While they clearly still actually have to deliver on the vision here, the intent and initial demo of Palm’s Synergy concept are amazing when you consider what’s happening. Instead of having to sync, the device is seemingly aware of your various accounts across work and personal services and just able to present the relevant information in context. Even when looking at a single calendar, you are gently reminded of previously booked time from your personal life … When reviewing a contact, you can see all your information from Exchange, Gmail and Facebook (as well as others) in a single contact card!
I’ve been messing with sync for probably as long as I’ve been playing with mobile devices and to say it sucks would be putting it lightly. Sync is just too damn hard and even when it works well across systems you typically end of up data that’s intermingled poorly. That is you don’t want your work colleagues personal email to come up by default in Outlook since that’s somehow the sync logic. Instead Synergy leaves your various account data in place and “simply” presents it within the Palm Pre. I love this idea. As initially mentioned, they actually have to deliver here, but it’s looking damn good.
Well done Serko!
View Comments so far ↓
1 V²oIP industry insights // Jan 26, 2009 at 11:50 am
2 All About iPhone.net // Jan 27, 2009 at 12:20 am
3 Palm creates "synergy" with Pre - will it do the same for social aggregation? | burning the bacon with barrett // Jan 26, 2009 at 1:05 pm
[...] Today while reviewing the weekly carnival of the mobilists, I came across a review of Palm’s new Synergy over at atmaspheric. [...]
4 phil barrett // Jan 26, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Very interesting – it's kind of like what Yahoo is trying to do with their oneconnect product.
If they can aggregate all your contacts / emails / calendars… how about social media feeds too?
5 ARJWright // Jan 26, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I've said it time and time again, and pretty much I agree with you @atmasphere; if mobile deviecs would be made to stop trying to sync everything, and would just serve as something that presents an aggregrated view, it would make it a lot easier for social networks to have a measurable impact beyond current niches.
6 Jonathan // Jan 26, 2009 at 4:00 pm
OneConnect seemed like it had great potential and then Yahoo went to crap. It's a year later from when I captured this – http://www.atmasphere.net/wp/archives/2008/02/1... We've got nothing.
No reason why the social integration can't also be part of the Synergy model. Nokia has actually started to bring that forward in the latest devices. The 5800 and N97 will include feeds for contacts so you get greater context from people's activity streams when you look them up.
7 Jonathan // Jan 26, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Sync is hard … aggregated view would be great. I've been thinking about this more though since writing this post and wonder whether this is view only or whether you can make changes that go back upstream.
Can I modify a contacts email on my Pre adding their personal info from Facebook into my exchange info …
How do you not see duplicates?
Most importantly how and where do I configure this all?
8 phil barrett // Jan 26, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Very interesting – it's kind of like what Yahoo is trying to do with their oneconnect product.
If they can aggregate all your contacts / emails / calendars… how about social media feeds too?
9 ARJWright // Jan 26, 2009 at 6:55 pm
I've said it time and time again, and pretty much I agree with you @atmasphere; if mobile deviecs would be made to stop trying to sync everything, and would just serve as something that presents an aggregrated view, it would make it a lot easier for social networks to have a measurable impact beyond current niches.
10 Jonathan // Jan 26, 2009 at 9:00 pm
OneConnect seemed like it had great potential and then Yahoo went to crap. It's a year later from when I captured this – http://www.atmasphere.net/wp/archives/2008/02/1... We've got nothing.
No reason why the social integration can't also be part of the Synergy model. Nokia has actually started to bring that forward in the latest devices. The 5800 and N97 will include feeds for contacts so you get greater context from people's activity streams when you look them up.
11 Jonathan // Jan 26, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Sync is hard … aggregated view would be great. I've been thinking about this more though since writing this post and wonder whether this is view only or whether you can make changes that go back upstream.
Can I modify a contacts email on my Pre adding their personal info from Facebook into my exchange info …
How do you not see duplicates?
Most importantly how and where do I configure this all?
12 McGuire’s Law » Blog Archive » Observations: Uncategorized - February 5, 2009 // Feb 5, 2009 at 8:05 am
[...] Palm’s Synergy could be game changing [...]
13 Florencelina // Jul 24, 2010 at 11:07 am
I found so many interesting stuff in your blog especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one having all the enjoyment here! Keep up the good work.
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