iConfused iSyncing iPhone

Got my iPhone. Very cool. Excellent chick magnet. And it's actually useful. Or it would be useful if I could figure out how to synchronize my data! I've got copies of my personal data (contacts, calendar and notes) in nine different places: Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Entourage, Apple Address Book & iCal, Yahoo Mail, Google Gmail, Plaxo, iPhone and RIM Blackberry. So far, I've used Microsoft Exchange as my absolute reference point: I rely on and make sure that I am managing that particular copy of the data and that copy is what gets synced out to Outlook, Entourage, Blackberry and (via Outlook) to Plaxo.

But iPhone doesn't synchronize directly with Exchange. It also doesn't synchronize with Plaxo or anything but Apple's own programs, Apple Address Book and iCal as well as Apple's .Mac service. Plaxo doesn't synchronize with .Mac, Exchange, Blackberry or Entourage, but it does synchronize with Apple Address Book, Outlook, LinkedIn (hadn't even thought of that one!), Yahoo and Google (among others).

In the process of seeing what I have where, I've discovered that I have a copy of my contacts but not my calendar at Yahoo, but it is way out of date and I don't know where it came from. I have several copies of my contacts at Plaxo, including one copy where there is a duplicate of most but not all records; I can't tell where the records came from originally. I haven't checked Google because I'm beginning to think this is out of control.

I want one entity to take responsibility for maintaining -- permanently and reliably -- a single copy of my personal data. I want it backed up, logged, and secure. And I want everybody to stop pretending that they are the ones that do this and acknowledge that entity as the source point for my data, with which they will promise to synchronize according to some minimum standard. In other words, don't re-label my email fields or reformat my phone number without asking (both of which have happened somewhere along the line and been synchronized back into my core database).

My current conclusion: I'm going to have to remove (delete) all my contacts everywhere except in Microsoft Exchange and start over again with that one copy, in order to get to the point where I can have the same contacts and calendar information in all of my devices: Mac, PC, Blackberry, iPhone and the web.

Comments

[Pete Dailey]

Are you a Mac or a PC (or both) user? There are some tools out there to help you, but fundamentally you are so hyperconnected that you're not an ideal market segment for product development. I've got a few of the same issues and have been able to work some of them out.