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Google Calendar From The Desktop
By Brick | February 10, 2008
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Before the weekend I discussed how I have deeply synchronized my desktop email client with Gmail. I did this because Gmail acts as my central mailbox for all of my email accounts, of which I have many. It should probably come as no surprise that my love affair with Google does not end with email. I am also a huge fan of Google Calendar, which I use extensively for three purposes:
- Scheduling and setting reminders for my appointments.
- Sharing my calendar with others.
- Keeping track of all the things I do when I feel the need to “audit” how I am spending my time.
- There are all kinds of useful features available with Google Calendar, such as integration with Gmail, Managing invitations and reminders, supporting multiple calendars (e.g. one calendar for work, another for home), sharing calendars, etc. These benefits have been described elsewhere. Instead I wanted to discuss how I have synchronized my Google Calendar with my desktop calendar.
For my desktop calendar I use Lightning, which is a Thunderbird add-on. The Lightning extension basically integrates Sunbird, Mozilla’s calendar application, into Thunderbird which is my desktop email client. To synch my Google calendars with Lightning, I use another Thunderbird add-on: Provider. The Provider extension allows Thunderbird/Lightning to read and write events in your Google calendars. A great tutorial on how to set this up can be found here. GCALDaemon can also be used to synch desktop calendars with your Google calendars. Besides Thunderbird/Sunbird, it also supports synching with other email clients such as Evolution and Apple’s iCal. I just find the Provider add-on easier to install and use.
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Topics: Google Calendar, Organization, Time Management |
