It works on the simple premise that you have a left hand folder or drive, and a right hand folder or drive. The great thing is about this system, is that the destination folder or drive can be anywhere, on the same computer, on an external hard drive, on a network and I am sure other locations as well.

I have set up various folder pairings, here is an example of my photos synchronising to an external HDD. When I add a photo or delete one (fuzzy or a duplicate) then this change will also happen on the right hand folder. If there is a little change to a large file, it will only sync the parts of the file that change.

I prefer this to the solutions bundled with external HDD because it seems much cleaner, faster and I can sync to a network location!

The thing that would be better than this is a if live mesh folders could be placed on network locations and on external HDD. Get on board.

It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet.

Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the “late prototype” stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They’re connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button. Statuses, like wireless signal and battery life, are displayed along the rim of one of the screens. On the back cover is a camera, and it might charge through an inductive pad, like the Palm Touchstone charging dock for Pre.

Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it—Microsoft’s brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J. Allard, who’s spearheading the project. Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies.

Microsoft has a history of collaborating with other firms, especially in the E&D division: Zune and Xbox have both gone through similar design processes. (And plans for the Microsoft Store leaked through a third-party agency were confirmed as genuine prototype layouts and concepts.) This video is branded Pioneer Studios, a Microsoft division within E&D that specializes in this kind of work, working with another agency that’s a long-time Microsoft collaborator on confidential projects.

The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a “pocket” to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft’s tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we’ve seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

Over the next couple days we’ll be diving much, much deeper into Courier, so stay tuned.

As a user of Google Apps, I have found it a very disjointed experience up until now.

I now sync my mail, calendar and contacts to and from Google Apps straight to my phone. The mail is not push yet, but I am guessing they will upgrade this shortly (they just enabled this for Iphone and Windows Mobile).

This is very easy, you can use exactly the same method with Gmail as well.

1. Download the latest Nokia Sync software to back everything up. MAKE SURE YOU DO THIS, IT WILL SAVE YOU!!!
2. You need to download the Mail for Exchange onto your phone
3. Visit the Google Sync website for mobiles and follow the setup instructions
4. Spend the time organising your contacts and calendar, you only have to do this once.

Do you use Outlook on your desktop?

1. You can use Google calendar Sync to ensure that your Outlook has the same calendar as your Gmail calendar. I have used this while Outlook is still connected to Exchange and it works well.
2. Use an IMAP connection to sync your mail to Outlook.
3. The missing piece of the picture  - you can not easily sync contacts for free. I am guessing that they will release this soon.

Good luck

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 8:48 AM

Posted by Marcus Foster, Product Manager, Google Mobile

Those of you who live in your Gm`ail inboxes usually want to know what’s happening with your email more instantly than standard fetch mail on your phone allows. Sure, using Gmail in your mobile browser gives you all the benefits of conversation threading and starring, but you still have to refresh every time you want to check for new mail.

When we launched Google Sync for Contacts and Google Calendar earlier this year, an over-the-air, always-on connection to sync mail was noticeably absent. We heard your requestsloud and clear, and starting today you can use Google Sync to get your Gmail messages pushed directly to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or Windows Mobile device.

You can set up push Gmail by itself or choose to sync your Contacts and/or Calendar as well. If you’re using an iPhone, make sure you’re running iPhone OS version 3.0 or above (on your device, click Settings > General > About and scroll down until you see Version). If your software is out of date, follow Apple’s upgrade instructions. Then, visit m.google.com/syncfrom your computer for set up instructions. If you’re already using Google Sync, you can just enable push mail.

Once you’re set up, new messages are normally pushed to your phone within seconds. While this type of speed is pretty awesome, push connections tend to use more power than fetching at intervals, so don’t be surprised if your battery life isn’t quite what it used to be. We’ve done a lot of work to optimize power usage, but if you prefer to save battery life, you can always turn off push in your phone’s settings and fetch mail every 30 or 60 minutes instead.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/push-gmail-for-iphone-and-windows.html