By Craig Froehle, Ph.D.

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The scene is a quiet, urban family home. Two adults, likely a husband and wife, sit on opposite sides of a kitchen table, both with a PDA or smartphone in front them, having a conversation:

Him: Are you on call this weekend?
Her: Yes. I told you that yesterday.
Him: [Tap] [Tap] Sorry…I forgot. What about Tuesday?
Her: Why?
Him: My office dinner…you were going to come with me…remember?
Her: [Tap] [Tap] That’s this Tuesday? Oh, crud…I scheduled an interview that night. [Tap]
Him: [Tap] [Tap] [Tap] Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that I have to teach next Thursday evening. [Sheepish look]
Her: [Tap] [Tap] [Tap] [Tap] [Tap] [Tap] [Tap] Oh…that’s just great…NOW you tell me! [Angry glare]

Yes, variants on this scene played out in my family with unfortunate frequency for several years until my wife and I started using ClearSync, a shared Calendar and Contacts system, on our Treos. Now, however, we never have to ask repeatedly “what’s your schedule like” since we each have the other’s calendar handily replicated on our respective smartphones.

In this brief review of ClearSync, I hope to give a glimpse into the promise of shared PIM (personal information management) services and evaluate how well ClearSync stacks up as a solution.

Introduction

ClearSync provides shared-PIM through a combination of a software application and an online service. Once you’ve created an account and registered the other person (or people) with whom you want to share your calendar and/or contacts, you walk through a guided setup process that installs the ClearSync desktop client on your PC (works on various OSes) and installs the ClearSync clients on your Treo or other Palm OS device(s). There’s not currently a ClearSync version for Windows Mobile Treos.

In a nutshell, ClearSync works in conjunction with the built-in Calendar and Contacts databases on your Treo (and your desktop, if Palm Desktop or another third party PIM, such as Microsoft Outlook, is installed), but you need to use their apps to get the most functionality out of the system. Whenever you update an event or contact on your Treo (using either the ClearSync app or the built-in app) and sync, the new data gets synced to your desktop as well as copied to the ClearSync server via your Internet connection. When another person in your community (what ClearSync calls the group of people with whom you share data) syncs his device, he gets updated with any info that you have changed that he is set to receive.

To the right, you see the community setup page on ClearSync’s website, where you can do a lot of community maintenance (e.g., setting up new members, subscribing members to different categories and calendars, etc.). As you can see here, my personal community has two members (Craig and Lori), two calendars (one for each of us), and three shared contacts categories (Businesses, Family/Friends, and Other, all of which are shared (or owned) by me and subscribed to by Lori).

Clearsync also offers the ability to view and edit calendar and contacts data via either the Java-based ClearSync 2 Desktop stand-alone application or a web browser. A welcome surprise is that these options all work on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux computers. You can add anyone who signs up for a free ClearSync account to your community, and you can then give them access to view your calendar and/or contact info — your most recently synced data — right from their browser (editing requires a paid subscription). This is a very nifty service and one I think many would find extremely valuable.

ClearSync Desktop

ClearSync Desktop is the aptly named desktop application that gives you complete access to viewing and revising your ClearSync calendar and contacts data (i.e., the records and events you have access to, whether your own or those of other people in your community) as well as making some community changes (e.g., unsubscribing from calendars, creating new contact categories, etc.). It looks a lot like a typical PIM desktop application, with various calendar views and a contact listing (see screenshots below).

ClearSync has no limit on the number of contact categories, and it allows you to assign contacts to more than one category. We choose not to assign contacts to more than one category purely for managerial simplicity (although it is always tempting around the holidays to create a special “Cards” category to which we could assign everyone who we need to send a holiday card to; we just haven’t gotten around to doing that). One obvious benefit to shared contacts is that any time one of us updates a friend’s information, the other one gets it as well, greatly reducing the chance of sending a holiday card to someone’s old address.

ClearSync on Your Treo

While the desktop and web are nice tools, the real meat-and-potatoes for me is the on-Treo applications (I do most of my calendar and contacts data entry and editing directly on my Treo). By integrating with the built-in Calendar and Contacts applications’ databases, the ClearSync apps — csCalendar and csContacts — work with other elements of your Treo quite nicely. For example, if you change a phone number in ClearSync Contacts, the number dialed using the standard phone interface will be that newly changed number. Or, alternately, if you change the number in the phone’s native addressbook application, ClearSync Contacts will know that it changed and update that on the server during your next sync. It sounds complicated, but it really works very elegantly and is generally pretty invisible to the user (i.e., it just works). You can even dial directly from ClearSync Contacts simply by tapping the desired phone number.

Let’s take a look at some screen shots from the ClearSync applications on the Treo (taken on my 700p). First, you see two different ClearSync Calendar views. The first view shows a combined calendar view with events from my (Craig’s) calendar denoted with red blocks and events from my wife’s calendar have blue blocks.

Tapping a colored block gives you a pop-up dialog to change the calendars that event is assigned to, which, in our case, can be either or both (but not neither…every event has to belong to at least one calendar), as shown in the dialog on the left.

