Where were you on the day GMail went down?

People often remember where they were on the day that momentous things happen in history; first man on the moon, JFK being shot, Princess Diana's car crash... that sort of thing.

That's all well and good for the big stuff (actually, was Diana's death really that big a deal?) but if you'd been following Twitter yesterday you would have though something similar had happened as a huge number of Tweets about one thing flooded the networks, something that seemed to excite and amuse some users and horrify others... the death of GMail!

Actually rumours of it's death are greatly exagerated since it came back online within a couple of hours but for a while there Twitter and the Blogosphere were buzzing with slightly nervous posts from users who couldn't access their email. Do a quick search on Twitter for #GFail to get a feel for it.

I pretty much run my life on Google's online services - they host my blog, my email, my calendar and contacts which sync to my iPhone, I use their blog reader, their photo sharing site Picasa and I also use their online bookmarks and search alerts to keep up-to-date on things.

So, in light of the Great Google Outage of 2009 should I be worried about being so reliant on one service? Google responded to the problems on their blog and everything seems ok now but I am wondering about spreading the load a little. I already use Flickr from rival Yahoo, along with an old Yahoo mail account so that's a bit of backup and delicious.com is probably better than Google's bookmarks but it's so nice and easy having everything in one place! Which is probably why there has been speculation around a monopoly investigation to determine whether it needs to divest some services.

I like it - I like the ease of use, the openness of their API and tools, the simple interface, everything! They just don't feel like Microsoft did when they were being attacked for their global coverage. Hopefully Google can recover from it's technical glitches and that their users will forgive them for being shown to be fallable like everyone else.

Google catches up

After my post on how to sync the Google contacts and calendar to an iPhone I was wondering why it was necessary to go to such lengths when Google makes it so easy to do everything else. It turns out that the good people at Google must have been thinking the same thing since they've now released Google Sync Beta for iPhone which does exactly what I achieved using Nuevasync - I've not tried the service yet since I'm happy with how I've got my iPhone setup but the comments about Google Sync overwriting the existing contacts suggest to me that they've used very similar processes and emulated an Exchange server.



Since you can already sync Google calendars and contacts to Thunderbird, the open source email client from Mozilla, the new Google release removes another layer of complexity in keeping everything synced together.

I seem to be increasingly reliant on Google now - email, calendar, photos, blog reader, maps... oh, and web searches! I've still not succumbed to their web browser Chrome since I like Firefox but they're a big part of my online life!

Syncing your iPhone contacts and calendar to something other than Outlook on Windows.... like Thunderbird and Google

Home Truths
Let's start with a couple of home truths:

1) The bulk of home computers run a Windows OS.
2) One of the benefits of a mobile device like the iPhone is to have roaming access to your contacts, calendar and email.

3) You clicked NO to the paid-for Mobile Me account that Apple want you to sign up for.

If you're a Mac user then it's all fine, Apple have helpfully given you all the tools you need to sync your iCal to the iPhone and email is handled well by the phone anyway although I confess to not knowing whether your contacts are sync'ed.

If, like the bulk of us you're running Windows then you're a bit more limited. For email then it's mostly fine, the iPhone will connect to most account types but to what happens if you want to co-ordinate your contacts list or calendar? Surely in the modern go-anywhere world it's nice not to have to re-input everything just because you want it on your iPhone as well as your home computer.

The choices presented by iTunes are Microsoft Outlook/Windows Address Book or nothing and unless you're running an Exchange server you have to plug your iPhone into the computer to sync. How restricting, how disappointing!

Holy Grail
So what happens if you use Googlemail, or an alternative email client like the excellent Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning calendar plugin?

Or if you're like me and you actually want to sync your Thunderbird/Lightning calendar to your Google calendar AND your iPhone as well as the contacts lists of all three? This is bordering on a kind-of holy grail of roaming data access.

The Solution
After a bit of digging around I found GCALDaemon which let's you sync your Google calendar to iCal compatible programs - lots of people have used it but some complain it's a bit too technical and for me it was only going to do part of the job so I'll mention it in passing but focus on how I chose to progress.

First thing is to link up your Google calendar to Thunderbird/Lightning - this bit is dead easy, simply go to the Google calendar settings, click on the link of the calendar you want to sync and scroll down to find the XML button. You need to copy the code this gives you and enter it into the Options screen in Lightning. That's it, your home life and mobile calendars are now linked!

To perform the same trick on your contacts list you need to use a third-party plugin for Thunderbird called Zindus which you download then install via the Add-Ons menu option from within Thunderbird. Make changes to either list and it will sync - either automatically when you open/close the program or manually by pressing the big SYNC button found on the Zindus menu option.

The next stage is to sync up your Google calendar/contacts lists to the iPhone. This should have been made easy by Apple since they bothered to give native support of the Google mail system but apparently they got bored before they finished extending the functionality to the rest of the tools.

The work around I've used is to sign up for a free NuevaSync account which acts as a Microsoft Exchange frontend to Google. You complete the very simple details for Calendar and Contacts then save it and forget about it. Now pick up that iPhone and go to the "Settings" screen, then "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" to add a new account as if you were adding a new email address.

Use the NuevaSync website address as the server and select "On" to both Contacts and Calendar in the iPhone account settings - I've not used the Mail switch since you can already access Googlemail on the iPhone.

Be warned that this will delete any existing contacts you have on your iPhone so make sure that you've got them replicated elsewhere, preferably in your Thunderbird or Google contacts lists since that's what it's going to be replaced with.

Enjoy!
That's all folks! You should now be able to access the same email, calendar and contacts in Thunderbird, Google and on your iPhone! That's what I wanted when I bought a mobile device and I'm disproportionately happy that I've managed to do it! Plus it's all done 'over-air', or as we used to call it, wirelessly.