Nuevasync

New Blog !

2010-11-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

We've moved our blog in-house, hosted on our own servers.
The new URL is: http://blog.nuevasync.com/blog/nuevasync/

The last few articles posted here have been copied onto the new blog site.
Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds.

Now Syncing: Reply/Forward Flags and Conversation View

2010-06-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

NuevaSync is now running the latest, Exchange 2010-compatible version of the sync protocol. This provides some nice new features including sync for reply and forward message flags, and a conversation (threaded) message view. At present these features are only available to Windows Mobile 6.5 users but we expect other devices to add support in the future.

In the screen shot on the left, messages that you've replied to show up with a purple arrow, while forwarded messages have a blue arrow. The new conversations view can be selected from the sort menu, on the right below:

Here's my desktop Thunderbird view onto the same AOL mailbox. You can see the messages have the same reply and forward marks (and the same color!). These flags sync both ways, so whether you reply and forward on the device or the desktop, you'll see a consistent view.

The conversations view groups messages from the same thread or conversation together, displayed as one entry in the inbox. For example on the left below the highlighted inbox item is a conversation. It's indicated by the multiple-envelope icon and the number (5) which is the number of individual messages in the conversation. Open the conversation and the view on the right shows all the individual messages.

New users, and any new device that hasn't been syncing in the past will automatically get these new features. To ensure uninterrupted service, we arranged for devices already syncing to keep using the older sync protocol version (the version change triggers a resync). To upgrade one of these devices log into our web site and trigger a device resync.

For now these features are only available on Windows Mobile 6.5 but we expect other devices will be updated in the future to include similar capabilities.

New - Meeting Invitations!

2010-05-19T18:38:00.001-07:00

We’re happy to announce testing of a new feature for premium users: sending and receiving meeting invitations. Since this feature requires both push e-mail and calendar synchronization, it is exclusively for users with our premium service. If you are not yet a premium user, you can still try it out by using a free trial account.

How does it work? Meeting invitations are sent as specially formatted e-mail messages that contain the time, place, and attendees of an event. Many programs can send invitations, including Google Calendar and GMail, and most popular desktop e-mail clients, like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird (with Lightning). Many mobile devices, like an iPhone and iPad, only gain invitation support when using a service like NuevaSync (they won’t be processed when using IMAP or POP3).

With the new support in NuevaSync, you’ll be instantly notified of new invitations, can accept or decline them from your phone, and will have the event details entered into your calendar automatically. You can also send out invitations directly from your phone.

As with all NuevaSync features, most smartphones on the market are supported, including iPhone, webOS, Nokia, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and more.

On an iPhone, new invitations are shown in a pop-up.	You can accept, tentatively accept (maybe), or decline to attend the meeting.
Invitations can be managed from the ‘Inbox’ in the calendar app.	On the Palm Pre, you can accept or decline from within the e-mail app. It will also warn you if this meeting conflicts with another item already in your calendar.

Meeting invitations are a powerful and complex feature, and we’ll be adding even more capabilities as time goes by. Check out our wiki for more detailed information on how it all works, its features, and its limits.

For any questions, check out our forum.

iPhone Gets Automated NuevaSync Setup

2010-05-13T11:20:00.001-07:00

Our iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users can now save themselves some typing, and also avoid any chance of creating an incorrect sync setup because NuevaSync now has support for Apple's device configuration profiles.
It works as follows: log into our web site using the device you want to configure and go to the device setup help page (shown below on the left). Click the "Click here" link to download your custom profile. After a second or two you'll see it displayed, like the one shown on the right below. The profile contains all the configuration for your NuevaSync account. Click the Install button and you'll have a guaranteed correct sync setup.
Profiles are cryptographically signed so the green "Verified" will be displayed. The NuevaSync profile can be used alongside any configuration profiles your device already has (for WiFi or certificates for example). Note that the sync "account" can't be deleted in the regular way in the "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" setup page. You'll instead need to find the profiles section in the "General" setup page and delete the profile there. Apple has some documentation on how to install and remove configuration profiles.

Not Your Father's Windows Mobile

2010-05-02T22:40:00.000-07:00

We're developing new features for NuevaSync that work with Windows Phone 6.5. This work needs to be field tested and since Verizon were offering me a nice contract renewal subsidy, I decided to upgrade my trusty Samsung Saga (SCH-i770) to a new Omnia II, aka SCH-i920. After using an iPhone, the Moto Droid and Nokia's flagship N900 device in recent weeks I wasn't sure what to expect from the current crop of pre-7 Windows Phones. The phone's arrival was delayed a day due to a snow storm here on Friday but since retrieving it from the clutches of FedEx yesterday it's been in constant use.

The first thing to say is that this phone's AMOLED display is awesome. As in, you stare in awe at it. It's so bright. Colors are so saturated. It's the best phone screen I've seen yet. It also introduces a new game which is to figure out how to get the most black on the screen. That's because with an OLED display, non-black pixels consume power and the more of them there are the shorter your battery life. At least that's the theory. I have my lock screen wallpaper set to all black which is easy to do by simply taking a picture with the phone of a black cat in a coal cellar and assigning that image as your wallpaper. You also need to get used to reading white-on-black text.

Besides the display, his device has a big surprise for calendar syncers: there's an "aftermarket" calendar app pre-installed that supports colors for event categories! This is really cool because in conjunction with our "Category Mapping" feature, it allows color-coded display of events from multiple Google calendars. Open up the options screen, and there it is "Set colors of categories":

You can even pick the exact color you want for each category to match the colors from Google Calendar. Not even an iPhone can do that!:

In no particular order here are a few more observations from my first 24 hours with this phone:

It ships with a custom widget-container today screen that's reminiscent of Nokia's N900. I turned this off mainly because I couldn't figure out how to remove a widget, and also because I felt the screen was too small to accommodate more than two or three of them.
The device ships with the default "ok" button action set to minimise (not close) the application. I suspect this is the source of the 300 reviews on Verizon's web site from angry users complaining that their phones locked up. I changed the ok button action to close the application. This prevents the inevitable accumulation over time of resource-sucking processes.
Applications install by default to main memory. The phone has 8G of on-board flash and that's where applications should be installed.
Although Google Maps was able to find my location no problem, the pre-installed Microsoft Bing maps application refused to use the phone's GPS. Go figure..
The Swype input mode works better than you might expect, but I keep thinking it really requires the user to have a transparent finger. You need to trace a path between the keys while keeping your finger on the screen. But now you can't see the keys because your finger is on the screen. There has to be a better solution than requiring the evolution of digit transparency in the user population.
I haven't found any way to turn Haptic Feeback off. It hasn't yet become annoying but I suspect it will soon.

Update: it turns out that the phone ships with GPS turned OFF, and Google Maps was discovering my location from my IP address or some other non-GPS method. Once turned on, Bing maps works with GPS. I also found the place to turn off haptic feedback.

Secure, Password-Free Syncing with Gmail

2010-04-05T09:41:00.001-07:00

On Friday we deployed a great new security feature: OAuth for GMail. Using OAuth, you can now sync your GMail account—as well as your Google Calendar and Contacts—with NuevaSync without ever sharing your Google password.

OAuth authentication for GMail is a new feature from Google as well, and we are among the first services anywhere using it. Even though it is very new, it is such an important feature that we are making it the default on all new GMail accounts.

To configure your GMail account with NuevaSync just enter your GMail address and click ‘Yes’.

When prompted by Google, choose ‘Grant Access’.

And that is it!

Existing GMail users are not left out. If you’ve already configured GMail with a password, you can replace it with an OAuth token by opening the e-mail configuration page and clicking 'Request GMail Authorization.’ Choose ‘Grant Access’ and your password will be deleted and replaced with a secure OAuth token.

For any questions or comments on GMail or OAuth, check out our push e-mail forum.

UPDATE: See our OAuth for Gmail wiki page for more information on OAuth and complete step-by-step instructions for new and existing users.

New Features: 37signals Highrise Tasks & Contacts

2010-03-24T20:16:00.000-07:00

Beginning today Premium Service users (and free premium trial accounts) can sync their tasks and contacts with popular CRM service 37signals Highrise.

Features

Compatible with almost every smartphone on the market, including the Nokia N900 & E72, Motorola Droid, Palm Pre & Pixi, and Windows Mobile phones. iPhone users can sync contacts, but Apple devices do not yet have task support.
Secure SSL communication between the device and our servers, and our servers and 37signals.
Two-way synchronization of contacts.
Two-way synchronization of tasks.
As part of our premium service you also get push e-mail, remote wipe, contacts capture archiving, Windows Mobile calendar categories, and of course technical support.

Setup

To setup your account, open your service selection page and choose Highrise. If you don’t see the Highrise option, you may need to upgrade your account with the premium service free trial.

On the configuration page, enter your Highrise domain, username, and password and then save.

Unless it has already been configured for another service, configuring either contacts or tasks will automatically configure the other as well.

Now, you’re ready to configure your phone to synchronize with our servers. Once configured your Highrise contacts and tasks will appear on your device. Any changes made on the phone will appear at the Highrise web site, and vice versa. Two-way sync!

More Info

Our new Highrise FAQ has detailed information on the new features.

This is a BETA release, so we want to hear experiences and feedback. For any questions or comments, please check out the forum.

New and Improved: Nokia E71 and E72 Support

2010-03-14T23:30:00.000-07:00

Nokia's latest S60 series smart phones—the E71 E72—ship with a new version 3 of Mail for Exchange that has support for HTML email and folders. It seems that with these new features Nokia also made some changes that could lead to trouble with our service, particularly when syncing email. After trying to help a few disappointed (and sometimes frustrated!) E72 owners remotely, we decided to get our own device so it could be studied "in captivity".
It arrived just over a week ago and after a marathon bout of testing, some intense debugging and many pots of strong coffee, I'm happy to say that the new service release today has complete MfE version 3 support. E71 and E72 users can sync calendar events, contact, tasks and email with all our data sources (Google, Yahoo, Toodledo and AOL).
In the course of this work we were also able to reproduce several types of unpleasant device behavior that had in the past proved hard to diagnose. NuevaSync has been updated with countermeasures for these MfE quirks. Nokia users should experience smoother syncing as a result.

