Just now when I was creating an event in my Google Calender (GCal) I happened to notice that Google is offering a synchronization service between GCal and MS Outlook.
Aside from this topic itself, I would have to say that Google does have some unique style of “announcing” new features. I don’t know about the situation of technology-savvy people who subscribe to Google’s announcement, but for me I don’t hear rumors, I don’t see official news, I don’t receive email notifications – the advent of a new feature is displayed merely in bold red font in the top toolbar of Google sites, and believe me there is a pretty good chance that it would be overlooked. So it is highly likely to lead to “Hmm, since when did Google begin to have this?” when you are just performing your regular routines with any Google service.
Now back to the new feature GCal offers: 2-way syncing with Microsoft Outlook. Isn’t that great? Previously we were only able to subscribe the GCal’s (assuming multiple calenders serving difference purposes) in Outlook to view them. Event editing had to be done on the server side, but now you can create and edit whichever side you want. On top of that, it is a free service.
That suddenly reminded me that I paid $65 for Spanning Sync for my Mac, which essentially (and only) performs 2-way syncing between GCal and iCal. It is simple but it does its job very well and the customer service has been very responsive. Yet truth to be told, I think $65 is a little bit too expensive for this feature. There is also a subscription option available for $25 a year, but I am just no subscription guy (part of the reason I didn’t buy .mac).
Anyway, since Google released Outlook syncing service. It could indicate that a free iCal syncing service is also in the future plan, which means I might have wasted my bucks.
Not so fast. I downloaded and installed Google Calendar Sync as instructed, but found that only my primary calender in GCal got its way to Outlook. Not surprisingly, I found this when I checked again the Getting Started page:
Keep in mind that it’s not possible to sync events on secondary calendars at this time. Google Calendar Sync will only sync events from your primary Google Calendar and your default Microsoft Outlook calendar.
Hence great new feature for one-calender-for-all users! Good news for multi-calender users because now you know at least Google is working on this 2-way syncing issue. Users who purchased Spanning Sync or BusySync (latest beta added support for 2-way syncing between iCal and GCal, for a cheaper price than Spanning Sync), let’s hope Google does not have support for iCal in the development plan.
Considering that many of Google users are Mac users, I think a version of two way sync for iCal is coming. I think that paying a premium is part of living life in the edge. No pay, no play as simply put. You should cherish the time that you have now. After all $65 is just a drop in the bucket comparing to the development cost of a piece of software.
Here is a hint, for one of your development class, why use this as a term program?