatwords.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/i-got...
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!!
C
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??
www.soocial.com Sign up to get an invite - I got my invite in less than a month. This thing works. Really.
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.
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.
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!
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.