THE DREAM IN ACTION

I’m pretty hard core on Google services, however, I am forced to use Outlook at work, fortunately am able to sync it with my GCal using the brilliant Google Calendar Sync.

When I bought my iPod Touch in preparation for my trip to China I had been hoping to double it as a PDA and was shocked to see that my calendar syncing options on a PC consisted of either syncing with outlook via iTunes, or – wait for it – syncing with outlook via iTunes (you’ve gotta be kidding me). And on a Mac, I’d have to go through iCal which also requires a manual sync, not interested.

On the surface this might seem reasonable, except that:

I’m not going to sync through iTunes on my work laptop because my Mac, at home, holds all my tunes. I did not want any manual sync’ing to have to be done and getting Outlook at home was absolutely not an option. I like the web interface for Gmail and wasn’t interested in trying an option like Thunderbird.

I found the solution to my problems with NuevaSync, which allows direct over-the-air, native synchronisation between Google Calendar and my iPod – which basically means that my appointments are synced both ways without manual intervention or iTunes. You’ll need to sign up here for an account, but it’s free and pretty straight forward to set up – just a matter of configuring your NuevaSync account to look at your GCal, and then configuring your iPod to point at NeuvaSync. The interface is awesomely simple with no frills, just functionality. In addition to  the iPod touch, NuevaSync also supports the various flavours of iPhone and Windows Mobile based PDAs and smartphones.

No I have both my Gcal and my Gcontacts completely sync in real time with no manual effort. Glorious!