Arguably the 'web 2.0' application I'm most looking forward to is a decent online calendar… with synchronisation. Don't get me wrong, I love what Google have done, and 30boxes is very promising too. But until one of them cracks the Outlook problem, letting me sync my local calendar with their web one, it's little more than a theoretical exercise. I can't have a calendar that can't sync.
So I was a bit startled to discover that, actually, Yahoo cracked it years ago. It took some substantial detective work, but I came across a reference to a product called Intellisync – and eventually found details of it on Yahoo's site. And yes, it does what it promises.
Intellisync for Yahoo! synchronizes schedule information from your other personal information managers with Yahoo! Calendar, contact information with Yahoo! Address Book, tasks with Yahoo! To-Do List, and notes with Yahoo! Notepad. Please note that you can also use your Yahoo! Address Book and Calendar with Yahoo! Mail, a free web-based mail service, for a complete and free personal information management solution on the Web.
And it works. I've successfully put a new appointment into my PDA – a T-Mobile MDA Pro, running Windows Mobile 5; synchronised it with my desktop copy of Outlook 2002; and then synchronised that up to Yahoo's website.
Am I ready to switch over to Yahoo? Er, not quite. I still don't quite know what to make of Yahoo. They seemed to buy up all the right innovators, like Flickr and del.icio.us, but I haven't seen any benefits to me yet (despite being a more-than-occasional user of both). And whilst I hear great things about their new mail interface, I can't seem to convert my old-school Yahoo account over to it.
(Update: I found the workaround. The new interface is much prettier… but man, is the advertising intrusive! And as far as I can tell, it's still the same old calendar, despite the hot-stuff new mail app. Disappointing.)
So I'm sticking with Google for now. Gmail still delights and amazes me. Google's calendar works beautifully, up to a point. I'm gradually being won over by Picasa, their photo management app. And they're (hopefully?) close to letting me bring my own domain to my Gmail account – as opposed to a rather primitive masking arrangement like now. Plus, it's still my search engine of first instinct. They just keep getting it right.
I use Yahoo calendar, address book and email as my primary PIM. I’ve been using Yahoo’s sync for a few years now. In the beginning I used it mainly as a way to back up my Yahoo data to Outlook. Now I use it to sync with Outlook which then automaticallys syncs with my PPC phone. However, it is also possible to skip the sync with Outlook and instead sync it directly with a PPC phone.
It works fine most of the time. Sometimes it requires a reboot. For awhile it would crash Yahoo Messenger but I think they’ve recently fix that issue. There are a few random bugs. For example, sometimes it wants to sync the wrong direction which requires me to update Outlook first and then let Outlook update Yahoo.
Yahoo seems to be adding the ability to sync with phones directly over the air but unfortunately they don’t support Spint or my PPC phone yet.
In regards to a Web 2.0 Calendar, I definitely like what Google has done. However, I am unwilling to switch over until they not only have a sync option but also a way to import ALL data from another calendar. Right now they have some weird limitation on how far you can go back.
And as for their email, I really like it. However, when I send an email via their system as though it were going out via one of my other email accounts they add ‘on behalf of Google Mail’. This makes my emails appear very unprofessional. Yahoo does not do this, so it’s back to Yahoo Mail Plus. Too bad.