OT: contact-management hell (iPhone how-to)

[John Abreau]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 1:45 AM, David Kramer<david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Rich Braun wrote:
....
>> *However*, stepping back from the brink:  how do y'all manage *your* contact
>> info?  Is there a sane way to keep your address book (defined as names, phone
>> numbers and email addresses, maybe a few other fields) regularly copied
>> (sync'ed may be too strong of a word) in either direction between a Linux box
>> and an iPhone?
>
> No.  There isn't.  At least not that I know.  I've had five or six
> different PDA's over the years that you could somehow get your data off
> of, and for every one it took major hackery to get the data from it to
> something else.  Well, except for the best geek PDA ever, the Psion 5mx.
> which had import and export functions.
>

I struggled with this years ago, and in the end I just decided to forget about
2-way sync. I set up my contacts in openldap as the master source, and
then sync'ed one-way from ldap to each mobile device, and I developed the
self-discipline to never enter contact information directly into the
mobile device,
but rather to email it to myself to be entered into openldap.

I decided to adopt the server-push model after trying to sync from a Palm TX
to a Sharp Zaurus, and finding that half the fields in the addressbooks were
silently dropped.


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John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
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