Anyone using Google Sync?

Alex · July 23rd, 2009, 01:17 PM

More info here.

Basically, it's an app you install on the blackberry (or iPhone, windows mobile, or symbian), and it will sync contacts between your blackberry address book and your google contacts. It does this sync over the mobile data network, and never requires your blackberry to be tethered to a computer. Blackberry enterprise users connecting through BES server already have this functionality, so it would be unnecessary. But for BIS users, AFAIK there isn't another wireless way to keep your contacts synced. What I'm doing now is using Desktop Manager to sync to Outlook on a local PC. It's really the only reason I have Outlook installed, as I don't use it for email or calendaring, so if this Google Sync allows me to completely bypass Outlook, that'll be a good thing.

I'm concerned about duplicate contacts, syncing issues, or any other problems that people have had before I start to rely on this for a whole bunch (10000+) of contacts.

Link to original page on YouTube.

M-Oorb · July 23rd, 2009, 01:22 PM

Question alex...I use google calendar and I love it. Would I somehow be able to add an event on google calendar on my blackberry and have it show up on the comp? From that video it seems yes but than I would actually have google calendar on my phone or I would set the appointment on my blackberry calendar and then it would go to google calendar on the desktop?

Alex · July 23rd, 2009, 01:27 PM

Yes, it's even easier than that. Once installed and configured, it will automatically sync your blackberry calendar (on the device) with your google calendar (online).

It doesn't create a new calendar program on your blackberry, it integrates with the existing one.

M-Oorb · July 23rd, 2009, 01:31 PM

So I'd still have to use the blackberry calender if I wanted to add something on my phone? I don't really like the blackberry calender but I guess this doesn't allow me to get around it when adding something directly from the phone...

Alex · July 23rd, 2009, 01:35 PM

You could always use the web browser on the blackberry to log in to google calendar directly, but I think it would be pretty clunky. Takes only a few seconds to add something to the blackberry calendar, and then this would update your google calendar in the background soon after you make the change. Works the other way too; when you update something on your google calendar, it will automatically show up on your device in the background as well. This way all of the alerts and other features that are built-in to the blackberry will work exactly as designed.

What don't you like about the blackberry calendar? I don't use it for anything particularly complicated, but it seems to work fine for my purposes.

noche_caliente · July 23rd, 2009, 03:08 PM

I use it and love it. It's on my blackberry. You can tell it what gets priority - outlook, blackberry, google, etc.
As for how to add things - I usually go through the quick-add web interface with the google calendar which only takes a minute.

Alex · July 23rd, 2009, 03:45 PM

OK, I've got it installed on my berry, and have enabled it to work with my calendars. Works great, bidirectionally, with zero issues. I don't see that amount of customization that noche is referring to, though. It lets you log into your google account, lets you enable syncing of calendar and/or contacts, and in the calendar options you can choose which calendar to sync to if you have multiple google calendars.

I haven't enable the contacts sync yet, but I don't yet see where one would be able to choose priority of Google vs. Outlook vs. Berry in case of conflict, is that buried somewhere?

noche_caliente · July 23rd, 2009, 03:59 PM

you know, I can't find it now - maybe I did that online somewhere, or maybe I'm mixing it up with when I used the desktop manager stuff to pull things out of outlook... sorry

backinthesaddleagain · July 23rd, 2009, 05:54 PM

No experience with it as I use BES server, but looks like a cool solution.

billmi · July 23rd, 2009, 06:45 PM

I haven't tried it, as I use a Palm phone, not Blackberry, but this topic does highlight a significant Irony to me.

Apparently Google doesn't have enough faith in Google Video, and they felt the need to host their own video on YouTube.

noche_caliente · July 23rd, 2009, 07:01 PM

Doesn't google own youtube????

Alex · July 23rd, 2009, 07:07 PM

Google bought youtube awhile back. Surprisingly, they've left Google Video up and running all this time.

Alex · July 24th, 2009, 09:39 AM

Verdict is in; it's not ready for primetime. For calendar syncing it seems to work fine, exactly as designed. But it hosed the contacts for both myself and my wife.

