Everybody with an iPhone (or in general a smartphone), at some point, faces the problem of data synchronization regarding his/her mailbox, addressbook and calendar (all features that make up a typical office organizer).
There are various ways and software packages (either commercial or free) in order to ensure data synchronization between computers or computers and smartphones. Every solution comes with its pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages and, as of today, I am not aware of an all-in-one software solution to accommodate every need and be compatible with every possible platform.
A possibility to overcome the problem of data synchronization is offered by google. When you have a google account you are able to use email (gmail), a calendar and an address book. The first great thing about this technology is that is online (always accessible), versatile, easy to use and free! This means that whatever you do on your google account is online and accessible everywhere in the world without the need for special software or even operating system; it only relies on the existence of a web browser.
Let's take thing one at a time:
MAILBOX
Gmail is a typical webmail service but with great added value features. First of all, it offers POP and IMAP access, which means you can download all your mail to your personal computer by using any email client software. Additionally, you have the option to forward all mail activity to another email account. What is also very important is that you are able to grab email from other email services, like yahoo, as I explained in a previous post.
CALENDAR
A really useful tool provided by google is the calendar. This is actually a set of calendars for every account, which means that you can create multiple calendars which are all fused to one display. This way you can create a calendar for every important activity or theme and be able to monitor your timetable a lot easier! For example you can create a calendar for 'general' general, a calendar for holidays, a calendar for a course schedule, and so on. Additionally you are able to fuse other global calendars into your calendar (like the "phases of the moon" or "local weather forecast" calendars).
Another great feature of the google calendar is that it can be integrated into your own website. An example of its usage: Consider being a professor and you teach several courses. You create one calendar for each course and update it with information concerning only this course. You are able to display this calendar in the website of the course and provide your students with timetables, schedules, and all information needed to keep everything in time with just a copy-paste procedure. Anyway, this feature is not actually relevant to this post so I have to stop it here...
ADDRESSBOOK
The addressbook provided by google completes the set of essential tools needed in order to keep things on track. This is an easy to use addressbook with various import and export features.
OK; now that we have the tools available how can we use them to our benefit on the iPhone?
It is as easy as this:
- Activate your iPhone
- Go to settings / Mail, Contacts, Calendars and choose "Add Account...".
- Then choose "Microsoft Exchange".
- In the email field and enter your full google account email address (i.e. user@gmail.com).
- Leave the domain field blank.
- In the password field and enter your google password.
- Press next.
- Enter your full google account email address in the username field and your password in the password field.
- Press next.
- If an "unable to verify certificate" dialog box appears, press "Accept".
- In the server field type m.google.com and press next.
- Select the sync services you wish to enable (email, contacts, calendars).
- A dialog box will appear asking whether to keep local data or replace everything with data from google account -- choose wisely ;-)
If you have "push" enabled syncing will be automatic, otherwise, synchronization will occur whenever you connect to a wireless network.
Now let's take a look at our status after this procedure: We are now able to handle our email, contacts and multiple calendars both from the internet and the iPhone. Isn't it great? Additionally, if you use a mac computer, you can use similar techniques to have everything on your computer synchronized with google and, as of this, synchronized with your iPhone, thus eliminating the need to connect the iPhone to the computer for synchronization. The central of your office becomes google!!!
Enjoy.
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