Benjamin Harley has updated his applescripted utility ABGMerge which offers true two-way syncing between Address Book and Gmail.

The latest release makes a number of significant improvements.

It has repackaged as an application, and features a ‘Safe Mode’ with the option to restore your Address Book to its initial contents.

User interaction has been streamlined and improved, and the app no longer leaves extraneous data in your Address Book (altough it still leaves “<myABGmerge>” in Gmail notes so you know which ones are synchronized to your Address Book).

It’s also faster: the basic synchronization algorithms are significantly refined.

Benjamin says,

It is still complicated, and probably not for people without some savvy. It doesn’t necessarily handle foreign addresses all that well. And it probably still has some bugs. But it is far more robust now than it was before – and it sure beets doing a one off import / export between the two applications. Address Book is such a good repository for address information, but if you don’t have .mac – Gmail may be the best bet to get at that information when you are at work or away.

You can get ABGMerge from Benjamin’s web site .address book, gmail, google, syncing, contacts, web 2.0, applescript

Brad Garland has a problem. He wants to keep the email in a Desktop email client (Apple Mail), a web-based service (Gmail) and on his mobile phone (Samsung Blackjack) in sync.

For me that’s not too hard. With Mail.app, an IMAP-based email service and a Nokia E60, it all syncs very nicely. If I wanted to, I could pipe my Gmail account through Fastmail as well, following Mike Davidson’s excellent walk-through.

Brad has set himself a harder target. He doesn’t like to use Google Mobile because it’s a pain to access.

And he likes to make the web-based interface his primary client, so he is connecting his Blackjack to Gmail via POP. It’s not much fun:

I am unable to delete any message from my phone and have it know to sync back up to Mail. When I send/receive again it just brings the message right back. So no deleting is possible from my mobile. But marking things as read/unread are… that’s strange to me. Why can it do one and not the other?

Finding a way to sync these three things can only get more important as more people look for more ways to access more of their email in more places.

Dan Warne finds a way to keep Mail.app, Gmail and his mobile email in sync with a Blackberry.

As he explains in an email:

The Blackberry can check up to 10 different mail accounts (including Gmail thanks to its POP access). But actually, I just forward all my email from all my different accounts into my Gmail account and have the Blackberry download from there.

The clever part is the autoconfiguration — you just put in your email address, username and password, and RIM’s database of mailservers works out the rest. As a result, all email sent FROM your blackberry is sent via Gmail’s SMTP and stored in the ‘sent’ folder at Gmail. You can also choose to cc: all sent emails to an address of your choice.

And because Blackberry’s access to Gmail is “non-destructive” he gets a full POP download of all his messages in Mail.app. A neat but expensive solution.

Short of something unexpected like, say, Gmail offering IMAP connectivity or Blackberry giving him a free phone, I wonder what the solution for someone in Brad’s position is. It seems harsh just to say, learn to live with the pain of Google Mobile.mail.app, apple mail, gmail, syncing, imap, pop, email, mobile phone, cell, blackjack

The private beta of Spanning Sync’s full two-way iCal and Google Calendar sync app is under way.

Aaron Freedman at MacUser provides a insider’s view of how the app works and how well it works.

It is packaged as a system preference:

Spanning Sync installs not as an application, but a System Preferences panel. In it, you put in your Google Account username and password, and then select which iCal calendars to sync with which Google Calendars. You can also set at which interval to have the calendars sync (or you can just choose to sync only manually), and you can choose to sync alarms on each individual calendar. All of this can be set up very quickly, and once so, you can close System Preferences and, if automatic sync is enables, have your calendars sync in the background.

And it is working pretty well. After some initial duplication problems were sorted out, Aaron is pleased with the app’s performance:

It’s great to be able to use my Google Calendar on my PC, and use iCal at home, and then be able to sync my calendar to portable devices with iCal.

ical, google calendar, syncing, synching, private beta, productivity

A Hawk Wings reader emailed me today with a depressing tale.

The Address Book had been wiped from her (or his) PowerBook, smartphone and .Mac account after syncing the Powerbook with a Nokia 6682, except for three contacts recently added through the new .Mac interface.

A rather weird email exchange with .Mac support followed, before a fix was found independently.

The names of the reader and the .Mac support person and the support ticket numbers have been removed.

The Hawk Wings reader contacted .Mac support:

Hello,

I recently sync’ed my .Mac account with my Address Book on my PowerBook G4, and all my contacts were erased, but for the three I had recently added via the .Mac website.

