As always, you can update by clicking ‘Check for Updates…’ from the application menu. And I’d love to talk with you about any feedback you might have in the Syncman Discussion Group. Hope everyone enjoys this new feature, and stay tuned… there’s more on the way!

Having people use and actually take the time to comment on your software is an incredibly gratifying feeling. However, sometimes I think of myself as a skipping record when replying to questions and comments. This, in combination with increasing requests for something of this nature, has led me to create the Syncman Discussion Group.  You can also get to the Discussion Group from the newly created Support Page.

This is the place where users can ask questions, give feedback, suggest features, and maybe even help their fellow user. Not only should this enable users to get support quick-like, but it should also help me get a better feel for what the community as a whole regards as important issues and features.

Thanks for all your feedback, past and future!

• For whatever reason, Apple requires that you have (and sync) an iPhone or iPod Touch to take advantage of the built-in Gmail syncing. Syncman of course makes no such requirements.
• Syncman respects the effort you’ve put into maintaining your Address Book, and therefore gets your confirmation before making any changes that could potentially cause you a whole bunch of headache. I’ve read a few reports of disgruntled users unhappy with Apple’s offering.
• Wateree Software is a small and agile company that can adjust quickly to our customers needs and desires. We already have a nice list of upcoming features for 1.1 based on user feedback.

So there you have it.  Of course, I welcome any further suggestions on what will set us apart from the alternatives.  Just drop me an email or leave a comment here.  Competition will only make us better!

• Fixed a bug that could cause Syncman to always want to update certain contacts on Gmail.
• Automatically handle situations that could lead to errors like “Phone Number must not be empty”.
• Syncman now tries harder to respect a contacts name structure (first, last, etc) in Address Book.

And here are the notes for version 1.0.1, just in case you missed it:

This is a highly recommended bugfix release. A few annoying issues were found after the launch of 1.0 and a few more popped up later (more on that below).

• Fixed a bug that would cause completely unrelated contacts to be merged during the initial sync.
• Give Company contacts a name on Gmail so they display properly in the list view.
• Display more descriptive messages for certain errors.

Google recently changed some things (unannounced) which could cause Syncman to think that it needed to replace all of your Address Book contacts. This seems to have only affected Google Apps accounts, or possibly those who were recently updated to the new Gmail interface.

Regardless, this release should fix the problem, but of course if it doesn’t then please let me know.

So it goes like this. You’ve synchronized before and everything is peachy. But all of a sudden Syncman wants to delete all of your Address Book contacts and add a whole new set. Syncman might look something like this…

From what I can tell, this seems to be the result of Google changing the ID format for Google Apps contacts. I’m working on a seamless fix and will try to get it out as soon as possible. If you absolutely can’t wait, a workaround is to empty the ‘Mapping Cache’ in Syncman’s preferences. This will cause Syncman to ‘recalculate’ the mappings between your Address Book and Gmail. This can work perfectly, but there’s also a chance that some duplicates are created.

I apologize for this inconvenience, and will update this post as things progress.

Update:  I’ve just released version 1.0.1 which fixes this issue. You can update by clicking ‘Check for updates…’ from the ‘Syncman’ menu.

Speaking of that launch, it’s gone very nicely and there’s clearly a desire for good, simple synchronization between Address Book and Gmail.  There were a couple of issues that slipped through, so I hope to release a bugfix release real soon now.  I’ve also gotten great feedback on what features all you folks are looking for and will start working on some new stuff as soon as I can.

So there it is.  First Post!  Looking forward to lots more.

ps.  Please bear with me as I set this house in order. I’ll get around to consolidating more with the Pomoto site and getting rid of this Kubrick theme before too long.