My wife didn't have her contacts online with google, so her sync went like this:

2000-ish contacts on phone, none on google. Sync pushed all contacts to google contacts, and back to phone. At that point, many of them were screwed up. It took the "title" field and misinterpreted it. So on the phone it used to be John Doe, VP, Gadget Inc. After the sync, the first name became VP John, last name Doe. Or sometimes just first name VP, last name John. There were other types of screwups, but those were the most prevalent. It didn't look like any were fully deleted; the same number of contacts in her phone were now online, they were just garbled. I'll have to delete everything from her phone address book and repush everything from her Outlook.

On mine it was worse:

I made sure the latest contacts I had were in my Outlook, and I synced my phone to them ahead of time. I also loaded those contacts directly to google contacts by importing them, so what was on the phone and what was on google should have been quite similar, if not identical. I hit sync, and it took hours. At the end of it, not only were many of my contacts garbled on both sides, but some of them were duplicated as many as 8 times on my phone. Just like for my wife's, I'll have to wipe the entire address book on the phone and repush everything from Outlook.

The google sync product is nowhere near ready for primetime, and I can't recommend it for anyone who wants to sync more than a very small amount of simple contacts.

noche_caliente · July 24th, 2009, 09:45 AM

wow alex- that is really messed up

I didn't have any problems like that with mine

but then again, I don't have terribly many saved either... Did you send them what you just posted so they can be working on it as well?

Alex · July 24th, 2009, 09:54 AM

There are many stories like mine already in the support forum there, I guess I had hoped they had worked it out and something weird had happened to cause the other complaints, but nope.

July 23rd, 2009, 01:17 PM	#1
Alex ninjette.org dude Name: 1 guess :-) Location: SF Bay Area Join Date: Jun 2008 Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE Posts: Too much. Blog Entries: 7	Anyone using Google Sync? More info here. Basically, it's an app you install on the blackberry (or iPhone, windows mobile, or symbian), and it will sync contacts between your blackberry address book and your google contacts. It does this sync over the mobile data network, and never requires your blackberry to be tethered to a computer. Blackberry enterprise users connecting through BES server already have this functionality, so it would be unnecessary. But for BIS users, AFAIK there isn't another wireless way to keep your contacts synced. What I'm doing now is using Desktop Manager to sync to Outlook on a local PC. It's really the only reason I have Outlook installed, as I don't use it for email or calendaring, so if this Google Sync allows me to completely bypass Outlook, that'll be a good thing. I'm concerned about duplicate contacts, syncing issues, or any other problems that people have had before I start to rely on this for a whole bunch (10000+) of contacts. Link to original page on YouTube. __________________________________________________ Montgomery Street Motorcycle Club / cal24.com / crf250l.org / ninjette.org ninjette.org Terms of Service Shopping for motorcycle parts or equipment? Come here first. The friendliest Ninja 250R/300/400 forum on the internet! (especially Unregistered)

July 23rd, 2009, 01:27 PM	#3
Alex ninjette.org dude Name: 1 guess :-) Location: SF Bay Area Join Date: Jun 2008 Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE Posts: Too much. Blog Entries: 7	Yes, it's even easier than that. Once installed and configured, it will automatically sync your blackberry calendar (on the device) with your google calendar (online). It doesn't create a new calendar program on your blackberry, it integrates with the existing one. __________________________________________________ Montgomery Street Motorcycle Club / cal24.com / crf250l.org / ninjette.org ninjette.org Terms of Service Shopping for motorcycle parts or equipment? Come here first. The friendliest Ninja 250R/300/400 forum on the internet! (especially Unregistered)

July 23rd, 2009, 01:35 PM	#5
Alex ninjette.org dude Name: 1 guess :-) Location: SF Bay Area Join Date: Jun 2008 Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE Posts: Too much. Blog Entries: 7	You could always use the web browser on the blackberry to log in to google calendar directly, but I think it would be pretty clunky. Takes only a few seconds to add something to the blackberry calendar, and then this would update your google calendar in the background soon after you make the change. Works the other way too; when you update something on your google calendar, it will automatically show up on your device in the background as well. This way all of the alerts and other features that are built-in to the blackberry will work exactly as designed. What don't you like about the blackberry calendar? I don't use it for anything particularly complicated, but it seems to work fine for my purposes. __________________________________________________ Montgomery Street Motorcycle Club / cal24.com / crf250l.org / ninjette.org ninjette.org Terms of Service Shopping for motorcycle parts or equipment? Come here first. The friendliest Ninja 250R/300/400 forum on the internet! (especially Unregistered)

