Sync-ing PIMs

I often find myself in the conflict to decide whether to go completely online or stick with desktop applications. Though, after the advent of Google and the plethora of web applications going online is a lucrative offer, albeit, due to my love of MS Outlook … and the lack of decent connectivity options back home (where the majority of users still access internet via dial up connections) this does not make it a feasible proposition.

By going online I mean adopting a web browser as the application. Using it as an email client, Blog application, Calendar and Task management; and with Google Documents you can now even create spreadsheets and documents online. (Right now I’m using Windows live Writer beta to furnish my blog with this piece of content update)

A couple of years ago I decided (after much debate) to stick with Yahoo!for Emails, blogs and PIM (tasks, Calendar, etc.), although MSn and Google had similar offerings; but slowly have drifted towards a more Google centric usage.

The reason I decided to stick with Yahoo! was because I could synchronize my Outlook with Yahoo .. using the third party IntelliSync, http://calendar.yahoo.com/?v=120, (which aslo syncrhonizes Yahoo with my PDA if configured to do so). But as luck would have it, some time ago my intelliSync stopped working. The reason being – it couldn’t authenticate me anymore.

Considering Yahoo has an amazing service by the name of Yahoo Answers, where you can find answers to all sorts of questions (this I personally haven’t had the opportunity to try, but the couple of times I’ve come across this service, its been a rewarding experience) – I thought I’d try my luck there. Alas, it was not to be.

I searched high and low, in the FAQs, knowledgebase, any Yahoo related site I could, but to no avail. I don’t remember correctly, but I think in a response to an email i sent to their support I got a response saying that this particular application, namely, IntelliSync is not supported. 😐

After spending months trying to get it to work I finally came across a blog which identified the cause of the error… 😀 and that was … the use of characters such as "@" in the password!

So, being the slave that I am, to Outlook, I went ahead, without further ado, and changed my password to something more ‘simpler’ and not too secure.

Whatever it takes to get all my data in the same place (I have my outlook set to connect to Hotmail, collect email from Yahoo and Gmail, as well as my corporate email server – all for free – you might want to look at YPOPs, www.sourceforge.net/projects/yahoopops/ for pop-ing Yahoo emails).

I was a happy man once again, for a while at least.

Most people accuse me of screwing around with too many applications at the same time which causes some of them to break. I don’t know which one is the culprit this time. But last I checked, my IntelliSync actually CRASHES when i try to sync Yahoo with outlook.

Not a properly identifiable error like last time (though there wasn’t much help for it either) but actually crashes 😦

Guess will have to make it work, since Google doesnt beleive in desktop applications connectors, and Microsoft has yet to come out wiht an Outlook Connector add-in that works without Premium membership.

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PROS:

• 2 way synchronization with MS outlook, Lotus Notes, Palm OS, Pocket PC.

CONS:

• Low level  of support