Personal digital assistant 5

These programs allow the PDA to be synchronized with a personal information manager, which may be part of the computer's operating system, provided with the PDA, or sold separately by a third party. For example, the RIM BlackBerry comes with RIM's Desktop Manager program, which can synchronize to both Microsoft Outlook and ACT!.

Other PDAs come only with their own proprietary software. For example, some early Palm OS PDAs came only with Palm Desktop, while later Palm PDAs—such as the Treo 650—have the ability to sync to Palm Desktop aor Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft's ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center only synchronize with Microsoft Outlook or a Microsoft Exchange server.

Third-party synchronization software is also available for some PDAs from companies like CommonTime and CompanionLink. Third-party software can be used to synchronize PDAs to other personal information managers that are not supported by the PDA manufacturers (for example, GoldMine and IBM Lotus Notes).

Wireless synchronization

Some PDAs can synchronize some or all of their data using their wireless networking capabilities, rather than having to be directly connected to a personal computer via a cable.

Apple iOS devices, like the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, can use Apple's MobileMe subscription service to synchronize calendar, address book, mail account, Internet bookmark, and other data with one or more Macintosh or Windows computers using Wi-Fi or cellular data connections.

Palm's webOS smartphones primarily sync with the cloud. For example, if Gmail is used, information in contacts, email, and calendar can be synchronized between the phone and Google's servers.

RIM sells BlackBerry Enterprise Server to corporations so that corporate BlackBerry users can wirelessly synchronize their PDAs with the company's Microsoft Exchange Server, IBM Lotus Domino, or Novell GroupWise servers.Email, calendar entries, contacts, tasks, and memos kept on the company's server are automatically synchronized with the BlackBerry.

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