Syncing Phone Contacts with Ubuntu One

    imageMartin from the Ubuntu One development team talked about the team’s plans.

    He said that in the near future they are going to make available the synchronization of mobile phone contacts with the Ubuntu One cloud service. A partner was found for this: the company Funambol , which has significant experience in developing mobile device synchronization services, and in addition, "shares Canonical's views on free software."

    Martin notes that Funambol has good potential, and their software allows using modules (plug-ins) to synchronize almost all the main platforms that store contacts: Thunderbird, Outlook, Mac OS X Mail, etc.

    There is, of course, a hefty fly in the ointment. The implementation of the Funambol server incurs additional costs, and therefore the phone contact synchronization service will be available only to paid Ubuntu One subscribers. Everyone else can enjoy the 30-day trial version of the service. These 30 days will begin on the day of the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (April 29).

    Under this expansion of service functionality, Canonical is expanding its server capacity. Of course, everything should be ready for the release of Lucid Lynx.

    The service is currently being prepared for open testing. Since it was tested only on a limited number of phone models, Martin recommends that testers first back up their contacts.

    Those interested can read the relevant FAQ andproject page .

    Via ars technica .

    Also popular now: