I really appreciate well-produced synchronization, because I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it is to get right. It seems that software developers can never quite agree on how to organize contact information, so everyone’s databases are different. For a long time, for instance, one of the major makers of financial management software didn’t even create city, state and ZIP/postal code fields, opting instead for an address field where all of that information was run together, making the data very difficult to parse.

So I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Snow Leopard’s “sync with Google” function, especially because I have a fairly large address book, and most of its entries have photos associated with them, something that very few sync solutions even try to support.

With a little planning, you can easily sync your address book with Google. Here are some tips — some of which are also applicable to other synchronization systems, such as the one available for synchronizing data between Google and Thunderbird’s Address Book on a PC.

1. Clean up your contacts. It’s easy to get sloppy about how we enter information, so it’s worth looking through your Address Book to make sure that your data is accurate and well-formatted. Putting first names and middle initials together in the first name field can produce amusing results, as can forgetting to check the “company” box for such entries — I had one card titled “Daily, Web Worker”! I also discovered a bunch of messed-up entries that had apparently been caused by previous experiments with sync software and services. One such service must have been European, because I found lots of entries where the postal code preceded the city, as is standard in France, but which isn’t correct in North America or the UK. Be careful with international phone numbers, too. If you don’t precede country codes with the plus (+) sign, some programs will try to format the numbers in North American format.
2. Back up your data! At the least, use Address Book’s Export function, and save a backup in Address Book Archive format. If you want added safety, use a program like Address Book to CSV Exporter to save your data in CSV format, which can be read by lots of other programs.
3. If possible, don’t try to sync two sources with different data, at least for an initial synchronization. You’ll get best results if you can clean up your data in the Mac Address Book, and completely erase all your contacts in Google. However, if that’s not possible, the charmingly named Conflict Resolver will spring into action during the sync, and give you the choice of which records to keep.

Once you’re ready, enter your account information into Address Book’s Preferences. Go to Accounts, check the “Synchronize with Google” option, click “Configure,” and enter your Gmail or Google Apps email address and password. That’s really all there is to it. I’ve found that you need to be logged out of the Google web interface for the sync to start. You might also need to make a change to your Mac Address Book in order for the sync program to become active, but once it begins, the process is surprisingly fast.

The Mac-to-Google sync system does have limitations. It can sync with one Gmail or Google Apps account at a time, and although it offers sync with Yahoo Mail’s contact lists, I’ve never been able to get Yahoo sync to work. Sync is also available with Apple’s MobileMe service, but I haven’t tried that.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with the results, and am happy that I can have immediate access to my contact information in several different places. As far as I’m concerned, one can never have too many backups of this vital data.

How do you keep your contact data synchronized?

If you’re running Office 2003 or Office 2007 and you can’t wait for Office Web, there are some applications available that can help you get your Microsoft Office data into the cloud, via Google Apps or Zoho Business. These applications can give you piece of mind that your data is backed up and accessible anywhere, and can also help you test the waters for a full migration to a web office suite.

Syncing Applications While syncing can be a somewhat of a dark art (even with established applications, getting your data to sync properly can be tricky), here is a roundup of some of the more popular syncing apps:

• Google Calendar Sync lets you sync your Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendar data. Unfortunately, Google Calendar Sync does not yet support Google Tasks.
• Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook let you sync Microsoft Outlook email, contacts, and calendar with Google Applications Premier Edition. Unfortunately, installing Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook disables the ability to search Outlook data.

Microsoft Office Add-Ins and Windows Applications There are a number of Microsoft Office add-ins that enable you to move your Microsoft Office data to the cloud, including:

• Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office enables you to access and edit Zoho documents and spreadsheets offline using Microsoft Office. You can also publish local documents to to the cloud via  Zoho Share.
• WebWorkerDaily covered OffiSync, which allows you to use Google Docs file storage and collaboration from a Microsoft application toolbar.
• Google Docs Uploader is a simple Windows application that enables you to upload Office documents to Google Docs using a simple drag-and-drop interface. You need to be running the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher.

