All about synchronising calendars
I thought I would write a short post about my experiences with synchronising amongst several calendars. I want to manage my work appointments and home life with as little conflict as possible: my work appointments in particular change sometimes daily, and so I need a way to know whether I can accept these changes without stopping personal appointments. Handling a paper diary is therefore out of the question - I can’t be doing with crossing out and re-writing everything, especially given that my work diary is nearly all handled in MS Outlook; MS Outlook is of course used in many work environments.
While I was teaching a few years ago I used to used to sync my diary to a Handspring Visor, and then switched to Windows Smartphones of various flavours. This still works very well for checking my diary when away from my desk (i.e. 8 hours a day). I did also try PocketPC for a while, but gave up there - the ability to enter events more easily on the touchscreen are outweighed by the need to carry two devices, and also to synchronise them. I find that battery life on PocketPCs are unacceptably small - I have to carry a charger - unlike on a Smartphone where I can go 2-3 days without charging.
Anyway, back to synchronising. Other people of course want to know if I’m free or busy, particularly my wife who wants to know for example if I can get away from work on certain days. Because of this, I made a Google Calendar account, and used gSyncit to keep everything synchronised. Great: Outlook and gCal show the same information, and gSyncit is pretty cheap ($9.99 last time I looked).
Recently though I find I am away from my normal computer, but want to enter appointments. Entering appointments on a Smartphone is just about doable, and is the only method when not next to a computer. I also use a Mac laptop at home (I have to use Windows XP at work), so it would be nice to be able to see and enter appointments on everything. Finally, it would be good to log into an online account somewhere and enter appointments, and to be able to keep all my contacts in sync as well.
I looked around for ways to accomplish this feat, and initially looked at SpanningSync: however, I was put off by the price and the fact that it only does syncing of calendars (and not contacts). Then I found the solution: Plaxo. The latest version allows you to sync to multiple services, and handles all your contacts. I have installed the sync programs on my work XP box and my Mac home machine, and it also still syncs to Google Calendar. Perfect! And it’s free as well - presumably because of their strategic partnerships.
Of course, I did have an initial hiccup, basically because I already syncing via another method (gSyncit): this resulted in a circular condition which resulted in duplications and hanging during syncing. The tip to avoiding this is to remove all other relationships, and to set Plaxo as the ‘central’ synchronising point - i.e. set up a synchronisation point from Plaxo to all the other services, rather than having a daisy-chain of dependencies. I have done it this way and it works really well: I can now see all my contacts and diary on my home computer, which has already proved really handy. I hope this experience proves useful to you.
Postscript: of course, you can sync Plaxo to multiple Mac. Also, I can get my calendar and contacts on my iPod - who needs an iPhone?
Testing your network speed
Speedtest.net is a really handy site for measuring the speed of your internet connection.
Some other ones are hosted at:
At work, the network is pretty fast - what you would expect from our site, which has probably the fastest connection pipe in the UK (one of the main SuperJANET5 nodes), although the speed to the office is limited by local routers.
At home, I have paid for an NTL 4MB connection, so it’s gratifying that 4MB is basically what I get:
