Synchronize Outlook, Gmail, and cellphone contacts with Soocial

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Google, BlackBerry, Mobile, Web

Synchronize Outlook, Gmail, and cellphone contacts with Soocial

by Brad Linder Nov 13th 2008

Soocial is a free web service that provides a central location for all of your contacts' phone numbers, email addresses, and other information. If that's all Soocial provided, it wouldn't be that interesting. But Soocial goes a few steps further and allows you to synchronize your contacts across multiple platforms, including your cellphone, Mac, PC, and Gmail.

Yesterday the company released a utility for Outlook synchronization that supports Windows XP and Vista and Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007. While the Outlook sync plugin is in alpha and Soocial recommends backing up your contacts before running, I didn't experience any problems. In a matter of minutes, all of my contacts were backed up online and accessible through the Soocial web site.

Gmail sync, on the other hand is a bit slower. I've been waiting about an hour for the Gmail synchronization to kick in. If and when it does, Soocial wil fill in the next piece of a synchronization puzzle that I've been struggling with for ages. Using Soocial, you'll be able to keep your Outlook and Google contacts in sync, and using Calgoo or Google Calendar Sync, you'll be able to synchronize your Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. And that means you'll be able to update your information on any computer with a web browser, knowing that the changes will be synched to your primary computer and any mobile devices like cellphones and PDAs that you keep synched with Outlook.

Now would someone please release a tool that synchronizes Outlook tasks with Remember the Milk?

Soocial also plans to release a BlackBerry client soon, and already supports hundreds of cellphones.

[via Decoder and TechCrunch]

Tags: blackberry, outlook, soocial, synchronization

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Brett said 8:04PM on 11-13-2008

Did you intentionally write "miinutes" to match "Soocial"? :)

Brad Linder said 8:04PM on 11-13-2008

Nope, but that would have been cleever of me. :)

Rami said 8:02AM on 11-14-2008

Does it sync 2 way with Gmail? or is it a one way sync like Plaxo?

Daniel said 8:02AM on 11-14-2008

Plaxo scraped the contacts in Gmail, so that one was one-way. Plaxo did it earlier, before Google brought out their Contacts API.
Soocial syncs two-way with Gmail using Googles Contacts API.

The initial Gmail sync might take a while but after that the successive syncs are almost instantaneous or a matter of minutes depending on the load.

James said 8:03AM on 11-14-2008

It's worth checking out www.goosync.com for those wanting to sync Google (or Google domain apps) contact and calendar with a mobile device. I've been using the gcal sync for a couple of years and the gmail contacts sync since gmail released their contact API and it's been great - really pleased with it, and pretty cheap for a year's service too.

davebrewer said 1:52PM on 11-14-2008

This might be the solution for all the G1 users looking to have easier access and sync between their GMail and Outlook since there is not yet an Android Outlook module. Thanks for sharing this one!

Rz said 4:28PM on 11-14-2008

Not ready for prime time. I'm having the same problem where although synchronized with Outlook (despite an error message), it hangs when trying to sync with Gmail (or at least I think it's hanging because it can't get past syncing 50 contacts).

Next.

Daniel said 5:09AM on 11-15-2008

Hey Rz,

if you could post your problem at getsatisfaction.com/soocial, i'm sure we would be able to see what's going on.
There are so many possible reasons for why it's going wrong, we'd love to help figure it out.

moby said 7:41AM on 11-17-2008

I'd love to hear from G1 users regarding this app. I have a G1 and I'm currently using a program called gsync, http://www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/

While gsync does sync both Calendar and Contacts from Outlook, it has a bug that I have been unable to track down who is responsible for. For business contacts to list in alphabetical order on the G1, you have to copy the business name into the name field otherwise when it syncs to the G1 all of your business contacts show listed by phone number instead of by name. I'd switch if someone could confirm this does NOT happen using soocial.

(Caveat: gsync cost 10 bucks and the owner seems a bit snotty when reporting bugs. However, other than the glitch I mentioned above, it functions as described.)

Firtch said 6:40PM on 11-20-2008

Moby, this is a bug in Android, not gsync. Android needs to list Business contacts by Business name. If you check your Gmail Contacts, you'll see that Gmail displays them correctly. Sucks that there's not a central place to report feature enhancements like this one!

moby said 2:34PM on 11-21-2008

@Firtch Hey, thanks for the heads up. I've been investigating on my own and was of the same mind.

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