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Moving to iSync

by Volker Weber

With the release of iSync 1.21 and iCal 1.51 I have now made up my mind and moved all of the PIM stuff over to the Mac. I used to sync this data to the Domino server and have gone through all kinds of pain with shortcomings of the different solutions. Lately I have given up after trying to evaluate one server based solution which shall remain unnamed here.

After that it was Palm Desktop only. Of course on Lucy. Since all of the Mac software is very well connected, I had a duplicate of my data in the Mac Address Book for reference by Mail.app and iChat. This violates the OHIO principle (only handle information once).

Today I finally settled all of this for iCal and Address Book. One single store with replicas on the mobile devices. Now I am syncing back and forth with Clyde and Woodstock. The T68i will follow later. Currently I am simply transferring my Quicklist category from the Tungsten T to the phone via Bluetooth.

After a little bit of data cleansing I should be fine again. Finally.

Comments

Hm...
Quite some time ago, everywhere I read about syncing (primarily PIM data, but also other) data between mobile and other devices, a general credo was, in a short while, SyncML will be widely adopted and we'll be able to sync between all our devices seamlessly.

Also, I read that Domino 6 was supposed to support SyncML natively. But as with many open XML standards, I assume there might be different dialects of SyncML. So far, I haven't seen much from SyncML application in the field.

So what's your experience with it? Anybody using it?

Curious,

Ragnar

hello ragnar...

as far as i know, the problem with syncml mostly seems to be nokia. although they do support syncml in a lot of their phones, only some of them are really syncml compliant. one problem is that the nokias mostly rely on syncml over web/wap, they do not support syncml via bluetooth or infrared....

i do use syncml only for keeping the same contact/calendar information on my mobile and on my mac.... and i really like the seamless integration between my address book and calendar and my siemens s55 ;-)

Allegedly the next versino of iSync will be extendible and may support SyncML as well - I hope so as I currently have a SyncML-capable phone that isn't yet supported by iSync. (it's a Sanyo S750 if anyone's listening)

I may be able to find/write a SyncML server and stick it on a web page to do a 'network' sync. It's vaguely possible I might even sort out a local bluetooth sync, but I doubt I have the time.

I very much hope that more apps support SyncML soon - syncing is only truly useful when it is ubiquitous, and currently it is not!

Amigo,

a SyncML server exists. Check out http://www.synthesis.ch/, and in Mac OS X Tiger, iSync will have SyncML support.

Be well.

M.

I tried Synthesis AG's SyncML server and it simply didnt work. I got the right wap settings from my carrier (cingular), ran the demo and was unable to synchronize at all. I wonder if you have had better luck, Miguel. I have yet to run in to any praise for this product (IE no one seems to have used it for personal reasons and had success).

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vowe.net is a personal website published by Volker Weber a.k.a. vowe. I am an author, consultant and systems architect based in Darmstadt, Germany.

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