Smartphones are great. Ubiquitous data access is great. Mobile computing is great. Unfortunately, each smartphone represents its own little walled garden of convenience. Apple’s iPhone is tied tightly with iTunes and various other Apple services. Android is tied tightly with Google services. Each manufacturer makes a modicum of effort to allow their smartphone to sync with someone else’s services, but as is too often the case, such integration is usually lacking some important functionality. After all, there’s little business incentive to allow your users to use someone else’s services, right? Enter Funambol, and their open source mobile cloud sync.
“Mobile cloud sync” aims to be an independent solution to the walled garden problem of smartphones. I admit that I haven’t had a chance to use this yet, so I don’t know how well it works, but I like the idea of an open system handling all my data synchronization.
Funambol is the world’s leading open source solution that keeps user data and content in sync across billions of mobile devices, personal computers, email systems and social networks. It is the ultimate white label solution for delivering next-gen mobile cloud sync and push email. Its state-of-the-art AJAX portal makes it easy for users to access data and content in the cloud, using any modern browser.
Funambol is an open source project, allowing you to host your own sync server. Great for DIY-ers and control freaks. If you’re not ready to manage your own sync server, you can use the MyFunambol portal, which is a hosted version of their solution.
myFUNAMBOL is a free 90 day open source mobile cloud sync and push email demo service. It provides mobile email and over-the-air sync of contacts and calendars. It supports billions of devices, including the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and feature phones. It lets phones sync with email clients such as Outlook and get email from Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL and Hotmail as well as POP and IMAP servers. It performs over-the-air setup of many phones and includes a web-based address book and calendar for viewing and managing this information online.
Like I said, I haven’t had a chance to use this service yet, so I don’t know how well it actually works. The iPhone app reviews are, predictably, a mixed bag. I just signed up for an account, and will be testing it shortly. If you sign up, and find it useful, come back and let us know!
Contest
Funambol is giving away 10 free, unlimited usage accounts to CrunchGear readers. All you need to do is sign up over at the MyFunambol portal, then come back here to leave a comment. Be sure to tell us your Funambol user name, and — just for fun — what model handset you’re using. Ten random winners will be selected Friday morning!
Going to try it on my Apple iPhone 3GS we’ll see how it goes. Username = jagman
Username = krkeegan
Both Funambol and My Funambol used to be free. It is unfortunate that they now appear to be going down the road of a paid service, particularly when so many people contribute to the source code.
Hi, this is Hal from Funambol, thanks for your comment. Funambol continues to have a free open source version (Community Edition), just like before, and the myFUNAMBOL portal continues to be free, just like before. The only slight difference is that we have decided to initially limit new users to myFUNAMBOL to 90 days of usage (prior users do not have this limit). The reason for this limit is that our commercial customers would not like it if we made myFUNAMBOL completely free for everyone, since they may decide to charge for their service. But as noted, myFUNAMBOL will continue to be free for prior users. It will also be free for anyone who contributes to our community in a significant way (you can read more about this on our community forge at http://www.funambol.org if you are interested). Thanks.
Sorry, I have not seen much detail from funambol about the new pay version of myFunambol.
I am happy to hear that you intend on continuing providing free service to those who signed up prior to the upgrade.
There is no ‘pay version of myFunambol’. The demo portal myFUNAMBOL is still a free/gratis service. See this FAQ for more details.
Username is Tarak
I´m trying it on my BlackBerry 8800 to and it looks very nice ! Thanks to Funambol.
User = drumandre
Thanks
MyFunambol isn’t working… just times out :(
when i do get a chance to register my username will be tonyreilly
Trying it on my iPhone 3G
Username: FaresF
All Signed up…
Username = tonyreilly
just sign today to transfert data from nokia to androit.
sound good.
But for now the web site seems to be down :-(
username : smadon
Hi smadon, this is Stefano of Funambol. my.funambol.com seems to be working correctly now. Should you experience again any issues please report them to the Help Forum specifying what you were doing when they happened , the time of the day, your geographic location (the nation is enough) and any other useful info to track down the problem. Thank you for you support, we appreciate it. Stef
Hi Stefano,
the myfunambol portal is not working for me (I only realized this when I tried to log in to check why my E90 wouldn’t snyc anymore, according to my phone the server wasn’t responding). I’m in Germany, and when I try to connect to the site it goes to
http://my.funambol.com/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=default#home
Then the address changes like three times (too quick for me to copy the other addresses) and continues with this loop until I shut it down. :-(
Could you help, please?
Thank you very much in advance,
Byte
I think it’s a temporary glitch and it should be solved by now. For the future, please report all strange behaviors of my.funambol.com on the Help Forum
Great program!!! I love having everything sync! And push emails…yeah…also for my horrible mobile! ;)
username: giuliopetti
my mobile is a nokea 5130 XpressMusic
Username= rainbowbreeze
Handsets: a Windows mobile (Fujitsu n560), a symbian s60 (Nokia e65) and an Android (HTC g1)
username: tvtemperante
handsets: SE W880i, iPhone, Nokia N95
user: criacon
handsets: Nokia 9300i, BlackBerry Pearl 8110
I discovered Funambol while trying to move contacts from the 9300i to the 8110. It worked easily: from 9300i to my.Funambol at 1st try. From my.Funambol to 8110: a little bit difficult because blackberry.net doesn’t support connections to my.Funambol. Resolved very quickly with the help of online support (Help Forum).
Funambol has found another fan!