Can’t We All Just Get Along…For Free???!!!

As a matter of fact yes we can.  I know I said it was far too boring to write anything more about my iPhone but there is one feature I don’t hear people talking about, I only stumbled on it myself. Three of the biggest companies on the web, Apple, Google & yes even Microsoft working together have made my life much much easier.

“Alex, how do they do that?” you might say.  What they have done for me is my personal computer Holy Grail.  One problem I’ve had ever since owning more than one high tech communications device is been how to keep them all in sync.  I would find myself checking one devices address book to see if I had the same contacts for the same person, delete an email on one thing but need it later on another, hooking that thing with this cable to another thing that doesn’t work with the first things codec or transistors of whatever and it was all a major pain in the ass.  Yes you can buy sync programs or subscribe to service like mobileme from Apple but there are a couple of big problems with those services.  First sometimes they don’t work and oh yeah before I forget THEY COST MONEY!!!  I’m an American gosh darn it and I don’t want to pay for nothing!!!

But low and behold I have found a system that works almost perfectly and is 100% no buts about it, free of charge.  “How do I get this Alex?” again you might ask.  Well first off you need to sign up with Gmail and download the Google Pack of software.  If you already use a Gmail email address you’re just about done, if not or you have many different addresses like myself import your other emails into Gmail, it’s really quite easy these days.  Then import your contacts as well if they’re not already there.  Here’s a good hint when exporting and importing contacts.  After exporting open a new spread in Google Docs and open the .CSV file.  Make sure everything looks right and the top row where it says stuff like last name, first name, etc. looks right, sometimes I’ve seen it come out as gobbledygook, just retype so it looks right.  It’s all easier then it sounds.  The go here and do all that stuff and that’s it!  When you open an email on your phone, it shows open on your computer, when you update a contact; it updates the contact on the phone.  All without hooking up nothing to nothing, all done automatically, almost instantly and absolutely undoubtedly free of charge.  The only thing you should do is every so often go to all mail on your iPhone when in a WiFi area and let it download all your messages.  Probably more than anything this is definitely “Cool Stuff Alex Likes”!!!