PatrickMD.net

I keep a network-accessible calendar with Google Calendar. I also carry an iPhone. Here’s what I want:

• Instant sync of calendar data when I make changes to either the iPhone or Google Calendar. Waiting until I dock with iTunes is too long.
• Availability of calendar data when the iPhone is out of internet range.

I wrote a few months ago about synchronizing Google Calendar to the iPhone and my method was tortured and ineffective. Updates would only occur when I ran iTunes to sync, which I only do once a month or so.

I just learned about NuevaSync, which cleverly uses the new Exchange functionality in the iPhone 2.0 update to provide instant over-the-air calendar sync. I set up an account in about five minutes. You provide your email address and allow Nuevasync access to your Google Calendars via AuthSub (so they never have your Google password.) Then you set up the iPhone to use NuevaSync as an Exchange server for calendar data, and that’s it. It’s simple and effective.

If you make calendar changes on the iPhone when you are out of internet range, the Calendar app will store the changes and sync once you are back in range. (Note that you have to actually start the Calendar application when your iPhone regains connectivity for the appointment changes to propagate.)

Nuevasync is beta, so be wary — a bug on their end could end up trashing your Google Calendar, or duplicating appointments (which happened to me when I tested ScheduleWorld.)

I find it funny that after years of work on standardized synchronization protocols (such as SyncML), the best way to over-the-air sync an iPhone is via Microsoft Exchange.

Goosync is pursuing a clunky iPhone App approach to over-the-air sync, which only allows contact sync since the calendar database is still inaccessible to 3rd party apps.

Tags:   calendar · iPhone · nuevasync · syncNo Comments