I’m in the second month of to trying to use an iPod Touch as a PDA, and have solved a few of the initial convergence and compatibility hurdles that I encountered. I suspect I wont be the only one who wanted to interface certain popular services with my iPod Touch/iPhone interface so I thought I would lay out the problems and how I’ve tried to solve them.
Mail – Fortunately the mail software on the iPhone software has an easy set up option for all Gmail users which syncs very well and as advertised incorporates push email. The best thing about push is right there in its name,
instead of engaging in the laborious process of having the software check the server to make sure no new email has arrived the server ‘PUSHes’ the email to the device ensuring you get your email as instantaneously as it is sent, that’s the theory anyway, and so far its lived up to its name.
Calendar – In many ways this was my biggest headache, I use the mighty Google Calendar, this isn’t the time to tell you why it is so brilliant, but be assured if you use a calendar/diary etc, then Google Calendar is a breeze and has some great functions.
Here we encounter somewhat of a problem, especially for the iPod Touch. The iPhone software has the apple in-house calendar app, iCal. To be fair, its not a bad piece of software, but as you have to pay a monthly fee for Apple’s mobileme service which gives you some resemblance of an online Calendar interface I was not about to give up the excellent, and more importantly free current set up with Google.
To be fair to Google they have done there bit for the iPhone user, most of their most popular apps, including Google Calendar have iPhone specific, and very well rendered internet conversions for the iPhone but its still not ideal for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I dont want to have to load up a webpage to input new calendar details if there is a software app on the device which will load much faster.
Secondly, with an iPod Touch there is no constant data communication (as in the GPRS enabled iPhone) just wifi so if I wanted to take down details of an appointment I would have to make a note of it and then when I was back in a wifi area, login to google calendar and input the appointment again. Not exactly an example of efficient working.
Most of the options that were offered on blogs that came up with Google searches said the way to do it was to use an external URL for your Google Calendar, which Google offers in their options menu, and plug those details into iCal on your mac, then sync your iPod (with the cable) to your mac. The problem with that solution is that it is only a one way sync, therefore not really a sync at all, no appointments added on the iPod Touch or iCal on the mac would be sync’d to Google Calendar. On top of that you need to fiddle about with cables and syncing your iPod a few times a week.
The solution came though, in the form of nuevasync. Essentially Nuevasync offers the equivalent of a Microsoft Exchange Server and pretty seamless integration with Google Calendars and Contacts (within Gmail). Changes going in both directions from iPhone -> Google Calendar/Gmail sync within seconds of each other.
For tips on how to set up NuevaSync go here, I had a little trouble getting it to work, but deleted all my NuevaSync account and the set up on the iPhone/iPod Touch and tried again and it worked seamlessly and has continue to.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Donovan // Jan 22, 2009 at 8:30 am
It is my desire to get an iTouch or iPhone at some point in the future… probably an iTouch due to the running costs of an iPhone. Regardless, I found your findings on this extremely helpful and will be saving this blog to refer to when I finally take the plunge!
2 Liam // Jan 22, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Good to know, thanks for commenting Donovan, they are certainly a lot of fun.
3 Donovan // Jan 24, 2009 at 12:05 pm
I did some reading on this. Essentially what I want to do is be able to manage my mail, calendar, contacts and task list from my macbookpro using ICal, AddressBook, Mail, etc. and have it sync with Google Apps. Then what I want to be able to do is to be able to do the same through an iTouch or iPhone and have it sync. Ideally I would like to be able to do this without having to call up a web browser because sometimes I am in places that I have to work offline. I also want to be able to use the collaborative features of Google apps with my assistant, wife, etc.
It seems at least from the macbook side, I can do most of this, but it is a bit unclear how to handle syncronisation of tasks (to do list). It seems even less clear to me how to handle tasks from the iPhone.
With what you have set up above, are you handling your to do list with Neuvasync? If so, is it working ok? Do you know of a good way to sync the same with a Macbook…
The end goal is that I would like to be able to manipulate my google stuff from either my mac or iTouch through syncronisation, while always having the option of going to the web interface if need be. So any suggestions you could give would be greatly appreciated!
4 Free Microsoft Exchange Services | A Few Thoughts // Jan 25, 2009 at 4:24 pm
[...] Google to update your calendar and contacts through a mobile device such as an iTouch or iPhone. Lyam Brynes has an excellent tutorial on how to do this. The end result is that your information is up to date [...]
5 Liam Byrnes // Jan 26, 2009 at 10:26 am
Hi Donovan, Thanks for commenting again, and for your link. I don’t tend to use a centralised to-do list but I know that it is not an inbuilt feature of the iPhone/iTouch software and that Ive had to download an (albeit free) to-do app from the appstore when Ive had project to do list I wanted to keep track of.
I hear there are a few third party to-do services that are worth a look, remember the milk which lifehacker have a few integration methods on here: http://lifehacker.com/search/remember%20the%20milk/
another of my friends uses jott and swears by it:
http://jott.com/
6 Gmail Tricks you might find useful | Byrnesys Blabberings // Mar 2, 2009 at 8:16 am
[...] pain of trying to keep an up to date address book over all platforms (mobile, email, and offline), I’ve mentioned before how I use NuevaSync to do this for me, and Google have predictably come up with their own solution, but one thing syncing tends to do is [...]