That Syncing Feeling

Ok, so I know what happened. I must say from the outset that it had nothing to to with my mac! It boiled down to how the two programs I used and my n73 handle shared calendars.

First I tried a program called Spanning Sync. This is a little application for the mac that sits in the system preferences and places its little icon in the menu bar up top. Once I entered my Google account details it was able to pull my calendar entries down and place them in iCal. Thus my iCal and Google Calendar were beautifully syncronised! It even allowed me to download details of a shared calendar - placing it in iCal in a different colour.

So at this point my mac and my google were getting along just great but my N73 was a bit left out. Using iSync I was able to update my phone with my iCal detail. This, as per usual, was such a simple process. It transferred details of all my calendars to my phone BUT - and this is where is started to go wrong - it didn't separate the calendars. So whether the calendar event was Dermo's or mine they sat on my phone just the same. I almost started picking praise songs for church on Sunday because my phone said that is what I should be doing tonight!

Dermo had recommended Goosync. This works differently to Spanning Sync as it does not involve my mac. It works by allowing my phone to sync with my Google calendar using my mobile web connection. The benefit of this is that I can update my Google Calendar on the go. This seemed like a cool thing to be able to do so once I was signed up etc I tried it. Big mistake. Bear in mind I had managed to merge two calendars into one on my phone. This meant that when my N73 set about updating Google it placed all my events and Dermo's events (it couldn't tell the difference) to my own Google Calendar giving me the irritating double entries!

The good news is that Goosync can only update a limited amount at a time so the damage shouldn't take too long to fix. My trouble now is figuring out which of these systems to use. Neither of them do exactly what I want which is one package that syncronises Google Calendar, iCal and my N73 in one go. There must be a way to do this through iSync? Similar to the way it would link up with .mac? I don't know enough about it but hopefully someone out there will.

For now I'm going to continue to play around with these two packages both of which are pretty good in their own way. My first step would be to limit my phone access to my calendar only as the issue started with the way it handled multiple calendars. I'll keep you all updated if I work out anything else.