Nuevasync Beta Burp
I’ve noticed a significant increase in visits searching for info on Nuevasync in the last couple of days, so I thought I’d do a service to visitors and post a little update.
As of this writing (September 3, 2008) Nuevasync is apparently hosed. Hopefully temporarily. Read On.
According to the Nuevasync on September 2, 2008:
Service is Being Throttled Today
We have identified an issue with the sync service today that has been causing the server to bog down (and last night triggered a kernel crash too). At present we’re running the service in a throttled mode that reduces load on the machines so our engineers can investigate and fix the problem. Users may notice periods where their sync fails or is delayed. Do not re-sync, just wait and you should get sync eventually. Hopefully we can get the problem diagnosed and fixed soon.
Early this morning, the Nuevasync site was offline altogether. The blog sheds some light, and I assume that the David and Thomas are working feverishly to restore service. Try and remember that Nuevasync is in beta mode, and have patience. I warned readers in my previous post not to count on the service for mission critical applications yet. It seems that for the most part, Nuevasync’s beta population is understanding, supportive and is having patience. Commenters at the official Nuevasync blog have been demonstrating the best attitudes of end users I’ve seen in a while.
For the latest updates on Nuevasync status, keep an eye on the official blog!
Update @10:59 AM, 9/3/2008 – The Nuevasync site has been up and running again since I published this post, although the calendar service is still not syncing. To ease server load, I’m going to discontinue attempting to sync for the rest of the day.
Over-The-Air Google Calendar to iPhone Sync with NuevaSync
In my not-yet-ending quest for a full GTD implementation that spans all of my contexts (@home, @work and in between), I came across a little post by Matt Grommes that introduced me to a fantastic little service called NuevaSync.
NuevaSync (currently in free beta) offers a real, working two-way sync between Google Calendar and iPhone 2.0 firmware, regardless of your desktop platform!
In a perfect world, MobileMe would offer this capability “out of the box,” but alas, no. There are workarounds for Mac users to sync iCal with Google Calendar and then to MobileMe or directly to iPhone via iTunes, but that is (a) a lot of extra opportunity for breakage and (b) requires a Mac. Windows users are out of luck.
There are other solutions and I invite readers to comment with details below or link to their own solutions. I’ll also update this post as appropriate.
I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about NuevaSync “the company.” I will say that their website is pretty straightforward and to the point. Following the directions will get you up and running pretty quickly. I am really excited about my initial experience and am looking forward to watching this little startup grow and succeed.
A few things to you need to consider before setting this up though:
- Back up your calendar data FIRST. I admit that I was simultaneously configuring NuevaSync and Google Calendar Sync for the first time. The combination nearly proved deadly (to my data) when I made a small (very reasonable) error in judgement. Due to the fact that God really had my back, I came through completely unscathed and with all of my data intact. Chances are slim that you will reproduce my experience. But just in case: Back it up.Of course, you know you should maintain regular backups at all time, but let’s face it: most of us don’t get as meticulous about this as we should. However, with a relatively small, beta product such as this, there are plenty of opportunities for something to go wrong. An error at NuevaSync could theoretically drop all of your calendar events (or just one really important one!) in mid-sync. So treat this beta with a healthy dose of respect.
- Push sync is the default set up, but you don’t really need it! To save battery life, change your “sync” setting to manual. Everytime you open the iPhone’s calendar, just wait a few seconds for the latest changes to sync up. You’ll see the “network traffic” animation beside your network indicator to let you know it is working. (Apple doesn’t make this obvious, but it works on my iPhone (v 2.0.1 at the time of this post)).
- NuevaSync will only sync calendars that grant you “write” permission. I subscribe to several read-only calendar feeds (i.e. Meetup.com, US Holidays, etc), and these will not sync via NuevaSync. According to the NuevaSync blog, this ability is coming soon, but there is no definite date attached.
- NuevaSync is a beta product with a small staff. There is no 24
hour support, and their website explicitly states that if a server goes
down while everyone is asleep, they won’t know about it until they wake
up. (I don’t mind, and I appreciate that they told me this up front!)That said, this is not a service for mission-critical calendaring functions. Period.
In the FAQ, NuevaSync makes it very clear that they aren’t quite sure yet how they are going to monetize this thing (probably paid premium services). I get that, and don’t hold it against them. They need to figure it out quickly because this product is, in my opinion, ripe for a Twitter-style viral explosion.
True, they won’t see the volumes of users that Twitter sees, but iPhone isn’t the only mobile platform that NuevaSync supports. Heck, it wasn’t even the first. Over-the-air syncing is not a simple thing to do, even when dealing with one platform. Scaling for large numbers of users complicates matters, and costs lots of money, too.
I frankly hope that they do get that figured out sooner rather than later, because their initial offering, for me at least, is far more useful than Apple’s $99 per year MobileMe service, and I want to see what the future holds for NuevaSync.
In addition to calendar syncing, NuevaSync offers the ability to sync your Google contacts (I wouldn’t even risk trying this: it looks like it may add all of Google’s suggested contacts to your address book!) or your Plaxo contacts (maybe try this…with a backup) over the air.
What NuevaSync doesn’t do is connect your desktop calendar to Google calendar or anything else. You’ll still need another product, such as CalDAV or Google Calendar Sync for that. I’m using Google Calendar Sync with an Exchange-based calendar. After I’ve had another day of smooth operation, I’ll post some thoughts on that as well.
Credit where credit is due: I found NuevaSync via: Matt O’ Rama » iPhone / Google / Outlook Calendar Sync.
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