Update: Okay, it is not perfect when it comes to resolving dupes between iCal on my Mac and Outlook on my Windows XP machines. The problem centers around the fact that iCal and Outlook organize data in fundamentally different ways:
- Within Outlook, you have one calendar, and it can have as many categories of appointments as you like. For simplicity, say you have two categories in your Outlook Calendar: Home and Work.
- Then, say you have contrived to have the same appointments in iCal. The problem you will run into is that iCal sets these up as two different calendars, not as one calendar with two categories. iCal is oblivious to the concept of categories.
So, when Plaxo syncs these two separate systems, with Plaxo you get Three Calendars: one called Calendar (the stuff from Outlook), one called Home (from iCal), and one called Work (from iCal).
As for me, I have about a dozen “calendars” within iCal, so I have quiet a mess right now. Most of these “calendars” exist because of an attempt to implement GTD Contexts (categories) within iCal.
So, it turns out that the article I drafted about my disappointments with technology are still valid and I will publish it in a couple of days.
In the interim, I am going to attempt to resolve all these “duplications” I now have within my Calendars, and will provide an update in a separate post when I am not ticked off.
Having said all that, I still think Plaxo is the best platform I have seen yet for getting all of your stuff to sync together.
Now to the original post:
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I did not even finish watching Scoble’s interview with a VP before I headed off and signed up on Plaxo.
It looks to me like Plaxo allows you to synchronize everything: all your contacts in Outlook with those in Mac, same with Calendar items, same with Google Calendar, same with Yahoo, …
It is available in two flavors: free and $49.95 per year. I signed up for the latter, and won’t be billed for it until my 30-day trial period is up.
I have already synced all my Mac data to Plaxo, and within the next hour or so, I will go into Windows and sync with Outlook. Hopefully, it will work as advertised and eliminate duplicates and do a true sync. That is what it is supposed to do, and it appears to be completely unique in its ability to sync with pretty much anything you throw its way. Of course, you sync with your smartphone, too.
This is truly going to be huge.
I drafted a post over the weekend in which I complain about technology not being nearly as advanced as I think it should be, and the draft includes some words about the pathetic state of sync technology. Now, I have to revise that draft. (But, I will still post it at some point, because it’s an old man’s duty to complain about things from time to time, don’t you know?)
Anyway, I’ll post more on Plaxo as I gain experience with it, but it sounds to me like just what I have been looking for and what I suspect a lot of folks have been looking for.