Why can't Google Calendar and my PDA talk to one another?

May 1, 2006 11:12 AM

Is there any way to sync (i.e. have data go both ways) between my PDA and Google Calendar?

I've searched Google, the Google Calendar help pages, and elsewhere, but the result seems to consistently be something to the effect of "not yet", or "sort of, but only one-way".

I have started using Google Calendar, since most of the time that I need access to my calendar is when I'm near an Internet-connected computer, but there are some times that I need access to my calendar when I'm not near a computer, which is when the PDA comes in handy. I'd like to be able to add events to GCal, and have them automatically work their way into my PDA calendar, and vice versa. Something tells me that I'm SOL, though...

The PDA is a Sony Clié SJ-20, and on the desktop (WinXP) I'm running the Sony-branded edition of Palm Desktop 4.0.

If this isn't possible, does anybody know if a developer is working on some sort of software to accomplish this task?

posted by gwenzel to computers & internet (2 answers total)

Give it some time - When was GoogCal officially announced? Two weeks ago?

I can offer you my (Apple-based) work around. You may be able to make something similar work in XP, I dunno.

1. Subscribe to the Google Calendar iCal feed with Apple iCalendar. This give you GC -> Apple -> Palm integration.
2. When uploading Palm -> Apple, send your new events to a calendar that's published to a public webdav. Have GC subscribed to the locally published calendar. Palm -> Apple -> Net -> GC.
3. Use GC to 'copy' remotely published information to itself.

That completes a pretty small circle.
posted by unixrat at 11:22 AM on May 1, 2006

Outlook 2007 can easily subscribe to the ical format.
Outlook 2003 can be made to subscribe with the remoteCalendars plugin.

I would assume palm desktop can get the info from Outlook easily enough in either case.

Getting your info back to GCal if you make a change on the PDA is the real problem right now.

The good news is that if you export a range of dates from Outlook as an ical file for uploading to GCal, GCal does not create duplicate events for things that have changed. So you can upload the same timeframe over and over as you change individual dates, without worrying about duplicate events. I don't think it will delete things though, so you have to do that 2x still.

Google has released an API for GCal, so as unixrat said, it's probably only a matter of time for full functionality.
posted by tiamat at 11:45 AM on May 1, 2006