I was getting frustrated over the weekend because I couldn’t sync my phone calendar with Google Calendar and iCal. I didn’t know how important my calendar was until it stopped working. I’ve been doing this synchronization thanks to a free Goosync account reminding me with due dates or appointments. Lately I’ve been getting login failure. If you are also a free Goosync user, don’t worry it will be back up soon.

Goosync announced on their forums,

Please accept our sincere apologies for the recent disruption in the GooSync service.

We have recently experienced accelerated and unforeseen growth, this has inevitably brought with it some “growing pains”. The results of this mean we are currently reaching the capacity of our current hardware configuration long before expected. The recent disruptions to the GooSync service have all been linked with these hardware issues. Read more.

In regards to the free users not being able to log in, they explained,

Due to server performance issues we have decided to limit the service to just paid users overnight. We aim to restore our free & paid service asap. Thanks for your understanding.

UPDATE:
Thanks for the patience you’ve all shown whilst we’ve been busy working on updating our servers. We’ve made some changes today to improve performance for paid users, we will continue to work throughout the weekend and fully expect to have a full (free and paid) service running on Monday.

While I’m happy for Goosync for “growing,” I’m a little irritated that I wasted time checking my phone settings and checking my login password at their website because the error told me I had wrong login information. I did not know about the whole issue until I searched their Support forums after 2 days of confusion. An email would have been nice. An accurate application error message would have been nicer.

What About You?

Do you synchronize your calendar? Are you a happy Goosync user or use something else?

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I found something really useful other Mac users might love. I have been able to sync my iCal, Google calendar, and phone’s calendar using CalDav and GooSync. Read on to find out how.

As an introduction, this solution is all possible thanks to CalDAV support in Google Calendar and Goosync support on S60 phones.

CalDAV

With CalDAV support in Google Calendar, you’ll be able to view and edit your Google Calendar events directly in Apple’s iCal. Any changes you make in iCal will automatically appear in Google Calendar the next time you sign in (and vice versa). If you use iCal while offline, changes you make will be saved and updated in Google Calendar when you get back online.

Setup iCal. First you’ll need to enable Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal. Google wrote a detailed how-to so I don’t need to write it here.

GooSync

Goosync synchronizes the phone’s calendar with Google Calendar without the need of installing an application. I can enter plans on my Nokia N95 8GB’s built in calendar application and then sync it to Google Calendar. I signed up for the free account since all I need is to sync my calendar. You can opt to get the premium type for more features if you wish.

Setup GooSync. Before you can synchronise your Google Calendar and Contacts you must first ensure your GooSync account is correctly authenticated with your Google account. Follow the directions to authenticate which only takes about 3 mouse clicks.

Finished

That’s it you are done. The end result is iCal, Google Calendar and the phone calendar being synced together. You can now edit your calendar on your phone, Mac, or any computer connected to the internet.

The only problem is it requires manual sync on the phone. You need to initiate the sync. I haven’t found anything right now that allows us to automatically sync our phone with Google calendar.

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