I recently ditched .mac because I was tired of paying for features that are generally free with other services. I've long been a Yahoo user and stumbled upon some new features that help you sync your cell phone when you're away from your Mac.

Setting Up the Phone with Yahoo!

I'm still playing with the features, but if you already have a Yahoo account, (if you don't have one, they're free, here's where you get one), head on over to Yahoo Mobile. From there, click on, click on "Contacts Back-up."

The next page will give you the opportunity to pick your phone and service carrier. I'm using the Motorola V551 with Cingular, which was in the list of supported phones. Your milage may vary.

After selecting the phone and service, I was given step by step instructions on how to setup the phone with the service. After typing in the settings and pressing "Done," I had it all setup.

Your phone is now setup to push and pull contact and calendar data from your Yahoo! Address Book and Calendar

This is actually the easy part. The hard part is getting your contact and calendar data from Address Book and iCal on your Mac to Yahoo! And for at least Address Book, I've found a temporary solution, and it comes by way of an Apple script by Aurelio of course called "Export Contacts to Yahoo CSV."

Using this simple script and following the directions on the webpage, I was able to pull out selected groups from my address book, and import them into Yahoo! Address Book. From there, using the steps above, I was able to put sync those contacts onto my phone.

Problems Left to Conqueror

This may sound all well and good, but while this system works for the phone side of things, it doesn't so much work for the Mac synchronizing side of things. Sure you can run this script to import to Yahoo! Address Book, but the process isn't automated--at least not in the way that iSync does things. However, it may be possible to write an Apple script with Automator to manage the process. Additionally, this only works with Address Book, and not iCal, and at the moment, there's not an easy way to transform ics files to csv files, and then import them into Yahoo! Calendar.

Additionally, there are some problems with what I did get to work. Even though the importing from my Mac to Yahoo! Address Book worked flawlessly, when contacts were sent to my phone, they all appear as Lastname Firstname. Some might not have a problem with this, after all, all the other info is right. Maybe the problem stems from the Motorola's address book's inability to separate first from last names--it's all one name field. Kinda lame.

What I was hoping the most was that this might be way to get contact info onto phones that are otherwise unsupported by iSync. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case, as only certain phones from Cingular and T-Mobile are supported. Nuts!

What Did Work

From the sounds of it, not much worked. But that's not exactly an entirely accurate picture. Since I did have my V551 sync'd with my Mac, it already had a lot of info on it. To play around with things, I had removed all of my Yahoo! Address Book and Calendar info. When syncing my phone to Yahoo!, everything pulled in just fine--including calendars, etc. This might actually be a useful way to get info onto Yahoo!--use iSync to get your contacts on your phone, then use Yahoo! Mobile to sync your phone with Yahoo!

Any Other Ideas?

Would you like to share how you've gotten Yahoo! Mobile to work for you? How about some other online service that fits the bill? Please leave a comment and tell us about it.