Till a couple of months back, Microsoft Exchange and (Pocket) Outlook combination used to be the epicenter of my productivity. I was almost addicted to the ActiveSync/DirectPush feature so much so that I was reaching out to my Windows Mobile at unearthly hours to check mail or to add a task. I used to continue my unfinished work at home seamlessly. At least 40% of my official mails were sent from Pocket Outlook on Windows Mobile while I was away from home or office. I did that not for an year or two, but for almost 8 years!
Everything changed since my departure from Microsoft. My new employer doesn’t support Push email feature on Windows Mobile (My wife is really happy about it!). And most importantly, my personal calendar, mails and tasks are totally out of sync. On top of it, I switched to an Apple Mac. Syncing my Windows Mobile with Exchange server gave me a complete peace of mind as every contact, message and calendar was on the server. Windows Mobile not paired with a backend Exchange server makes it completely useless and dumb!
Now my scenario is very different – I have an official notebook running Outlook that’s connected to my corporate Exchange server, my home PC running Windows Live Mail client connected to a bunch of email services, my Windows Mobile downloading mails from the same bunch of email providers, and of course Mac OS X Mail client configured to work with my GMail, Hotmail etc. When it comes to managing a personal calendar, it is a chaos! I missed the luxury of accessing and updating my calendar from any device that I want to.
When I was switching my domain to GoDaddy, they offered me an option to try Google Apps. I signed up for the following services –
- GMail
- Calendar
- Docs
This conveniently gave me the customized mailbox, calendar through http://mail.janakiramm.net , http://calendar.janakiramm.net . I moved my mailboxes from my old hosting provider to my customized GMail backend.
With a little bit of experimenting I achieved what I have been looking for –
- One universal mailbox that pulls (through POP) mail from all other accounts hosted on my domain!
- One universal calendar that synchronizes across my office notebook PC, home PC, mobile phone and my MacBook.
- Contacts on the cloud in my mailbox.
- Just one Inbox to deal with irrespective of the device that I am using.
- My official and personal calendars completely in sync and my Windows Mobile up to date with my appointments.
You may ask me why not Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Calendar . Syncing Windows Live Calendar is not supported on Windows Mobile and I just found it very convenient to hit one ‘Sync’ button on my mobile phone to quickly synchronize my mail, calendar and contacts (just the way I did it when using Exchange!)
I plan to write another detailed post on how I got this working. All I can say is if you are using a Windows Mobile and want to exploit the Push capability, go pair it with Google Apps.
As a Cloud Computing Strategist, Janakiram MSV helps businesses understand and adopt the Cloud Computing paradigm. His core strength is designing and architecting solutions for the Cloud. Janakiram focuses on industry's leading Cloud Computing offerings including Microsoft Windows Azure.
