As you may recall, I published a guest post from David Sparks several months ago, in which he discussed his first few weeks as a Mac convert after being a PC user for over 20 years. Today, Mr. Sparks discussues a problem that he encountered and solved related to his calendar:
Well its been a few months now since I chucked my PC laptop and bought my shiny Macbook Pro. One problem that continued to pester me is one that is near and dear to the heart of all attorneys, the calendar. My office uses a PC Network with a specialized legal application called "Timematters" which performs pretty well with one exception (*cough* regular email crashes *cough). Timematters is a PC only application and one of the things it does well is sync with my Treo 650. This way my secretary and staff is entering contacts, appointments, and task items which sync into my Treo. This is very helpful to me. The problem is when I want to look at my calendar at home on something other than the tiny Treo screen. So therein lies the challenge -- sync my Treo with my Mac without screwing up the data when I return to my office. (It would not be fun explaining to my colleagues how I managed to wipe out the contact database) As an aside I was never able to successfully do this on my old PC laptop either.
This is not as easy at it should seem. The Palm desktop may be the worst program ever written in both its PC and Mac variants. But I think the Mac version is particularly loathsome. I try to sync with it and it takes FOREVER. Furthermore, it doesn't always grab all the data and worse yet it seems to corrupt data when I send it back at work. I also tried "The Missing Sync" to no avail (although a lot people swear by it).
The good news is I've found a solution using Google Calendar and GooSync. GooSync can be found at www.goosync.com and is made by a UK based company, Toffa International. GooSync allows you to sync your Google Calendar with just about any cell phone that has a calendar app. If you go to their site they have a list of supported phones. With my Treo it actually installed a small palm application that, with a press of a button, allows me to sync my treo to my google calendar. GooSync talks to my google calendar and sync’s all changes on both the phone and those on google. When I go back to the office it then integrates those changes straight into my windows based calendar software without a hiccup.
One nice feature of this is there are no cables. You can sync your phone from anywhere. I usually hit the GooSync button on my Treo as I drive home from the office and again in the morning as I head back in. The free version of GooSync will synchronize for 30 days. If you purchase a 1 year subscription at 20 pounds (which ended up costing me about $40, it will sync an entire year.
If you really want to go crazy, you can also buy Spanning Sync. This program installs a system preference tool that works very similar to the .mac synchronization. When you first set it up you can attach each of your google calendars to a separately created calendar in Apple iCal. I’ve had it running on my MacBook Pro now for 2 weeks with no problem whatsoever. Because it allows you to sync multiple calendars I can pull down my office calendar (uploaded with GooSync), my wife’s calendar, the Google US holiday calendar, and any other public google calendar. I can make adjustments to both calendars and the sync process puts it all together on both systems.
I’ve been very pleased with this program. My wife still works on a PC and it allows her and I to keep up with each other. This also lets me see my calendar, via google calendar, even when I’m away from my mac. It also works fine on multiple macs. I bought my daughter an iMac and the program works fine on my user account on her computer. If you don’t believe me then go to the website, SpanningSync.com. They have a very nice video demonstration.
They offer a trial demonstration of 15 days. They have an interesting license schedule, its $25 a year or a one-time fee of $65. I bought the one year license. I highly recommend this program if you have need of viewing and editing your calendar from other computers, or share calendar data with other users (especially cross platform). It is a great little application that quietly does exactly what you expect it to every time.
The net result for me with these two programs is that my secretary, my wife, and I can all be looking at and changing my calendar from multiple locations and multiple platforms and at the end of the day everything syncs up flawlessly. Since my calendar is constantly changing, this is a very good thing.
David W. Sparks is an attorney with George & Shields LLP in Irvine, California. He specializes in litigation and transactional practice. He is described as a "creative thinker focused on precision, detail-oriented litigation preparation and strategic business planning to obtain the best possible outcome for clients." David can be reached via email by clicking HERE. My thanks are extended to David for his great guest post.
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