How about S60 devices? Since Plaxo does not support SyncML yet, it is not that easy to sync our S60 devices with Plaxo.

There should be a limited support on some S60 devices from the US operators. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried it because I don’t live in the US.

There is a third party application, called Sync2App for Plaxo (Series 60). Unfortunately, it doesn’t come for free. Besides that, it supports only older version of S60, i.e. 1st and 2nd Edition only.

What can we do with Plaxo from our S60 now? Until Plaxo supports SyncML, there is not much we can do.

One solution that we can try now is sync Plaxo with Outlook and then sync Outlook with our S60 devices. It is not perfect; but it should do the job.

Bonus Links

• Contacts Management and Online Backup
• Anything About Synchronization

• Offline; meaning you don’t need Internet connection to do synchronization.
• Online; meaning your contacts are backup to an online server.

Offline

• Microsoft Outlook. I am pretty sure that many of you have been using PC Suite to synchronize your contacts to Microsoft Outlook. The latest PC Suite even supports synchronization to Windows Vista contacts.
• Apple’s Mac. Mac users may also be familiar with iSync. Personally I’ve never tried iSync yet because I don’t have Mac. However, I heard that this product is awesome; just like any other Apple’s products.
• Mozilla Thunderbird. There were some discussions about contacts synchronization to Mozilla Thunderbird. Until today, I haven’t managed to synchronize between S60 devices and Thunderbird. There is a product, called NokSync to synchronize Nokia phones. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with S60 devices.

Online

Online backup for contacts is getting increasingly more popular these days. There are many companies out there that are providing online backup service. My favorite online backup services are:

• Plaxo
• Zyb
• Mobical

Plaxo uses proprietary protocol for synchronization; while the other two, Zyb and Mobilcal, supports SyncML. For those who are not familiar with SyncML, it is a platform independent information synchronization standard from OMA (Open Mobile Alliance).

I am going to discuss online backup in the next postings. So… stay tune…

Bonus Links

• Contacts Synchronization with Plaxo
• Anything About Synchronization
• It is getting easier to sync your cell phone with Linux box

Update (01-Oct-2007): Added some bonus links.

Now I am going to discuss about files synchronization in PC Suite 6.84. If you run the new PC Suite and select Synchronize, you should see a checkbox, called ?File and folder items?. Enable this checkbox to allow files synchronization.

Then on the Files and Folders tab, you can set the source and destination folders. Since, you can only specify one folder here, let?s utilize Briefcase feature from Windows. For those who don?t know about Briefcase in Windows, please read the following tutorial from Microsoft.

What you need to do is:

• Create a Briefcase folder on your Windows PC.
• Copy any files you want to synchronize to this folder.
• Run Synchronize application from PC Suite.
• Click Synchronize button and you are ready to go. Note that you can also automate the synchronization each time you connect the device. To do it, simply click Advanced button in the General tab.

Tip: Add Briefcase folder to your Send To menu. This way, you can copy files to the Briefcase folder just by right clicking on it and select Send To menu.

Today?s topic is ?synchronization?. It is about synchronization of everything, including contacts, images, music, videos and documents. How do we synchronize them between our PC (main computer) and S60 devices (mobile devices)? Note that the discussion below focuses on PC (Windows) only. For Mac users, please start looking at iSync.

Contacts Synchronization

• PC Suite. I am pretty sure most of you are using PC Suite. It allows us to synchronize contacts between our devices and PC, mainly Microsoft Outlook. It doesn?t support Thunderbird yet.
• Nokia Synchronization for Thunderbird. It is supposed to allow us synchronizing contacts from Thunderbird to Nokia phones. Unfortunately, I couldn?t manage to make it work.

Images/Videos Synchronization

Please check my previous postings:

• Managing Your Images/Videos using Nokia Lifeblog.
• Managing Your Images/Videos using Nokia Image Store.

Music Synchronization

Please check my previous postings:

• Synchronizing Music Files and Podcast from iTunes to S60 Phones.
• Synchronizing MP3 Files form Windows Media Player to S60 Phones.

Files/Folders Synchronization

Imagine that you have a bunch of files on the PC that you want to ?carry? on your S60 devices, for example Word or Excel documents. Later, you may update the files, either on the PC or S60 devices, how do we synchronize them?

• SyncBack. It is my favorite application to synchronize files and/or folders. Best of all, it is free.
  Basically, you have to connect your S60 device to a PC in ?Mass Storage? mode. It means that you can only use it on newer S60 devices because older devices don?t have this mode.
• Allway Sync ?n? Go. Another free application to synchronize your S60 device to your PC as “Mass Storage” mode.

Compatible devices: S60 2nd, 3rd, Nokia Nseries, Nokia Eseries

Update (14-Sep-2007): The latest PC Suite also supports files/folders synchronization. Please check my posting, http://www.s60tips.com/2007/07/21/file-synchronization-using-nokia-pc-suite-684/.

The DST (Daylight Saving Time) update does not affect some of you. It only affects mostly for people who live in the US/Canada or people who are traveling to this area this Sunday. Thanks to Kevin who has pointed this out on his blog.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, here is the explanation about DST from Wikipedia:

Daylight saving time (DST), also known as summer time in British English, is the convention of advancing clocks so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour in late winter or early spring and are adjusted backward in autumn.

This year’s DST problem comes when President George Bush decided to change the DST time from first Sunday of April to the second Sunday of March in some parts of the US.

On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November.

