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Full Blown Calendar Syncing

Finally there is a good way to sync calendars for Non-Outlook / Non-Exchange users.

Being a Mac user now and using Opera since version 4 as my email client, I was cut off the calendar syncing "technology" a couple of years ago anyway.


Further my calendar master is and always was my mobile phone. I carry it with me anyway, so why not use it as master? Hence, all syncing solutions that forced me to use a PC application as master was no option for me. I don't want to keep track of calendar entries at two places.

And, syncing my mobile phone via a USB cabel with my PC was/is a bad solution too. To much software involved, to unreliable, to complicated. To me, the only option is syncing via the air. Especially since UMTS data flat-rates are really affordable these days.

So, how did the situation now changed?

1. I have a UMTS data falt-rate on my mobile
2. Apple provides iCal for the desktop which uses open standards
3. Google provides an online Calendar which uses open standards
4. Google provides a small tool to sync via the air

And these 4 parts are enough to setup a really useful calendar syncing solution.

1. Install "Google Sync" on your mobile. One side note: Only new calendar entries after installation will be synced. No old ones.
2. Sync your mobile to your Google account.
3. Subscribe from iCal to your Google calendar. Here you need to use the private iCal link that you can see in the Google Calendar options.

With this you can add entries from:

1. Mobile phone
2. Google account
3. iCal application

and all will be kept in sync.

The nice thing having it all synced to Google is, that you can publish your calendar to others, so they can see it. And this is possible without having those people be part of your Exchange server or whatever.

Overall, the perfect solution and it's free.

Looking at companies and how much they spend to get shared calendars up & running that support external people as well, I really don't understand it. With the described setup you get it for free, it works and it's simple to setup.
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