[Lemniscate]

I'm looking for a service that provides Exchange style push contact and calendar support so that I can make changes on my phone or computer and have it pushed to the servers (and back). This way everything will always be up to date. I'm looking to avoid the need to connect my blackberry to a computer to sync, basically.
Because my computer isn't always on, I don't want to run a server. I would rather have a provider take care of this for me so that I can pull updates from their servers when my outlook is opened and have the updates pushed to my phone whenever I have cell phone coverage.

I've looked into some services such as myFunambol, but it only pushes emails -- not contacts and calendar entries. This requires a manual pull.

I've looked into scheduleworld but it isn't free.

I've also looked into SmarterMail but it requires a fee for upgrading to Exchange support which is exactly what I need.

While Google has Google Sync, it syncs the contacts in my email that I don't want on my phone (the 1000+ email addresses stored in my Gmail that automatically get saved get put on the phone). Currently they have no support for selecting certain entries to be synced. Yahoo Autosync doesn't have support for the blackberry as far as I understand (but if you could prove me wrong, that would be great!)

I've been searching for days and I've had no luck. Thank you for the advice, opinions, as well as workarounds and walkthroughs.

[nitu]

I use Google Sync with a newly created and blank google account for not use the adressed stored in my regular gmail account. Works like I charm.

[mark-d]

Funambol can be set to automatically sync after a certain period of time however I found with that service if I changed a calendar event or a contact rather than changing them in the other device (Outlook or phone depending on where I'd made the change) it just created new entries.

Set yourself up a separate gmail account and use google sync. It works for calendar and contacts, you can set the refresh time and it's not like you'd be forced to use the gmail address you'd be setting up as the contacts would be available on your BB and Outlook to use with your existing email addresses.

I use googlesync and I only set up my gmail address for that specific purpose. Since it's all free a second gmail account would probably be best.

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[Hoochie-Coo]

While Google has Google Sync, it syncs the contacts in my email that I don't want on my phone (the 1000+ email addresses stored in my Gmail that automatically get saved get put on the phone).

Google Sync only syncs the contacts in the "My Contacts" list. There was a time when gmail would add any address you received/sent to your My Contacts. It doesn't do that anymore, and puts them instead into the "All Contacts" list. So... You would have to go into My Contacts, and delete the unwanted ones. Of course, you may have 1000+ good contacts in the My Contacts, in which case, why wouldn't you want them sync'd?

As far as Contacts go, Google Sync works pretty good. My beef is with the Calendar sync, which works great... up until the point it starts throwing duplicate events in.

[Lemniscate]

Great. I didn't know that Google Sync had push notifications, but if you guys say it does, I'll give it a try.
There doesn't seem to be any other alternative right now for what I'm trying to do. It's great that Google released this service

[mark-d]

As an odd on to this thread how do you sync the google contacts back to outlook? I've got it syncing fine between the phone and google for contacts but it won't then continue the sync back to Outlook.

The calendar sync works brilliantly and the calendar syncs two way between outlook and the phone via google calendar but the contacts only sync between the phone and gmail, not to outlook.

[kenman345]

As an odd on to this thread how do you sync the google contacts back to outlook? I've got it syncing fine between the phone and google for contacts but it won't then continue the sync back to Outlook.

The calendar sync works brilliantly and the calendar syncs two way between outlook and the phone via google calendar but the contacts only sync between the phone and gmail, not to outlook.

I believe their is a googlesync type program for your computer that brings your gMail contacts into Outlook. Just google for it.

[cavingjan]

The free one isn't 100%. It definitely doesn't sync all of your contacts and it doesn't always free itself from the Outlook file so the computer can shutdown properly.

[jytvyj]

Still looking for one working over wifi

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[mark-d]

Not sure Googlesync is really the one for me

It works fine for Googlecalendar and that syncs back to Outlook fine but the contacts only get as far as Googlemail.

Thenlast night I thought I'd do a contact sync with Outllook via Desktop Manager. All the contacts on my BB had been altered during the the Googlesync operation. Something as simple as Doctor Surgery which was all entered in one name field became Surgery, Doctor. Everything was changed to First name, Middle name, Last name whether it was appropriate or not.

As so many changes to contacts had taken place on my BB already I decided to sync to Outlook after all and resolve all the naming issues there.

After 50 minutes of editing on my laptop all my contacts were back the way they should be and needless to say Google contact sync is now disabled on my BB.

[Lemniscate]

Google sync is not an appropriate solution to what I was looking for, unfortunately. The program does not sync contacts like I would have liked it to. Maybe in the future?

For now I leave the floor to anyone else that can propose a solution. Thanks

[mark-d]

Having looked into this yesterday after my dissappointment at Google I've found the two free solutions for this are Funambol and Googlesync. Neither of which have achieved what I wanted to achieve so I've just gone back to Desktop Manager and a usb cable!!

I guess there's a reason Blackberry charge more for BES as it's just a more functional service than BIS.

Maybe in the future there will be a solution but right now I think the emulating solutions are not up to the mark.

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