I can be contacted by email at Xxxxxxx@mac.com or by phone at x xxx xxx xxxx. Please let me know ASAP how to fix this, as this is a very, very serious problem, with heavy consequences for me.

Thank you
Xxxxx X Xxxxxxx

.Mac response:

Dear Xxxxxxx,

Thank you for contacting Apple and the .Mac Support Team. Based on the information provided in your email, I understand that your Address Book contacts disappeared after syncing with .Mac.

I’m sorry to hear that some of your data is missing, but data lost through .Mac Sync cannot be recovered.

.Mac Syncing is not designed to back up data, such as Address Book contacts or Safari Bookmarks. I recommend using an application designed specifically for data backup, such as .Mac’s Backup.

Backup allows you to automatically save photos, family movies, your favorite music, and other important documents to your iDisk, a CD, a DVD, or an external hard disk. This will lessen the possibility of losing any important messages or data in the future.

You can also save your important files to CD, DVD, or other removable media using Mac OS X instead of Backup, as described in these articles:

Mac OS X: How to back up and restore your files

How to back up and restore your important Mac OS X 10.4 files

Sincerely,

Xxxxxxx
.Mac Support

Puzzled, another attempt is made:

Let me clarify: I know .Mac syncing is not design to back up data. But I don’t think it’s designed to erase it, is it?

I do not sync my Address Book with my .Mac account and my cell phone in order to back it up. I do it, just as most of your customers, in order to be able to use the same contact info on my Mac at home, on my PC at work and on my smartphone on the go.

This “glitch” has caused an extremely severe damage to the personal use I make of .Mac, as well as to my professional practice. That is why I very strongly encourage Apple to make sure this never happens again to me, or to any other .Mac subscriber. This is an advice I am giving both as a faithful Apple customer and as an attorney at law.

Should this happen again, not only would I lose any confidence in Apple’s .Mac service — I would also probably consider seeking reparation.

Cordially,
Xxxxxx X Xxxxxxx

.Mac Support replies:

Dear Xxxxxxx,

I apologize for any inconvenience that this issue might have caused. Based on the information in your latest email, it appears you might be using iSync rather than .Mac Sync.

I have forwarded your report to a .Mac Support specialist for assistance. After the matter has been investigated, a .Mac Support representative will respond to you with additional information.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience, and I appreciate your patience as we work to make your experience with .Mac more enjoyable.

Sincerely,

Xxxxxx
.Mac Support

Fortunately, the reader did not have to rely on .Mac support in the end.

The solution, using Address Book’s AddressBook.data.previous backup, emerged in a forum thread he started, basically following this macOSXHint tip for restoring lost contacts.

[Thanks, Xxxxxx]address book, .Mac, dotmac, syncing, backup, isync, support, erased, solution

The clever people at Spanning Sync are working on a service which will allow for full, two-way syncing between Google Calendar and iCal.

This has long been a Holy Grail for Mac users. Now it looks as if it could be in reach, judging from the screencast of a beta version and the screenshots at Spanning Sync.

According to TUAW a private beta test is just starting. When the app launches you will find it here .

[Via TUAW ]ical, google calendar, syncing, plugins, apple, productivity

Take Control’s latest offering is an ebook that covers all aspects of syncing in 10.4.

It covers every conceivable combination of devices from syncing between Macs to mobile/cell phones, Palm OS handhelds and iPods.

Of course, Apple’s built-in iSync app gets the full treatment, but syncing software from third party developers also gets a look in.

Even those who are old hands at syncing will learn from the chapter which explains how syncing works and from the troubleshooting section, especially useful the press release says for “anyone who has experienced a syncing feeling upon realizing that the wrong data was overwritten”.

The ebook costs USD 10 and comes with a 50% discount voucher for PocketMac’s syncing software.

You can read more about the book and sample a free 24 page preview on the Take Conrol web site .

In another new development (at least, new to me), Take Control Books now offers a “print on demand” service for this title and for “Running Windows on a Mac”. The price for this service is USD 10-15 and the end result looks good:

syncing, isync, take control, mobile, cell phone, palm device, ipod, tips, productivity

While .Mac offers Mail.app users an easy way to sync their account settings, rule and other settings across multiple Macs, Thunderbird users are not so lucky.

If you want to use Thunderbird on multiple Macs, a post in the MozillaZine Knowledge Base offers seven ways to get the job done.

Solutions range from switching to IMAP, using portable version of Thunderbird on a flash drive, a work-around for POP users and more.Thunderbird, email, IMAP, POP, syncing, profiles, multiple Macs, home and work