Sometimes you need
a calendar you can
access from anywhere;
sometimes you just
need one on your
desktop. We’ll show
you how to make these
separate applications
play nice.
Before you start your adventures in synchroni-
zation town, you need to have all the necessary
programs and utilities up and running. If you
don’t have a Google account, open one now
( http://www.google.com ). Doing so gains you access
to Google’s stable of awesome apps—Gmail,
Google Docs, Google Talk—but most impor-
tantly, it opens the door to Google’s mighty
online calendar application.
The app itself is pretty straightforward.
You’ll start off with a primary calendar that
you can add all manner of appointments
to. If you want to create secondary calen-
dars for alternate purposes (say you want
separate calendars for your work life and
personal life), just click the Add button on
the left of the screen. Select “Create a new
calendar” and enter the corresponding
information—including whether you want
to share the calendar with your friends, the
world, or nobody.
Now is the time to separate your cal-
endars by function. Perhaps you want only
work-related appointments to appear on
your work laptop, whereas you want your
soccer schedule and Maximum PC Podcast
reminders to appear on your PC at home.
We’ll show you how to do this with a syn-chronization program. Trust us, it’s a lot
harder to divvy up your calendar entries after
you’ve thrown a ton of items into a single
container. After you’ve created your calen-
dars, fi re up your calendar application of
choice (Outlook or Sunbird).F
or years, we’ve had the ability to synchronize email across offline and
online platforms. That’s a no-brainer. But only recently have we stum-
bled across a rock-solid method for synchronizing that other big part of
the typical email program: the calendar.
Yes, we know how easy it is to pull down an iCal or XML feed into a desktop
calendar application. That’s little more than a copy-and-paste job. We’ll still
show you how to do it, but we’re far more interested in the holy grail: a two-
way synchronization between your Outlook or Sunbird client and your Gmail
Calendar. Depending on which program you’re using, this can be as easy as pie
or as fun as a kick to the groin. Our advice? Disentangle yourself from Outlook
and move over to Sunbird.Sync Your Online and Offline Calendars
WHAT YOU NEED
GOOGLE CALENDAR
Free, http://www.google.com/calendar
MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2007
$110, http://www.microsoft.com
AND
SYNCMYCAL PRO
$25, http://www.syncmycal.com
OR
MOZILLA SUNBIRD
Free, http://www.mozilla.com
AND
GCALDAEMON
Free, gcaldaemon.sourceforge.net1 Set up Google Calendar
BY DAVID MURPHYWith Google Calendar, you can import some-
one else’s shared calendar, a public calendar,
or a calendar file on your computer itself.TIME HOURS:MINUTES
00 :30
60 MAXIMUMPC | APR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
how (^2) IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE, ONE STEP AT A TIME