There are setup instructions for the new devices.

Unfortunately MfE3 still doesn't implement all-day calendar events properly.

New Toodledo Options

2010-02-19T10:21:00.001-08:00

We’ve introduced two new Toodledo options to make an advanced settings page.

Folders and Categories

The first new feature lets you choose how categories should be mapped between your phone and Toodledo. You can choose ‘tags,’ ‘folders,’ 'contexts,’ ‘goals’ or no mapping at all.

What’s the difference?

Tags offer the most flexibility for the device. The categories from your phone are mapped to (and from) a comma-separated list, such as “Personal, Birthdays, Purchases” at Toodledo. You can sync as many categories as can fit in the tag field at Toodledo this way, and filter your phone’s view on any one or several of the values. The downside is that Toodledo doesn’t offer a good way of filtering the view based on the tags.
Quoting Toodledo, “Folders are a convenient way to organize your to-do list. You can use folders to keep track of different projects, or keep work-related tasks separate from personal items.” When mapping categories to folders, only one of the categories is synced back to Toodledo, since tasks can only be in one folder at a time. You can move tasks between folders on your phone by selecting the appropriate categories, or create entirely new folders by creating a new category. When the device sends the category list back, if any of the selected categories is already a folder we will use it. If none of the chosen categories is already a folder, we’ll create one from the first category which the device sent to us and place the task in the new folder.
Toodledo contexts are used to filter tasks based on where you are and what you are doing. For example, while you are out of town on a business trip it isn’t helpful to have a task reminding you to wash the car at home. Contexts help separate the two. To the phone, contexts appear much like folders, and the rules are the same. Whether you prefer to use folders or contexts mostly depends on how you prefer your tasks to be arranged at Toodledo.
Toodledo goals are used to group loosely related tasks. For example, you may create the goal of losing 10lbs, and then associate tasks like a jog in the morning, picking up some fresh fruit for lunch, and exercising at the gym after work. To the phone, goals look much like folders and contexts, and again, which would serve best depends mainly on how you’d like to organize your Toodledo list.
You might choose no mapping at all if your phone doesn’t support assigning categories to tasks, and you want to make absolutely certain that the folders, contexts, goals, and tags you’ve already assigned at Toodledo will not be disturbed.

Completed Tasks

The second new option is whether or not to retrieve completed tasks on the initial sync. While most of the time it makes sense to start with only active tasks, sometimes you need access to past, already completed tasks for reference. This option lets you select which you behavior you’d prefer.

Any questions or comments, please head on over to the NuevaSync forum.

New E-Mail Feature – Follow Up Flags

2010-02-10T20:31:00.001-08:00

We’re pleased to announce an enhancement to our IMAP/GMail push e-mail service. We now support syncing message flags (aka stars).

Flagging—“starring” in GMail terminology—helps you keep track of important messages that require further attention. Phones such as the Palm Pre, GMail with the “Starred” label, and most desktop e-mail programs provide additional tracking by offering an “All Flagged” or “All Starred” virtual folder to zero in on all your important messages, no matter which folder they are really in.

To date, we’ve tested flags successfully on Windows Mobile 6+, Palm Pre, Dataviz Roadsync (tested on Nokia), and Nokia Mail for Exchange. Apple devices and the Nokia N900, unfortunately, do not make use of flags.

More information about capabilities and device compatibility is available at our wiki.

For any questions and feedback, please visit our push e-mail forum.

Flags on Palm Pre

Flags on Windows Mobile 6.5

Flags on Nokia E61i (MfE)

Flags on Nokia E61i (Dataviz RoadSync)

Thoughts on the Nokia N900

2010-02-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

This is the first blog post I've written about a specific mobile device. It's also the first post I've written on a mobile device. "There's an app for that" it's called a WEB BROWSER:

This device's browser combined with the 800-pixel wide screen (800x600 screens were common on desktop PCs until quite recently and so most web sites are still designed to fit that size) make for by far the best mobile web experience yet. Even Javascript and Flash-laden sites like Facebook, Google Finance and Youtube "just work". So 90% of the apps you'd use on an iPhone are unnecessary. Just as well as there are very few Maemo apps at present. If you want you can even install real Firefox, but I've been happy with the built-in browser (also based on the Mozilla code). The N900 is sold unlocked in the USA and is a GSM-only device. We only have 2.5G GSM here so I'd love to have a CDMA version that worked on Verizon's network but sadly that device does not exist.

The top 10 things about the N900

Works well with NuevaSync (after we spent a few weeks spent studying its sync client and writing special code to accomodate its wily ways).

The command prompt (bash shell of course), which Nokia quaintly calls the "X-Term". (I don't think I've heard that since the 1980s...). Old friends like ps, df, awk, grep, top are all there and after installing an extra package you can gain root access in seconds.

Deep integration with Skype and Jabber. There's no Skype app: you just call a contact with skype.

WiFi works when the device is sleeping so you can be available on Jabber and Skype and receive push email without cell data service.

A VNC client (great for that quick sysadmin task on the run).

Very open platform. You want to write an app? No problem. A quick script? Sure. How about a Kernel module? Yep, that's just fine. No need to ask permission from a black turtleneck-wearing person.

Best slide keyboard. Big improvement vs. the Droid.

Excellent movie-watching device. Using legally downloaded DRM-free video files, of course.

I can listen to KQED while driving in my car here using the built-in FM transmitter. Hopefully nobody from my cell carrier is reading this.

Tetherless experience. Firmware updates are over-the-air. Backup to memory card. scp your media files.

The not so good

It's impossible to use the keyboard when the headphones are plugged in.

The device gives the impression that it's sometimes engaged on much more important activities than responding to user input (calculating Pi to a million decimal places??).

The user interface is...well the best word I could come up with is "zany".

The touch screen is horrid. You'll need the build-in stylus for many tasks.

There's a front-facing camera: great for videoconferencing. But the Skype client doesn't support it.

The map application can take a minute to start, which I find limits its value considerably.

The calendar app doesn't sync multiple calendars like the iPhone does.

Composing HTML email is cool, but otherwise the mail app is quite limited and quirky.

VPN client support is limited at present, but you can create ssh tunnels.

So although the N900 is not perfection in your pocket, it's the closest I've seen and rates a solid A-

Announcing Yahoo! Contacts Sync

2010-01-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

We’re proud to announce public beta testing of Yahoo! Contacts sync. Yahoo! is now available as an option for the contacts sync source for all NuevaSync users.

Features

Synchronizes with almost every smartphone available, including the Apple iPhone, Nokia N900, Motorola Droid, Palm Pre and Pixi, and Windows Mobile phones.
Secure OAuth authentication.
Two-way synchronization of all contacts.
Two-way support for contact categories.
Synchronizes even unusual fields like Radio Telephone or Customer ID to Yahoo!
Works with Contacts Capture.
Avoids clutter by syncing only contacts that have more than IM info, such as a phone, email, postal address, etc. If you add more contact information to it later, the entry will be automatically added to the phone. (Optional)

Setup

To setup your account, open your service selection page and choose Yahoo!

On the configuration page, enter your Yahoo! id and click ‘Request Account Access’:

After signing in, click ‘Continue’ to finish link your account:

And you’re done!

Notes

We will be adding support to download contact pictures from Yahoo!
Since each contact chooses their own photo, Yahoo! does not allow you to update the picture for a contact. However, the service stores any picture sent from the device to be used in subsequent syncs.
Web site configuration validation isn't available yet for Yahoo! Until it is enabled, instead of a green ‘ok’ dot, the status page will show either a blue ‘configured’ dot or an orange ‘needs configured’ reminder.
During the beta preiod features may be added or improved.

We’re eager to know how it works for you. If you have any questions or problems visit our forum.

UPDATE: Support for downloading pictures from Yahoo! is now available for testing.

New Feature: Contacts Capture

2010-01-20T15:30:00.000-08:00

There's a new feature available today as part of the Premium Service package that we're calling "Contacts Capture". Inspired by a few users who have contacted us asking if we could provide an archive service, and also by this unfortunate incident, Contacts Capture stores contact data as it flows through the service and allows users to download their data from the web site. The popular vCard format is used. ".vcf" files can be imported into a wide range of applications and services.

Even contacts that have been accidentally deleted can be recovered (as long as those contacts had been sync'ed). So if a contact has been "seen" by the service (after capturing was enabled), then it is safely stored and available for download.

Capturing can is optional, and for existing Premium Service users must be enabled on the account settings page:

The device status page shows if your device's contacts have been captured:

Contact data can be viewed, and a snapshot taken of the current contacts state via the device management page:

Here's an example after contacts have been syncing and 4 contacts deleted. All the contacts, included the deleted ones can be downloaded from this page:

This example shows a snapshot (the lower table row) and the changes since the snapshot was taken. A snapshot allows recovery of contact data from the past even if the contacts have since been changed.

More information about this feature can be found on this page.

Windows Mobile Calendar Gets Categories

2009-12-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

NuevaSync Premium Service users with Windows Mobile phones can now sync calendar events with a "category" tag matching the event's Google calendar. This allows multiple Google calendars to be managed conveniently on the device: a filter can be enabled to show only one Google calendar, and new events can be created in any of the user's Google calendars.

More information on this new feature can be found on our web site.

Remote Wipe Your Phone!

2009-12-17T15:45:00.000-08:00

NuevaSync Premium Service users can now remotely "wipe" their phone if it's lost or stolen.

After enabling the feature on your account, the devices that are ready for remote wipe will be marked in the device management page on our web site. To begin the remote wipe process, click the "manage" link:

You'll then see a page like this with a "Wipe your lost or stolen phone" link:

The next page is the final confirmation before the wipe command is sent (so be careful if you're checking out the site!). A captcha must be entered at this state to prevent accidentally triggering the wipe process:

Now, provided your phone is still syncing, it will erase all stored data. Confirmation that the wipe command was received is displayed on the device management page (if the phone didn't respond you'll see a "wipe pending" status here).

If you trigger wipe for a phone that is turned off, or for some other reason doesn't respond, and you want to revoke the request, a 'Cancel' wipe link will appear on the device management page. Beware however that any device that has an active push connection will wipe very quickly (in less than a second typically).

