I have been looking for a good calendar application for my Windows PC for years. When I was working, I used Corporate Time (now known as Oracle Calendar.) Before that, I had an on-and-off relationship with Microsoft Outlook, but the client was too heavyweight for me. Later, I saw iCal for Macintosh and wanted that for my computer, so I started looking again in earnest. Mozilla Sunbird was too alpha-quality for my needs, and Chandler looked great but kept throwing weird Python errors I never had the time to diagnose and report. I tried AirSet when it first came out, but I hated the user interface. It was too confusing, even for me, and I didn’t like all the extra features. I just wanted a calendar.
Finally, I saw Google Calendar a month ago and loved it. It had iCal import and export, a great user interface, and all the funky repetition options one could want. I loved the multiple calendar interface and the ability to let many people edit one calendar.
The only thing missing was synchronizing with my Palm unit. Based on a forum posting I saw, I put together this Rube Goldberg system:
- Re-open my AirSet account
- Subscribe my AirSet calendar (Calendar->Subscribe…) to the private iCal feed of my Google calendar
- Install the AirSet Desktop Sync application
- HotSync Palm
And that’s it.
The problem is that I need to log into AirSet when I want changes propagated immediately. I found today after entering my Ob/Gyn schedule that I needed to remove and resubscribe AirSet to my Google calendar link. (There appears to be no “update all subscriptions” button in AirSet.) But after all that, I now have four weeks of calendar data in my PDA. It’s worth the effort.
I’m off now to deliver some babies (maybe.)
June 26, 2006 at 5:46 pm |
So why wouldn’t you use Palm Desktop’s Calendar instead?
July 14, 2006 at 10:05 pm |
I think google calendar is much better. very clean interface…they have such a knack.
August 1, 2006 at 6:40 pm |
Did I miss something, or do I have to make my Google calendar public to the world in order to subscribe to it via airset? That freaks me out (although I’m willing to do it just for my “beta” test).
September 3, 2006 at 7:42 pm |
I subscribed Airset to the “private iCal feed” from Google Calendar. There is no need to make your calendar public.
September 20, 2006 at 3:39 pm |
I’m looking into this, and it appears to be one-way synchronization. That is, if I read Google’s Help correctly, the Google Calendar private address only allows AirSet to READ Google Calendar. It does not permit AirSet to WRITE to Google Calendar (i.e. add or modify events on Google Calendar).
Am I correct that when you add or modify an event on your Palm device, it will not be reflected in your Google Calendar?
Hopefully I’m wrong, and AirSet really does a true two-way sync.
October 11, 2006 at 7:13 pm |
You are correct, it’s one-way synchronization. I rarely change my schedule on my PDA so this wasn’t a priority. That’s why I did not highlight this limitation in my post above. That said, I believe AirSet does do two-way synchronization of PDA changes back to AirSet, but not back to Google. I’m not aware of any calendar app that handles two-way sync of iCal data, as there’s no standard protocol for that.
June 19, 2008 at 11:46 pm |
[...] 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. [...]
June 21, 2008 at 11:37 am |
[...] feature is nice too. I didn’t use my Palm during psychiatry, so I haven’t managed the Google-Airset-Palm trick this month. I have noticed that there is a commercial product out for this task called [...]