With nothing but frustration from other solutions I’ve tried, I migrated my calendars to Google Calendar (GCal). This is a half-solution for me right now, but absent a viable alternative, it’s really pretty good. Here’s how I’ve got it set up:
- As always - back up everything first.
- I exported my Personal 2006, Work 2006 and Others 2006 calendars from iCal and imported them into GCal. You need to create Calendars in GCal first to import these into. This step went very smoothly.
- Delete the local versions of these calendars in iCal and subscribe to the GCal versions of these calendars (on desktop and laptop).
- Create a “BlackBerry” calendar in iCal on the desktop.
- Set up PocketMac to sync the GCal calendars from iCal, and to put events created on the BlackBerry into the “BlackBerry” calendar.
I can still create events in my BlackBerry and export them from iCal and import them into GCal (after syncing). Or I can send the event in via SMS. It’s not as nice as an OTA sync will be, but I have hopes I will be able to OTA sync in the near future.
Unfortunately, GCalSync doesn’t seem to work yet on the 8703e. Perhaps I can bribe someone with a donation and diagnostic information. 
UPDATE: Got GCalSync working after disabling the proxy as noted in their troubleshooting steps. Unfortunately, it only seems to sync with the default calendar (which ended up copying over everything from my other calendars into the default calendar). So I guess now I’ve got to decide how much I value having everything broken up nicely into different calendars. My current system is to have a personal, work and others (which has salient events in my family’s schedule, etc.) for each year. Then I can archive the old years and only sync the current year’s events with my mobile device.
Anyway, I’m pretty pleased with this solution so far. Frankly, the GCal interface is superior to the iCal interface in my opinion. I love, love, the “Next 7 days” custom view and the keyboard shortcuts give me quick access to everything I need to do.
Plus, I can subscribe to my Tasks Pro™ iCalendar as well - just like I do in iCal.
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Robert Accettura adds this Comment:
I’m still waiting for Palm Sync support. I’m amazed I haven’t seen any real solution thus far.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the Palm OS is dead.
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:25 am
Brett adds this Comment:
OK, I’m ready to attempt something similar, trying to get Tasks Pro to show up on GCal. For some reason it cannot fetch the URL. How did you get yours to show up?
Shouldn’t one of these work?
http://user:pass@www[...]hp?task=5695
or
webcal://user:pass@www.domain.com/tasks/icalendar.php?task=5695
November 24th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
Please see the previous post on this topic.
Just a reminder, this blog is not a support forum and support related comments will generally be deleted.
November 25th, 2006 at 12:43 am
Kevan adds this Comment:
Also, note that the custom view can be customized further - personally, I like monthly views but hate that if the day of the month is the 27th (for instance) that I can’t see into next month. So I changed my custom view to be Next 4 weeks. I’d actually love them to allow multiple custom views - then I’d have next 4 weeks and next 7 days.
November 27th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Alex adds this Comment:
I agree, I’d use those views as well.
November 27th, 2006 at 10:46 am
John F. adds this Comment:
Robert Accettura wrote:
“I’m still waiting for Palm Sync support.”
A couple of Palm-Google Calender sync solutions:
http://www.companionlink.com/
http://www.goosync.com/
February 17th, 2007 at 4:11 am
Dan adds this Comment:
I’m thinking about the 8703e myself. I found this article while looking for evidence that gmail and google calendar will work with it.
I’m thinking this app will put what you create on your blackberry (which is synced with pocketmac to ical) and events you put directly into ical onto google calendar. It’s in beta, but it looks promising.
http://spanningsync.com/
March 9th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Alex adds this Comment:
Search this blog for comments on the spanning sync service. I’m not a fan of their implementation.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Plaxo | alexking.org adds this Pingback:
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April 18th, 2007 at 11:01 am
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April 18th, 2007 at 11:28 am
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April 18th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Chrs adds this Comment:
Hi Alex - thanks for the GCal/PocketMac/iCal tips. The ability to only sync to a default calendar is a pain. The other issue I’m having is trying to delete old years - I’ve checked all the options on every app and nothing seems to work - any ideas? I also notice that iCal is working extremely slowly and often crashes since I installed Spanning Sync a few weeks back - anyone else have this issue?
November 30th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Charlie Wood adds this Comment:
Chrs,
Several other users have reported iCal crashes. They’re usually due to damaged preference files or a corrupted Sync Services database.
For more info, including steps for fixing these issues, please see this thread in our discussion forum:
http://groups.google[...]ea7dce459941
If that doesn’t clear up the problem please contact us at support@spanningsync.com so we can diagnose and fix the problem.
Thanks,
Charlie
November 30th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Steven Warman adds this Comment:
Google just released a Blackberry App to sync your Google Calendar with your Blackberry.
http://googlemobile.[...]ng-late.html
December 15th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
BBerry Junkie adds this Comment:
Google sync looked like my solution. My enterprise uses NotifyLink which is a complete disaster as a synching product to Groupwise. I synched to Outlook, exported my calendar as a csv file to get all my current entries into Google calendar. Loaded Google sync to my ATT 8800, I was a pig is S _ _ _.
Then… I realized that not all the entries that I was creating were synching. I gave my secretary full editing permission to my calendar (and asked her to keep a record of all changes while I test the syncing.) The initial tests passes. When we moved to “production”, I saw that some appointments that were created on Google calendar never synched to my BBerry, and some from my BBerry would appear on the calendar and then vanish from my BBerry.
Oh well, Sync needs to go back to Google labs. it’s not ripe yet…
February 26th, 2008 at 12:19 pm