See this page on our web site for more details on the new remote wipe feature.

Note that some devices don't support remote wipe yet: Android 2.0 phones such as the Droid, and the new Nokia N900.

Sync All Devices!

2009-12-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

I'm very happy to announce that NuevaSync now works with all the devices that have an Exchange sync capability. Compatible phones include the very new Nokia N900, and the rather old Palm Treo. Also supported: the über cool Motorola Droid, and the slightly less hip PocketPC 2003. And of course, SonyEricsson, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPod Touch, WebOS, Windows Mobile all sync too.

Testing, debugging and fixing sync for all these device types has been a major undertaking both for us here and the many users who helped in the effort (thanks!). With this work done and 100% device coverage achieved, we're busy developing new features to be released before the end of this year.

New: Sync Tasks with Toodledo!

2009-09-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Beginning today Premium Service users (and free Premium trial accounts) can sync with the popular task management site Toodledo.

To sync tasks you need a compatible device (iPhones don't have tasks support yet but Windows Mobile, Nokia and Palm Pre phones do). Register for a Toodledo account (free or pro). Enable and configure tasks on our web site---enter your Toodledo username and password. Note that you need to enter your fully-qualified Toodledo username (typically your email address).

Finally enable tasks sync on your device. Windows Mobile setup looks like this:

Nokia Mail for Exchange will list tasks under the 'Content synced' once enabled:

The Toodledo API doesn't provide real-time change notification, so the service checks for changes every so often. Changes made on their web site will appear on your phone after a few minutes.

Sync your BlackBerry!

2009-09-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

BlackBerry® devices can now be used with NuevaSync thanks to a $49 application from AstraSync (they have a free trial). Until recently there were a few compatibility issues with AstraSync and our service, but those have now been resolved. Contact, Calendar and Email sync are all supported, including Push Email service.

After downloading and installing AstraSync please follow these configuration instructions. Your BlackBerry device should show up on the device management page like this:

Check our new BlackBerry device forum for more information, or to report any problems.

Sync on.

Push Email Service now supports GMX

2009-08-31T07:23:00.000-07:00

We deployed new code was today that includes a fix to support the popular free Email service GMX. There have been quite a few users attempting to use GMX with push email free trial accounts and it wasn't until I tried GMX myself that we discovered there was an incompatibility with their IMAP service. Fortunately the problem was easy to fix.

In testing with GMX we've noticed that message read/un-read changes are pushed (unlike GMail) but message delete events are sometimes delayed by up to a minute.

Correct push email configuration on our web site for GMX looks like this:

Premium Service Free Trial Now Available

2009-08-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

New today on the web site we now offer the chance to try Premium Service before you buy. A new free trial account can be created here.
Existing users can can be begin the three day trial period by any free service user by clicking "click here to begin" on this page, then click yes on the confirmation page.

Free trial users get all the Premium Service features including Push Email, but they'll continue to use the same server facilities as other free users. Free trial accounts can be upgraded to permanent Premium status at any time during the trial.

Push AOL Mail to the iPhone

2009-08-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

Since our push email service works with any IMAP compatible mailbox, there are quite a few services besides GMail that can use it, including AOL Mail. Today we released a service update that gives better support for AOL Mail, including quick configuration on the web site. We did find one AOL-related iPhone quirk so I thought it would be useful to write up complete configuration instructions for an AOL account db1234567@aol.com using NuevaSync account aoltest1:

If you're using a NuevaSync account with an aol.com or aim.com registered e-mail address then service configuration is much easier because the web site notices you may be trying to use AOL Mail and presents a quick setup screen. You only need to enter your AOL password, click yes and you're done:

For folks who like to do things the hard way, here's the full configuration screen filled out for an AOL account:

After verifying that there's a green light in the status display, we can proceed to device configuration. Here's where we need to work around a small issue with the iPhone. Normally we'd enter the AOL email address here:

However, if you do supply an @aol.com address, the iPhone will go into a never-ending spin trying to fetch auto-configuration information from an AOL server (it says "Verifying Exchange account information" but really it's trying to get the server name from the server "aol.com", which of course doesn't have that information to give):

This is similar to the GMail case where the phone tries to fetch config from a Google server and gets an SSL certificate validation error. However in the AOL case it just spins and spins and spins. Other devices such as Windows Mobile allow the user to disable auto-configuration, but the iPhone doesn't. We've found two ways to work around this. The first is to put the phone in flight mode during the account configuration process. This works just fine but it means you lose the chance to confirm the setup is ok because the phone can't test it. The second method is to first enter an e-mail address that doesn't end with aol.com. It can be anything you like. In this case I simply replaced "aol.com" with "nuevasync.com":

This will get you to the next screen without the death-spin syndrome. You can then edit the e-mail address back to the correct @aol.com address and enter the server name http://www.nuevasync.com/.

Clicking next on the screen above should check the username and password and connectivity to the server. Lastly turn calendar and contact sync off unless you're using those since sync performance will be a little faster with them off:

For reference, the resulting setup looks like this. SSL is on, the user's AOL e-mail address is configured, their NuevaSync account, their NuevaSync Password and server name:

And that's it. Open the mail app on the phone and you should see your AOL inbox, and new messages pushed. A bonus vs. GMail is that AOL's IMAP implementation is complete, so message read/unread status is pushed in real time. We did find one potential pitfall with AOL Mail: their SMTP server checks the sender address on messages. GMail's simply replaces the sender address with your account's e-mail address if the device happens to present a different one. In the case of AOL, if the e-mail address configured on the phone does not match the AOL account, then message sending fails. We don't yet have a test for this in the web site, so beware that if you find after configuring that you can't send messages, then probably your e-mail address was mis-typed. It's easy to open the sync account settings page on the phone and change it though.

New feature: GMail message 'archive' support

2009-08-05T21:02:00.000-07:00

New in today's premium service update is a feature that many GMail users have requested: messages deleted on the device can now be 'archived' instead of the traditional move to the trash folder. An archived message desn't have the inbox label and hence will no longer appear in the inbox, but will show up in GMail search results and will retain any other labels the user or filters have applied. This is slightly different to the normal IMAP treatment of deleted messages where they'd appear with the 'trash' label and would not appear in regular search results.
The 'Delete-means-archive' feature needs to be turned on in the e-mail advanced settings page. Log into our web site then click the 'setup' link next to Email to display the regular settings page, then click 'Advanced settings'. Check the box at the bottom of the form and click save:

There's no need to do anything else (except perhaps wait a minute or two for the configuration change to propagate to the sync service). All your deletes will now magically 'archive' the messages at GMail.

Edit Word Documents on your iPhone with "Documents To Go"

2009-07-23T19:37:00.000-07:00

Recently I heard about a $5 iPhone app called Documents To Go which allows editing of Microsoft Word documents. If you're not familiar with the iPhone, it has built-in viewers for e-mail attachments in several common desktop file formats, including Word, PDF and Excel, but does not have an editing capability. Documents To Go adds that capability, at least for MS Word files today and for Excel in a future update.
The way I heard about this app first was when several users complained (all on the same day, curiously) that it did not work with our service! At first I couldn't understand what a Word document editing app had to do with our service, but once you realize that there's no easy way to get the files onto and off of the device, it becomes more obvious. Add to that the fact that Documents To Go comes from renowned device sync client developer DataViz, and the penny drops...
Documents To Go can communicate with an application you install on your desktop computer, to fetch and save files, but if you spring $5 extra for the Exchange version, it can read and send files through a corporate mail server, or of course our push e-mail service (we fixed the compatibility problem soon after the first reports). It has its own sync client software, and shows up as a separate device as far as our service is concerned. It has its own settings page where you enter your username, password and www.nuevasync.com, much the same as for the phone's built in client:

Then sync your inbox (my GMail account in this example), which will display all the messages with compatible attachments:

Word attachments can be opened and edited like this:

Then saved on the device, back to your desktop, or e-mailed directly from the app which is what I did with this document, and here it is open in Word on my PC:

Push E-Mail is Here!

2009-07-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

Big news: We've launched our new 'push' E-Mail Sync Service. The iPhone, Palm Pre, Nokia S60 Series and Windows Mobile Phones can use push E-Mail Sync.
Your mailbox is accessed by our service via the industry standard IMAP protocol which is widely supported by corporate servers and also by most hosted e-mail services,
including Google's GMail.

New messages appear on your device within seconds with an optional beep or vibrate alert. iPhone users don't need to keep the mail application open:

Push E-Mail sync is part of our $25/yr Premium Service. In addition to e-mail sync, premium users get priority support and the ability to sync an unlimited number of calendars, with no restriction on history. Premium service is run on separate machines from the free service for optimal performance and reliability. Once an account is upgraded to premium status, e-mail can be configured by clicking 'change' next to 'E-Mail' on the web site:

There is a streamlined configuration process for GMail users. If the account has an @gmail.com or @googlemail.com address this screen is presented and you only need to enter your password to finish:

For other users there is a comprehensive setup screen that allows all the mail server settings to be entered individually:

There's more information on our web site and if you'd like to comment or ask a question please check out the new E-Mail and Premium Service areas on the Nuevasync forum.

I have to thank all the users who helped us test e-mail sync over the past few weeks. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has supported us with unsolicited donations. Those donors will all receive complementary premium service.

Contact Counts on the Web Site

2009-06-29T07:55:00.001-07:00

The detailed account status page has been enhanced to show more information about your Google contacts. We've found this to be handy when investigating reports from users who had either no contacts on their device, or the wrong number of contacts. Often there was confusion about which contacts, and how many should be syncing. The new information displayed on the web site should clear up the confusion:

The example above shows a user with 241 contacts in the 'My Contacts' pseudo-group at Google. This is the set of contacts that we sync. If a contact shows up under 'My Contacts', it should sync. If it doesn't, then it definitely won't sync. The default 'System' groups (Friends, Family etc) and two user-created groups (Test Group, Second Group) are displayed next. Contacts in these groups are always included in 'My Contacts' and so they will sync. The last group is the one formerly known as 'Suggested Contacts', and now labeled 'Most Contacted' at Google. By popular demand, we do not sync contacts in this group. So for this user, the total number of contacts that will sync is 241. Contacts in all of the groups except 'Most Contacted', will sync but they don't count towards the total because those contacts already accounted for under 'My Contacts'.

