New AOL Sync Application For Mobile Phone
AOL just launched this Thursday a brand new sync application that will sync the users AOL address book and calendar with Outlook and their mobile phone. The application, AOL Sync, is the result of a partnership between AOL and Plaxo, all to bring you a Funambol based, bidirectional, over-the-air client. Funambol, in case you don’t know, is a popular open source synchronization solution that uses SyncML to push PIM data to mobile devices and desktop applications. In spirit, it’s the poor man’s Exchange / BES.
The AOL sync client supports Outlook, Outlook Express and both Windows Mobile phones and BlackBerry handsets. you can install the client to either your phone or desktop, configure it to sync with the AOL servers and before you can wonder what happened, automatic OTA bidirectional syncing. Sweet! Though they haven’t listed them as supported devices, there is a Funambol sync client for the iPhone and for Thunderbird / Sunbird (experimental) as well. If you can get the AOL settings, it may be worth a try to see if those other platforms work, too.
Now let’s wait till users have actually tried the new application out to see if AOL has lived up to its claims.
Funambol is a great service and should serve AOL well; however, AOL should set up their sync service to allow contact and/or calendars to be synced SEPARATELY. I would like to use AOL Sync to sync my contacts but NOT my calendar – you can’t do this currently. So close!!