July 23rd, 2009, 03:08 PM	#6
noche_caliente ninjette.org certified postwhore Name: Kim Location: mundo de ensueño Join Date: Nov 2008 Motorcycle(s): '08 250 Posts: A lot.	I use it and love it. It's on my blackberry. You can tell it what gets priority - outlook, blackberry, google, etc. As for how to add things - I usually go through the quick-add web interface with the google calendar which only takes a minute. __________________________________________________ Progrip tank pad, blue rim stripes, blue Pazzos, Roaring Toyz lowering kit, Puig DB in dark smoke, Cortech sport tail, super mini tank, and saddlebags, OES swingarm spools and Intuitive frame sliders

July 23rd, 2009, 03:45 PM	#7
Alex ninjette.org dude Name: 1 guess :-) Location: SF Bay Area Join Date: Jun 2008 Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE Posts: Too much. Blog Entries: 7	OK, I've got it installed on my berry, and have enabled it to work with my calendars. Works great, bidirectionally, with zero issues. I don't see that amount of customization that noche is referring to, though. It lets you log into your google account, lets you enable syncing of calendar and/or contacts, and in the calendar options you can choose which calendar to sync to if you have multiple google calendars. I haven't enable the contacts sync yet, but I don't yet see where one would be able to choose priority of Google vs. Outlook vs. Berry in case of conflict, is that buried somewhere? __________________________________________________ Montgomery Street Motorcycle Club / cal24.com / crf250l.org / ninjette.org ninjette.org Terms of Service Shopping for motorcycle parts or equipment? Come here first. The friendliest Ninja 250R/300/400 forum on the internet! (especially Unregistered)

July 23rd, 2009, 01:22 PM	#2
M-Oorb ninjette.org sage Name: Matt Location: South East Florida/Rutgers University Join Date: Dec 2008 Motorcycle(s): 2008 250r (Fastest Color) Posts: 914	Question alex...I use google calendar and I love it. Would I somehow be able to add an event on google calendar on my blackberry and have it show up on the comp? From that video it seems yes but than I would actually have google calendar on my phone or I would set the appointment on my blackberry calendar and then it would go to google calendar on the desktop?

July 23rd, 2009, 01:31 PM	#4
M-Oorb ninjette.org sage Name: Matt Location: South East Florida/Rutgers University Join Date: Dec 2008 Motorcycle(s): 2008 250r (Fastest Color) Posts: 914	So I'd still have to use the blackberry calender if I wanted to add something on my phone? I don't really like the blackberry calender but I guess this doesn't allow me to get around it when adding something directly from the phone...

July 23rd, 2009, 03:59 PM	#8
noche_caliente ninjette.org certified postwhore Name: Kim Location: mundo de ensueño Join Date: Nov 2008 Motorcycle(s): '08 250 Posts: A lot.	you know, I can't find it now - maybe I did that online somewhere, or maybe I'm mixing it up with when I used the desktop manager stuff to pull things out of outlook... sorry __________________________________________________ Progrip tank pad, blue rim stripes, blue Pazzos, Roaring Toyz lowering kit, Puig DB in dark smoke, Cortech sport tail, super mini tank, and saddlebags, OES swingarm spools and Intuitive frame sliders

July 23rd, 2009, 05:54 PM	#9
backinthesaddleagain ninjette.org certified postwhore Name: Greg Location: Rhode Island Join Date: Apr 2009 Motorcycle(s): 2013 ZX6R 636 Posts: A lot.	No experience with it as I use BES server, but looks like a cool solution.

July 23rd, 2009, 06:45 PM	#10
billmi ninjette.org member Name: Bill Location: Palm Bay, FL Join Date: Jul 2009 Motorcycle(s): 82 XV750, 99 DR200SE, 04 DR200SE, 08 DR200SE, 95 EX250 Posts: 71	I haven't tried it, as I use a Palm phone, not Blackberry, but this topic does highlight a significant Irony to me. Apparently Google doesn't have enough faith in Google Video, and they felt the need to host their own video on YouTube.

