I have been a big fan of using iCal to manage my schedule. What’s even better is that iCal was able to sync with Google Calendar when Google quietly released CalDAV support for Google Calendar. Though Google Calendar still have some bugs, it is nothing major. Now to complete the cycle, having iCal and Google Calendar to sync with my iPhone and I mean over-the-air sync. There is no point having a read-only calendar on your iPhone if you cannot edit or add new events into it directly (the iPhone has only read-only access when you sync a CalDAV calendar in iCal with iPhone).
Initially, I thought that the iPhone would be able to sync over-the-air when Google announced that it supported CalDAV. This is because Apple has been the main guy supporting the CalDAV format so it would make sense to have them support it out of the box. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Currently, the only way to get over-the-air sync with the iPhone is either by subscribing to Apple’s MobileMe or get an Exchange server somewhere.
Anyway, to get iCal, Google Calendar and iPhone to play along, you would need:
- Google Calendar (duh!)
- NuevaSync (sign up here)
- 5 – 10 minutes to set them up
First we need to get Google Calendar to play nice with iCal. To do this, Google has a good set of instructions here. Note that Google currently only supports iCal and SunBird. One of the bug that Google Calendar has is that it is unable to sync reminders/notification from iCal to Google Calendar. To get around this, go to Event Reminders in Google Calendar (Settings –> Calendar –> Notifications –> Event Reminders), I have set a default pop-up reminder before each event. This reminder will be automatically pushed into iCal after you have created an event in iCal. If you prefer not to have any reminders at all, just remove it (if there’s any) in Google Calendar.
Now that Google Calendar is playing nice with iCal, let’s go ahead with setting it up to play nice with iPhone. If you haven’t done so, go ahead and sign up for an account at NeuvaSync. Note that your username must be a combination of alphabets and numbers. Once you have verified your account, log in to NeuvaSync.
On the main page, you will see a list of services that NeuvaSync provides which includes synching Calendar, Contacts, Email and Tasks. We are currently interested only in Calendar.
Next, click on change, select Google and click change. Next, click on “Click to configure your service…“. You will then be asked to enter your google account id. Enter your google email address and click on “Request Account Access”. You will be redirected to Google notifying you that a third party is requesting permission to access your google account. Go ahead and grant access and you’ll be redirected back to NeuvaSync page notifying you that changes has been saved. With that, you have successfully set up NeuvaSync as your “Exchange” account for Google Calendar.
Now that you have successfully done the above, go ahead and follow NeuvaSync’s guide “Need help configuring your phone?” and configure your iPhone. After you have done this, you have finally gotten Google Calendar, iCal and iPhone to play nice with one another.
