Soocial adds full two-way sync for Yahoo!

 

Full two-way sync with Yahoo!

Good news. We have just released full two-way sync with Yahoo!

We are working hard on our next release due in the coming weeks we are starting to merge parts of it into the current live Soocial service. The first part of this is releasing the work we’ve done on upgrading our Yahoo! sync.

Previously one -way

Our previous sync with Yahoo! was a one way import function due to limitations of Yahoo!’s API. This meant that any change you made in your Yahoo! Mail address book would be sent to Soocial and any connected devices or services. However changing a contact in one of your other connections wouldn’t get synced back into Yahoo! Because the API was read only it was really more like an RSS of your Yahoo! contacts.

Now full-two way sync

This API was recently updated and so now we can offer syncing both ways. This means that any change you make on your phone will also be synced to Yahoo! The supported fields are: name, email, phone, job title, note, link, address, birthday and anniversary. The most important field missing from this list are images but they aren’t correctly supported by the Yahoo! contact API right now. We will add them when support becomes available.

You will have to re-add the Yahoo! connection

Because of the upgrade we’ve had to remove your Yahoo! connection. The previous authorization only had read-access to Yahoo! and thus you will have to re-add your Yahoo! connection in order to continue syncing. This is a one-time issue and you will not have to do this in the future.

Multiple Yahoo! accounts?

Although it is technically possible to sync multiple Yahoo! accounts – we have decided not to implement it but will consider it if we feel there is enough demand. If you really can’t live without it – or would just slightly prefer to connect more of your Yahoo accounts head over to our community support site and let us know. In our experience the problem of multiple Yahoo! accounts is much less than with Google accounts.

New countries added for easy phone setup

Total list of supported countries on Soocial

If you are in one of these countries we can send you a text message to setup your phone to sync with Soocial.

Soocial just got easier to use if you are in:

Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Ukraine

If you are in one of these countries we can now send you a text message to setup your phone to sync with Soocial.

This makes is easier for you to use Soocial because you don’t have to manually fill in the information in your phone. Often this information is very hard to find – both on your phone – and often the needed network settings. This is called Over-the-Air setup (OTA) and works via SMS.

If there are still countries you would like to see supported please let us know and we can see what we can do to add them.

We also added some networks in: China and Japan!
For some of the supported countries we are aware that there are networks (or operators) missing from the list – let us know what networks you would like and we will focus on adding those.

Praise from users makes such a difference

We’ve just recently had some very positive feedback from users that we’d like to acknowledge. Sometimes we can be just too busy with stuff – whether it’s creating new features or fixing bugs – that it becomes easy to focus on the feedback about problems and miss praise we are getting from users.

A special thanks to Marty, Jeff and Alex who took the time to thanks us for Soocial’s service. Feedback like that reminds us why we put these long hours into creating Soocial. Often it’s just heads down and going hard working on getting users and making those users happy. Sometimes a large part of that has already been done and all it takes is a quick look up to see where we’ve come so far. So here’s to our awesome development team: Tijn, Tiago, Bart, Justin and all the rest of the gang (you know who you are) for making something really useful!

Related to this and making users happy: @tijn also fixed a nasty bug that was throwing off some Nokia’s. Earning it’s own praise directly from users (and rightly so of course).

We’ve got some pretty exciting news coming soon so stay tuned.

Soocial silently releases connected friends

Screenshot of connected friends.

We have recently upgraded our database in order to be able to release our long awaited connected friends feature.

Connected friends enables you to automatically get the newest contact details from your friends. In all address books. Near immediately. And mostly without doing anything.

We will post more about it once it has been released and tested more extensively but feel free to play around with it.

Most of you will see a screen like the one on the right for now but start connecting with users or inviting new friends and you’ll be start to get the hang of it soon.

For those of you unsure whether to use it, just ignore it for now and we’ll be writing more here in the coming weeks.

Sync across multiple Gmail accounts

Soocial now supports syncing of multiple gmail accounts

Soocial now supports syncing your contacts across multiple Gmail accounts

After many requests we have enabled the possibility to add more than one Gmail account to your Soocial connections. That means that from now on you can add up to three of your Gmail accounts and keep them all in sync using Soocial.

