I have a bluetooth dongle for my (old) Powerbook. I keep all my events in iCal and all my contacts in Address Book. I’m organised and I appreciate having this data on the run. So why do I never synchronise my phone to my computer? It only takes about five minutes, but it’s just hassle. I have to take that five minutes out of whatever else I’m doing.

One alternative is to use wholly online services, with mobile versions, or browse them phone-side through Opera Mini. In my case I’m sure I can find a service that can provide WebDAV calendars for iCal and perhaps even LDAP for Address Book. Whenever I need to get to my information while I’m out, I just go to my bookmarks on my phone. But now I’m restricted to the places where I can get signal. If I’m sat on the underground I’ve got a powerful device with a large memory, but none of the data I need. This is something that a lot of mobile app developers seem to have missed. It’s just about OK to assume that a desktop user has connectivity, as a mobile user it’s in an out all the time and the bandwidth is dog slow. A much better experience will be provided to the user if you assume offline and be online if you get the chance.

So, instead, wouldn’t it be great if I could use podcasting to get my contact, event and other data to my handset on a regular schedule? I’d set up RSS feeds for all of my key information, and those channels would include data in standard formats. For contacts, send vCards as enclosures, or use the hCards microformat. My phone would have options to poll my feeds regularly, I could do it on demand as well. In my case I’d set my phone to update every 24 hours, that would be plenty given how often I update and would keep my data traffic fairly low. If I’m out of range or battery when the allotted time comes, my phone would fail silently and retry later on. Perhaps giving me an error if a threshold of retries failed. My operator would provide a central service for uniting my disparate feeds (or I could do this myself), so my phone only has to check one place. If there’s no new information, the data transferred is tiny.

The only problem with this idea is how to implement it. AFAIK it can’t be done with a Java midlet because these must be explicitly run by the user. The whole benefit of podcasting here, as in other applications, is that it’s a transparent background task. The user should not be involved.

Now some of you might say stop being lazy and get your Bluetooth on, but if you think this is an interesting idea, maybe we can get grass roots support to force it on the handset manufacturers and network operators :-). Maybe Dave Winer is reading right now. If you think this has potential, like to this post with the link text “syncasting” and we’ll see what happens.

Actually, I did once meet a guy who did some UI work at Nokia and SE. Maybe I can twist his arm…