You can see the detailed account status page either by clicking the link in the troubleshooting page, or by clicking on the green/orange/red 'lights' in the main status page. If you're wondering why it takes a while to load, it's because we re-fetch your contact information from Google in real-time, to be sure the page shows up-to-date results.

Service Outage Sunday

2009-06-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately we had a service problem today that didn't trigger our service quality monitoring system, but did affect service. Please accept my apologies for this. We're working to improve the monitoring system to catch the particular type of error it missed. Service has been brought back to normal operating state.

Service Overloaded by iPhone 3.0 Update

2009-06-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

Apple's highly anticipated 3.0 firmware release is causing us some operations problems right now. Large numbers of devices have been updated within a short time period, and it appears that after the update the sync code in the phone triggers a 'resync'. This puts extra load on our service which is currently running at maximum capacity. We've enabled load throttling measures which should ensure it remains working, but unfortunately not all devices will be able to sync until the load spike passes.
UPDATE: We've deployed some hardware upgrades tonight and service is now back up and running normally. We're expecting to be able to handle the load peak forecast for Thursday morning as the remaining iPhone users update their devices.

Sony Ericsson P1i

2009-06-16T12:55:00.001-07:00

We've had owners of Sony Ericsson phones connecting to the service for a while but they proved to be a stealthy group of users in that nobody had ever reported any problems to us. (I'm talking about the 'home grown' Sony Ericsson phones, not the line of Windows Mobile devices they make). Curiosity got the better of me and I went eBay fishing for a test device. After a few delays with shipping and then me being out the office, my 'unlocked' P1i finally arrived today. The P1i is no longer sold, but there are similar current devices such as the G502. Anyway, the P1i is now configured and syncing. Interestingly, although the Sony Ericsson phones run the same Symbian S60 OS as Nokia devices, they ship a completely different sync client, Roadsync from DataViz (incidentally, you can get this client for Nokia devices too if you want).

My phone already had the Exchange sync client installed but Sony Ericsson's support page implies that some devices might not come with it pre-installed. Configuration was easy and I'm happy to report that it synced just fine. That is, except for the fact that contact pictures did not show up on the device. We need to so some investigation to determine why that's happening.
I connected the phone with WiFi, rather than cell data service. It does push sync over WiFi, even when the device is 'turned off'. A nice surprise because not all devices do this (the iPhone does not for example).
The keyboard drove me completely nuts. There are three or four characters per key, and both a shift and alt keys. I was unable to deduce the relationship between them by experiment and had to resort to the on-screen keyboard. The side scroll-click-wheel worked quite well though. Better than a touch interface for one-handed use, I think.
The contact and calendar apps have a good feel to them, and an initial test suggests that unlike Nokia's calendar, all day events work properly. There doesn't seem to be support for folders in the e-mail sync client (other than the inbox, sent folder etc). The device has IMAP IDLE (push) support but unfortunately so far I haven't been able to get its IMAP client to work at all. It seemed to become severely challenged by my 3600+ message inbox so I haven't had a chance to compare push sync e-mail with IMAP IDLE.
Once the remaining testing we plan is completed, we'll be adding some configuration and device-specific information to the web site.

Palm Pre Setup

2009-06-09T13:08:00.001-07:00

Here are step-by-step instructions for setting up the Palm Pre to sync with NuevaSync. Configuration can be done under any PIM application (e-mail, contacts, or calendar) but it is simplest under the calendar or contact applications. Under e-mail it does auto-configuration guessing that sometimes chooses the wrong server type.

Whether you choose to start configuration from the contacts or calendar app, the configuration is applied to the other apps as well. (If you don’t use all of them, that is OK, it will still sync.)

Open up contacts (or calendar) and go to “Preferences & Accounts”:
Scroll to the bottom and tap “Add An Account”:
Tap “Microsoft Exchange”:
Then enter your NuevaSync-registered e-mail address and NuevaSync password:
Put https://www.nuevasync.com in the server slot and your username in the username slot. Leave the domain slot empty. Tap “Sign In” and you should be syncing.

Syncing with the Palm Pre

2009-06-08T21:27:00.001-07:00

I snagged a Palm Pre over the weekend. It was well worth it; though it did mean starting out at about 05:30 on Saturday to get to the Sprint store in time.

I hadn’t gotten to test the Pre pre-release (heh), so the first question for me, naturally, was “Does it sync with NuevaSync?” The answer is yes, and I’ve been syncing my contacts, calendar, and mail with NuevaSync since about 8am Saturday morning.

What about the Pre itself? It is smaller than I expected, even having seen size comparisons online. It is about 1/3” shorter than an iPhone/iPod touch and much more rounded. Even though it is a little thicker than either of those, I think its shape is better suited for carry in a pocket.

The build quality feels very good. The slide/hinge mechanism on mine has no discernible play on any axis, fully extended or closed, which is even better than I expected. The screen is excellent. It is a little brighter and sharper than the one my iPod, but they are basically comparable. I like the Pre screen myself, but I could see votes either way (the iPod/iPhone screen is slightly larger). I imagine it would loose handily in a “Will it Blend?” faceoff though – a metal case is hard to beat for that one.

The entire phone is the same shade of shiny black, so it is difficult to discern the controls from pictures. The power button is in the top right corner (the same position as an iPod/iPhone, but on the opposite side), and right next to it is a tactile switch to put the phone in and out of silent mode (I like that quite a bit). The upper-left side has a rocker switch for volume control. In the center on the right side is a small and very well disguised USB port behind a protective flap. The round (glowing, though that never comes out in pictures) button in the bottom center of the face is primarily used for task switching (think Alt+Tab). Just above it, but below the screen, is a touch-sensitive bar. Swiping along that bar is something like “back”, though conceptually it might be said to go “up” as well. For example, from the Inbox swiping will take you “up” to the folder list. At the very top center is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. The little bar near the top of the face is a speaker.

The overall input is very iPhone-like, with various swiping and pinching and tapping gestures, with the addition of the swiping bar on the face. On the whole, the input is so similar, I’m not sure there is any worthwhile difference between the two mechanisms. That is probably a good thing, as the iPhone has a friendly interface. The Pre has one notable difference in its physical keyboard. The only downside is that the actual keys look a little cheaper than the rest of the phone. I think that is purely aesthetic though, as they feel solid. I managed to get someone to time me typing the same sentence on both devices. On the iPod touch I got it done in ~69s, with ~64s on the Pre. It wasn’t a very long sentence (I’m not a quick typist on these things), but it was typed in normal English with all the correct capitalization, punctuation, etc. Overall I prefer the real keyboard on the Pre, and I was a little faster, though it doesn’t appear to make a night and day difference in speed. I’ve typed regularly on the iPod/iPhone for quite a while though, and just barely over a day with the Pre: I may get better with practice. I have noticed that the iPod/iPhone has better automatic spelling correction.

Along with the keyboard, the big news with the Palm Pre is that it supports multiple applications running simultaneously. It does work, and it seems to work well. I can say for certain that switching between my calendar, contacts, and mail is significantly faster and easier on the Pre. It really deserves more than a few sentences, but after using lots of different mobile OSs I can say that this is much easier than any of them for multitasking. For day to day use, it feels much more like using a real (albeit tiny) computer.

I was pleasantly surprised by the camera. The quality was far better than I expected and I can snap multiple shots pretty quickly – around one a second. It has a flash as well, with all the basic controls (auto/off/on). That is nice touch. I’m not sure if there is any other on-phone camera that can do a fill flash.

Last up on the hardware is USB connectivity. The port is rather difficult to reach behind its flap (I think they really want people to purchase the inductive charger) but it is notable for having the best connectivity options I’ve seen. When first connecting, it prompts on the phone whether one would like to connect as a USB mass storage device, for media-sync, or just for charging. That is nice on its own, but goes a step better, as one can change modes afterward without reconnecting. For example, after connecting to do charging, I can tap the little USB icon in the corner of the phone and switch to harddrive or media-sync mode on the fly. (Once in harddrive mode, you can’t easily switch back, however.) Perhaps I’m the only one left, but I prefer managing all files manually vs. automated media-syncing, so the mass storage device mode is very welcome. I haven’t tried managing every kind of document that way yet, but I’ve done a little with music, pictures, and certificates successfully. All the screenshots were copied over that way as well.

And now for some pictures. I took these earlier today.

By itself:

And next to an iPod touch:

I’ve been overwhelmingly positive so far, but there are a few quirks. One is the speed. Most the time it is snappy, but occasionally tapping something will produce no visible effect. When that happens I often tap it again in case it hadn’t registered my finger, just in time to realize it was simply being slow. The second tap might reverse the first, so I have to start over. It can be annoying. This can happen with all mobile devices, but I think it is more common on the Pre. Another is an Exchange / NuevaSync-specific one, which is that the Pre doesn’t support multi-colored calendars through its Exchange sync. It is very close to working, but just a little short. The Pre downloads the full calendar list, assigns each one a different color (the colors are even user-selectable), and allows each one to be adjusted individually for inclusion in the “All” list. It is quirky though, as it gives every calendar the same name, and despite having them all on the list, only really syncs the default. Hopefully this will be fixed in future firmware. In the meantime, using a merged calendar is preferable.

The Pre also offers built-in Google sync. I want to preface this by saying I haven’t had the chance to test it extensively, so these are just some initial impressions. On the pro side, it is easy to setup and multi-colored calendars work properly with the built-in sync. On the con side, the contacts sync includes all suggested contacts, ie, anyone you ever e-mailed on GMail. That may not be a big deal, but it can be very messy if you have an extensive list. I think remote updates to contacts and calendar both are picked up a good deal faster when syncing on NuevaSync as well, but I need to do some more testing to be certain.

And here are screenshots off the latest firmware, 1.0.2 (yep, there has already been an over-the-air update).

