A new way to sync Google Contacts | Hacker News Reader

A new way to sync Google Contacts

gmailblog.blogspot.co.uk

97 pointsAndrewDucker35 comments

CardDAV is very much not a new standard. It's been around for at least a decade and is based on vCard which has been around for even longer.

That said, I'm glad they're doing this now. For the longest time the only way to sync contacts on iOS has been to set up google as an exchange provider.

What would've been a newer standard?

The original title was something along the lines of "google uses new standard to sync contacts".

Perhaps they meant "new for Google."

"the only way to sync contacts on iOS has been to set up google as an exchange provider."

This seems to work fine for me. Is there an advantage to CardDAV?

Google Sync via ActiveSync/Exchange has some serious limitations:

'Limited Contact Information. The iOS device can synchronize up to 3 email addresses. Phone number synchronization is limited to 2 Home numbers, 1 Home Fax, 1 Mobile, 1 Pager, 3 Work (one will be labeled 'Company Main') and one Work Fax number.'

https://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

The limitations on the Mac are less serious but still not all address data gets synced, for example relationships.

This has been a serious limitation for me.

The lack of relationship syncing is particularly irksome when using Siri.

Yes. The Exchange/ActiveSync version Google uses is quite old and fairly limited in the number of elements available per property, the labels are only a fixed set, and some properties are not supported at all. CardDAV doesn't have these limitations.

Thanks - sounds like pretty good reasons to switch.

If by long time, you mean 2011 - that's when the IETF RFC was filed:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6352

CardDAV is much like CalDAV and WebDAV - but for vCards - which has been around pretty much forever.

Interesting fact: Apple appears prominently in the RFCs of two of the three protocols as well as the vcard format.

With vCard and CalDAV, open-source productivity software never really did much better than Microsoft Exchange/Outlook, but CardDAV does provide something that Exchange doesn't - an working, standards-based way to sync your contacts across all accounts.

And it looks like Thunderbird is going to support it natively (when they've finished rewriting their address book back-end)

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=546932

Very cool if true, but didn't they recently announce they're stopping new development on TB? And that bug was opened in 2010 and isn't assigned to anyone.

In the comments, someone (from last week) linked to this post: http://mikeconley.ca/blog/2011/09/07/creating-a-new-thunderb...

So, it seems like work on a better address book is ongoing.

Goodbye Exchange! I also just accidentally figured out iPhone supports syncing notes in Gmail through IMAP. The behavior is a little wonky but it's pretty handy. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/save-iphone-notes-t...

Now if todo list could just get an open standard maybe we could sync iPhone Reminders to Gmail Tasks.

Aren't Google Tasks synced through Google Calendar as events?

I think the ones with dates do but I use my calendar directly for items like that, I use my task list for tasks with no time dimension.

Now, if only Android supported CalDAV and CardDAV synchronization (with your own server) instead of only offering Google account synchronization and Exchange synchronization...

Aren't there any apps that offer CalDAV and CardDAV synchronization?

Yes:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.calda...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.cardd...

are two of which I'm aware, but they're not free. They worked well when I had my own calendar server, integrating into the "Accounts and sync" section of the settings, thus providing fairly seamless integration with the native calendar app, for example.

I know of no CalDAV and CardDAV synchronization apps which are open source and actually work.

Woohoo! This seems to fix the issue with large contact photos (from your iPhone) being resized down to tiny 48x48 icons by Google Sync. As far as I know, there wasn't any way around that when syncing via Exchange.

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/mobil...

http://superuser.com/questions/40437/editing-contact-in-gmai...

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/gmail...

This was the first thing I checked for. Finally!

Is there any advantage other than ideological to switching to using this if one already has Exchange sync set up and working for mail/cal/contacts?

Is it just me, or are these flashy new Blogger themes not really that impressive? This is what the official Gmail blog looks like on my (android) phone:

https://plus.google.com/112865255606805639625/posts/8E8Mtx9f...

Not just you. My pet peeve is that their sharing links gadget on the right side covers the scroll bar on at least Chrome. So, the scroll handle can get stuck under the links. Not very smart.

I keep thinking that widget is the scroll bar and clicking a share button accidentally.

With this scheme, it looks like gmail is the source, and you can sync from gmail to other devices. Is that true?

Could you go the other way, and have a standalone app be the contact source, then sync from the app into gmail??

Having gone thru hell moving my contact list from iOS to Android, I am for it. Anything that might lead to better utilities to make contact lists more portable and easier to mine/use is a big plus as far as I'm concerned.

For iOS specifically, is there any benefit to using CardDAV vs Exchange sync?

It doesn't involve Google paying royalties to Microsoft :-)

You mean Apple too. :] They've licensed ActiveSync for iOS since 1.0 I believe.

Is this the iCloud/Google Contacts sync solution I've been waiting for?

Is there some API documentation?

There's the RFC: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6352

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