Let’s face it.  We want things that just work.  We want our experiences to be seamless from device to device and between different services.  I’ve been working hard for a while now to get that seamless experience with my contacts and calendars.  Unfortunately this is not an easy process.  I have a Blackberry Curve, an iPod Touch, a Mac, and a PC.  I want to be able to keep all of these in sync with my Google contacts and calendars.  So let me just break it down how I do that.

Google <-> MacBook

I’m currently doing this in two different ways.  To sync my contacts I’m using the built-in ability for Address Book to sync to Google’s contacts.

I purchased a Spanning Sync license late last year because of its ability to sync Google Calendar to iCal.  You can use CalDAV to see your Google Calendars in iCal, but it is very inelegant.  I just can’t stand how it looks.

iCal Sidebar w/ CalDAV

iCal Sidebar w/ CalDAV

It’s fine for your main calendar, but I just can’t stand all of those drop downs for the rest of them.  That’s a function of iCal, and not Google.  I do wish they would improve that interface, but of course they want you using MobileMe (granted I’m probably one of very few people that this clunky interface really upsets).

Google <-> Blackberry

This syncing is done using Google Sync which anyone can download for free.  This syncs my Google contacts and calendars back and forth on my Blackberry over the air.  Yes I could use PocketMac to sync the Blackberry to my Mac, but that doesn’t really fit into what I think the “just works” mentality is.  It requires hooking up to my MacBook and syncing.

I also use the Facebook app my Blackberry to sync people’s pictures and info to their Facebook profile.  Though I’m not really sure how well that process works.

Google <-> iPod Touch

I COULD use Google Sync for this as well.  And it works just fine for contacts.  But once again the calendar does NOT look right.  When you use Google Sync it puts all of your events into one calendar and completely loses a lot of functionality.  You can no longer look at separate color coded calendars.

Instead, for my iPod I’m using free service NuevaSync to sync contacts and calendars.  NuevaSync runs an Exchange server to allow you access to your Google contacts and calendar over the air.  They now offer push email as well for those who want to pay a little extra.

Summary

So that’s how I do it.  It does a good job of keeping my calendars synced, as I’ve had very few problems there.  However, my contacts are another story.  I’ve never lost any contacts, but I’ve had some serious duplicates as well as contacts with the same address multiple times.  I’ve actually looked in my Mac’s Address Book and seen the same person duplicated 6+ times.

This is what frustrates me.  I’m not sure exactly where these problems happen.  I do think the odd duplicate addresses are coming from the Facebook Blackberry App.  It seems that it tries to put their Facebook address in there, but it usually just ends up being a city.

This whole process and the troubles that came with it make me think that there is not a very standard contact file format.  I don’t really know how contacts are stored, whether its an XML-esque file or what, but I plan to do some digging into that for a follow up to this.

How about you?  Leave a comment and let me know how you manage your contacts/calendars.  Have you had similar problems or have you found ways that work better?