So I finally figured out the simplest way to get Google Calendar info locally on the Tablet… It’s relatively simple given the amount of effort I thought was required. You do not need to use a third party system like ScheduleWorld or GooSync (which does not work), you simply subscribe to your Calendar’s private (or public) iCal feed. You can easily view your Google Calendar online, but I’ve had trouble getting events to add. My guess is that the Ajax is a tad tricky for the Opera browser to really manage — not too unlike my experience with Google Reader actually.
You’ll need to actually install a calendar on your Nokia since there isn’t one thee by default and for the time being I would recommend GPE-Calendar, which is a nice work in progress. I’m not going to get into how you need to add repositories in order to install software here as that will make this more complex than need be. If you don’t know what that means, your probably reading the wrong post. If you have GPE-Calendar installed already, you are all set.
It’s probably best to start in Google Calendar in order to get the details we need to make things work back on the tablet… In Google Calendar, click on Settings, then Calendars and the name of the calendar you want to use. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find the ical and rss options for your calendar. I am using the private ical link in GPE-Calendar and as you would expect you’ll need to also use your Google Calendar login credentials in order to view things on your device. I emailed the .ics URL to myself so I could have it locally on my tablet as the address is pretty long. From within email on your Nokia, you can simply copy it to your clipboard as you’ll need it in a minute or two…
Back in GPE_Calendar — From the menu, choose Tools, then Calendars. When the window opens, you want to tap the paper icon, which will create a new calendar or you can edit the default calendar if you prefer. Regardless, you need modify the settings… Under Type, you’ll need to switch things from Local to Subscribe and paste or enter the ical URL we noted from Google. After you enter your Google Credentials in the boxes below, and adjust the sync frequency, you are done. Click save, and you’ll be back at the Calendar list. You can tap the down arrow icon which should now be in the line next to your calendar’s name. This will manually begin the process… be patient, as it may take a few min and GPE may appear to hang.
There are three bummers here aside from actually having to install a calendar on what seems like it would be a natural PDA already. If you can live with these for now while things evolve, you’ll be all set:
- First, you can only subscribe. Changes made on the tablet are not sent back as a limitation of GPE Calendar. This means that you will receive whatever is on Google regardless of what you may have done locally… Hopefully this will be enabled as a two way option at some point in the near future as there is quite a bit of enthusiasm around the Nokia Tablet right now.
- I’ve also discovered that alarms you’ve set for events do not travel… I’m less concerned about this for now since I get alerts on my phone via SMS as well as on my desktop from Google’s Notifier, but it seems like something that should really just work.
- The last thing is a bit odd. When you sync, the CPU spikes and basically stalls things. I don’t know why downloading info like a calendar would do this but it does. Again, something that will hopefully be worked in the near future.
Technorati Tags: GooSync, GPE-Calendar, N-Series, N770, N800, Nokia, Opera, Schedule World, SyncML
