Apple advertises MobileMe as a way to keep your mail, contacts, and calendar information in the “cloud” and uses push technology to keep everything in sync across your iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC, and the web automatically. Google sync does the same thing but doesn’t come with the $99/yr price tag. Instead they offer this service for free, and doesn’t seem to completely destroy possibly months or years of contacts.  There is a LOT of reports all across the web that when synching with mobile me for the first time ALL your contacts will get messed up! Of course you should ALWAYS back up your data before you do any syncing, but for those who have forgotten in the past – you’re in for a mess of work afterwards.  If you only have a few contacts between your phone numbers and email contacts, maybe it’s not a big deal but I have over 500 contacts that have very organized information, photos attached to their contact card and notes to help with smart filters.  I’ve personally experienced (as well as my friend David, who shared his story with me) only seeing numbers in all my text messages on my iPhone after one sync.  After you spend hours cleaning up the mess and relinking numbers to names, MobileMe works well – but why do all this extra work when Google Sync does all of this WITHOUT messing them up.  Why can’t Apple do the same, with their own native devices?  Here is a video explaining Google Sync:

For people that still have @mac.com addresses (or anything else for that matter), Gmail allows you to import email addresses and even better, allows you to still reply as that email address. The import options can be found in the settings menu under Accounts and Import:

If you’d like to have a Google Apps account and import your mail (preserving information such as sent dates and sender/recipient data, as well as the folder structure used by email programs) from a host site onto Google, you can use their Google Email Uploader which has steps for both Mac and PC.

So now you have all your email coming through Gmail or Google Apps. Here’s how to sync it to your iPhone. The iPad will use the exact same steps.
1. Open the Settings application on your iPhone’s Home screen.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account…
4. Select Microsoft Exchange.

5. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address. If you use an @googlemail.com address, you may see an “Unable to verify certificate” warning when you proceed to the next step.
6. Leave the Domain field blank.
7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.
8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
9a. Choose Cancel if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears.
10. When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
11. Press Next at the top of your screen again.

12. Select the Google services (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts) you want to sync.
13. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes.

If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the “All Contacts” group instead.

Synchronization will begin automatically if you have Push enabled on your device. You can also open the Mail, Calendar or Contacts app and wait a few seconds to start a sync. To select which calendars to sync to your Apple device, follow the steps below:

Open the Safari browser on your device and go to http://m.google.com/sync.
Sign in with your account and select your device from the list of devices you’ve set up for Google Sync.
Bookmark this page so you can return to it easily. If you use Google Apps, click on this link for slightly different steps.

Now you can synchronize both your Mac’s desktop Address Book and iCal through their preferences. If you use Mac’s Mail app at all, you should know that Gmail is added with ease by setting up its access to IMAP in Apple Mail 3.0. I personally have tried the Address Book option and got a lot of duplicates and messed up contacts. Of course you should ALWAYS back up your iCal and Address Book through their Export to Archive options before trying any of this. But if you want a really smart and cheap way to sync your desktop applications to your Google Emails, I’m going to have to recommend Spanning Sync. Here’s a video to show why as well as some features listed below taken from their site:

Spanning Sync can not only simplify the initial setup of Google Sync but will also keep your Mac in sync with Google—something Google Sync doesn’t do.

Stay Organized Across Multiple Macs
If you’re lucky enough to have more than one Mac, keeping your data organized can be a challenge. But Spanning Sync makes it simple to organize your calendars and contacts: just sync all of your Macs to the same Google Calendar account.

So whether you’re using your Mac Pro at work, your iMac at home, or your MacBook on the go, your calendars and contacts are always up to date. And since Spanning Sync is licensed per-person not per-computer, you can install it on as many Macs as you like without paying more.

iCal Sharing Has Never Been Easier
Need to set up a shared iCal calendar for your group? Spanning Sync makes it easy. Just create and share a Google Calendar, then sync it with iCal on your Mac. Changes made in Google Calendar show up in iCal—and changes made in iCal show up in Google Calendar.

Their interface is simple and it honestly takes seconds to set up. I’ve included some sample screenshots below:

Spanning Sync offers a 15 day trial period, a $25 year subscription or a $65 one time purchase that never expires and will work with any upgrade they offer. Remember, Spanning Sync is licensed per-person not per-computer, you can install it on as many Macs as you like without paying more.  I recommend giving the trial a run to see if you like it and if you do, you can save $5 right away on either purchase if you use my referral code here: AJA9TK.

… Now some people may ask me what about all the other features MobileMe offers? There are many free gallery websites available to share your photos with others. I personally use Flickr and Google’s Picasa which works fine for me. Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically and is a great (free) replacement for iDisk. The only thing one could really miss from MobileMe is Find my iPhone/iPad. And other than the unfortunate employee who accidentally left the next-gen iPhone 4G at a bar, I haven’t heard of anyone needing this feature.

