Sync your Mac contacts list and calendar with Google Apps

Syncing your calendar between devices and locations can be a godsend. Anyone who's worked in an office with Microsoft Exchange can appreciate the ease of managing contacts, appointments and emails, but just because you're not ready to spring for an expensive server doesn't mean you can't reap some of the big server benefits, all with the devices you need to use every day. Today, we take a look at syncing data between multiple machines with Google Calendar.

Calgoo

First is a little free software gem I found called Calgoo. While it might seem sort of frustrating to sign up for a link to download (Calgoo creators: Download first, sign up second!) the software is worth the perceived hassle. The freeware is a veritable swiss army knife of calendar and contact syncing, allowing iCal users to sync their Google Calendar accounts with just an extremely simple wizard. In addition, the software allows limited syncing with Facebook to transfer events automatically to your calendar, but the real gem comes in the cross platform compatibility: the application is available, fully featured, for Windows, MacOS and Linux.

The program's main setup takes place using wizards. On install, users are prompted with a simplistic wizard that sets up a Calgoo account, along with basic settings. To link up an iCal / Outlook and Gcal account (along with the bundled Calgoo account) just click "add new calendar" and a very simplistic wizard lets you link the two fairly simply. One word of caution though: Any alarms you've set to remind you won't make the trip between Google Calendar and iCal or Outlook.

In addition to syncing GCal and iCal / Outlook, the application itself is a fully featured calendar and contact management solution. While the application is a fully featured calendaring and contact management application in itself, the app is written on its own implementation of Java and as such the codebase and interface is largely similar from Windows to Mac to even Linux.

On the downside, that cross platform compatibility comes at the expense of some prototypical Java-esque bloat. Java apps are great for single use applications, and since the program isn't transferring large amounts of data to bog it down *cough, AZUREUS, cough,* we're willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but we're cautious to recommend leaving this application open all day. I installed it on an alternate user on my Mac, and when I switched back to that user, the performance was a tad sluggish, though not enough to warrant legit concern just yet. Calgoo does warn against the bloat so it's worth keeping an eye on how much of your system resources it occupies. If you're experiencing slowdown, please leave your feedback in the comments.

SpanningSync

SpanningSync is an application, strictly for Mac, that tightly integrates into a preference pane. While Calgoo runs on Java, suffering from side effects of bloat, SpanningSync runs in the background with little noticeable side effects (tested on my MacBook for a few years). While much of the features are similar including linking Google Calendar to iCal, the minimalist approach is the polar opposite of Calgoo. Rather than be its own calendaring application, SpanningSync sits in the background, refreshing calendars on a specified interval.

SpanningSync's major differentiators are both positive and negative. A cut down on system bloat is always nice, but the real killer app is automated syncing of contacts to Gmail as well as calendaring. However, with a steep $25 / year price tag (or $65 outright,) had I not purchased the software years ago, I'd have a tough time buying it to save system resources when the additional RAM needed to run Calgoo would likely cost about the same, and give me more benefits, though without the contact syncing.

Winner: Calgoo

If you can get around the Java bloat, Calgoo is a really great cross platform solution for syncing calendars. Once you've synced your iCal or Outlook calendars to Google Calendar, it's increasingly simple to get those calendars on every machine, and beyond that there are apps for even getting Google calendars on your mobile devices.

Got an app suggestion or method of Mac calendar syncing we missed? Make sure to leave it in the comments.

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