Marketing Pilgrim

Two related announcements today regarding Google’s Gmail/Apps offering.

First up. After providing the very useful Google Calendar Sync for the Blackberry, Google’s giving users what they really want: Google Calendar Sync for Outlook.

Product Manager Shirin Oskooi explains how it works…

When I add an event to the Outlook calendar on my laptop, Google Calendar Sync syncs it to my Google Calendar — and since I also have Google Calendar Sync running on my desktop, the event then syncs from Google Calendar to Outlook calendar on my desktop. All of my calendar views are always up to date, and I can choose whichever one I want to use.

Ah, bliss. That’s assuming you can ever reach a state of "bliss" using Microsoft’s Outlook.

Here’s how it looks:

Second announcement. Google has release a Contacts Data API which will allow developers to build applications that access and export your GMail/Apps contacts.

In particular:

• Synchronize Google contacts with contacts on a mobile device
• Maintain relationships between people in social applications
• Give users the ability to communicate directly with their friends from external applications using phone, email, and IM

I was only yesterday wishing there was a way to get the contacts from my Google Apps email to my Blackberry and KRZR–so someone please hurry-up and build something. Thanks for that!

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