Spanning Sync
Synchronizational Harmony
10 June 2007 Justin Williams Skip to comments
12 Comments
(
Open)
Justin Williams reviews Spanning Sync, a utility that allows you to keep your iCal and Google Calendar data synchronized.
As a .Mac user, I am not a fan of the service's online calendaring solution. Using iCal and a .Mac account, you can publish a calendar to a .Mac server and view it online. The problem I have with this solution is that it is one-way. While I can publish and view the calendar online, there's no way to modify the data online. Instead, I have to open one of my Macs and use iCal to edit it. Another reason I'm not a fan of the .Mac online calendar is that I have to remember so many addresses to view my calendar. Each separate calendar you synchronize to .Mac is uploaded to it's own unique Web address rather than having all of your calendars appear on a global calendar. One way around this is to publish a group of calendars, but even then, all of the calendars appear online with a single color.
A little over a year ago, Google released it's own calendaring solution, cleverly dubbed Google Calendar. Google Calendar allows you to keep your calendar information online rather than in a desktop application like iCal or Entourage. You can view your Google Calendar data in iCal by subscribing to your calendar from iCal, but you can't make any changes to your Google Calendar data from within iCal.
As you can decipher, there doesn't seem to be a decent two-way calendaring solution that allows a user to manage their calendar online, but also keep that data online as well as editable remotely. This is important to me, and I suspect many other road warriors. As an avid Gmail user (MacZealots manages all of it's email using Google Apps), I wanted to use a solution that would allow me to keep my calendaring data inside Google Calendar so that I can easily deal with meeting invitations that are sent via Google, but I don't want to lose the convenience of working with a desktop application like iCal.
Enter Spanning Sync. Spanning Sync allows for two-way synchronization between Google Calendar and iCal by integrating with Google's Data (GData) developer API. Using the GData API, developers can write applications that integrate with the suite of online Google applications such as Blogger, Google Spreadsheets and, of course, Google Calendar.
Installing Spanning Sync is seamless as you would expect from any Mac application. Running the Spanning Sync installer, installs a standard Mac OS X preference pane in open /Library/PreferencePanes/, the standard location for third-party panes. Once you've completed the installation process, Spanning Sync launches System Preferences so that you can begin setting up your synchronization.
As you can see, Spanning Sync's interface is drop-dead simple. The first thing you need to do is provide your Gmail login and password. Spanning Sync supports both standard Gmail and Google Apps For Your Domain, which is a major feather in their cap. While there's millions of Gmail users, more and more small businesses are adopting the Google suite of applications to manage their business.
Synchronization
After you authenticate your account with Google, you'll be given the option of setting how often you will synchronize the data between Google and iCal. Spanning Sync lets you as often as every ten minutes all the way up to weekly. If you'd rather manually synchronize your calendars, you have that option as well.
Spanning Sync gives you the option of synchronizing only the calendars you. After you place a checkmark next to the iCal calendar you want to synchronize, you can determine which Google Calendar you want to synchronize it against. Like iCal, Google's calendaring application let's you setup different calendars for the different aspects of your life. Synchronizing an iCal calendar to a Google Calendar is a one-to-one prospect meaning that you can't synchronize two different calendars in iCal, Work and Personal, for example to a single Google Calendar.
The initial synchronization process can take anywhere from three minutes up to ten minutes depending on the amount of data you have on both your Google and iCal calendars. Since the process runs seamlessly in the background, the Spanning Sync experience should be seamless after the initial setup. Spanning Sync launches a daemon that runs in the background (located in /Application Support/Spanning Sync) that handles everything for you. The daemon uses minimal memory, so you shouldn't even notice that it's there.
Besides just the time and event name, Spanning Sync is able to synchronize the location and notes you may have stored in iCal as well. Google Calendar and Spanning Sync don't seem to support synchronization of iCal reminders, but you can create a set of default reminders for a calendar in Google Calendar and have that data inherited in iCal. For example, I setup a Google Calendar called "Super Important" that I store my most important events. I set this calendar to send an SMS notification to my cell phone 30 minutes before each event on this calendar. If I add an event to this calendar inside iCal, when it syncs back to Google, it will automatically add that SMS notification requirement. Very slick.
Spanning Sync doesn't support comments added to an event via Google Calendar, nor does it support any sort of attendance information being sent back and forth between Google Calendar and iCal. This is a feature I'd love to see as a former Microsoft Exchange user, but for a small group or a single user, it might not be an issue.
Conclusion
Spanning Sync seems to be the holy grail for calendar junkies and those wanting a more dynamic experience than what .Mac's online calendaring service offers. In future releases, I'd like to see support for managing attendees. Until Apple decides to overhaul the .Mac service and make it as usable as the offerings from Google, I can't recommend Spanning Sync enough.
