TooMuchGreen

So then, in the continuing quest to sidestep MobileME’s $99 a year using existing free services the previous post gave us cloud based calendar & To Do list integration for Thunderbird and set up syncing with the iPod Touch/iPhone (which by the way is working seamlessly) but what about contacts? Without contacts a comms suite isn’t actually a comms suite, again not a problem, hello Google contacts (standalone) and the Zindus add-on (and as before this is aimed at T-Bird on the Mac).

As you know I don’t have a GMail account (I like my private address and prefer to be less generic) which isn’t a problem with the standalone Google contacts service, first things first, let’s set that up, all you need is an empty account at this stage, go HERE to set one up.

All done? Cool, now you’ll need to populate your T-Bird address book, this is easy, just export your Mac contacts as an LDIF file and import it into the T-Bird address book, next download and install the Zindus add on (HERE).

All done? OK, from the T-Bird ‘Tools’ drop down menu select ‘Zindus’ to set up synching with your Google contacts account, input your Google details and your address book will replicate up to the Google cloud, that’s the computer end finished, now to sort out synching with the iPod Touch/iPhone.

The quick and dirty way to do this is through iTunes and as contacts don’t (usually) change *too* much I think we can allow a hard wired solution (well I can). Connect your iPod Touch or iPhone, select it in iTunes, pop the ‘info’ tab and tick the ‘Sync Google Contacts’ box, that’s it.

We’re done.

To sum up, we’ve got cloud sync between desktop and iPhone/iPod Touch for email (IMAP), calendar & To Do’s (using Google & Remember the Milk), and for our storage (using Drop Box), now we’ve also got Contact replication (using Google Contacts), and all for free, not bad for a brief two days R&D.

Give me a shout if you would like expanded advice on procedures in the Sync posts, Linux, or anything else featured on Too Much Green.