A minor success

Image via CrunchBase

Okay, in the overall scheme of life synchronising calendars may not seem a big thing. But to me and any/many geeks it may be compared, albeit metaphorically to life and death.

The problem is that you have a computer - which has your calendar on it with all its appointments. Also, if you are like me you have a calendar in GoogleMail, which also has set of diary entries. Also, if you are like me you have a mobile phone which also has a calendar on it - and of course various events scheduled for the future, hopefully. So you have all three - and some of you may have more!

Now getting any two of these to sync is relatively easy. Vista, for example has a calendar application which accords with the ical standard, and so syncing that with Google's calendar is not so difficult. That said, as I remember it is a one-way sync - that is the Vista calendar can see Google appointments but you cannot add to Google from your computer. Hmm.

There are similar challenges awiating the unwary if talking from your phone to Google's calendar. However given most mobile phones are pretty new there are apps for many phones that will do the job, even if you have to sync manually.

So the main challenges are:
- syncing in all directions,
- automation of syncing,
- attention to detail, including time-zone and daylight issues, oh and
- ease of use.

The solution that works for you probably depends on your phone model, your computer. Fortunately Google in this case is a constant.

My hardware setup is a laptop running Vista and a Nokia 6210 Navigator. Because this is a Nokia phone therefore Nokia PcSuite can take all the strain of syncing Windows Calendar with the phone's calendar, and of course taking backups of contacts.

Now I have previously tried to get my head around using funmobil and outlook (not that I want to use Outlook) to sync via the computer. But that was too difficult and laborious for me.

What now works with this phone, since it is an S60 phone (running Symbian) is the new Google Sync feature using Nokia Mail for Exchange. The install and setup instructions are covered elsewhere, so I won't repeat them here.

What I will say is that I had initial authentication problems - probably a typo on my part. However once it is up and running it just works. Not only that it works in the background, automatically and completes the triangle.

So now my desktop Calendar, my phone Contacts and Calendar and my Google Mail Contacts and Calendar all stay in sync.

Wonderful and highly recommended.