Here is the calendar view:

And a specific event:

And the contact list (these test entries don’t have pictures, but pics do sync OK):

And a specific contact (this one does have a pic):

And, lastly, one of my INBOX. ;)

Google OAuth Security Flaw

2009-04-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

A security vulnerability in the OAuth protocol was announced last night. This is the mechanism we use to have access tokens granted to us for users' Google calendar and contact data. Google has implemented the recommended warning message on their access request page, which reads:

This website is registered with Google to make authorization requests, but has not been configured to send requests securely.If you grant access but you did not initiate this request at www.nuevasync.com, it may be possible for other users of www.nuevasync.com to access your data. We recommend you deny access unless you are certain that you initiated this request directly with http://www.nuevasync.com/.

I think the message must have been written on the assumption that a fixed OAuth protocol will be introduced in the future (hence the 'has not been configured...' part). Unfortunately right now that doesn't exist so there's no way for us to 'configure' our service appropriately.
So what does this mean for our users? Having analysed the vulnerability, the bottom line is that you need to be sure that if you ever see that Google page where you grant access, that you were yourself performing the access request. That is, you just came from our site and had just clicked on the 'Request account access' button. The nature of the vulnerability is that someone has to trick you into clicking 'grant access' on that page in response to clicking a link on some other page (not on our site). This is exactly what the alert message on the page says, so basically if you read and understand the page, then you're ok.

Update: There's a good description of the problem in this blog post. It turns out that the attack is not so easy to pull off against our service because we take steps to ensure that the Google id stored in your account matches the data accessed by the Google access token. In general the attacker won't know the victim's Google id and therefore the attack will fail.

Nokia Nirvana

2009-04-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

Or at least pretty close. A number of changes were deployed tonight that bring us up to a much higher level of compatibility with the Nokia MfE client. More information about our Nokia support in general can be found here. There's also a new Nokia discussion area on the Nuevasync discussion forum which would be a good place to post any experiences (good or bad!) with Nokia syncing.
We recommend using the latest version of MfE (2.09.158 at the time of writing). This has support for contact picture sync which works both ways (for reasons outside our control, updates to pictures at Google seem to take around 5 minutes to show up. Please wait a while before concluding picture syncing isn't working).
The only Nokia problem that we're aware of at present is that a contact with two mobile phone numbers (or more) at Google will only sync with one of them to the phone. This is because Nokia appear to have not implemented support for the contact field that we normally use for the second mobile phone number ('car phone'). We'll figure out a fix for this problem soon.
Nokia's calendar application has a rather strange approach to all-day events: they are treated as regular events that happen to run from midnight to 11:59pm. This looks like a bug to us, but apparently it's always been like that. It's important to get your time zone setting right because if it is off vs. the Google calendar these all-day events will show up spanning two days, and at weird times. A 'real' all-day event is called a 'memo' in Nokia-speak and if you create one of these on the device it will sync as an all-day event at Google. However if you ever resync, it'll be converted back to one of the strange 'lasts-all-day' events.

Nuevasync Discussion Forums

2009-03-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Nuevasync now has a web discussion forum. Registration is required to post. You don't need to be a Nuevasync user to participate.

http://forum.nuevasync.com

Fix Bundle

2009-03-26T02:13:00.000-07:00

Several fixes and small improvements were deployed last night.
We've implemented our own workaround for this Google contacts service bug. This problem was affecting quite a few users and resulted in loss of contact sync. Affected users don't need to do anything, sync should begin working again. You had this problem if the sync status page displayed a message about bad data at Google.
Also fixed is a problem affecting some users where an event deleted at Google would remain on the device.
Recent Palm devices such as the Centro will now sync with the service. These devices don't allow e-mail sync to be turned off and because our service didn't allow e-mail sync they would always throw an error. The service now allows e-mail sync to be enabled (but doesn't actually do any syncing of e-mails yet), and so these Palm devices will 'work'. Palm support should be considered experimental at this point. We know that several things aren't working properly.
Finally, the web site now allows a 'default country' to be specified (in the account settings page). This is used to apply a country to contacts that don't have one at Google. This in turn is particularly useful for non-US iPhone users because the iPhone's map application does very strange things if the country field is not set (such as trying to navigate to Paris, TX when a person in France tries to find a friend's address !)

Nokia Contacts Working Again

2009-03-02T15:55:00.001-08:00

Since the most recent release of Noika's MFE sync client our contact sync from Google didn't work (Plaxo did still work). This problem has been fixed. We're taking some time to fix a number of other smaller Nokia compatibility issues. These should be done in the next few days. We also have Palm interoperability working in the lab, but not yet deployed on the production servers. There will be a post here when that's done.

These Calendars Go To 'Eleven'

2009-02-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

Previously we had an eight-calendar limit. As of tonight the limit on the number of calendars that can be selected to sync has been increased to 11.

(Some readers may need to watch this).

New Contact Code

2009-02-10T07:41:00.000-08:00

New code dealing with physical address processing was deployed last night. The goal was to do a good job of translating postal addresses as they appear on GMail contacts into the device format. This is an interesting problem because there are many different address formats in use around the world and the address comes to us free-form with no fields identified. The new code is able to recognize addresses from a large number of countries, although it may still be challenged by some UK addresses. If the country is present in the contact's address the iPhone map application should now correctly locate addresses in countries other than the good old USA. The iPhone seems to have bug in its contact edit screen: a contact that has a valid country (for example the phone's map app finds the address correctly) will always display 'United States' for the country if you edit the contact. This doesn't happen for contacts entered on the device itself. We will be adding a 'default country' setting to the web site soon that allows a global override for the country on all contacts that don't already have their country set. Thank you to all the users from France and other countries who helped make this feature happen.
The mysterious 'squares' in contact names problem has also been fixed, along with a few contact issues seen with Windows Mobile devices (file-as not being always set, contacts appearing as 'Unknown').

Do not adjust your set. Nuevasync is still here.

2009-02-09T20:51:00.000-08:00

Here are some answers to the questions we've been asked today:
Is Google's new sync service similar to Nuevasync ? Yes the two services use the same sync capabilities present in the same devices including the iPhone, and today provide a similar set of features.
Did Google use any of our technology? No.
Does this mean the end of Nuevasync ? No, there will be much more to Nuevasync than today's Google sync service.
Is this good news for Nuevasync ? Yes. I'm pleased that Google have adopted our approach to mobile sync. It's also good to read that they are using their resources and influence with device vendors to enhance the quality of device sync client code.
If you guys weren't planning to become the sync engine for Google, why did you create your Google service ? We wanted to develop really solid sync server software and Google was picked as a data source back in 2007 when work began on our 'demo' service. Google had a decent calendar application and a usable API. The plan was to attract a few hundred users and fix any bugs they revealed in the code. There are 120,000 users today so we over-achieved a little on the plan but we've also fixed some very obscure bugs!
Which new features are coming next ? E-mail sync (from any IMAP mailbox), support for other calendar services besides Google, a solution for users who need to use a corporate Exchange server, tasks support, major web site improvements. We will also fix all the bugs ;) Keep the support mails coming...

New Service Code Deployed

2009-01-30T05:57:00.000-08:00

Since 08:00 UTC today we have new code running that provides significantly improved capacity and reliability. So far everything looks to be operating as expected.

Nuevasync Review at TechCrunch

2009-01-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

Jeff Widman at TechCrunchIT has posted an interview with David. Particularly if you are curious how Nuevasync came to be, make sure to check it out.

Support News

2009-01-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

We've recruited a new member of staff who will work 100% on user support. It's been challenging to keep up with the support workload recently, particularly at times when there were service reliability issues because those tend to lead to large numbers of new tickets being raised. Users should experience more consistent response to support issues and our engineering staff will be able to focus entirely on fixing the problems reported.

If You Have no Contacts...

2009-01-17T19:48:00.001-08:00

Thanks to everyone that reported they had no contacts. A pattern is emerging. Almost all the users reporting lack of contacts have the same problem, which in fact isn't a new problem nor is it related to the recent reliability issues. This blog article has the details. If you have a lack of contacts, or indeed any problem, please log into our web site and check your account status first (if you see a red light that indicates a problem that needs to be fixed), then your sync status. These pages 'understand' a large number of known support issues and will often display information on how to fix the problem you have.

Update: thanks to a very helpful user who was willing to allow us to use his account for debugging, we found an additional problem with Google contact sync last night. Users with larger numbers of contacts should benefit from the fix which is now live on the production service.

Contact Sync Status

2009-01-17T16:36:00.000-08:00

There are quite a few blog comments here suggesting that contact sync just isn't working at present. As far as we are aware contact sync is working normally. We can sync contacts on test devices, add contacts on each end and everything seems ok. There are situations in which the iPhone will delete all its contacts and then re-fetch the contact list from our service. If for some reason it can't contact the service at that point then the device has an empty contact list. It's possible that this event has been happening more often than normal, or that there's some reason why the re-fetch isn't working. We'd expect devices to catch up again and retain their contact list.

Update: if you have no contact sync (or indeed no calendar sync) please send a message to support@nuevasync.com with subject 'I have no contacts (or calendar)' and include your Nuevasync username and the number of contacts in your list if you know that. There may be some account-specific problem and we'd like to investigate some affected accounts. Thanks.

iPhone/iPod Default Calendar

2009-01-17T16:27:00.000-08:00

We're not yet up to date on the web site with all the tips and tricks for the iPhone multiple calendar feature. Here's one useful thing: for reasons not yet clear the iPhone sometimes picks a 'default calendar' seemingly at random. This can be annoying because when new events are created on the device they are assigned to the default calendar unless another one is explicitly selected. We intend the default to be your Google main calendar but this doesn't seem to always be the case. Until we get this resolved, it will be necessary to change the default calendar after the initial sync. This can be done in the settings page, under 'Mail, Contacts, Calendar...', scroll down 'till you see 'Default Calendar'.

iPhone Multiple Calendar Support Fully Deployed

2009-01-16T12:38:00.001-08:00

All existing users now have multiple calendar support enabled. The next time your device syncs it should pick up colored calendars. No user intervention is required. Sync status logging is still turned off so the sync status page will not display correct information yet. It might say that your sync has an error when in fact it succeeded.

