iPhone Contacts and Calendar synchronization
After playing a bit with Funambol for synchronising email, contacts and calendars I checked which other services are available which allow you to synchronise contactlists and calendar data across different services and devices.
For me the disadvantages of Funambol are that the iPhone version of Funambol currently only supports the synchronisation of contacts data. Support for calendar data is currently not avaiable yet. Also, the synchronisation has to be performed manually, meaning that whenever you want to synchronise your contacts you have to run the application and press the ’synchronise’ button.
Nuevasync is a service that allows over the air synchronisation of contacts, calendar, email and task lists. It works transparantly, meaning that it doesn’t require the installation of software and runs completely in the background and over the air.
After registering an account on their website, you can configure the different services.
Calendar: synchronisation with Google Calendar
Contacts: synchronisation with Plaxo or your Google contacts
On the iphone you configure the Nuevasync service as a Microsoft Exchange server connection. Using this type of connection it will automatically perform the synchronisation in the background and over the air with the Nuevasync server.
Having configured Nuevasync to configure my iphone calendar with Google Calendar, I am now also able to synchronise my Lotus Notes calendar with my iphone. I use Companionlink for Google on my computer to synchronise Lotus Notes with Google Calendar, and my iphone transparantly synchronises my Google Calendar to my phone using the Nuevasync service.
Another advantage would be if you change phone (for example to a Windows Mobile device) you can easily synchronise this device with your Nuevasync account to transfer all your contacts and calendar data.
After succeeding in synchronising my iPhone contacts with my Plaxo contacts, I also added the Plaxo addon on some other client software such as Thunderbird to have access to my contacts. Plaxo offers software for Mozilla Thunderbird, PocketPC, Outlook, Outlook Express, and MacOS to keep your Plaxo address book in sync with each of these applications. On the Plaxo site itself, you have the possibility to synchronise your Plaxo address book with Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo, Outlook, Thunderbird. The disadvantage is that it only syncs on 1 direction, being towards Plaxo.
