Over-the air synchronization of contacts, calendars, tasks, and notes can be accomplished by the BlackBerry PIM Sync Plug-in, a free download from www.funambol.com (open source solution provider). The provider supports most Blackberry devices, and Go Web has tested models 8830, 8810, and Curve devices. The client provided by Funambol uses the SyncML 1.2 protocol, which is fully supported by Go Web’s synchronization servers.

Within your webmail interface, click the Settings button on the main toolbar and select SyncML in the My Settings Folder from the left tree view to see what clients have connected to your mailbox and attempted synching. Logging of information, last successful synchronization, decision rules and the ability to reset synchronization of devices is available from this area. For regular and push email usage, Go Web offers the following methods:

1) The Blackberry Internet Service is a free method to push email to your Blackberry and is a service provided by your mobile phone provider (Sprint, Verizon, etc.) and can be configured to check your mailbox and push all new and unread messages to your mobile phone. Messages are normally pushed to the Blackberry device with a 5 to 10 minute delay. This BlackBerry Internet Service will connect to your mailbox via the IMAP protocol.

2) An alternative free method to push messages to your mobile phone which is normally only delayed a couple minutes and simulates the expensive Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) which is often associated to Microsoft Exchange is to use the open source provider Funambol (www.funambol.com). By signing up with the free Funambol service, you can (just as with the Blackberry Internet Service), configure Funambol to scan your webmail mailbox for new and unread messages. If a new message is found, the Funambol service will push the message to the Blackberry device and the Funambol client program. When you sign up for the Funambol service, they will provide you the appropriate client that should be installed on your Blackberry device. This method provides a significant cost savings over the formal BES method with only a modest diminishment in performance.

3) Since the Blackberry is focused on pushing email, many consumers who are familiar with IMAP and PocketPCs miss the advantage of having access to all their messages that they see within Outlook or the Web mail interface. For people who would like to log into their mailbox from the Blackberry and see all of their messages as if they were in Web mail, additional clients can be installed on the Blackberry, such as the free and open source application LogicMail (http://www.logicprobe.org/proj/logicmail).