A couple of weeks ago, in an embarrassing example of blog as self indulgent whinge, I complained about problems with Google Calendar. For the record, they have been ironed out and were temporary propagation artefacts; I am now completely happy with the resulting system, hosted by Google and managed primarily from Mozilla Lightning. In fact, I shall be shifting fully onto it from August 1st, a month earlier than planned
I also said, at that time, that:
“Adding an item from the E63 is slightly less convenient than on the Palm, but to a degree with which I can live. Modifying an item from a phone is impossible, but I've found ways to deal with that too. (There is supposed to be a way of synchronising the E63's onboard calendar application with the Google calendar, but I've not sussed that yet.)”
That para, too, is now out of date. I have found several third party apps which integrate Google Calendar with the onboard calendar of Symbian phones (the Nokia E63 runs Symbian), of which I narrowed down to a personal choice of two with confusingly similar names: Goosync and Googasync.
The two offer slightly different approaches, marginally different facilities, and considerably different pricing structures, but both do an excellent job and I won't say which I plumped for in the end. (Just don't do as I did, and try them both at the same time ... at one point I was weeding out six copies of every appointment at both handheld and web ends! Try one at a time, them make up your mind and install your choice.) The result, whichever you choose, is a near perfect unified system running simultaneously in web browser, hand held and (if you go for the Lightning option) email client.
2 comments:
Felix, I only use a calendar on a hand held device. Initially a Palm, then a Palm treo, but then that went bust. I tried the newest Android (because an iPhone didn't jive with my carrier, Verizon) and found its ability to deal with contacts and calendar truly atrocious. It uses Google.
I traded it in for a BlackBerry which seems a lot better, but one still has to jiggle the column headings to get things to come out in the right place. On top of that, you have to export to a csv file and then work it around and then reimport, if you are lucky! I assume that your Goosync and Googasync to that without causing trouble.
This whole thing with synchronizing is a big mess. It is almost as if we are in a 21st century Babel.
Doc,
I can only speak for my own set up as described in the post, but yes: synchronisation between Symbian and Google, via either Goosync or Googasync, is transparent and involves no effort or action my part except pressing a button on the handheld.
As you will know from my original "A shortage of gruntles" post, I too came from Palm devices ... I would say that this system is if anything better, smoother and easier than the Palm system.
If you want to also maintain a copy of your calendar on your desktop machine, that may be different. I am using Mozilla Thunderbird for my mail, Lightning handling the calendar within that, on a PC and am very happy with the results. You, I believe, use a Mac; while I know that the Thunderbird/Lightning combination is available to Mac users, I haven't tried it.
But the Google version of the calendar is, of course, available to you and to anyone who needs to access (or interact with) it,via a browser on any machine or operating system.
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