Google Calendar Now Supports CalDAV, Syncs Natively With iCal (But Not iPhone)
One of my personal sticking points for keeping my online life totally synced is now one step closer to being easier—Google Calendar now supports CalDAV and can sync natively with OS X’s iCal without a third-party add-on. But there’s a huge hitch—as of now, I see no way to sync events created on my iPhone back into a Google Calendar, as you can’t create an event in a CalDAV calendar directly on the iPhone. Damn, almost there—looks like I can’t throw out BusySync just yet. But if you’ve found away around this limitation, please share in the comments. So close! [Lifehacker]
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CalDAV support comes to Google Calendar
I’m a pretty big user of Google Calendar, because I like how I can automatically sync it with my BlackBerry. The problem for me has been that on my desktop, I really prefer iCal’s interface. Syncing the two can be cumbersome. We’ve written about third-party programs that can sync iCal and gCal together in the past, and although those are great — I have still wanted a native way to sync the two calendars together.
Well, fortunately, Google has just quietly introduced CalDAV support to Google Calendar. CalDAV is the protocol that iCal uses to transmit data over the web. Although some other mail and calendar programs support CalDAV, right now Google Calendar is only compatible with iCal. Finally, iCal and Google Calendar can sync without having to use third party programs!
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Mac 101: Back up Address Book, iCal, iPhone before MobileMe
Being the paranoid person that I am, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to back up Address Book and iCal before all of the syncing madness begins between Macs, MobileMe, “the cloud”, and iPhone/iPod touch. Here’s how to do it (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard only):
Backing up Address Book
- Launch Address Book
- Select File > Export > Address Book Archive
- Find a location to save the Address Book archive, then click the Save button.
Backing up iCal
- Launch iCal
- Select File > Backup iCal
- Find a location to save the iCal backup, then click the Save button.
Backing up iPhone / iPod touch
- Just sync it
Ahhh, don’t you feel all safe and happy now? And remember, if you’re running Leopard and Time Machine, your backups are going to be backed up, too!
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Widget Watch: Get Organized for free
Those wizards of widgets at iSlayer have come up with yet another really useful tool for the Dashboard. Organized is a free widget with an event calendar, world clock, notes, and to-dos, all of which are synced to iCal and Mail.
As with other iSlayer widgets like iStat menus/nano/pro, it is obvious that a lot of thought went into the design of the user interface for Organized. It packs a lot of data into a very small widget and even has a feature I immediately turned on — the ability to shut off Marker Felt as the default font for Notes.
If you download, install, and use Organized, consider sending these guys a donation so they’ll continue to develop great stuff for us.
[islayer]
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.Mac and Me rumors: Inside look at Apple’s next-gen service
What’s next for .Mac, Apple’s much-maligned online service offering for OS X users? TUAW has learned that .Mac will no longer be sold by Apple after WWDC, as new users will migrate to the new MobileMe service (not too shocking, given the swirling rumors as of late). Existing users will have their @mac.com e-mail addresses forwarded to their @me.com address in perpetuity, which should provide some relief for nervous .Mac users who depend on that email.
MobileMe is slated to include a host of new features, which we alluded to early in May; in addition, there will be new web interfaces for all aspects of MobileMe — calendars will look just like iCal, Contacts will look just like they do in Address Book, etc. This is similar to the way .Mac Webmail works today, though we’ve heard that the new interfaces will be much snazzier (yes, that’s a technical term). Apple should also be updating the .Mac dependent applications (iChat, iWeb, iPhoto etc.) to work with the new service. The new service will be backwards compatible with .Mac protocols for the time being — so developers will not have to rush out updates as soon as they hear the official word.
MobileMe is scheduled to be available sometime in late June/early July. We have also heard reports that the latest build of the iPhone beta firmware (2.0) has already undergone revisions to handle the new MobileMe service. Some of the features of the service on iPhone will include: over-the-air syncing of contacts, calendars, and photos. Interestingly, there is also a Windows version of MobileMe planned.
Though we’re confident in the source of this information, this is still a rumor until Apple reveals all. We should hear more information about MobileMe at the World Wide Developer’s Conference starting on Monday (June 9th).
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