Early this year Google released Google Sync, which makes your calendar and apps work is if they were on an Exchange server. Missing from the app, of course, was push capability for Gmail.

That day has come, people.

Google just announced that Google Sync now supports push Gmail for Windows Mobile (5.0 and higher). The usual caveat applies, however: If you're already using an Exchange server for other e-mail, you're out of luck.

Get the full deets here.

Good news for your guys and gals who have been wanting to consolidate other e-mail accounts into Hotmail. (You know, like most other e-mail services have been able to do for, say ever.) This has been available for Hotmail users elsewhere but just opened up to the U.S., Canada and Brazil. Go figure. The process is as straightforward as it could be, and you can now push multiple services through one Windows Live account to your Windows Mobile phone.

Windows Live via Seattle PI

We've previously discussed some of the upcoming changes Outlook Mobile may see with the launch of Microsoft Exchange 2010 (we say may because it's up to your IT department to actually implement them). A recap:

• Threaded e-mail.
• Voicemail transcription.
• Sync SMS.
• Block/quarantine phones.
• See when messages you've replied to or forwarded.
• See if a contact has some free time for you.

And, the really cool part: When your business (or Exchange provider, at least) upgrades to Exchange 2010, an upgraded version of Outlook Mobile can be pushed to your Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5 phone.

Now, see a few of those changes in action. Part 1 is above, and the second part of the video is after the break.

Technet [via wmpoweruser]

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Ask us about ways to push e-mail to your phone, and the Seven beta inevitably comes up. And for good reason. It's pretty darn good. Now Seven has given a boost to calendar support, with specific love for Google calendar.

Here's what's being rolled out:

• Ability to accept, reject or reschedule meetings and appointments: users can manage their calendar the same way they would on their desktop, enabling them to better manage their time.
• Real-time, two-way synchronization: with SEVEN's true push capabilities, calendar updates are automatically, in real-time, synchronized between the server and the mobile device. The two-way synchronization increases users' productivity by letting them manage their Google Calendar on their phone while ensuring that changes are reflected on the server.
• Meeting reminders: reminders, one of users' favorite calendar capabilities, are also available. Users can choose between visual and/or sound alerts as reminders of upcoming meetings. Users can dismiss or snooze the reminder.
• Read/Write Offline Accessibility: with SEVEN, the Google Calendar is also accessible offline, for access outside of coverage areas or in places where the use of mobile phones is banned. When offline, users can not only view their Google Calendar, but they can also create, edit and change calendar entries. Server synchronization occurs as soon as the phone is connected back to the network.

Seven's still in a free, open beta, which you can get in on here.

Ever have an e-mail you know you sent just seem to sit in your outbox?

Turns out you're not crazy. At least not because of this. Fellow WM Expert George Ponder has turned us on to a post over at Smartphone Thoughts that helps shed light on the whole thing.

It turns out there is a bug in Windows Mobile 6.1 that can keep messages in you outbox for good. It goes like this:

• When you send an e-mail, your phone attempts to use the specified SMTP server name. (On my AT&T phone, it's CWMX.com, a holdover from the Cingular days.) Think of that as Mailman 1.
• If Mailman 1 isn't available, for whatever reason — I like to think he's enjoying a tall cold one on the beach — Windows Mobile 6.1 looks for an alternate SMTP server. That'd be Mailman 2. But if there's no alternate server listed (has there every been?), and your phone can't connect with the first server (that beach/beer thing again), then that e-mail gets kicked into a perpetual outbox loop. Even when your phone reconnects later, that e-mail's still stuck, unsent.

The Microsoft readme file (read the entire thing after the jump) is a little more ominous:

This behavior is associated with a feature that is introduced in Windows Mobile 6.1. The feature allows for mobile operators to specify an alternate SMTP server name that is used if e-mail messages cannot be sent by using the user-specified SMTP server name. If the mobile operator does not specify an alternate SMTP server name and if the Windows Mobile 6.1-based device does not connect, the e-mail account is corrupted and cannot send e-mail messages.

How do we fix this? With a simple download. Hit up Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch page. You can either install from your desktop or directly onto your phone as a cab file. Your phone will immediately reset, and all will be right in the world. Note that if you hard-reset your phone, you'll probably have to re-apply this patch.

The bug applies to IMAP and POP mail, but not Exchange mail or SMS/MMS text messages, and it affects touchscreen and non-touchscreen phones. If all of this is Greek to you, go ahead and apply it.

Fair warning: Microsoft says anything that's stuck in your outbox will now be sent. So if you have any e-mails with the subjects "Honestly, it was just dinner," "Dear boss, screw you," or "I promise I'll have the money on Tuesday" in there, now would be a good time to clean them out.

Obligatory rant: Why have none of the wireless carriers made notice of this yet? (Edit: HTC just sent out a message on its Twitter feed a few minutes after we first posted this.) It's just one more disconnect in the strange relationship between the carriers and Microsoft. And for more about that, be sure to check out the latest WM Experts Podcast, in which Dieter and Malatesta dive deep into that dysfunctional family.

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You likely know GoDaddy.com as an Internet registrar and for its, er, eye-catching advertisements. Now you can add hosted Exchange to its resume.

What's hosted Exchange, you ask? It's most often found in the workplace, but outside vendors are now offering its push-email and cloud-based storage for monthly fees. We've written about it a bit, and Dieter and Mal have touched on it in a couple of podcasts (19 & 22).

For $6.99 a month, GoDaddy gives you a single mailbox with 2 gigabytes of storage, POP3 and IMAP access (and presumably OWA, though it's not listed), plus the usual calendar goodies. For $9.99 a month you get all of that plus access on your mobile device.

The price isn't bad, but we'd like to see more storage. While 2 gigs is still a boatload of space when it comes to e-mail, it hardly stacks up to the 7 gigs gmail gives you for free. Yeah, it's still not true push e-mail and it doesn't play as nicely with Windows Mobile as Exchange, but you can't beat the cost.

However, it is nice to see another hosted Exchange option come to fruition. Check out GoDaddy's offerings here.

via jkontherun

Those of us who rely on gmail for our everyday communications have a few little gripes when it comes to mobile access — and one big one.

That whopper namely comes in gmail's finicky IMAP (wikipedia def) support in that it uses "labels" instead of true folders like the rest of the civilized world. It's not that the labels are evil, it's just that they don't play well outside the Google sandbox.

Google has, however, recently implemented some new settings that allow you to pick and choose which labels are synced over IMAP. This should have different results depending on what you're using to pull (or push) in your gmail, so YMMV. We're still waiting on true push e-mail from the Big G, but we'll take any improvements we can get in the meantime.

Give it a shot, and let us know in the comments how it works for you.

Gmail Blog: Advanced IMAP Controls

In a move that's expected to affect tens of people, Sprint has announced it will no longer offer PCS Mail after Dec. 31. As such, any @sprintpcs.com e-mail accounts will no longer work.

The shutdown isn't all that surprising - does anyone actually use their carrier account? - and should be an obvious savings for Sprint, which lost $344 million last quarter.

If you do actually have an @sprintpcs.com account, there are instructions to help you set up and transfer to a new account, such as Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail - which is a downright nice thing to do and is a positive move for a company with notoriously bad customer service.

Edit: Updated to note that the shutdown only includes @sprintpcs.com e-mail, and that Sprint Mobile Email is still available.

Via PhoneNews