Any questions as to whether or
not I'm a computer nerd will be answered after this post.
How to synchronize your PDA with Google
Calendar.
The whole Google "let us help you organize
your life" thing is cool, as far as I'm concerned. I'm pretty much all in
with Google. I have a number of calendars going there. The church calendar is at
Google now, as is my own and one for my family. I can see them all (and modify
any of them) when logged into my primary Google account. I use Gmail for all my
email needs. I don't use my @gmail.com account, but I use Gmail as my mail
client, letting it check various pop accounts for me. This way I get the Gmail
grouping by conversation feature (which I love) for all my email accounts - and
I have several. Tim Heavin and I share a number of church documents through
Google. That's pretty handy too. We also use Google groups for emails to
everyone in the church.
Sounds perfect huh? It's close, but the one
thing that was lacking was the ability to synch all this with my Treo phone/PDA.
I'm often not in a central location with my computer. I jot down a lot of
appointments using my Treo. And when I'm out, I check my Treo to see what I have
to do on any given day. The advantage of the Treo over other phones with
calendars is that I can synch it with Outlook on my desktop. That was great in
the past when I used Outlook for the church calendar, but as I said, it's all
Google now. And at this point, Google has not provided a way to synch its
calendars with your desktop or PDA.
But I've discovered a way to get that done. I'm
assuming there may be some others would like to synch Google with a desktop or
PDA but haven't figured out how. It's a little work setting this up, but once
you do, it's easy to maintain. Here's one way to do this. I'm sure there are
others:
First, I'm assuming you have a Google
calendar. That's why you're reading. But if not, setting one up is ridiculously
easy. Notice that your Google calendar has an ICAL feed button found under
"calendar settings." That's an important part of this.
Next, go to Airset.com.
This is a public calendar program on the Internet. It has two shining features
that make this work. First, it synchs with Outlook or other desktop calendars
(including the Palm calendar) using a little application that you download for
free. Second, you can create calendar groups and "subscribe" to the ICAL feed
from your Google calendar. Once you do that, anything you enter into Google's
calendar will be pulled into your Airset calendar without you having to do
anything.
This system is particularly advantageous
if you have several people editing and using a Google calendar. In my case,
Jeanene can edit our Google family calendar and Tim edits the church Google
calendar.
Most of you probably see where this is going.
Simply run the Airset desktop synch to synch Outlook or the Palm calendar with
your Airset calendar (which now includes all of your Google calendar
information). Then synch with your PDA as usual. I know this sounds complicated,
but here's how it works in real life:
A couple of times I week I synch Outlook with
Airset. And I synch my PDA with the desktop as I have been doing for years as a
backup. That probably means once a week or so.
The bottom line: everything new added to
any of my Google Calendars by me or Jeanene or Tim ends up on my Treo. New items
that I enter in the Treo make it to my desktop and then to Airset via Outlook.
But they won't end up on the Google calendars. Google does not import like that.
But that's okay. That's got an advantage for me. There is no way some personal
calendar item will end up on our Google church calendar. The main thing is, I
get the latest calendar from the church and our family on my treo so I don't
overbook myself.
rlp
