If you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch you’ll want the latest information that you have available on each one as well as on your laptop, work and home computer.  There are a number of ways to synchronise them, but here’s my suggestions as to the best solutions. I’ve choosen the best solution for each area that needs syncing. 

Address Book: Use MobileMe.

MobileMe provides simple and easy over-the-air automatic syncing of Address Book. It even syncs your Address Book photos! Read how to here.

iCal: Use Gmail

Gmail can sync calendar information very well. You can either share a calendar read-only so others can view it but not edit it, or you can do a full two-way sync across your own computers. Read how to here.

Notes: Use Notational velocity and Simple Note. Read how to here.

Mail Accounts: Setup your computer account using IMAP (not POP) then manually sync it across to your iPhone with iTunes using your USB cable. You only need to manually sync the setup ONCE, then the built in mail apps will automatically keep the email in sync. This is why you don’t need a MobileMe solution. All MobileMe does is sync the Mail Account information (username and password etc), it doesn’t sync the actual email.

ToDo lists

OmniFocus  is a great task manager with automatic syncing – I hope to do a review soon. Unfortunately ‘Things’ doesn’t have auto sync yet.

Tis approach means that you need to set up each area separately, but when it’s working, it’s great! Here is what the setup might look like on your iPhone, I’ve shown calendars (MobileMe) and contacts (Gmail).

Using MobileMe on the iPhone to sync JUST the Address Book

Using Gmail on the iPhone to sync JUST the Calendars

1. Have a look in ~/Library/Spotlight and make sure there are no plugins that might be causing problems. For example, I had an old Mailtags Plugin that was 2 years old, so I deleted it.

2. Make sure you haven’t excluded your mail folder in the spotlight privacy tab (spotlight preferences)

3. Reset the entire spotlight database by opening a terminal window and typing 

sudo mdutil -E -i on /Volumes/*

(It will ask for your password)

4. Open Mail and click on Mailboxes:Rebuild.

That resets spotlight and mailboxes, which I think just about covers all options.