You can purchase Spanning Sync for either $25 for a one-year subscription to the service or purchase a permanent license for a one-time fee of $65. Both licenses give you updates to the Spanning Sync application for the duration of your license.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (12)
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed below are those of their authors and not necessarily endorsed or supported by MacZealots.com. In all cases, the comments provided here are offered as a courtesy and will be moderated. Any content deemed off-topic or offensive will be removed without notice. Posting a comment here boils down to two things: 1.) Think before you type 2.) Respect the thoughts of others. See our commenting guidelines and/or privacy policy for more information.
#1) On November 4, 2007 7:39 PM
I have tried Spanning Sync’s demo last month. Google Calendar had developed an issue where changing an appointment in iCal caused the Google Calendar appointment to add new invites to the appointment, but didn’t change the appointment. I stopped using the service but have read that Google has now addressed the issue. I went back to try the demo again and I am locked out- demo expired. Then, I went to the Spanning Sync website and found their Google-hosted forum where there are hundreds of user-posted issues. From the nature of these issues, the potential customer should be warned to the problems they may encounter when using this software. My opinion from my own experience and from reading the experiences of paying and demo users is that this software should be distributed as a perpetual BETA until it has been proven to work for more than a handful of people. It is software written for beta software. Maybe it’s the only solution out there and maybe people are willing to pay for it, but it should be clearly stated that it will break due to breaks in Google APIs and I just don’t see how people should pay for this. Syncing is such a sensitive procedure to have anything but 100% guarantees that my 100’s of appointments are correctly handled. I don’t have time to verify that 1 or 2 are being dropped or translated.
#2) On November 4, 2007 7:40 PM
Google’s API issue:
http://code.google.com/p/gdata-issues/issues/detail?id=103
#3) On September 5, 2008 7:03 PM
The latest version of Spanning Sync has fixed many of the synchronization issues, and the Spanning Sync Beta 2.0 now offers contact synchronization, and will be going public soon. Read more at my site: http://www.sync-my-calendar.com/spanning-sync.html
#4) On September 5, 2008 7:04 PM
The latest version of Spanning Sync has fixed many of the synchronization issues, and the Spanning Sync Beta 2.0 now offers contact synchronization, and will be going public soon. Read more at my site: http://www.sync-my-calendar.com/spanning-sync.html
#5) On September 5, 2008 7:05 PM
The latest version of Spanning Sync has fixed many of the synchronization issues, and the Spanning Sync Beta 2.0 now offers contact synchronization, and will be going public soon. Read more at my site: http://www.sync-my-calendar.com/spanning-sync.html
#6) On September 5, 2008 7:09 PM
Sorry guys, seems like your server was having issues (Internal Server Error) when I tried to post my comment, resulting in the multiple posts.
#7) On September 20, 2008 2:33 PM
v2.0 absolutely terrific!
syncs contacts, even with photos! I love it.
You can also get a $5 discount with this code; FNFMBV
#8) On December 16, 2008 10:37 PM
Don’t even bother installing this piece of junk. It doesn’t work, and there is no way to easily uninstall. A big time waster! I hate software like this!
#9) On April 19, 2009 3:00 PM
Spanning Sync is not a piece of junk, as the above guy says. Spanning Sync offers seamless two-way sync of both calendar and contacts between Google and Apple products. This way I can use Apple’s beautiful apps on my Macbook and still access my information online from my desk at work. That is very convenient.
Furthermore, Spanning Sync is relatively cheap. $25 a year is a fair price. But it gets even better if you apply this coupon code:
9H83W4
It’ll save you $5.
#10) On June 9, 2009 6:23 PM
I love Spanning Sync! I downloaded the trial version and after using it for that period was so pleased with the program that purchased the yearly subscription. Not a single problem! Works perfectly with google, and mac. Furthermore, if syncronising with a cell phone live becomes much more organized. I recommend it! I found a discount code for spanning sync and used it to save 5$. Now I’m sharing my discount code for spanning sync to save you 5$. The discount code is: TRNNXX.
Best wishes,
S.
#11) On December 16, 2009 3:09 AM
Works perfectly! I’m using it for several months already, no problems at all. It is helpful for a busy person. Save 5$ with the Spanning Sync discount code TRNNXX.
Thank you!
#12) On December 16, 2009 3:12 AM
Works perfectly! I’m using it for several months already, no problems at all. It is helpful for a busy person. Save 5$ with the Spanning Sync discount code TRNNXX.
Thank you!