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Google's Sync Available To iPhone, Windows Mobile In Beta Flavor

Today, Google announced that it is making its Sync product available to the iPhone and Windows Mobile platforms. The software makes it possible to sync calendar events and other data from Google directly to the phone.

"One of the hardest parts about switching phones is getting your address book and calendar to your new device," says Bryan Mawhinney, software engineer with Google Mobile, in a blog post. He's not kidding. For most feature phones, it can be a nightmare to re-enter all the contact data from old phones. It's even more annoying if that old phone happens to be dead.

Google is hoping to ease that pain a little by releasing a beta version of Google Sync for the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones as well as a contacts-only version for phones that support SyncML.

Mawhinney explains, "For iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, Google Sync allows you to get your Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar events to your phone. Once you set up Sync on your phone, it will automatically begin synchronizing your address book and calendar in the background, over-the-air, so you can attend to other tasks. Sync uses push technology so any changes or additions to your calendar or contacts are reflected on your device in minutes. The connection is always on so you don't have to manually sync your phone after Sync has been set up."

By the way, it is interesting to note, that in order to provide this service, Google had to license ActiveSync from Microsoft. By licensing ActiveSync, this should give Android users hope that future Android phones will be ActiveSync-enabled as well. That means corporate e-mail, folks.

Unlike Google's half-baked offline Calendar access that was announced last week, Google Sync works in both directions. This means any changes that you make to your contacts or calendar appointments on your phone are automatically reflected on the Web and vice versa. The two-way syncing also will work on SyncML-enabled phones and BlackBerries. Google Sync already is available for Nokia's S60 and Series 40 platforms, as well as on Sony Ericsson phones.

This will make life a bit easier, but I have to wonder how it will tie together with other services that do the same thing for the iPhone and Windows Mobile. Will events be double- or triple-added to your calendar? Will contacts be added back and forth multiple times? Let's hope not.

Google strongly stressed -- more so than usual -- that this is beta software. Mawhinney even cautions, "Please keep in mind that Google Sync may remove all existing contacts and calendar events from your phone, so make sure to back up any important data before you set it up."

That sounds like good advice to me.

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