• Email
• Contacts
• Calendar
• Sync
• iDisk
• Photos

Email is the real biggie here but also the easiest to transition off of. Actually it’s going to be really nice to get a fresh email account. I finally took les at lesjames dot com and ported it over to Google Apps (Gmail). Mac Mail and my iPhone both sync nicely with Gmail. I still have push and great web access. The nice thing about all this is that I still have a couple months left of MobileMe so I can slowly ween myself off of it.

Photos and iDisk were never great with MobileMe so I have no problems here. I’m going to use Flickr as my photo repository and Dropbox is just about the coolest thing since Nintendo (I’m going to start using Nintendo instead of sliced bread as my default measuring stick of coolest since). BTW if anyone wants to give Dropbox a whirl use that link because we will both get extra space.

Sync is going to be the biggest loss here. I love how MobileMe keeps my laptop, cloud and iPhone all in perfect sync. It’s the tight integration you would expect from Apple having control over both the hardware and software. I’m pretty sure I can get contacts to sync up but I’m scared of calendars. The other nice thing about MobileMe was it synced my computer preferences too. When my laptop went down for a week between MobileMe sync and Time Machine I didn’t miss a step on my loaner Mac. I’ve also never had to use MobileMe to find my lost iPhone (knocking on wood now), but when I turn the service off I just know that is when Find My iPhone is going to come in handy.

I’m going to start transitioning my contacts to Google so hopefully it goes smoothly. I’ll give it a couple weeks and then report back. I’m saving calendars for last because I just know that will end up being a pain. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Update]
So I have switched off MobileMe contact syncing for my iPhone and laptop. Fortunatly Mac Address book has an option for syncing with Google Contacts. When I set up my gmail account on the iPhone it magically started syncing my contacts too. The process wasn’t entirely painless because I had a tough time with duplicate and sometimes triplicate contact entries showing up, but I think everything is in sync now. As a side note, my contacts in Google Apps and my Google Account are completely different lists and I can’t get the two to sync. So I wiped out my contacts from my account (not gmail in apps). The whole thing was quite confusing there for a little while. Google should do a better job of meshing my account with Apps.

I’m going to let the dust settle with contacts before I try and tackle calendars. I’ll update when I give it a go.

[Update]
When I switch off MobileMe I will lose the Find My iPhone feature which thankfully I have never needed. This app could be a nice alternative: Undercover

[Update]
Thanks to this great article on iPhone.AppStorm I have now transitioned off of MobileMe calendars and switched to Google. This was the last piece of the puzzle. Yay!

[Update]
I have turned off MobileMe on my computer. All mail, contacts and calendars are being handled by Google now. I feel like I’m a step closer to digital harmony.

The key to all this is linking back to my site. External links are so crucial in SEO. Not just any old link but quality external links. Links that contain my name and are found on a page that relates to me are extremely valuable. My public Facebook page won’t show a link to my site so that is a bummer, but all the other ones do. Having external pages with “Les James” in the title and a well written link pointing to my site should push me over the edge to number one. This weekend Facebook is going to start handing out user names so I’ll be sure to grab the lesjames handle (this will allow me to have “lesjames” in the facebook url). Every little reference should help. I don’t remember being late to the Gmail party but from day one all the user names that contained my name were gone so I went with my gamer handle of Serak. So having Serak003 in the url instead of lesjames doesn’t do me any favors but we’ll see where this Google profile gets me. I am led to believe that the profile will show up in the search results so we’ll see.

I have pointed back to each of these pages in the footer of my site (see icons next to the about me blurb). Linking out to these sites probably won’t boost me but at least it points the spider in the right direction. If I think of anything else I’ll be sure to update this post but for now I just have to play the waiting game. Watch out you other Les’s out there! Yea you the musician in San Fran and the personal trainer in New York, I’m out to get you. As for the 1919 Australian rules footballer on Wikipedia, I guess you are safe for now.