Just like a lot of people out there, I use more than one computer. I have my laptop, my desktop computer at work and various computer terminals at school… So I like to keep my data online as much as possible. The best solution for synchronization between computers is MobileMe. But I find the service expensive when there are a lot of free and really good alternatives and frankly, it is not cross platform. If I had an iPhone, I’d probably buy a MobileMe account to have all my data with me all the time and be able to access it in a very usable way. But I don’t have an iPhone and I am not planning to buy any time soon, not the 3G model.
So I stick with Google Calendar. It is very usable, web based and free. Now the best part is that it can be synchronized with iCal. In fact, it is not synchronization. Any modifications you make on iCal is instantly transferred to your Google Calendar if you are connected to Internet. That is if you are using the
CalDAV. You can use Google’s
Calaboration tool to easily add your calendars to iCal and keep them in sync via CalDAV.
But I have a terrible problem, the image on the left side shows how it looks when you add multiple calendars. As you can see all the calendars seem to be under different accounts, this is such a waste of space and very annoying. In a perfect world, it should be looking like the one on the right:
Maybe this requires some extension to CalDAV protocol/structure. I don’t really have any information about it. All I know is that this is terribly annoying. If you know how to avoid this mess or Google/Apple is planning to release a fix, please let me know.
Apple iCal and Google Calendar synchronization
Just like a lot of people out there, I use more than one computer. I have my laptop, my desktop computer at work and various computer terminals at school… So I like to keep my data online as much as possible. The best solution for synchronization between computers is MobileMe. But I find the service expensive when there are a lot of free and really good alternatives and frankly, it is not cross platform. If I had an iPhone, I’d probably buy a MobileMe account to have all my data with me all the time and be able to access it in a very usable way. But I don’t have an iPhone and I am not planning to buy any time soon, not the 3G model.