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Googl-ifying my Calendar. And my Life.

By Todd Mundt • April 13, 2006

After months of speculation and many questionable screenshots around the web, Google has launched its Calendar product. It doesn’t feature the near-perfect seamless experience that you get with the Ajax calendars like 30Boxes or Kiko, but you’ll find that, like GMail, it’s pretty darn good, right out of the box.

I’ll leave it to others to ruminate about Google’s next move in the “office” space - a document product like Writely or a spreadsheet. I want to talk a little bit about my quandary - should my calendar live online or on my computer?

This would be an easier question to answer if it weren’t for my own particular quirks. I’m obsessive about keeping my calendar entries - all of them - as a permanent document. I’m not even sure why I want to do this - but I can’t shake the feeling that I must do this, nor can I forget the wrenching pain of my hard drive crash in 1997, in which I lost all my calendar data. Recognizing that I can’t change that obsessive desire to preserve this kind of lifedata, I’ve formulated my desire for an online calendar product around the following short list of requirements:

  • The online calendar must feature simple, easy functionality - Ajax or near-Ajax functionality
  • The online calendar must sync effortlessly, in the background, with any desktop software I might use to access my calendar during those increasingly rare times when I find myself offline
  • Any handheld or smartphone I use must be able to sync either with the online calendar (my first choice) or the desktop software. In any case, all versions of my calendar should display exactly the same information within minutes of an addition or change to the calendar on any device I’m using.
  • The online calendar must be capable of exporting its contents to a file, for archival purposes.

Seems so simple, and yet it’s not easy at all, is it? Six years ago, I used the Yahoo calendar, clunky by today’s standards, and synced it to my Outlook calendar, until Intellisync stopped working most of the time. That first attempt at an online calendar fizzled. Then I used Outlook to publish my calendar to the web. That was nice for getting a view of what I had going on, but the web page version was static and I had to remember to publish the page regularly. And then, of course, there’s always been my trusty Palm handheld. I’ve owned three of those over the years, all of which offered easy syncing, but it wasn’t automatic.

So, where do I find myself today? In the past 6 months, since switching to the Mac Powerbook, I’ve tried iCal but have settled on Entourage as my calendar application. This morning, I activated my Google Calendar, and began the round-about process of getting my calendar from Entourage to Google: not as easy as one would like. I opened iCal, imported the Entourage calendar, exported from iCal to a file, and imported the file into Google, which accepts iCal format. At this moment, I have a great looking Google calendar that works wonderfully. Using a private iCal feed offered by Google, I can now open iCal and see my Google calendar. iCal syncs to Google every 15 minutes, but it’s a one-way sync - if I add an event to iCal, it won’t add it to Google. And where’s Entourage? It’s sitting quietly on the other side of the room. As far as I’ve been able to tell, it won’t subscribe to the Google calendar, nor will it sync to it. What about my handheld? Don’t even ask; it’s not WiFi or EVDO capable.

This is not the way things should be. All of this content should sync across platforms, even when the companies are competitors or rivals or sworn enemies or whatever. Perhaps Ray Ozzie’s Simple Sharing Extensions will be the carrier for this new platform interoperability.

Or perhaps I’ll be able to make the transition to a life online. This is hard for me to do, and I think the biggest reason is “that’s not how I was raised.” Software on my computer has always been the basis for the majority of my interactions. Even GMail ports to my Entourage email software - I rarely compose an email on my browser. It’s probably a generational thing. As WiFi and EVDO have given me continuous high-speed access to the web, I’ve brought my cluster of software packages along for the ride.

I find myself thinking a lot about my workflow patterns. In a world of GMail, GCal, Writely, etc., do I need Microsoft Office? Or any other flavor of a computer-resident software package? Can I be comfortable making the transition? Which means, do I have automatic syncing for those rare times when I’m offline? And do I have the kind of export capability I want for archiving?

Don’t expect this to be resolved anytime soon. No obsessive geek makes a quick and easy decision.

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Viewing 8 Comments

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    Great post, Todd. I too just recently made the swith to Apple at home (got an iMac) and started using iCal, but am now experimenting with GCal because of its great interoperability with GMail. I imported all of my iCal items into Gcal, but was frustrated to see that it was an import, not a syncing, process. I guess the best solution for me will be to just use GCal exclusively, so I can updateit at work and at home, and never have to worry about having more than one calendar. Those crafty Google bastards. They've sucked me in again.

    BTW, didn't Googel buy Writely a while ago?

    Great blog. Just dicovered it and am enjoying your posts.
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    Yes, I stand corrected - Google bought Writely in March, I believe. I even found the article I had bookmarked in del.icio.us at the time - which proves that while del.icio.us is great for storing things, it's done nothing for my memory!
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    I empathize with you. I see my calendar as critical too. I have been through so many gyrations with iCal and Entourage after moving from the PC world.

    Here are a couple of points of interest. Make sure you are on the latest version of Entourage. That can sync with iCal so the subscription to your private gCal feed should cascade through. The problem is that the gCal feed is read only.

    One Google feature that is under publicised but may be of use is the fact that you can add calendar entries using SMS text. follow my url to get more details (http://ekive.blogspot.com/2006/05/update-google...).

    Like a lot of people I am waiting for a gCal synchronization tool. That will make the switch to gCal easier to accomplish but the sms add event feature is a useful adjunct to the gCal service.
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    Amen!

    I got so excited when I saw the Intellisync for Yahoo application and was severely disappointed when it refused to recognize my palm (zire 31) was connected to my computer. *sighs* A web search on yahoo said that I had to make sure that my hotsync channels were "properly" set up and nothing more. A quick email to yahoo authorities ended with a comment something like "we don't support this software except for faqs on the web"

    I use the calenar on my palm almost exclusivelly. If I can't get that to sync with an online calendar then I'm not going to use any online calendar. *sighs*

    Great post
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    Hi there:
    I came across your post re: syncing Entourage and gCal, but noticed that you wrote it about a year ago. Has there been any changes in your setup (or Apple's, or Google's) to allow Entourage to sync more seamlessly with gCal?
    Thanks.
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    There have been updates and YES NOW you can sync with entourage and windows mobile!!! The latest upgrade with entourage allows you to sync with iCal. So in a round-a-bout way you have the same one-way sync. I have a Q and it's gotta be the hardest phone to sync with a mac. I use missingsync to sync entourage with my phone (it also syncs ical).
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    There still resides some issues for those of us who reside in a cross platform world. I currently can sync my Samsung BJ to entourage no problem on my home mac mini. However, my travel and work laptop is a thinkpad running Activesync. The issue I have found is that the contacts will sync to outlook, but not the calendars. I have no error message and nothing acts weird, but nothing on my BJ calendar will transcribe to the Outlook calendar. Bummer.
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    seems like I'm in the right group here: I have a macbook and a moto Q which i coordinate with missing sync through Entourage. now i'm getting a PC for a new business so i need to keep it in the loop. and i have a lady in India (GetFriday) who needs to be in the loop to keep me organized. seems like Google is the answer but i have this odd notion that i need to be able to use my calendar on my macbook when i'm on the road but offline. if the Q syncs to Entourage and Entourage syncs to Google Calendar (thru iCal?) i'm good to go, right?
 

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