The screenshot of the calendar on the right shows my preferred calendar interface: a “split” (or “side-by-side”) day view, with my events on the left and my wife’s events on the right. Note the pulldowns above each column; these let you select up to two calendars to show simultaneously in the split view and from all the calendars you own and are subscribed to, and up to 16 (!) calendars in a graphical side-by-side day view. There’s also a merged day view that shows the events from all the selected calendars in a single day display. This can be a little overwhelming, although the calendar color coding helps tell at a glance whose events are whose. It’s very powerful (and definitely makes you happy you have a 320×320 display). I do wish font choices were broader in the ClearSync apps, as I would prefer a smaller font so I could see more event data on a single page.

Another calendar view is the ClearSync version of the week-at-a-glance, with my events again in red and Lori’s again in blue.

If you notice the little [R] button at the bottom of the screenshots, that is ClearSync’s Wireless Refresh function. It’s available only to premier (”Gold”) accounts and lets the user use his Treo’s wireless data connection to update a portion of his calendar or his contacts database without syncing. It’s not meant to substitute entirely for a complete HotSync, but if you are in a situation where someone else is updating your calendar regularly (e.g., a secretary), a wireless refresh might be very helpful to make sure you’re seeing all your near-term events.

ClearSync Contacts works very much the same way as normal contacts, as the first screen shot on the left shows.

One notable missing feature that standard Palm Contacts now has is the ability to add a photo of the person. However, if you recall that I said the ClearSync applications write to the standard Palm PIM databases, then you will have already figured out that it’s perfectly OK to use both; keeping the person’s photo in the standard app (which is immediately accessible via the Phone function) and employing the ClearSync Contacts app simply to manage categories (see screenshot below) is a perfectly fine usage modality.

When it comes to managing contacts categories, that’s also pretty easy on the Treo. Tapping the categories field pops up the dialog shown below. Note that the little phone icons next to each category indicate that all three categories are replicated in the standard Palm Phone/Contacts database (you can do this for up to 15 categories). This is useful, say, if you have a large category that you don’t want to have to wade through when dialing numbers. The other two icons show the ownership status (in this case, it means I own the category and am sharing it) and the category’s color code (in desktop and online). Those are all user-changeable options.

ClearSync has lots of functionality I’m not showing here in this brief review, so if you give it a try, don’t be surprised if your favorite feature or view is one I haven’t mentioned here.

An Example

So here’s a scenario that illustrates how shared PIM in general, and ClearSync in particular, works and how useful it can be. I’m at the office one morning and my boss schedules a dinner (with spouses) the following Thursday evening, so I add it to my Treo’s calendar. At the same time, and unbenownst to me, my wife is on the phone with the babysitter, who is calling to say she has a new phone number. Later that day, I sync my Treo, as I tend to do most every day. My wife then syncs her Treo that evening. The next day, I think “I should see if I can get a babysitter for next Thursday,” and call the sitter. Now, if my wife and I hadn’t had our Treos, I’d be calling the wrong number. I call and confirm that she can come watch our daughter that night. The next day, one of my wife’s colleagues asks her if she can swap call with him next Thursday. She consults her Treo and notices that my work dinner is that night and says “no.” Had we not had shared PIM, then she might have said “yes” and we would have been back to the same old situation of trying to figure out who’s doing what well after committing to too many things.

Conclusions

Currently, ClearSync has two paid service levels: Silver ($19.95/yr + $9.95 for each additional user) and Gold ($59.95/yr + $29.95 for each additional user). Gold adds the aforementioned wireless sync, encrypted (SSL) Internet communication, and telephone tech support. ClearSync has a big comparison chart here. My wife and I are currently Silver subscribers.

For many, the idea of paying an annual fee will give pause. Not that $30 is a lot of money for two Treo-toting adults, but that, frankly, we’re used to getting software for free. Well, if you realize this is more than just software — there’s a whole lotta server action happening, which makes your data more accessible and secure — then the annual fees start to make sense.

During the time we’ve used ClearSync, we’ve already seen many improvements to the UI, to the robustness of syncing, and to the reliability of the back-end service. A year ago I recommended ClearSync only to those I thought had some technical acumen, as troubleshooting the convoluted relationships and data files could get complicated if something went amiss. Now, the service is quite reliable and I have no problem recommending it to anyone looking for a means to sharing PIM data with a spouse, colleague, secretary, etc. Plus, ClearSync has very attentive email support for those who don’t opt for the Gold membership.

I have often stated that ClearSync is one of the few things that keeps me from considering other smartphone platforms, as I can’t imagine going back to the days before my wife and I had each others’ calendars and contact info on our Treos. There are some other solutions out there, but none integrates as well with the Treo and is as easy to use as ClearSync is. Sure, it’s not free, but it’s certainly worth to us what we pay for it.

Reviewer: Craig Froehle, Ph.D.

Craig was founder of MemoWare, the largest and oldest web repository of pre-formatted PDA content, and is currently an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the University of Cincinnati College of Business. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife, daughter, dog, and various unfinished projects (he may get around to them if he finds time on his calendar).

Related Links

Buy ClearSync Silver

Buy ClearSync Gold

Treo Software

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