Synchronize your two lives

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Many of us use electronic calendars of all sorts, in the not entirely futile attempt to manage our commitments and agendas less inefficiently. Palm Pilots, BlackBerries, MS-Outlook, Mobiles, PDAs of a variety of kinds... they are all supposed to give us a hand in this era of externalised memories.

Google Calendar, of course, is becoming a major tool. But, until recently, there was a problem. Your life online (Google Calendar) was not in synchrony with your life offline. Nothing worst than having to keep two diaries. "Don't forget to update the other diary" sent as a reminder at the beginning of each day? No thank you, or so the people of the internet complained, just google "Google Calendar Synchronization".

The good news? Well, complaining on the web does have some consequences. For where there is demand, there can be offer, at a little premium or even free.

The following two programs have recently appeared to make sure that your life offline (the electronic diary in your desktop or PDA or mobile etc.) and your life online (Google Calendar) may waltz together, seamlessly synchronized. But do not rejoice too soon: I've tried both with MS-Outlook 2002 Diary (you need at least Outlook 2003) and with Palm Desktop, and both failed to deliver. So hold your breath a little longer, we are almost there, or try them yourself, you might be luckier. In any case, the problem has been identified and solutions have started to be offered.

Remote Calendars (free): "RemoteCalendars is a COM-.NET Add-in for Outlook 2003/2007, written in C#. After installing this plugin, every Outlook user should be able to subscribe, reload and delete a generic remote iCalendar (RFC 2445) from Outlook 2003/2007."

CompanionLink for Google Calendar ("for a handful of dollars"): "a two-way synchronization solution for people that [sic] want to extend their Google Calendar onto their desktop calendar systems or mobile devices. It can synchronize Google Calendar with all the latest Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, Palm, and BlackBerry devices in addition to Outlook, Lotus Notes, Palm Desktop, and Groupwise applications. "

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