Google Calendar

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:

  1. As always – back up everything first.
  2. 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.
  3. Delete the local versions of these calendars in iCal and subscribe to the GCal versions of these calendars (on desktop and laptop).
  4. Create a “BlackBerry” calendar in iCal on the desktop.
  5. 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.