Hosted Applications Moving your Microsoft Office data into the cloud doesn’t necessarily mean using Google Apps or Zoho Business. We covered the launch of Microsoft Online Services, which provides hosted SharePoint and Exchange services. I like the thought of Exchange and SharePoint hosted in the cloud, although my experience with SharePoint hosted through third parties has been less than favorable. As Online Services is hosted by Microsoft, I’m hoping it will provide a better experience. Microsoft Online Services makes these services more accessible to freelancers and small- to medium-sized businesses that lack the personnel and resources normally required to run them.

Applications for Neglected Mac Users I count myself as one of the Mac users stuck in Microsoft Office. As Darrell Etherington wrote about on TheAppleBlog, Mac users are going to have to wait for the Office 2010 goodness. However, there  are some third-party applications available that can help put your Office data into the cloud while you are waiting:

• Spanning Sync can sync iCal and Address Book with Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts.
• MobileMe can sync Microsoft Office data from Office on the Mac to the cloud. Unfortunately, I encountered way too many issues with MobileMe after its amateurish launch so I didn’t renew my account. Apple tried to be everything to everybody and stumbled when it came to cloud computing; my plan is to revisit MobileMe in a year to see if Apple has gotten its act together. MobileMe is a fee-based service.
• GDocsUploader, previously covered by WebWorkerDaily, is nothing more than a small applet that enables you to upload documents to Google Docs via a drag-and-drop interface.

Can Microsoft Office and Web Offices Coexist? While these third-party and vendor applications, add-ins and services may seem like a rag-tag bunch, they do build a case for coexistence of the desktop-bound Microsoft Office and the various web office suites, although sometimes there are incompatibility problems. I’m hopeful that the interaction between Office 2010 and its web components will provide a smooth round trip for my documents from Microsoft Office on my desktop to Office Web, without the file compatibility issues from using third parties.

How do you use Office with the cloud?

In the intervening period, we’ve seen companies such as Plaxo and Facebook seek to evolve themselves into the position of defacto social address books, but even such powerful companies have only offered uneven ‘hacks’ for integration with our email, cellphone and IM contact books.

Apple’s Mobile Me service has attempted to provide some of the ‘glue’ to connect these silos of contact data, but at a great price…and of course tied to the Mac universe. It’s also telling that Gmail still lacks a useful API to it’s Contacts data – perhaps data that should really be a standalone application? This has left an opening for companies such as Soocial…

Founded in Amsterdam, by Stefan Fountain, Soocial provide hooks into existing services and a modicum of interoperability between them. Currently the service enables users to draw contact data from…

• Gmail
• Highrise
• Facebook
• OSX’s Address Book
• A number of mobile handsets

It’s an impressive (though again uneven) list of contact sources, notably support for what appears to be a broad range of handsets,though, some like the Facebook application don’t offer true synchronization or access to contact data within that service.

I can’t help but thinking what’s really needed is a master web-based address book, with a standards-based API that any device or application can draw contact information and synchronise with. Perhaps this is the space that Soocial hopes to occupy – or indeed upcoming services such as CloudContacts.

Soocial’s Fountain has such faith in the utility of his service, that he has generously extended a limited number of invitations to Web Worker Daily’s readership, as part of Soocial’s (currently private) beta trial.

Head on over to http://www.soocial.com/web-worker-daily to pickup your invitation and put Soocial through its paces.

And yet…despite some high-profile complaints, the bulk of Apple users still seem to be satisfied. A survey at our parent blog GigaOM is finding most respondents to be satisfied, and the just-released American Customer Satisfaction Index scores put Apple ahead of all other computer manufacturers for Q2. So despite some stumbles, it looks like Apple hasn’t yet lost its shine.

What’s your take on the state of Apple products?