If you will be affected by this change, I recommend downloading an update for your S60 devices. I think this update should have been included in the latest firmware upgrade via Nokia Software Updater too.

Anyway, here is the list of download links to DST update for some S60 phones: N71, N73, N80, N80 Internet Edition, N91, N91 8GB, N92, and N93. I am not sure what older phone users, such as Nokia 7610 and 6600, should do. There is no support of Nokia Software Updater and no separate installation file (.sis) for them.

Compatible devices: S60 1st, 2nd, 3rd Edition, Nokia Nseries, Nokia Eseries.

Before we continue, I have to give pre-warning that you cannot synchronize protected files downloaded from iTunes Music Store. Why? This is because all S60 phones does not support Apple’s FairPlay DRM system. What can we synchronize then? You can still synchronized non-protected files, such as MP3 files, and your PodCasts subscription.

What do we need to synchronize music files and podcasts from iTunes to S60 phones?

• First we need S60 phones that can be connected to the PC as USB mass storage. Most of the newer S60 phones, such as Nokia N71, N80 and N91, can be connected as USB mass storage. You can check whether you phone support mass storage or not very easily. Plug-in your phone to the PC. If you see a dialog that has “Mass Storage” option (or “Data Transfer” in some other phones), then your phone is on the list…

• You need also a large memory card, such as 1 GB or 2 GB. Of course, nothing prevents you to use small memory card.
• Next you need Apple’s iTunes. I assume that you must have iTunes installed on your PC now because you are reading this blog….
• The last thing is the most important one, i.e. iTunes Agent. It is an open source project that enables us to synchronize any USB mass storage device with iTunes.

Click here to download iTunes Agent

Now let’s start:

• Connect your S60 phone to the PC as USB mass storage.
• Run iTunes Agent. You should be able to see iTunes icon in Windows task bar (near clock).
• Open Windows Explorer and create a new file in the root folder of your memory card. Choose a unique name, for example “iTunes_N73″. This file will be used by iTunes Agent to recognize your S60 phone. You can choose any name.
• Now we have to configure iTunes Agent so that it recognizes your S60 phone. Right click iTunes Agent in the Windows task bar and select Preferences menu.

• Click New button to create a new device.

  • In the Name box, enter any name that you want.

  • In the Synchronize pattern box, choose the directory structure you want to have, i.e. iTunes, Artist Folder or Flat.

  • In the Music folder box, choose the directory you want to store your files. Note that the previous contents of your folder will be deleted during synchronization. So, make sure that you don’t have important files in that folder.

  • In the Recognize by folder/file box, enter the unique file name that you have created in the previous step. In my example, it is “iTunes_N73″.

  • In the Associate with playlist box, enter the playlist that you want to synchronize with your S60 phone. In the example here, I use the same name as my device name, which is “Nokia N73″. You can, of course, create your own playlist from iTunes and change it again later from this dialog.

• Now you are ready to synchronize. Copy your music files or podcasts to your playlist. As I said earlier, you can copy your files to any playlist you want. Just remember to change the preference in the iTunes Agent.

• To start synchronization, right click iTunes Agent and then select Synchronize devices menu.

Links

• Featured Freeware – Nokia Podcasting
• Import OPML File to Podcasting Application

Here is how we can do it:

• Insert your phone to the PC via USB cable. Select Media Player when the phone asks connection mode. If your phone does not ask for connection mode, go to Connectivity | Data cable. You should be able to select Media Player there. Note that non-XPressMusic phones do not have this option.

• If you insert your phone for the first time, Windows will install necessary driver. If your Windows is not able to find the driver, try to insert the CD-ROM that comes with your phone package. Locate a folder that contains an .inf file (the file naming may vary for each phone, for example “N71 Windows Media Player 11 driver.inf”). After you install the driver, your phone will be recognized as WM portable device.

• Now you can launch WM Player and start synchronizing MP3 files to your phone. You can also set WMP to synchronize automatically each time you insert the device.

I think it is a common problem for many of us too. How can we transfer contacts between phones? There are several ways to do that, but probably the simplest one is by using memory card. Here are the steps:

• Make sure your memory card is inserted in your old phone.
• Launch Contacts application and then select Options | Mark/Unmark | Mark all. It will select all contacts you have on the phone.

• Copy all the contacts to the memory card by selecting Options | Copy | To memory card.

• Now you have your contacts in the memory card. They are stored in vCard format under \Others\Contacts folder.
• The next step is to transfer your vCard files to the new phone. If your phones use the same format of memory card, for example Mini SD, it is much easier. Simply remove your memory card from the old phone and then insert it in the new phone.
• What should you do if your phones use different format of memory cards, for example one is using Mini SD and another one is using RS MMC? You need to transfer the files using memory card on your PC. Copy all the files under \Others\Contacts folder from one memory card to the other one.
• OK, now you have the memory card inserted on your new phone. Launch Contacts application then select Options | Copy | From memory card. It will import all the vCard files from the memory card to your Contacts application.

• That’s it.

Update (11-June-2006): I have received some comments about contacts synchronization. Thanks to all of you…:) Actually you can also synchronize contacts using Nokia’s PC Suite and PIM software, like Microsoft Outlook. I have been using them and it works fine (although sometimes there are a few fields not synchronized correctly). If you have PC Suite + PIM software or may be iSync from Apple, you may not need this feature at all.

In some newer S60 phones, there is an application called Data Transfer, which can be used to synchronize contacts between S60 phones. Check Tools folder to see whether your phone has this application or not. It is very convenient to use. Thanks to Alexandre for pointing this out.