For quite a while now I’ve been looking for a solution to sync iCal and Google Calender. I’ve even though of giving up on iCal and using Gcal.app (an application) full time. However Plaxo 3 was released the other day and it syncs calendars for free.
Running a few tests, it indeed does sync my iCal and Google Calendar. However, it’s not instant. When I make an update to one calendar, it’s a bit of time before it shows on another. I’m not sure the exact amount of time, but it’s more like once an hour or two. Even by hitting the sync button in the Plaxo menubar icon, the changes don’t seem to take effect on Google Calendar right away.
Now, this is a newer service, so that could change in the future. However, it still works to sync between Google Calendar and iCal (both ways). Plus, you can also add in Outlook and Yahoo calendars if you want.
The other downside I have is I can’t make the online Plaxo calendar work in Firefox. Safari, even though un-supported, works much better. Go figure. I must have an addon conflict as it works fine in Camino and Flock.
Now I’ve tried other Mac calendar syncing applications too. Spanning Sync worked well, but the price tag ($65) was way to much for me. gSync ($20) is another alternative. This wasn’t user friendly to me and I may re-check it out after it goes 1.0.
With Plaxo syncing iCal and Google Calendar for me for free, I feel a bit more organized. I’m hoping that this service continues to improve and the sync times are updated a bit more often. But then again, if I’m editing Google Calendar, I must not be at home. 
If you’ve been looking for a solution on Mac or PC to sync your calendars, do check out Plaxo. It’s free and will sync many different calendars to keep you organized.
Posted Thursday, June 28th, 2007
Categories: Apple, Personal, Review, Software
Tags: free, Google Calendar, gsync, iCal, mac, spanning-sync
Macness has released v1.0.1 of gSync
Thanks sharing this, great find !
A few months ago Scott Hanselman did an interesting podcast about Calendar synchronistion. Get it from here:
http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=75
How did you manage to get Plaxo to sync iCal. Their own website says it doesn’t support anything on Mac other than Contacts via Address Book, at this point. It’s really frustrating me because Plaxo would otherwise be the perfect solution to my current sync woes – I need to sync a SmartPhone, Outlook on Parallels (because of the legal case-management software we use which manages clients and calendars through Outlook), and Address Book & iCal without duplicates or data loss. If you could tell me how you got Plaxo to work with iCal, it would solve all of my issues and I would be forever grateful!
Check this out: http://beta.plaxo.com/ It does work on Mac 10.4 and sync’s Google Calendar.
I can’t seem to find how to get the Google Calendar sync working either – I’m using the Plaxo 3 beta, but there’s no Google option when adding a ’sync point’ – there are options there for Yahoo!, Outlook, AOL, etc but no Google.
Is there some trick to getting the Google Calendar integration working?
Thanks!
Looking at the site today it says “Google Calendar Sync has been temporarily disabled. We are working diligently to resolve the problem. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
the FAQs say it doesn’t support iCal syncing for Mac. i just created a google calendar account so i could sync w/ ical but i can’t figure out the preferences between the Plaxo, Google and Apple calendars. if you don’t mind, what on earth do you do to get the three synced up?! thanks!
Alex, go to Plaxo and log into your account.
Click the calendar tab.
At the bottom you should see an Apple logo. Click that to set everything up. You will have to install Plaxo for Mac though on your machine.
I know it works as I have it setup currently. It goes from iCal to Plaxo’s calendar to Google Calendar.
I just synced on my macbook and Plaxo says “Syncing Address Book and iCal with Plaxo” – Actually works pretty fast.
This is the third time I’m trying to comment, darn anti-spam thing…
Do you still use this service? Your post makes it sound like the solution to all my syncing woes, but it doesn’t seem to be updating my Google calendar.
Their support section says Plaxo can only sync one way with Google.
Beware. Backup your data before using Plaxo. I have experienced data loss in the form of random contacts disappearing using Plaxo 3.
[...] challenge is in getting Google Calendar to sync with iCal. There are a couple of solutions to do this, and I choose to give BusySync and Spanning Sync a try, because these feel most suited [...]
Why not just use GCALDaemon? Works like a charm for me, and it allows you to avoid the morally iffy Plaxo.
anon, that’s great that it works for you. I found GCALDaemon to be a pain to set up and then was never able to get it working anyway.
GCALDaemon seemed a bit complex to setup for me too. Haven’t looked at it recently though.
works great! thanks for the tip, I have been looking for an easy way to do this for some time.
[...] On my laptop, I’m finally looking into synching Apple iCal with Google Calendar. [...]
You can also go direct from iCal to google calendar now using google’s CalDav.
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99358
CalDav works nicely, if you’re using Leopard and iCal 3.
The problem with the updates not being instant, is that google updates the link provided to it only a couple of times every hour. The same problems exist when using google feeds.
You can’t really blame google. They just have a ton of users. I reckon most companies just let you use their server-side webdav to update to google. I would recommend just using the built in webdav to publish to your own private server. Its very simple to set up, and can easily be password protected.
Have you tried BusySync ?
http://www.busymac.com/
It´s good !
Julie
I like BusySync as well.
[...] GCal with iCal has been possible via Plaxo since 2007 at least. More recently, it has been possible on Leopard to sync individual calendars [...]
Calgoo Connect syncs iCal/gCal for free, including multiple calendars. No need to buy spanning sync anymore.
I have been using Calgoo, as it does the job it’s not very fast and a bit and temperamental, I sometimes have to redo a connector as it just stops syncing.