Go to your connections page and add an extra Gmail connection. It should sync reasonably fast but just in case you get impatient you can schedule a sync manually in which case it will happen within a few minutes. Remember that this is still beta but let us know what your experience is and we will act swiftly if you manage to find bugs or unwanted behavior.

Enjoy!

Windows Mobile client available now

Windows Mobile phone

We are very pleased to announce the immediate release of the Soocial Windows Mobile sync client. This means that Soocial can now be used as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange to synchronize your address books. Hooking up your Windows Mobile phone to Soocial means you can sync it with Gmail, Yahoo! mail, Macs and all our other supported devices. This has traditionally only been possible for the adventurous or tech savvy crowd, Soocial now also makes it easy for those with Windows Mobile devices.

 

Download client by browsing to soocial.com/wm

Download client by browsing to soocial.com/wm

How to install

Browse with your Windows Mobile to www.soocial.com/wm and pick your phone type (see below) or alternatively follow the more detailed instructions on your connections page (after login).

 

 

 

Supported devices

There are two kinds of clients, depending on your device choose one of the following:

  • Devices with touch screen, based on Windows Mobile 6, 5 or 2003 with or without built-in phone (like many HTC, iPaq, Qtek, MDA, XDA, SPV-Mxxx models and Windows Mobile Palm based Palms like Treo 700w and 750)
  • Phone devices without touch screen but with keyboard, based on Windows Mobile 6, 5 or 2003 (like for example HTC S710, MotoQ, BlackJack, SDA, QTek, SPV-Cxxx, but not Palm 700w or 750!)

 

Feedback welcome

Let us know how you find the Windows Mobile client on twitter or on our community support pages. Feel free to drop us your thoughts, let us know of bugs you find or anything else you might need.

 

Update: Easy configuration messages back online!

Connecting your phone to Soocial

Soocial displays an easy interface for you to pick you phone.

New updates to Soocial

We’ve just added some exciting updates to Soocial. The quick list of updates is:

  • Configuration messages are back online
  • iPhone application is available
  • BlackBerry application is available
  • Coming soon: Windows Mobile application
  • Better support for pictures
  • Added support for SyncML 1.2

 

Fill in your phone number and instantly receive your configuration for Soocial

Fill in your phone number and instantly receive your configuration for Soocial

Configuration messages are back online

After months of being disabled we have since today switched the easy configuration service back on for Nokia’s, SonyEricsson’s and a whole lot of other phones (see the full list here – after login). This means no longer having to browse the million different menu items to be able to sync with Soocial but use our easy online form, fill in your phone number and voilà your phone is ready to go.

 

 

Soocial's new iPhone app

The updated app has a better scrollbar indicating the progress of the sync.

iPhone application is now available

After some confusion regarding the release of our iPhone app it is now fully available in the AppStore. Just point your iPhone’s safari browser to http://soocial.com/i and install the application. We have also submitted a new version that includes a few bug fixes and depending on Apple’s review speed it should be online in the next few days.

Coming soon: Windows Mobile app

Another exciting thing is that in the next few weeks we will be releasing our own Windows Mobile client. We cannot commit to a hard deadline yet as we are still going through the last tests but it is looking like it is ahead of schedule!

 

Other updates

BlackBerry application is already available

Although the latest version of the BlackBerry client has been out a while, we haven’t seen the same amount of uptake as the iPhone version. However those users that are using the BlackBerry client have been syncing happily for quite a while and we think it’s good to repeat that we are seeing good results with the BlackBerry. plus it has a nice feature that the iPhone doesn’t have: it syncs in the background!

Better support for pictures

Another pretty important update is that Soocial now has much better support for pictures. They are fully supported for the iPhone, the upcoming Windows Mobile client and GMail. Other clients will support this in the next version.

The rest

Also we’ve done many performance improvements (including a new queueing system based on Redis en Resque) and many many more bug fixes.

Don’t forget to let us know what you think, and you should follow us on Twitter!