Service Status

2009-01-16T00:21:00.000-08:00

The servers weren't quite able to keep up with their workload during the busy part of the day Thursday but are operating normally now. As load rises on Friday morning it is possible that service will degrade again. We are working on two fronts to address our overload problems: 1) deploying additional server capacity and 2) making a performance optimization in the software. One or both of these measures will be introduced on Friday to address our increased load.
The heavy traffic over the last few days is due to two things. First the transition to multiple calendars generates more work for the servers. Second, we have three times as many new users signing up every day than we did last week.
The status on the transition to multiple calendars is as follows: about half our users have had the feature enabled. Roughly 75% of their devices have made the transition. When we're sure that most of the eligible devices have transitioned and the current performance and capacity issues have been addressed, the remaining users will then be multical-enabled.
The web page that reports sync status and the elapsed time since the last successful sync will display incorrect information at present. This is because the recording of the status and error data has been temporarily disabled to reduce disk traffic (and improve overall reliability).

iPhone Calendar Color Selection

2009-01-15T07:53:00.000-08:00

The mystery of the iPhone calendar coloring is...well...still a mystery to us. At present the situation is this : the iPhone picks the colors. We don't yet know how to send it color information. If we learn how to do that (assuming it's possible) then we will allow users to pick the colors. Google does allow users to select colors, and assuming a stable calendar/color assignment on the device, it is usually possible to modify your Google colors so they match. However, sometimes the iPhone randomly changes the colors. There is also a strange black on yellow color that can show up, and in extreme cases all the calendars get that color. We suspect that it has some deep meaning (perhaps related to the 18th century practice of flying a yellow flag on a ship to indicate the presence of fever?). The yellow plague and the random color reassignment can usually be fixed by clicking the link 'Folder list on the device does not match? Reset it. ' on the calendar setup page.

Chinese, Japanese Calendar Names

2009-01-15T07:52:00.001-08:00

Several users reported that in the calendar selection page, if the calendar name is a multibyte string, it was displayed as ???? characters. This bug has been fixed and those calendars should be readable now.

Service Status and Vanishing Contacts

2009-01-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

After a marathon debugging session we found and fixed two performance-related bugs in the service last night. One had led to more disk I/O being done when a device performed a re-sync with contacts enabled. The data we store was being re-written when it hadn't really changed. We had many devices re-syncing yesterday when they converted to multiple calendars. This led to disk saturation and hence service slowness. Slow service leads to increased load because some devices time out and trigger yet more re-syncing. The second problem was a memory leak that became worse with the increased load, eventually leading to the service bogging down completely which triggers an automated re-start. Both these bugs were fixed late last night.
The worst aspect of this incident was that Apple devices interacted in an unfortunate way with the degraded service: if the device wasn't able to sync a change made on its end it could trigger an out of sync condition in the service. This is handled on the iPhone by deleting all the existing data, then re-fetching new data from the service. Normally this would happen in a few seconds but yesterday the service wasn't always responding to the re-fetch and as a result the device ended up empty until it was able to successfully re-sync.
For us this is a worse situation than if the service were completely down because in that case you'd still have all your data on the phone. Therefore we modified the service code last night to allow us to globally block these out of sync triggers on a temporary basis. Hence we can guarantee that nobody will have their contacts vanish all of a sudden. The downside to this is that nothing will sync for the affected devices either. This safety mode was enabled last night. It will be turned off once we're sure service is stable this morning (things look good at present).
All the devices that got into the half-synced state where contacts and calendar events were 'vanished' should have picked up sync again and fetched new data.
We do have plenty of servers and network bandwidth available.

Update : people have asked 'what can I do' to get syncing again. The answer is : nothing. Sync should pick up again naturally. The safety mode has been turned off now, so unless there are further service load problems everyone should see normal service return soon.

Server Stability Problems Today

2009-01-14T10:04:00.000-08:00

It turns out we were a bit over-ambitious with the number of users enabled for multiple calendar sync. The conversion process went very smoothly over night, but when the load rose this morning (load peaks around 9am pacific time every day) the service hit an overload state. There could be unreliable service and short outages today as we deal with the situation. It's unlikely the problems will last beyond today. Apologies for the poor service today, we expect to have things back to normal very soon.

Colored Calendar Phase-In

2009-01-13T20:53:00.000-08:00

Some details on how iPhone multiple calendar support is being enabled for our users:
In planning the roll out for multiple calendars there was some concern that the extra load on our servers from processing the transition for large numbers of devices all at once might bring down the entire service. Transitioning a device from the old to the new calendar content involves re-fetching all calendar events and quite a bit of churn in the persistent store, so more CPU and disk and network resources are used than for normal syncing. This led to the adoption of a progressive roll out strategy.
In addition, in order to reduce the risk of widespread service instability, we decided to initially deploy first in a mode where 'old' users did not get the new features but newly signed up users did. The idea was that new users never had working sync and therefore if something unfortunate happened they would be much less upset than existing users who had had working sync beforehand.
The plan was to watch for any reports of badness from new users for a while, then if none were seen, begin to enable multiple calendar support for existing users.
What actually happened was that there were no reports of new problems but there was an unrelated server stability issue over the weekend. Investigating that issue delayed the beginning of the 'old user' roll out, and in the meantime someone leaked the existence of multiple calendars for new users in a blog comment.
This prompted the 'official' announcement which of course led to frustration for those users who had not yet been 'enabled'. It was necessary to proceed with caution: enabling 100 users first then watching server load for a while, followed by 1000 users and so on. As of tonight roughly 40,000 users have had multiple calendar support enabled and we expect to enable the remainder tomorrow, assuming no server overload issues show up.

New Features!

2009-01-12T16:32:00.001-08:00

NuevaSync has several new features for the New Year:

Support for multiple, separate calendars on Apple iPhone and iPod touch devices is here! Now you can tell which appointment belongs in which calendar, add appointments to the calendar of your choosing, and filter your display to show only events from a specific calendar. What is most important of all, your calendars each get their own color. We are currently phasing this feature in: if you don't see it on your phone yet, you will very shortly.

You can now select exactly which of your calendars you want -- or do not want -- to sync. This feature is available for all users and device-types: just click on the setup link next to the calendar section after logging in to the NuevaSync site.

Read-only calendars can now be selected for sync. This is great for common calendars, like holidays, and for shared calendars from school or work. You can make changes and remove entries from a read-only calendar on your phone, but those changes will not be applied to the remote version. On an iPhone or iPod, read-only calendars are marked with an "*" after the name.

BlackBerry Support

2008-12-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

No, not an early April fool's joke. It's possible to use a BlackBerry device with Nuevasync. An intrepid user told us that they were able to sync (apparently without trouble) using Astrasync. Now, we're not exactly sure if this is a useful capability for BlackBerry users, since there's already a supported Google sync solution, but we thought it was at least worth mentioning here.

Google Deletion Fix

2008-12-12T14:52:00.001-08:00

A few users noticed trouble deleting entries, particularly appointments, since yesterday. We tracked it down to Google's new library and found a spot where, if their HTTP server issues a redirect, some necessary information is lost when it retries, causing the operation to fail. It is pretty rare, as it only affects deletion and only if there is also a redirect.

We made a fix and built the Google libraries ourselves, which we deployed a little bit ago. So far we have not seen any similar messages in the logs and we are no longer able to reproduce the problem.

Happy syncing!

Google contact sync problem affecting some users

2008-12-12T09:33:00.000-08:00

As noted in the comments on the article below, there is a problem that affects some users that arose when the new contact code was deployed last night. We're still investigating but it appears that users who set up their contact sync some time ago were assigned authentication tokens that do not work with the new Google contacts API. The problem is fixed by logging into our web site and re-requesting access to your Google contacts data. This results in a new token being assigned.
This problem does not affect all users, we suspect only those who signed up several months ago. The real problem here is that our web site does not yet detect and diagnose the problem, and the 'green light' checker says that everything is ok. We will be fixing that later today once we figure out exactly how to detect the problem.
At present, if you had working contact sync yesterday, and now it's not working, and you see 'contact support' in the sync status page, and your account was setup a while ago, then please perform the request access procedure again.

Update: the web site now does detect and display this problem.

Nix on the Suggested Contacts

2008-12-11T18:26:00.001-08:00

Syncing only your "real" contacts has been one of our most requested features, and today it is here! Google released version 2.0 of their API for contacts today. With this new version we are able to discriminate between your real contacts and your suggested contacts (which include basically anyone you have ever sent an e-mail).

We worked hard to get this out to all our waiting users, and we are happy to say that as of about twenty minutes ago, suggested contacts are no more.

The feature is automatic for any suggested contacts which Google creates from now on. However, if you already have suggested contacts on your phone we won't actively seek them out to delete them. If do you want to get rid of them, you will need to resync your contacts (instructions); and in just a few seconds you'll be free of your suggested contacts.

Happy syncing!

Service Restored

2008-11-23T19:23:00.000-08:00

We believe that the stability issues we've been experiencing today have been resolved.

Service Instability Tonight

2008-11-23T17:53:00.000-08:00

We're working on a thread leak bug that cropped up after the new SSL connection performance issues were fixed. This results in the web site becoming very slow, and syncing for any device that attempts to make a new connection will also be unreliable. This issue should be resolved before the morning.

New Connection Delay Problem Fixed

2008-11-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks we've noticed a problem where new SSL connections to the service sometimes took tens of seconds to become established. This issue also affected the web site, since it requires https.
The problem has been identified as a bug in Apache Tomcat's APR connector. A workaround was deployed tonight. The result should be slightly quicker syncing and smooth web site page loads at the busier times of the day.

iPhone 2.2 Firmware Released

2008-11-21T12:37:00.001-08:00

Apple released their iPhone/iPod Touch 2.2 firmware update today. We're excited about this because it includes a fix for the 'freezing iPhone' problem that some users have been experiencing. We'd like to hear from users who have updated their devices, particularly users who previously had experienced the freezing syndrome.

Plaxo Back Up

2008-11-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

Plaxo have been kind enough to white-list our IP addresses on their high traffic blocker, while we resolve why we're overloading their API. We need to determine what level of traffic is acceptable to Plaxo and dial down our traffic to suit. So Plaxo service is back up at present.

