gordon.dewis.ca - Random musings from Gordon

Subscribe

Archive for June 16th, 2008

Google Sync for the Blackberry

June 16, 2008 @ 23:42 By: gordon Category: BlackBerry, Gadgets, Reviews

I’ve had a BlackBerry Curve since last November and like many BlackBerry users, I linked it to my Google Mail accounts.  But this didn’t give me a way to sync up my calendar with something online.

In fact, I did explore some third-party options that would let me sync a Google Calendar to an MS Office calendar and then sync the BlackBerry calendar to the MS Office calendar.  But, that was a very cumbersome way to be able to sync my BB calendar with my Google Calendar and required me to connect my BB to my computer at home, with via the USB cable or Bluetooth, not to mention I would have had to buy the thing that connected Google and MS Office.  I could have installed the BlackBerry Desktop Software to help keep to calendars synchronized from afar, but that was fraught with its own issues.

While poking around the various mobile services offered by Google a couple of days ago I came across something called Google Sync.  According to the website, Google Sync allows you to "[s]ynchronize your BlackBerry®’s built in calendar with your online Google Calendar".  Sweet!

Installation was a painless over-the-air download and configuration was fairly painless.  I had some duplicate events caused by the fact that I had the same events in both my Google Calendar and my BB calendar, but that wasn’t caused by Google Sync.  It allows you to sync multiple calendars with your BB and events created in one are synchronized with the other with minimal delay.  You can sync events up to 24 weeks in advance and specify who "wins" on a conflict (server or BB).  Synchronization can take place automatically or manually, and there’s even a counter to help you track the data volume used.

Thanks, Google! 🙂