Finally, a sync I can support! Google Sync will now sync your Blackberry’s built-in contacts with your Gmail contacts. This is huge, especially if, like me, you use Gmail for email. Before, I had to do a complicated dance with Plaxo in order to get my contacts onto my Blackberry. Now, it should happen automatically and over the air.

Good stuff once again, Google!

Navigate to m.google.com/sync to get Google Sync on your Blackberry.

I just bought a Blackberry Pearl 8120 (has wi-fi), which I love. This may be the perfect phone (for me). The keyboard is not a full one, but I can still type faster and more accurately than I could on my Treo or my wife’s MotoQ. Remember the Milk now offers a Blackberry sync, which works very well, as does Google Sync for my calendar.

But I can’t find anything for my contacts. I get a 502: Bad Gateway error when trying to access m.plaxo.com, and Plaxo is agonizingly slow to release a sync tool for Blackberries (which is dumb, since they are still the most popular handheld).

And although I can boot into Windows and sync from Outlook once in a while, I don’t want to.

So does anyone know of a good online contact manager that offers an over-the-air Blackberry sync, plus a sync to one of the following?

• Thunderbird
• Plaxo
• Gmail

Oh, and I already know about ScheduleWorld/Funambol, but it is ugly and clunky and a pain in the arse, and I won’t use it unless there is no good alternative.

As most readers of this blog know, I am in a constant search to find the “best” way to manage my practice. As everyone knows, there is no “best” way to manage a law practice, but there is always improvement. So here are the bits of technology and old-school hardware I am using to manage my practice.

As you may also know, I use Linux for my operating system more than half the time. But since I still use Windows at the office, all the software I use is available for both Linux and Windows. There are two exceptions: Outlook, which I don’t really use any longer, and Acrobat.

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For quite a while now, I have been using Plaxo to manage my contacts. The great advantage of Plaxo is that it syncs with a variety of software—I use it with Outlook (two different copies), Thunderbird (ditto), and Gmail. The mobile version of Plaxo is also fast enough that you can access it even from an older smartphone instead of your local contacts.

With Plaxo, you can also sync your Outlook calendar(s), tasks, and notes.

LinkedIn does much the same thing, along with the social networking aspect. Both LinkedIn and Plaxo will automatically update contact information for any of your contacts who are also members, which is a handy feature.

Enter a new player, Keepm, which focuses solely on contact management. It will import from Gmail, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, etc. For someone who just needs a central contacts repository and does not want to muck about with all the social networking that comes with Plaxo and LinkedIn, Keepm looks like a simple, lightweight, and central contact manager.

[via Lifehacker]

Along with Ubuntu 7.04, Mozilla released Thunderbird 2.0 today. Thunderbird is Mozilla’s cross-platform e-mail client, and with the Lightning add-on, a full personal information manager (PIM).

If you prefer free software, or you don’t need a full-featured client like Outlook, give Thunderbird a try. I’ve been playing with it, and it really is a pretty sweet program. With a little monkey-wrenching, it is definitely good enough for a solo or small firm to use for managing e-mail, contacts, and calendaring. With custom contact fields and instant search capabilities, in some ways Thunderbird may be more flexible and workable for law offices, actually.