Plaxo Again Not Working

2008-11-15T07:09:00.000-08:00

Plaxo sync has been down for several days. Since we've not been able to resolve the issue with Plaxo. They say we're using their API excessively, but after a fair bit of work on our end (we added special rate-limiting code to our service, used packet sniffing and log file data to analyze our API use) we don't see any evidence of excessive traffic. Until we can correlate what Plaxo are seeing with something we have control over on our end that we can fix, unfortunately Plaxo sync will be down.
Google contact sync is working well, and it's not hard to export contacts from Plaxo and import to GMail.

New Data Center

2008-11-13T00:45:00.000-08:00

Service is back up, running in our new Silicon Valley colocation facility. The move to the coast gives us access to vastly increased bandwidth, redundant network paths, highly reliable power and plenty of space for expansion. Plaxo service is also currently working, since we have new IP addresses that Plaxo are not currently blocking.

Server Maintenance

2008-11-12T21:38:00.001-08:00

We are making some improvements to our network. The service will be down temporarily while they are completed. The down time should be brief, and everything is scheduled to be back up shortly.

Plaxo Sync Back Up

2008-11-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

We've resolved the problems with Plaxo sync (which related to the high volume of traffic we were sending to their API). Plaxo users should be syncing now.
UPDATE: it's back down again. It looks like we tripped the excessive traffic limit at Plaxo again. We're investigating...

Plaxo Sync Down

2008-11-03T21:07:00.001-08:00

Plaxo sync is currently not functioning. Our servers are unable to communicate with their servers. We are investigating the cause. So far we do know that it is not our code and it is not our general Internet connectivity, but we are still looking into what is happening, and what we can do. Stay tuned.

iPhone Battery Life Tests

2008-10-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

Last night I was able, for the first time, to test the theory that the iPhone consumes significantly more power when doing 'push' sync with our service. I left a fully charged iPhone on a shelf in a location with 5 bars ATT 3G service, and push enabled (which is the default configuration). This morning, after 12 hours on the shelf, the iPhone's battery level indicator was still at 'full'. At first I suspected that it wasn't actually syncing so I pulled the server log records for the device. These indicated that the phone had completed a 'ping' sync operation roughly every 7 minutes all night, which is exactly what we'd expect it to do. In previous investigations, when users have reported increased battery drain over night, the server logs showed exactly the same thing: normal regular pinging.
Although this is a single data point, it does tell me that whatever is leading to the reports we see of significantly increased batter life is probably a function of the cell radio in the phone, rather than the sync client or some strange interaction with our service. Perhaps when it's in a location with marginal service it burns much more power sending packets or flipping back and forth between towers, for example.
I'm keen to dig deeper into this mystery and to do so we'll need reports from users who either do or do not see major battery drain from an otherwise idle iPhone that's using push sync. Please send any reports to support@nuevasync.com with subject 'iPhone Battery Drain Investigation'.

Update: Service Restored (was: ISP Down Hence Service is Down)

2008-10-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

Update: our Internet service was restored a few minutes ago. Service is running normally now.

The ISP that provides connectivity to our servers is currently totally down. Yes, the entire multi-state ISP, affecting many cities and businesses. The outage began a couple of hours ago. They don't know the cause, nor how long it will take to restore service. My own investigation suggests that the problem is at their peering point with the outside world, not anywhere local to here. Needless to say we will be changing ISP as soon as we can. Apologies to our users. Service will be restored as soon as our ISP gets their act together.

iPhone 2.1 Freezing Update

2008-10-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sure many users are wondering what's been happening with this issue. Although we're not yet able to say that the problem is 100% resolved, some significant progress has been made. After a detailed analysis of server log records from devices belonging to users who reported freezing had happened, our engineering team were able to reliably reproduce the freezing problem.
There are two parts to the freezing syndrome: why the device freezes; and the conditions that led to it getting into the frozen state. On the first part, we believe that there is the potential for deadlock in the iPhone 2.1 sync software. We're also confident that the deadlocking problem will be fixed in the next iPhone software update. We don't know when that will be released.
Freezing seems to occur when a particular set of circumstances arises : a change is pending from Google, but the iPhone times out reading the change from our servers; then later before the device has caught up with that missed change, a second change is made on the device. Having discovered the set of conditions that can lead to the device deadlock, we wondered if we could make changes to the service that would reduce or even eliminate the potential to trigger it. As a result new service code was deployed this past Wednesday. It makes sure that any changes from Google are flushed to the device soon after they are seen. The result is that any device that might have got into the pre-freezing state, where a change was missed due to a timeout, will no longer do so. Unfortunately devices that were already in that state before the new code was deployed can still freeze up. This is because our change only addresses the first stage towards freezeing, not the second, which happens outside our control, on the device.
So far the results are encouraging. The number of users reporting new freezing episodes has dropped significantly. Evidence we are able to gather from server logs is also positive.
However, I don't feel that we can declare complete victory yet. There may be other conditions that can trigger the deadlock than the ones we have studied.
We'd like to determine the best method to un-freeze a device. So far only the 'Reset All Settings' method works reliably for us, although users have reported other methods working for them here (change Neuvasync password, turn on flight mode, etc). If you have thoughts on this please post comments.

iPhone Configuration Article on theiLife.com

2008-09-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

Nuevasync user Keith Hobin from theiLife posted an excellent article today that has a step-by-step Nuevaysync-on-iPhone configuration guide, including the first documentation we've seen on how to preserve your existing contacts and calendar events (the iPhone rather unhelpfully deletes them when you enable sync). We're grateful to Keith for taking the time to research and write the article. Thanks Keith !

Service was down for an hour or two

2008-09-28T09:36:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: Service was restored at 12:21 MDT.

Service (including the web site) is currently down. The cause is a defective ethernet card on the router that feeds the servers. The backup router isn't responding so we need to get physical access to the server room to fix the problem. That will take a couple of hours, at which point service will be restored.
Update: actually the Ethernet port is fine, but the Linux kernel on the router has a bug that led to the interface being mis-named when the router booted. For reasons not yet understood, the router rebooted this morning and it appears to have picked up a new kernel at that point, with the bug in it. I'm updating its kernel now and that should fix the port problem.

Fixing Duplicates

2008-09-23T17:54:00.001-07:00

Though not common, over time there have been users who have reported entries duplicated either on their device or at Google/Plaxo. As we've made continued improvements to squash duplicates, we've kept in touch with those users. But, we want to broaden access to that information and make sure all our users know first, where duplicates can come from, and second, how to deal with them.

By far the most common cause actually isn't a NuevaSync problem at all, but a bug in the Apple synchronization client. The precise details are rather convoluted, but the quick version is that if an error ever happened when syncing, it was possible for the device to get confused and start adding entries it already had.

In response to that, we’ve written and deployed code that actively intercepts duplicates before they get committed. It isn't possible to intercept 100% of duplicates this way, but the results so far have been excellent. And since the code is in our server, it applies equally to devices of all types and versions: iPod, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nokia, etc.

Apple apparently noticed the problem as well, and another major step came with the release of the 2.1 firmware. When we began testing the 2.1 beta releases a few weeks ago, we noticed an improvement in the devices' behavior; they did not create duplicates in the same circumstances as the 2.0 devices. This is a great enhancement for Apple users, and though we are still a little reserved about 2.1 (cf. some of our earlier posts), we are very pleased with this particular fix.

While those changes (and several other, smaller ones we've made) work to prevent duplicates, what do you do if you already have them? To answer that we have created some experimental tools to "dedupe" your account. The tools for Google Contacts and Calendar have been available for some time, but today marks the release for Plaxo. All these tools are specifically targeted at removing duplicates which might have been created through us. If your service offers its own tool, you may want to use that instead. Plaxo, for example, offers an advanced duplicate merging and removal tool which is well worth a look. Our tools are experimental and by their nature designed to delete entries. Make a backup first and exercise caution when using them!

They can be accessed at:
https://www.nuevasync.com/PublicSite/user/tools/dedupe.htm

Detection and removal can take a few minutes, so be patient when it runs. If a lot of entries are removed, it is probably a good idea to resync your device afterward (cf. https://www.nuevasync.com/PublicSite/user/troubleshooting.htm), but that is entirely up to you.

By raw numbers, duplicates have never been common, but nevertheless they have been one of--and perhaps the--most serious of issues to us. With these new measures, we’re hoping most users will never have a problem. If you do, e-mail us at support@nuevasync.com and we'll do everything we can to get it fixed and you back syncing.

As always, many thanks to our users!

2.1 Firmware Investigations

2008-09-18T16:33:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update, but following information provided by diligent users, we have some lines of investigation which we are pursuing on the freezing issue which can sometimes occur with iPhones or iPods running the new 2.1 firmware. We've also managed to reproduce this ourselves on a test device, and are working on a consistent reproduction case to nail it down.

If you encounter this problem, please do e-mail support with the subject 'iPhone Freezing Returned'. We've had a number of users send in reports, but more information is always good. Please include some details about--as best you can recall--the last operations you were performing before the freeze. That information is especially helpful. Things like, were you adding an entry, changing one, or not changing anything? If you were changing one, was there anything unique about the entry? We may not respond individually to each e-mail, but we are studying them.

And our thanks again to all the users who have sent us information. Thank you!

More on the iPhone Freezing Syndrome

2008-09-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

So far unfortunately we have been able to identify any specific data returned by the service that might be upsetting the iPhone sync client. The best workaround we have is to use 'Settings\General\Reset\Reset All Settings' to clear the device sync state. This will also reset various other setting such as your icon positions and stock tickers. Most users who have used this method report success, although some have reported the freezing subsequently returns.
If you have had freezing return after device reset, please send us e-mail and mention 'iPhone Freezing Returned' in the subject so we can identify your message quickly. We want to check the server logs for those users to see if we can correlate us sending a specific event to their device with the onset of freezing.
Also, if anyone has the freezing problem and is also an iPhone developer, we'd be interested to see the log from your device (can be viewed using the XCode utility with the device docked).

iPhone 2.1 Freezing Syndrome

2008-09-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

It would seem that all is not well with the 2.1 firmware update. We've had reports from several users (although by no means all users with the 2.1 update) that their phone freezes while attempting to sync. Reading the comments on the previous article and the support e-mail, it does appear that the problem can be resolved. We're working to determine the exact correct set of steps to un-freeze the 2.1 iPhone and will post it when it's ready. In the meantime it might be prudent to not update your phone/iPod to 2.1 just yet.
We were a little asleep on this issue unfortunately because although there were a few support tickets over the weekend that mentioned freezing, we had seen similar reports trickle in for the past couple of months (from users with earlier firmware) and so for a while we assumed this was just more of the same random iPhone hangs, and not something related to the use of our service. There were more reports on the problem, and more detail in the blog comments here than in the support e-mail, but we were focusing on the support e-mail.
Check back here for updates on this issue.

iPhone 2.1 Firmware Update

2008-09-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

A number of users have written to report that they had problems after updating to 2.1. There are no known problems with the 2.1 firmware and Nuevasync. However, the firmware update process seems to reset the sync state on the device which results in a 'resync' the next time the phone contacts our service. The resync operation is quite expensive and can take a while. Also at times a resync can fail if Google is busy. The users who reported problems subsequently let us know that their iPhones picked up sync again after a while. During the time between the firmware update and the next successful resync, your iPhone will loose its calendar events and/or contacts. Therefore we recommend updating your firmware at a time when loosing sync for a time will not cause major inconvenience. If in doubt, check your device sync status.

