If you need to share your calendar with colleagues in other offices, or in an Outlook-free business, chances are that you’re using Google Calendar. We use Google Calendar and are delighted with it: it has all the usability of Apple’s native iCal, but with much better workflow for teams who need to plan meetings and share schedules.
But I still prefer Apple’s iCal.app as my local client app for viewing and adding calendar. Before the advent of Google Gears (which now makes it possible to access your Google Calendar while offline), it was also the only way to access my calendar when (gasp!) separated from the Internet.
The combination of iCal and MobileMe is also the best route for keeping a desktop Mac or Macbook synchronized with your iPhone calendar. Sure, you can do one-way subscriptions in either direction, but BusySync provides a way to pass additions and edits back and forth between calendars. And, thanks to an application called BusySync, it’s also a way of keeping your Google Calendar synced to your phone.
Even if you’re not a fan of MobileMe or iCal.app, you may want to use BusySync as a way of keeping Google Calendar synced to your iPhone calendar. It feels like a minor miracle that I can now view, add or edit a calendar event in any one of four places:
- Google Calendar
- MobileMe
- iCal.app on my Macbook Pro
- Calendar on my iPhone
…and wherever I make the addition or change, it’s available everywhere else within about two minutes. This means that my assistant can add something to my Google Calendar, like the address for an upcomign meeting, and it’s available virtually instantly on my iPhone calendar.
The kind folks at BusySync have a very usable, step-by-step guide to getting this setup running for you. It looks daunting but all I really needed was the pointer towards the appropriate settings in each app, and it was quick and intuitive to setup.
And it just works. I’ve been running this setup for several months, and while I did have a brief glitch, redoing the setup resolved them and it’s been reliable ever since. It’s well worth the $30 for BusySync (the $$ for MobileMe is another story…but again, as an iPhone user, I find its contact and calendar syncing indispensable. Plus I really love the backup utility that acts as the primary safety net for my data.)
If you’re an iPhone, Mac and Google Calendar user, this is almost certainly the setup for you. And if you’re an iPhone and Mac user who needs to share schedules with family or colleagues, it’s time to try out Google Calendar
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