The good news is Google has released version 3.0 of their Contacts Data API, which Spanning Sync uses to sync with Google Contacts.
It adds a number of features, most important of which to our users is support for structured names and postal addresses. This means that Google will now distinguish between a contact's first, middle, and last names, etc, and the street, city, state, etc, parts of their addresses—so we don't have to guess at which words should go in which fields in Address Book, which we have to do now. (Goodbye, compatibility modes!)
As soon as we got access to the API we started implementing support for it. That work is now largely complete, and will be part of Spanning Sync 3. We've done some interoperability testing and have had great results with both Google Sync for iPhone and the new Google Apps Sync for Outlook. But other apps and devices are more problematic.
The bad news is that the Google Contacts web UI itself and the Contacts application on Android devices aren't well-behaved, which can lead to data loss.
When you create a contact in Address Book and sync it using Spanning Sync 3, the contact's structured names and postal addresses are sent to Google. But when you then edit that contact in the Google Contacts web UI, the structured data is destroyed in Google's database. That's no good.
Android's Contacts app doesn't completely destroy the structured data but it rearranges it in ugly ways, moving parts of contacts' names and addresses to the wrong fields.
We're in close contact with Google about this issue and have been told that the Contacts UI team is working on a fix. We're optimistic we'll see that fix soon.
In the mean time, we continue to add even more killer features to Spanning Sync 3, which we hope to have in beta soon. We think you'll be pleased. Stay tuned.
I'm hoping that you are are the final answer I've been looking for!! For the last week, I've struggled to make my new Palm Pre work with my Mac. I'm coming off of Palm Desktop and now have my data in iCal and Address Book. Very much hoping that you all will work to support this new device.... any idea??? (The Missing Sync for Pre app is awful... takes FOREVER over the wifi if you've got a lot of contacts, which I do)
As I type this I'm syncing for the first time... I've got my fingers crossed!
Thanks!
Posted by: dalifovea | June 12, 2009 at 02:05 PM
Yes, we definitely want to make sure Spanning Sync is useful for Pre owners, and plan to incorporate the Pre into our interoperability testing.
Cheers,
Charlie
Posted by: Charlie Wood | June 12, 2009 at 02:08 PM
Any news about spanning sync V3 with support for the new google APIs (...and the birthday field :-) )
Thank
Thomas
Posted by: pistache | June 23, 2009 at 04:58 PM
We're putting the finishing touches on the Spanning Sync 3 beta right now. Watch this space!
Posted by: Charlie Wood | June 23, 2009 at 05:01 PM
I am a Palm Pre Advocate looking for solutions to recommend. I am using Entourage and through iCal and Address book I am able to keep the Palm Pre in sync with Google and my Mac. Keep up the good work.
Posted by: braycher | June 25, 2009 at 01:45 PM