Thanks to everyone who helped with the quick beta. Spanning Sync v3.0.2 is now available!

We usually have a beta test period for our client software before releasing it to the general public, and while we know that many of you download the beta versions, we don't actually end up hearing from most testers. With v3.0.2 we're going to try something new. If you download the v3.0.2 beta, try it out, and send us at least one "beta report", then we'll give you a complimentary Spanning Tools for Mac license. It's not a lot of work, you get the newest version with the latest fixes, you help other users by (potentially) finding bugs, and you get free stuff. Slam dunk! At least we hope so.

So what's a "beta report"? Simple: If something goes wrong, tell us what happened (in most cases along with a troubleshooting report from the Advanced tab of the pref pane). If all went swimmingly, tell us what you tried. Beta reports should be sent to beta@spanningsync.com. Known issues are covered in the User's Guide. We don't need to know about those :-)

Here's the link to download the beta:

https://secure.spanningsync.com/downloads/spanningsync-3-0-2-beta.zip

Here's what changed in v3.0.2:

• Removing a recurrence rule's "until" date from Google Calendar now syncs to iCal
• Fixed a problem that could cause the sync to loop if the "sync events older than N days" option was on
• Changing an event so that it's not "all day" wasn't syncing in some cases
• Trickle syncs are faster
• Exchange calendars will sync as read-only
• CalDAV calendars weren't showing up as read-only, now they are
• The sync app was crashing in some cases
• Trickle syncs are now delayed by 10 seconds and coalesced
• Contact "Department" properties were being deleted unexpectedly

We're hoping the beta period can be a quick one, so try to send your reports by Sunday night.

To recap, the rules:

1. Send a beta report, get a free copy of Spanning Tools for Mac
2. Reports must be received by Sunday 9/20 at 11:59PM, EDT
3. No more than one free license per user
4. Reports must be from the most recent available version
5. No freebies given out after the beta period ends

Thanks!
Larry

Spanning Sync v3.0 Beta 2 is now available for testing!

What's New in v3 Beta 2:

• Snow Leopard and Leopard compatibility (Tiger users should continue to use Spanning Sync v2.1.3)
• Fixed messages being replicated in the user log
• The sync app could crash if the notifier wasn't running
• Fixed a problem with alarm syncing
• Fixed a problem where the pref pane wouldn't completely load immediately after an upgrade
• Fixed a problem with contact group filtering and sync batching
• Eliminated common cause of "** Couldn't load Info.plist..." logs
• In some cases starting a sync would silently fail
• Added support for syncing the deletion of certain properties (like birthdays) from Google to the Mac

Existing beta users will be prompted to upgrade the next time they open the Spanning Sync pref pane. New users can manually download and install the beta from spanningsync.com/beta-download.

Before installing the new beta please quit System Preferences.

Please continue to send all beta bug reports and feedback to beta@spanningsync.com. Thanks!

Thanks to the hundreds of people participating in the Spanning Sync v3.0 beta, we've found and fixed a number of bugs and are making steady progress toward releasing the final product early next month.

A last-minute server-side bug sneaked in that allowed duplicate contacts to be created in Google. It's now been fixed.

If you have duplicate contacts in Google but none in Address Book, you can clean them up by replacing contact data on Google (Advanced > Replace Data on Google > Contacts), but remember that doing so will wipe out your Gtalk chat lists and group information in Google Contacts.

If you need to clean up duplicates in Address Book first, you can use its built-in feature (Address Book > Card > Look for duplicates) or the more powerful Contacts Cleaner in Spanning Tools for Mac.

Hi all, Larry here. It's hard to believe, but here at Spanning Sync we've been working on sync software for nearly three years! During that time, we've learned some lessons about the nature of the data that our customers sync like contacts and calendar events, and the problems that they sometimes run into.

First, most people just aren't very good at keeping their contacts and calendars organized. Open up your Address Book, or perhaps that of a friend or family member, and you're very likely to find duplicated entries, contacts with names in the wrong fields, mislabeled contacts…the list goes on. And who can blame us? Our lives are busy and complicated.

Second, sync software is generally not very good at dealing with bad data. We're proud to say that Spanning Sync is currently (as far as we know) the only sync product on the market with active duplicate prevention on both ends. If you find a duplicated calendar event or contact on your Mac or on Google, chances are slim that Spanning Sync put it there (barring Google Calendar time zone bugs; sorry New Zealand!). That said, once duplicates find their way into your calendars and contacts, all sync software has the potential to act like a virus and propagate these inconsistencies to every device and app that you sync with.

Clearly, these two facts can lead to a "perfect storm" of sync destruction which we sometimes find when helping our customers resolve various issues. When we find such issues, we refer our customers to useful utilities such as iCal Dupe Deleter and/or recommend a data cleanup that entails hours of tedious preening inside iCal and Address Book.

That is, until now. Today we're announcing Spanning Tools for Mac, a suite of utilities that analyzes, reports, and fixes dozens of problems with iCal, Address Book, and Apple Sync Services — problems ranging from the obvious, such as duplicated calendar events, to the subtle, such as invalid calendar dates and poorly formatted contact names.

We're going to kick things off with a public beta, which you can download right now from this download link. We'd appreciate hearing about any problems you run into or any enhancements you'd like to see. Just drop us an email at beta@spanningtools.com.

Now that Spanning Sync v2.0 is out of beta, we'd like to thank you for your tremendous help. This has been our most extensive beta program ever, with thousands of people participating and giving invaluable feedback. With your help, we believe this is our best release ever.

Thank you!

Last night we pushed a few more small server-side changes that affect Contact sync. Now we're just waiting on some localizations before we issue a release candidate (RC1) client. If no new issues show up with RC1, it will become the official 2.0.

Once RC1 is released, I'll be asking all of our beta participants to use it and look carefully for any bugs. Look for another post here shortly.

This afternoon we pushed a set of server-side changes that improve contact syncing:

• Added support for prefixes and suffixes in contact names (e.g., "Dr.", "Ph.D.", etc.)
• Improved "best-guess" name parsing

Since Google Contacts disallows multiple contacts with the same email address, duplicates usually aren't an issue. But contacts without an email address can become duplicated under some circumstances, so we've just enabled a server-side feature that should help prevent that from happening.

If you have duplicate contacts in Google but not in Address Book, and if Address Book has all of your contacts, you can perform a server reset (Advanced > Replace Data on Google > Contacts) to get rid of the dupes. Note that this will remove any group information or other "extra" information from your Google contacts that isn't stored in Address Book.

What's New in Build 347

• Fixed a problem where the software couldn't refresh-sync one type of data without refresh-syncing all of them.

What's New in Build 346

• Dramatically improved network performance
• Fixed a problem that was briefly rejecting some logins