For those of you who have tried using MobileMe in a workplace setting, you may be as frustrated as I have been with the lack of groupware features. MobileMe does offer wireless syncing but does not give us very robust shared calendaring features. We could use Exchange, but since we are an all-Mac shop at SpinWeb, using an Exchange server for our email, calendaring, and contacts seems, well, dirty. Since we are using Google Apps for our email, it would be nice to utilize the rest of Google’s applications for groupware but it seemed that it was not possible.
This weekend, however, I discovered some new information that changed everything. The first major event was Google’s new feature of allowing two-way syncing of iCal to Google Calendars with CalDAV. Awesome! Now I can sync up iCal with my Google Calendar. Next, I discovered a great service called NuevaSync, which allows you to sync your iPhone calendar with your Google calendar. It also lets you sync your iPhone contacts with your Google contacts. And since the Apple Address Book already lets you sync your contacts with Google, we now have a total solution for mail (IMAP), contacts, and calendaring - all using Google Apps as the “cloud”.
This is great news, since MobileMe is somewhat broken and costs $99/year anyway. By using Google Apps, we now have a free solution that offers better functionality. I tested it out and it works great. I placed events on my iCal and they immediately showed up on my iPhone. Same with contacts. Who needs Exchange! 
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Um, Mike, I hate to break it to ya, but NuevaSync uses Exchange. So unfortunately you’re still a little bit “dirty”
Glad to hear you got it working though, I tried it a while back and could never get it to work right. The service was very new at the time and didn’t have any type of error message; it just silently failed to work. I’ll probably give it a try again though.
Are you using a Gmail account, or Google Apps?
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Whoops, sorry, guess you already answered my question. Google Apps rawks… my email server crashed a while back during a brownout; I decided to move to Apps and haven’t looked back since!
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Yeah… I know it uses Exchange but I just try not to think about it
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Well, the important thing is that you’re not paying for it! (Although I have the sneaking suspicion they will start charging for this service at some point, but hopefully early adopters get a discount!)
I’m glad you posted this though… when I first tried it, they made you enter your Google password and it just didn’t work. I see that they now use the Google API to add access the “right” way, and it’s working beautifully for me now!
Now, if only Windows Mobile supported multiple calendars
August 4th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Been using Nuevasync to Sync Google Calendar with my iPhone calendar for about 3 days, with no problems so far. Setting it up required above average technical skills, however, and the set up process needs a serious usability overhaul.
I wonder how much battery juice Nuevasync is using, though, because there doesn’t seem to be a way to control how often it forces the iPhone to call in for Calendar updates. Anyone have any idea?