Following on from part two this post provides more information on the steps I went through in syncing to the cloud.

3. I selected a smartphone that did what I needed it too.

At the time I was using a HTC Touch Diamond. I worked, looked great and I enjoyed using it. However personally I increasingly became frustrated with the touch screen and poor battery life. I needed a device that was a bit more resilient to hours away from power, game me good connectivity and offered a very efficient means of data input.

I considered the HTC Touch Pro2 and Acer M900 for the fact they both had good touch screens and a keyboard. However I opted for the HTC Snap as this offered a great keyboard, a good feature set. The non touch screen was a drawback but it assisted in conserving battery life and after a short while I was used to not having the touch screen.

4. I updated my contacts and calendar.

Being so keen to get myself organised I got in contact with the majority of my contact database, through email and phone and updated the information I had for them. Such information included email addresses, contact numbers, addresses and much more.

In addition I added to my calendar any appointments that I had not already entered, including regular social arrangements.

So with contacts and calendar updated, I moved onto the next step.

5. Established a two way sync between my laptop (at home) and Google Servers/Google Mail along with a two way sync with my work pc.

Ok so this is where it gets a little bit more complicated, but still fairly easy in all honesty.

To ensure that all the PC’s were communicating, it was necessary to install a piece of software on my laptop at home and the work PC. This ensured that the computers kept up to date at all times.

Point to note!! The software allows Google’s servers to sync with my home calendar and work calendar, but it does not allow a constant sync between contacts on the two computers. Therefore while calendar entries sync with both computers and the phone, the contacts only sync between the Google Server and my phone. So, if I were to add a contact to my laptop or work PC I need to add it to my phone too.

However I am now working (at home at least) towards, working completely online through the Google Web Access portal.

If you have a premium Google account, which I believe is for Small Business Customers at a cost, you can sync your contacts too, thus resolving the issue of not syncing contacts from the PC to Google’s servers!

The small app that does all the syncing is Google Calendar Sync which can be read about and downloaded on the link below:

http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=89955

For those with a Premium Google Account, Google Apps Sync details are on the following link:

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/outlook_sync.html

Because the contacts do not sync, I exported (as a .CSV file) my contacts from my Outlook database at home and work and easily imported them into Google Contacts through Google’s web based portal.

A good guide to exporting contacts from Outlook can be found HERE

A guide to importing into Google Contacts can be found HERE

Tomorrow you can read part four!