Introducing gCal

One thing I really like about Google is that they are making their services very open for now. Of course I’m sure there will be a financial full moon where Google will change into money sucking leaches like Micorsoft. But for now, they make even Yahoo look evil.

The fact that I can use Gmail to check email for my own domain, and download it through Pop3 is great. Now they added their own calendar feature that actually syncs with iCal. I have not been very happy with Google’s lack of support for Mac (still no Google Talk for Mac, but we already have iChat), but this is great move.

One issue we have had with USWeb is the idea of sharing calendars without using Exchange. I hate Exchange, but we do use the shared calendar and tasking features. It would be nice if this was turned into a simple syncing service. But for the record, as a stand alone Web calendar service, I still prefer 30 Boxes.

Below are instructions on how to sync Google Calendar with iCal. I got this from TUAW.

HOWTO: Subscribe to a Google Calendar using iCal: “

Filed under: Software, How-tos, Internet Tools

So Google
has released a web calendar that supports the iCal format.
Big deal, right? I use iCal, so what do I care? Well, you can use iCal to subscribe to any share Google Calendar, and it
works like a charm, though keep in mind that Google Calendar doesn’t support Safari (I used Camino to make this how
to).

In order to subscribe to your own Google Calendar, first log into gCalendar (as I like to call it).
You’ll notice the Manage calendars link on the left hand side of your calendar (highlighted in the picture to the
right).

Go ahead and click on that, and continue reading this tutorial, after the jump.

After you click on ‘Manage calendar’ you should be in the Calendars tab of the Calendar Settings screen.’ Click on
the ‘Sharing’ setting as highlighted below:

This whisks you to ‘Share this calendar’ where you can
pick to publicly share a calendar (as we have done below) or share it with only certain people. I have decided to share
all my information with the world because everyone is always hounding me for appointments (Steve, I’ll pencil in lunch
with you next time I am in Cupertino, I promise!).

Now just click on the Calendar Details tab, and you’ll
see a whole bunch of info about the calendar you are currently in. The part we care about is the ‘Calendar Address,’
which is the web address that iCal needs to subscribe to your calendar. Simply click on the green ‘ICAL’ button shown
below.

Clicking on the ICAL button will result in this pop up (remember this doesn’t work yet in Safari);

That’s
the address we need for our iCal calendar. Copy it, and create a new calendar in iCal. Command click on the newly
created calendar and pick ‘Subscribe’ like so:

Paste the web address you got from clicking on the
green ICAL button into the ‘Subscribe to’ field:

Give it a name (I’m so clever with my names):

Click
‘OK’, and there you have it! Events you add to your Google Calendar will now show up on this iCal calendar (though you
can’t actually add events using iCal, which is kind of a bummer).

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(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)