Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 110

Sharing Data in Multi-Palm Households/Offices

The mention of Yahoo Calendars brought this subject to mind. How do the rest of you multi-Palm households/offices keep your data in sync across multiple users?

When my wife got her first Palm a few years back, it quickly became essential for us to synchronize our Palm data. For example, if she changed the address book listing for our kids' doctor, I needed to get that change, too. We used a little app called SyncUp for a long time, until WeSync came along. We have been quite satisfied with WeSync Contacts, which synchronizes the changes we make in the four or five address book categories we share. But WeSync Calendars, which in theory allows the same for Palm datebook events, has been a disaster. Events duplicate, hotsync times are vastly lengthened, unintelligible queries from the WeSync server ("delete record from handheld/PIM or handheld/PIM?") keep popping up, etc. After struggling with it for many months, we decided it was more of a liability than an asset. (Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that I use Datebook+ but she does not? Either way, I want to keep using DB+.) I tried WS Calendars again recently, and found no improvement. Despite buying WeSync a year ago, Palm seems to have invested little in it.

So how do you folks keep data (contacts, calendars, todos, memos, etc.) in sync across multiple Palms? Is there a reliable way, short of reviewing each other calendars every few days and beaming data back and forth, to keep calendars in sync? I tried something called GroupSync long ago, but had no luck with it. Even from the user manual I honestly couldn't figure out exactly what it was supposed to be doing.

The ideal would be to have something that allowed the person who first entered the data to select whose Palm it will get added to. Then the item would be added to the other person's Palm during a hotsync.

Any advice? Can we convince some smart developer that there is a market for this product? (I'd sure pay for it!) How do you other multi-Palm offices/households do it?

Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Atlantic Rim
Posts: 570

Thats So, Redundent

My wife and I have had the same struggles. Why is it so damn hard to synchronize schedules without generating duplicates? I've been besieged with duplicates to some extent on virtually every cross-platform synch product I have used (MyPalm, MyYahoo, Maximizer).

I'm no code writer, but as I press my fingertips to my temples this is what I see....an instruction set that says "If Martin Luther King Day is already on the desktop and the handheld, do not add another instance of it".

Registered: Feb 2001
Location:
Posts: 447

Perhaps using it in conjuction with UnDupe would work?

Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Atlantic Rim
Posts: 570

Huh?

Undupe?

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

UnDupe...

__________________

God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Feb 2001
Location:
Posts: 447

Thanks for the link, Mark.

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: New York, NY, USA
Posts: 60

WeSync works for me

My wife and I have used WeSync Calendars for over a year. It has worked fine for us. She has a Palmpilot Pro upgraded to 2mb/ir and with Jackflash to use the Flash for big programs. She has Datebook4. I have a Prism (Upgraded to 16mb RAM by Tony Rudenko) and also Use Datebook4.

I used to synch on 2 machines, home and desktop and installed the Wesync conduit on both. I used to get those cryptic messages frequently and always chose the handheld/PIM option over the server. Since I have stopped synching at work (It is a long story and I hope to rectify it soon) These errors have stopped occurring.

Also, since WeSync upgraded their servers a few weeks ago synch times have been dramatically REDUCED!!

Neither of us actually use the palm app wscalendars to routinely view our schedule, instead we only look their if we want to see the other persons schedule. I also will mark important dates in my calendar to show in both calendars from within the details options in wscalendars. That way these events will show up on my wife's palm in datebook4 (icons and fonts pass thru no problem as the code is in the associated note).

I have never had problems with duplicate entries. I settled on WeSync after failing to get any other solution to work. I used to use categories in Datebook4 to designate certain events to be shared and then beamed them to my wife's palm and set up special profiles in datebook4, but this was much too complicated to maintain. WeSync is great because it is totally behind the scene.

Joel