Scheduled Maintenance Complete

2008-09-06T15:28:00.001-07:00

As mentioned in an update to the earlier notice, scheduled maintenance has been completed for all servers and the service has been turned back on to full capacity.

A Post on Service Quality Issues

2008-09-06T07:03:00.000-07:00

In the interests of preserving the useful comments on this post (which was originally about a scheduled downtime required to replace defective hardware and to deploy a faster database machine), I'm leaving this post up forever.

The hardware upgrade appears to have been a great success. Server load is quite low and so far there are no reports of serious problems.

The post originally said :

Nuevasync service will be unavailable for a time today while a major hardware upgrade is done. The planned outage time begins at 11am MDT (18:00 UTC) and is expected to last two hours. During this time the web site will redirect to a maintenance page and no syncing will be done. iPhone/iPod users : PLEASE DO NOT DO ANYTHING. Don't 'resync'. Just leave your phones alone and they will pick up sync again when the service is restarted. If you resync, all your data will be deleted from the iPhone and it may take a long time for it to be synced back.
Update : the upgrade went well, and it turned out we had a bad hard drive (bad in a bad way in that it didn't report any errors but silently hung the system when certain sectors were read). Dealing with the drive issue (which means re-installing the OS on the machine since the old drive couldn't be imaged) will take a little longer than the expected down time. We should be up in about 45 mins time (2:30 MDT, 21:30 UTC).
In response to the people who commented that the old service status posts should not be deleted : well I agree in so far as I'd like the comments preserved, but on balance it seemed messy to leave all those rather quickly written and often in hindsight incorrect posts on the blog. What we really need is a page that a) stays up when our connection or servers are down and b) isn't a blog. Right now we don't have that in place so the blog got abused with the status posts. It's not ideal but we've taken the approach that you the users would rather we fix the problems than make things all pretty and neat.

Sync Status Page Goes Live

2008-08-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

One of the challenges for us supporting iPhone and iPod Touch users is that the devices give absolutely no feedback to the user about their sync. They don't even get to know if it worked or not ! The whirring sun thing rotates and bit, and then all is silent. We wanted to provide a higher quality user experience. Since our web site has access to any error information logged when your device tries to sync (we already use this information when answering support tickets), the obvious next step was to provide a way to see it on our web site. This feature has been in development for a while and finally made it onto the live site earlier today. Here's the page. If an error has been logged, the page will display information about how to fix it. There is a simple expert system that understands how to diagnose the most common errors. If it doesn't understand the error then you will be advised to contact our support team.

Nokia Configuration Instructions

2008-08-21T06:46:00.000-07:00

Although we don't have any Nokia devices ourselves, our server logs indicated that several users have been using them with the service. Until now it was something of a mystery how they'd configured their phones. I'm very happy to see that one of our users has spent the time to write up the details in this article. One thing we're not sure about is whether all Noika phones are similar so if you have experiences with other models we'd be interested to hear about them.

Sync for all Google Apps users

2008-08-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

After a few weeks where some users reported that sync didn't work, and by the way they were a Google Apps user, we have finally tracked down the cause. Thanks to one of our more persistent users who diagnosed the key issue and let us know his findings. Google Apps users who were seeing a 'red light' in the status page on our site should be able to get to green by simply requesting access to their Google account again. Click on 'setup' then on 'Request Account Access' and follow the instructions. If you have more than one Google account please make sure you have logged in to Google using the right one (our red/green test checks this so if you have green you're good to go).

Calendar status now available on the web site

2008-08-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

One of the major causes of confusion for our users, and consequently support e-mails sent to us is that we don't sync all your Google calendars. More accurately, we sync calendars that you have permission to write to, and that have timezone information.
The rationale for not syncing calendars that you can't update was that this could lead to devices becoming out of sync with Google. You could change an event from one of these calendars on your phone, but we would not be able to update the event in Google's system. We recently added code to support one-way sync for read-only calendars but found in trials that users didn't always want those events on their devices. So the feature is on hold until we have the capability for users to select which calendars are synced.
We don't sync calendars that lack timezone data for the simple reason that we need this information in order to create the responses we need to send to your phone. Without the timezone we'd either need to guess it, or not sync the calendar. The choice made was to skip those calendars. You can't create a calendar without timezone data using Google's web site, but we have seen cases where third-party applications and sync tools have done so.
A new feature on our site today gives users the ability to see which calendars will sync and the reason for any non-syncing calendars. Simply visit this page to see your list.

The Case of the Missing Phone #'s - Closed

2008-08-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days we'd had several reports from users that while their contacts were synced over to their phones, they arrived sans any phone numbers. Other attributes seemed to be communicated OK.

We have very good logging of the conversion process in our system, and though for a few reasons we don't retain logs for long, we were able to look through and spot the issue pretty quickly.

The devices have a common set of attributes which they support. The basic set of phone attributes is two home phone numbers, one mobile phone number, two work numbers, and then a handful of less common numbers such as radio phone, assistant's phone, etc.

Google, on the other hand, supports fewer categories of phone but a greater total number; someone could have five home phones, for example. This difference is where our phone mapping system comes in. The problem these users had encountered was that phones which lacked any category at all, or which were marked as 'Other' at Google, were being skipped entirely.

We are still working with this users to track down how these contacts were created--it isn't possible to add a phone number with no category through Google's own site, so it is pretty curious--but we have deployed a fix where these phones are held over in a special list until we finish mapping all the categorized numbers. If there are any free slots left in the main five (mobile, home 1 & 2, and work 1 & 2) at that time, we start using them to hold these uncategorized numbers.

The fix has been deployed as of yesterday (08/10), and so far things are looking good, as affected users have started to report they now see the phone numbers they expect.

In testing, we did find one curious related circumstance worth mentioning. On an Apple device, if one sets a phone number to the Apple 'other' category (not the same as the Google 'other' category) it isn't sent to us at all, and consequently isn't synced to Google. We'll dig into that one more deeply, but for now, we recommend not to use the 'other' category on your iPhone or iPod, or at least to understand that if you do, it won't be synced over at Google.

Support ticket system

2008-08-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

We've deployed RT to manage the support e-mail workload. We hope this will give users more consistent support service because every request is automatically assigned a ticket number and logged in our system when its received. Any updates made to the ticket result in an e-mail sent to the requester. We can see at a glance any ticket that has not been resolved. This was not easy to do when we were looking at a busy mailbox.
Having done this we realized that we needed a new mailbox for non-support messages such as when users send us suggestions for new features, or just when they want to say hello. Therefore we've created the mailbox info@nuevasync.com.

Event calendar move consistency error fixed

2008-08-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

One of the issues with data consistency mentioned a couple of days ago has been fixed. It turned out that if an event was moved from one calendar to another at Google, and at roughly the same time an event was changed on the user's device, the reconciliation processing was not done correctly. This resulted in a fatal error that blocked sync for the user. This problem is now resolved.

New server deployed last night

2008-08-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

Our main sync server died yesterday evening. We haven't yet had time to analyze the failure but it seems likely that increasing load put the machine into a state where one or more kernel bugs were triggered. Rather than spend time trying to fix it, we instead deployed a new much bigger, faster server in its place. This took a little longer but we think it was worth the wait because this morning the service looks very healthy.

What are we doing today?

2008-08-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

We have a few 'interesting' blog articles in the works, but since none of those are ready yet I thought I'd begin the blog by simply describing what we're up to today. Today is an important day because it's essentially the first day since the iPhone 2.0 launch that we haven't had some kind of developing crisis to deal with. No servers melting under load; no exponentially growing Internet traffic; we're not creating duplicate events in users' calendars. We've also been successful in reducing the support e-mail load by making improvements to our web site and configuration process.
So today we're focusing on the top three reasons users are currently not able to sync successfully. We know what the reasons are, and how many users are affected because we write a detailed problem record into a database whenever our servers encounter an error. In the past, we would find this information in our server log files. As our user population grew this became impractical (our servers generate 20 Gbytes of log data per day). The new database view we have onto user errors has allowed us to get a much better understanding of the range and frequency of problems.
So what do we see ? The number one problem that leads to persistent inability to sync turns out to be when the user enabled e-mail sync on their phone. At present we don't support e-mail sync (perhaps these users really wish we did !) but we're working on it. At present our server just can't deal with a device that says it wants to sync e-mail. It throws an error and no further syncing can happen. Later in the day we are planning to compile a list of all the affected users and send them an e-mail asking them to turn e-mail sync off on their phones. They should then find that sync begins working.
The second and third most common problems that lead to non-working sync are to do with inconsistent data. Our server code performs consistency checks in a number of places. For example it checks that when Google sends us calendar event changes, that they don't give us two changes (that are different) for the same event. It turns out that sometimes they do ! When this happens our server can't continue processing the sync request, and the result is no sync for YOU! We have some good clues about the cause and are working on a fix which we hope to deploy soon.
The last of the three more common problems also relates to data consistency. What happens is that the user's device sends us changes to events, but there is no 'server id' for those events. This is logically impossible, yet it happens for a fee users. We have a few theories about this one and hope to understand the problem in more detail soon.