                          

My OCD Inbox

This is what my inbox looks like 99% of the time. During the course of a day I can get anywhere between 20-50 emails, which I’m sure many would consider lucky. However, seeing them pile up in the inbox can be overwhelming. Even if they are shown as read I prefer to have them archived and hidden knowing that the conversation is done or I am waiting for a reply. The benefit to my OCD is that it makes for a very organized and structured life, complete with labels, folders, spreadsheets and I figured I’d share some of the steps I take to make this work.

I’ll be demonstrating these steps using my google apps email account which is used for this website but I use the same methods for my regular gmail account, only with more filters and labels (friends, family, co-workers etc)…

Below are the steps I use to sort and organize all my mail with labels and filters which makes it incredibly easy to find any email afterwards. Gmail’s search bar is very powerful as well, but adding labels, filters or keywords to it can be extremely helpful. I’ve exported a few of my filters which you can find at the bottom of the post, that you, yourself can then import into any gmail/google apps account and use (as well as edit) to better suit your needs.

All labels in Gmail are sorted alphabetically but I’d like some to stay up at the top for quick reference. To do that, I add numbers in front of them. The @Contact, @Gmail and @Info represent any emails that come from my other accounts, that I forward to my google apps account. This lets me have all emails in one place to respond and organize from while adding the label for them let’s me know how the sender got in touch with me. The labels numbered 1 through 5 are where I store all the emails that I don’t have time to respond to instantly. THIS is the first step to having an clean inbox. You can name them whatever you like – numbering order doesn’t matter either but this keep the labels above all the others and works for me. Just a reminder, I use these to remind myself that I have to go back to these at some point soon. Once I’m finished with the email, I can remove one of these five labels and archive it.
1. Action Required – either replies or tasks that should be performed quickly (a bit more important that #2)
2. Follow Up – emails/inquiries I have to reply to
3. Upcoming – could easily be named ‘reminders’ (upcoming events: concerts to shoot, get together with a friend, travel information etc). Of course me, having OCD would also include this information within iCal as well
4. Awaiting – emails important enough where I’m waiting for a reply. If the email sits in this label/folder too long I know to write to them again if needed.
5. Opportunities – job opportunities or offers
The others listed below are pretty self-explanatory and about half of them are automatically sorted by the use of my filters. Once I’ve read and/or responded to an email, I simply archive it so it is hidden from my inbox.

The most powerful part of Gmail, in my opinion is their labels. Email services like Hotmail contain folders but that only lets you put an email in one category. Labels on the other hand, are like tags and don’t copy the email but rather, tag an email with as many labels as you like. I have hidden some of my labels in this post (personal, family, friends etc) but often it’s hard to place an email in just one category. By combining filters and labels together, your emails will automatically be ‘tagged’ by a label which allows for quick archiving and storing.

Google’s filters work through creating boolean operations, which for those that don’t know, are AND or IF statements. You also don’t have to limit yourself to filtering through emails. You can filter through subject, keywords, emails, attachments and much more. I’ve included 2 examples below to show what I mean.

Example 1: Automatically searching for images within an email

This filter will look for any image with the words listed which usually represent images.

If the 'image' label isn't already made, one will be created after finalizing the filter.

When working with booleans you work with an OR or AND statement.  OR can also be exchanged by using ” | ” this symbol.  AND means your email would require all requirements listed while OR looks for any of them.

Example 2: Separating messages from Social Networking Sites

Adding a * before the @ let

This will filter all emails coming from sites like Vimeo, Myspace, Flickr all into one label

*Let me note that I use Apple Mail to check and correspond from 95% of the time. I have a PC at the office which keeps me on google’s web page for my mail and I set up all my filters and labels within gmail rather than smart mailboxes in apple mail so all my mail can stay synced up wherever I go, or if I have to jump onto someone else’s computer. I will assume most people that use gmail + apple mail together know the benefits of IMAP but have included a link here just in case. *

Setting up your email this way is handy because while Apple Mail will transfer your labels into folders, if you don’t have filters set up and an email could be tagged as 3 separate labels, you’d have to copy that email into each folder.

I have exported a few of my filters for you to download, edit and/or use however you like. They include filtering images, music files, video files, purchases made from online sites and social networking sites. To import a filter into your gmail account, simply go to your Settings > Filters. Scroll down to the bottom and click on Import Filters. Locate the file you’ve downloaded from my site under browse and open the file.

*Update – some people have been having troubles importing filters into their gmail account.  Please make sure you enable this option in your google labs settings.*