July 23rd, 2009, 07:01 PM	#11
noche_caliente ninjette.org certified postwhore Name: Kim Location: mundo de ensueño Join Date: Nov 2008 Motorcycle(s): '08 250 Posts: A lot.	Doesn't google own youtube???? __________________________________________________ Progrip tank pad, blue rim stripes, blue Pazzos, Roaring Toyz lowering kit, Puig DB in dark smoke, Cortech sport tail, super mini tank, and saddlebags, OES swingarm spools and Intuitive frame sliders

July 23rd, 2009, 07:07 PM	#12
Alex ninjette.org dude Name: 1 guess :-) Location: SF Bay Area Join Date: Jun 2008 Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE Posts: Too much. Blog Entries: 7	Google bought youtube awhile back. Surprisingly, they've left Google Video up and running all this time. __________________________________________________ Montgomery Street Motorcycle Club / cal24.com / crf250l.org / ninjette.org ninjette.org Terms of Service Shopping for motorcycle parts or equipment? Come here first. The friendliest Ninja 250R/300/400 forum on the internet! (especially Unregistered)

July 24th, 2009, 09:39 AM	#13
Alex ninjette.org dude Name: 1 guess :-) Location: SF Bay Area Join Date: Jun 2008 Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE Posts: Too much. Blog Entries: 7	Verdict is in; it's not ready for primetime. For calendar syncing it seems to work fine, exactly as designed. But it hosed the contacts for both myself and my wife. My wife didn't have her contacts online with google, so her sync went like this: 2000-ish contacts on phone, none on google. Sync pushed all contacts to google contacts, and back to phone. At that point, many of them were screwed up. It took the "title" field and misinterpreted it. So on the phone it used to be John Doe, VP, Gadget Inc. After the sync, the first name became VP John, last name Doe. Or sometimes just first name VP, last name John. There were other types of screwups, but those were the most prevalent. It didn't look like any were fully deleted; the same number of contacts in her phone were now online, they were just garbled. I'll have to delete everything from her phone address book and repush everything from her Outlook. On mine it was worse: I made sure the latest contacts I had were in my Outlook, and I synced my phone to them ahead of time. I also loaded those contacts directly to google contacts by importing them, so what was on the phone and what was on google should have been quite similar, if not identical. I hit sync, and it took hours. At the end of it, not only were many of my contacts garbled on both sides, but some of them were duplicated as many as 8 times on my phone. Just like for my wife's, I'll have to wipe the entire address book on the phone and repush everything from Outlook. The google sync product is nowhere near ready for primetime, and I can't recommend it for anyone who wants to sync more than a very small amount of simple contacts. __________________________________________________ Montgomery Street Motorcycle Club / cal24.com / crf250l.org / ninjette.org ninjette.org Terms of Service Shopping for motorcycle parts or equipment? Come here first. The friendliest Ninja 250R/300/400 forum on the internet! (especially Unregistered)

July 24th, 2009, 09:45 AM	#14
noche_caliente ninjette.org certified postwhore Name: Kim Location: mundo de ensueño Join Date: Nov 2008 Motorcycle(s): '08 250 Posts: A lot.	wow alex- that is really messed up I didn't have any problems like that with mine but then again, I don't have terribly many saved either... Did you send them what you just posted so they can be working on it as well? __________________________________________________ Progrip tank pad, blue rim stripes, blue Pazzos, Roaring Toyz lowering kit, Puig DB in dark smoke, Cortech sport tail, super mini tank, and saddlebags, OES swingarm spools and Intuitive frame sliders

July 24th, 2009, 09:54 AM	#15
Alex ninjette.org dude Name: 1 guess :-) Location: SF Bay Area Join Date: Jun 2008 Motorcycle(s): '13 Ninja 300 (white, the fastest color!), '13 R1200RT, '14 CRF250L, '12 TT-R125LE Posts: Too much. Blog Entries: 7	There are many stories like mine already in the support forum there, I guess I had hoped they had worked it out and something weird had happened to cause the other complaints, but nope. __________________________________________________ Montgomery Street Motorcycle Club / cal24.com / crf250l.org / ninjette.org ninjette.org Terms of Service Shopping for motorcycle parts or equipment? Come here first. The friendliest Ninja 250R/300/400 forum on the internet! (especially Unregistered)

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