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UPDATE 12 Oct 08: I found a great way to constantly keep Google Calendar and iPhone synchronized.

Some time ago I wrote about synchronizing Google Calendar data with a Palm device. Since then, I’ve given up the Palm because I realized I rarely used it. Now, I carry an iPhone instead, and have the same calendar synchronization problems.

While I can use Google Calendar’s iPhone interface to check and add appointments, the AT&T “Fine” EDGE network takes a long time to set up an initial connection. This makes a quick calendar consult require a 60 second investment. For this reason, it would be nicer if the standard iPhone calendar picked up my appointments when I synchronize with iTunes.

iTunes will synchronize your iPhone calendar only with Outlook. Short of reverse-engineering iTunes, solutions require that the Google Calendar entries end up in Outlook. I first tried the Funambol plugin with ScheduleWorld. This worked once, but was far too complex. For this to work, I logged into ScheduleWorld (SW), allowed SW to talk with my Google Calendar, and then sync’d my calendar to SW. Then the Funambol Outlook plugin downloaded my calendar from SW to Outlook. At one point ScheduleWorld duplicated all of my Google Calendar entries because I did not realize that the “one-way” directionality isn’t saved as a permanent preference. This gave me a sharp lesson in why I should be very wary whenever I provide Google AuthSub tokens to a website.

I gave up all that and today tried a different angle, RemoteCalendars. I had some trouble with the provided documentation, but this blog entry was very helpful. I downloaded the 6.3 version, and then ran the setup program. Outlook 2003 didn’t start the plugin immediately, so I installed VSTOR. After VSTO installed, I re-enabled the plugin (via Tools->Options…->Other->Advanced Options…->COM Add-ins…) and the options screen popped up.

I added five Google calendars using private ICS links, and each calendar appeared in Outlook without a problem. I then synchronized with iTunes, which copied the calendar data to the iPhone. To make sure my iPhone didn’t carry any double appointments, I selected “Replace information on this iPhone: Calendars” under the “Info” tab.

I am only planning to use the iPhone calendar in “read-only” mode. However, I believe that it is possible to get two-way sync working with RemoteCalendars. The reason I haven’t pursued this capability is that I synchronize my iPhone with my laptop once a week. For sync to be useful it would have to happen a lot faster.

There is no design reason for the synchronization to remain within iTunes. Since the iPhone can make internet connections on its own, I hope that the upcoming SDK will allow developers to write a synchronization application native to the iPhone that will allow it to pull and push appointments from the Google Calendar server regularly, just as the iPhone Mail application does now with the Google Mail IMAP server.

Tags:   calendar · google · iPhone2 Comments