New and Improved: Nokia E71 and E72 Support

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

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

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

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

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


2. 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.


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


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


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


6. 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.


7. Best slide keyboard. Big improvement vs. the Droid.


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


9. 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.


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

The not so good

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


2. 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??).


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


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


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


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


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


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


9. 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

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’:

Sign in at Yahoo! with the account you want to sync:

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

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

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.