Synchronization

ramsesoriginal ramsesoriginal at gmail.com
Fri Apr 11 18:17:25 CEST 2008


On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 5:25 PM, David Pottage <david at electric-spoon.com> wrote:
> On Fri, April 11, 2008 3:57 pm, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>
>  > ramsesoriginal writes:
>  >
>  >> [snip] ... I am speaking about the synchronization between the phone
>
> >> and other devise, could it be PC, a MAC, another phone, or even just
>  >> Google calendar. Which way of synchronization has been chose? Which
>  >> standards? Are there some "branded" or at least "recommended"
>  >> clients? _What_ can be synchronized: contacts? calendar? rss feeds?
>  >> GPS data? files?
>  >
>
> > I've synced anything I've wanted to (going to/from a linux box) using
>  > 'rsync -auv'
>
>  I don't think ramsesoriginal was asking about syncing the filesystem
>  which you would sync with rsync, but about synchronizing his address
>  book (contacts) calendar etc.

Exactly! I personally can use whatever, but a consumer-device needs
the ability to sync in an easy way,

>
>  In general the solution is to use SyncML, which is an open standard for
>  synchronization between phones, desktop computers, and internet sync
>  servers. It can use a variety of transports including bluetooth and
>  TCP/IP, and works by exchanging vCard files, for contacts, and similar
>  vCal etc files for calendar events and the like. It should be fairly
>  easy to port a sync client or server to Open Moko.

Ok, that sounds good. Is this system also supported by "mainstream"
applications? I think of the secretary who uses outlook, or maybe
thunderbird..
Anotehr question is if this would also allow to sync other infromation
like geodata/tags, feed list (and the read/unread status of the
feeds), etc.. is there already some standard for that, or would we
have to start from scratch?

>
>  I have done some experimenting with syncing my Nokia phone with my
>  Linux desktop. The syncing part went fairly well, the problem was that
>  Kontact would not play nice as a sync target, so I was only able to
>  sync the contacts DB on my phone with a directory full of vCard files
>  on my Linux box, rather than with my groupware client which is what I
>  was really trying to achieve. Proper sync support is on the roadmap for
>  the next version of Kontact, so everything should work properly fairly
>  soon. I am eagerly awaiting the next Ubuntu release in order to give
>  that a try.

And here I think of something: many people use web-based applications.
Is there also a plan to sync with those?

>
>  Another exciting possibly is that seeing as the OpenMoko phone is a
>  full Linux computer it could be used as a Sync server, making it
>  possible to sync with another cellphone without the need for a normal
>  computer. If we could have that as a standard feature on the consumer
>  version of the Freerunner it would be very cool.

Now this Sounds like a pretty cool and innovative idea. This would
allow also for some neat functions like copying of contacts at code
signing "partys", or vCard exchanges at buisness meetings without the
need of some fixed computer.

-- 
My corner of the web: http://blog.ramsesoriginal.org




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