The requests have been made. And now I respond, this is how my Google Calendar utopia has emerged.

My search for a ubiquitous solution emerged when I got an iPhone and realized that Google Calendar had next to no support. Mobile Me had its own very cool push calendar, but that means nothing if its tough to use. I hated the fact that I couldn’t respond to invitations from other people, as well at the time I didn’t have a Mac, so without iCal, I was limited to the MobileMe web interface, which to put it plainly is a glorious hunk of crap.

What I really wanted was a good gCal solution. Finally I found one! All hail www.NuevaSync.com. Now there were some bugs, but it is pretty much problem free now. What NuevaSync is, is a proxy program that hooks into Google Calendar and mimics an Exchange Server calendar, which do have excellent support! This gives you true push of gCal, as well NuevaSync also has push Google Contacts. I must say the service has been great.

One of my favorite aspects of NuevaSync is that you do not provide NuevaSync with your Google credentials, rather you give them your accountID (email address), and they try to contact Google, at which point Google asks you to authorize and and provides Nueva with a token. Very cool.

As far as problems, the only issue that I have right now, is that if I move a recurring appointment it seems to end up with 2 copies on my phone. Not terrible. The nicest thing, is that the notification timing from Google is honoured on the phone.

…OH… And it’s free, that might actually be the best part of it!

Strangely enough this is not where the utopia ends. To really pull it all together, Google now supports a cloud style feed to iCal. You can get more details here. Needless to say all of my calendar data is stored in Google, and through various different mechanisms it is available in 2 very conveniant applications. I must say this integration is what I really want it to be.

Now if only I can find a way to get such nice integration with gMail. Sigh.