Wireless Blackberry/Mac Syncing on the Cheap

I’m attached at the hip—quite literally—to my BlackBerry. After trading in my Windows Mobile phone for the 8830, I know I’ll never go back to anything other than a BlackBerry. The unfortunate part is that upon opening my business, my Mac became attached to my BlackBerry, too.

PocketMac is great, if/when it actually works, but plugging my BlackBerry into my computer brought about new problems. I wound up either forgetting to unplug it and take it with me or forgetting to plug it in after making changes on either device. I could use the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, but why on earth would I pay that much? Plus, with it comes more stuff to deal with setting up. (Honestly, I'm against paying a ton of money for anything.) I did some searching and problem solving, and am sharing my spoils with you.

My two-part solution came about in reverse. I set up my company mail on Google Apps (I love Google products). Google recently released mobile software called Google Sync to wirelessly sync your Gmail or Google Apps contacts and calendar to your phone. I had solved the second part, getting my BlackBerry synced wirelessly for free.

Part One uses some great software called Spanning Sync. It takes your iCal and Address Book and pairs them up with Google. Spanning Sync costs $25 per year, but offers a free 15-day trial, so I went for it. After I tried the trial, Spanning Sync’s features and simplicity got me hooked. It’s great and ridiculously easy to use. There is a ton of support and help if you have any problems.

The step by step process (in order):

1. Download Spanning Sync (when you buy it, use my code SABTCX and save $5)


2. Follow the instructions and sync your iCal and Address Book with your Gmail/Google Apps account


3. Download Google Sync on your mobile device (visit m.google.com/sync from your BlackBerry)


4. From your phone, log in to your Google account in Google Sync.


5. Go to the Options and add the calendars you want and make sure the box to sync contacts is checked if you want it to be.

So for $25 for the first year ($15 for renewals) you can sync your iCal and Address Book to Gmail/Google Apps to your phone wirelessly via Google Sync. Set it up and forget about it. If you use my referral code SABTCX when buying it, you save $5 and I make $5. Then you can refer people and make back the money you paid for the software. Refer four people and it’s free. Sweet deal in my opinion.

* Taking it a bit further:
Spanning Sync will sync with multiple Google accounts. If you had a calendar for business meetings: use Spanning Sync and sync with your employees and co-workers Google accounts. Using Google Sync, they can also get the calendar on their phones. Google Sync is also starting to support more decives than just BlackBerry devices, they recently added support for iPhone, Symbian, Sony Ericsson, and WinMo, so more people in the office can get your calendar. Note that everyone will have read/write access unless you specify otherwise, so be careful of that.

Welcome

If you're reading this blog, it could be caused by technical frustration and despair. It was created from hours of searching for answers, often leading to circles or dead ends. Welcome and I hope I can help save you some frustration by sharing the spoils of my own frustration and hours of searching, asking questions, and yelling at my monitor.

I'm not big at posting in forums. I get discouraged because I find many people there often go off on ridiculous tangents about unrelated things and the poor soul who posted the original thread seems to never get their answer.

Instead, I live by Googling everything, often sending people to one of my favorite sites when they don't. Upon one of my many never ending quests for some the answer for some random question I reached a point of frustration at the phrase RTFM. Sure I say, I'll read it but how can you read the effing manual if there is no manual? I'm a techie, a geek, whatever you prefer and this is my humble response. Here's your FM.

-Harry