James Frye has written a small app that syncs facebook events into iCal, so that you can integrate your facebook invitations with the rest of your calendars in one view.

Packaged up as a stand-alone app, it first authenticates into your facebook account, and then retrieves a list of your events.

Its Preferences allow you to determine whether or not it lists events that you have accepted, declined, are unsure about or have not yet replied to.

You are then presented with a dialog containing the events:

Hit the sync button, and the app creates a new local calendar in iCal called “facebook events”, displaying all your “facebook dates”.

Because it is all listed in one new calendar, it’s easy to delete them again—say, hypothetically, you have a student who has (by mistake?) created a 21st birthday party that lasts for a month. It’s easy to undo the sync again.

James is working on EventSync 2.0 which will display the flyers and images associated with the facebook events as well.

EventSync is donation-ware and can be downloaded from its own web site.facebook, ical, events, syncing, social networking, not apple mail, not mail.app

The recent 10.5.3 update introduced built-in syncing with Gmail Contacts in Address Book.

Despite this, developers of third-party Address Book-Gmail syncing apps are soldiering on. Both SpanningSync and Syncman developers point out that 10.5.3 offers this only for Leopard users and, even then, only for Leopard users with an iPhone or iTouch device.

Jeff Nichols, Syncman developer, has just released a new improved version of his sync app, lending credence to his claim that Wateree (his software firm) is a “small and agile company that can adjust quickly to our customers needs and desires”.

Syncman 1.1 can now be configured to run as a menubar utility and to load automatically when you fire up Mac OS X.

Behind the scenes further tweaks have improved the way Google Talk address are mapped to Jabber addresses in Address Book, and improved treatment of how Address Book’s Last Name field is handled.

But the number one request of users was for scheduled syncing, and Syncman delivers on that too.

The Preferences allow you to set the period of the sync and to customise the level of confirmation you want before it makes any changes:

Confirmation is another nice feature of Syncman, that is lacking in Address Book’s default sync option. As Jeff puts it:

Syncman respects the effort you’ve put into maintaining your Address Book, and therefore gets your confirmation before making any changes that could potentially cause you a whole bunch of headache.

So Syncman offers a confirmation dialog displaying potential changes before it makes them:

SpanningSync has also recently launched a 2.0 beta of its software, which is addition to syncing iCal and Google Calendar, will also sync Address Book data, including photos (Syncman is promised to have this feature soon too). The beta is free (but is a beta, so backup!).

SpanningSync costs either USD 25 for a year’s subscription or USD 65 for a once-off, unlimited licence.

Syncman is shareware and costs USD 15 (€9.95). You can get a 30-day free demo from Wateree’s web site. address book, gmail, google calendar, syncing, menubar, contacts, scheduling, nimble agile developers

BusyMac has released an update to its BusySync software, which adds the ability to sync iCal calendars over the internet. The company has also released a public beta of BusySync 2.0 (due in February) which will add syncing between iCal and Google Calendar.

Previously, BusySync users were limited to sharing calendars over a local network, but now distance is no obstacle. With the BusySync Preference Pane installed, users are able to view, edit and manage shared calendars remotely, without the need for a .Mac account.

Options to allow and control the sharing are provided in the Preference Pane:

BusySync 1.5 costs USD 19.95 and is available from the developer’s web site .

The company’s press release for the 1.5 update gives more details of this clever utility.

In addition, BusyMac has launched a public beta of BusySync 2.0. It promises Mac users “bidirectional synchronization between iCal and Google Calendar, providing web based access to your calendars from anywhere”:

When it is released in February, it will provide a cheaper option than SpanningSync , which costs USD 25 for a 12 month subscription and
USD 65 to purchase outright. BusySync 2.0 will cost USD 24.95.

You can sign up to be added to the public beta trial on the BusyMac web site.ical, productivity, google, calendar, syncing, dotmac, spanningsync, busysync

Christina Laun at VirtualHosting.com has posted a killer list of 50 tips, scripts, extensions and hacks to make the most of Google’s Calendar service.

She starts off with some basic tips, keyboard shortcuts, integration with Gmail, reminders and so forth.

Things get more interesting for seasoned users with her collection of 15 (mostly Greasemonkey) scripts that offer skinning, interface streamlining and more, including the Better Gcal script, which combines several of the most useful scripts (à la Gina Trapani’s Better Gmail Firefox extension).

Finally, she provides a list of Firefox Extensions, hacks and some syncing utilities that help Outlook users and others get the most of Gcal. She doesn’t mention BusySync’s public beta that offers iCal-Gcal syncing or Spanning Sync , but I guess you knew about those already.

If you use Goolge’s Calendar, you will want to bookmark Christina’s collection of tips for sure.not mail.app, not apple mail, google, calendar, tips, scripts, greasemonkey, web 20, ical, productivity, firefox, syncing

FacebookSync syncs data between your Address Book and facebook account. It used to sync a lot of data (email addresses, IM details, phone numbers, etc) until facebook pointed out that this was a breach of its terms of use.

It still does a number of useful things though. It can add facebook profile pictures to Address Book contacts who have no photo, also address information.

Fire it up and you are asked to authenticate your facebook account. Then it delivers a list, comparing information about friends in your facebook account with your Address Book contacts, noting the differences:

You can then select sift through the contacts manually to select which Address Book contacts you would like it to update, or use the buttons on the right for a batch job.

It’s very clever. If you are addicted to Mail.app’s ability to display a photo of the author in the top righthand corner of each email, which somehow (for me) turns emails into conversations with real people, you will love it. Finally, I have an Address Book photo for a photo-shy friend! (I could simply have taken it from her facebook profile page but that wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.)

facebooksync is freeware and and you can get it from the developer’s web site .address book, mail.app, apple mail, contacts, friends, facebook, syncing, social web

Spanning Sync has released a new version (1.1.3) of its iCal-Google Calendar syncing utility, which offers several significant stability improvements.

In particular this release makes large syncing attempts more reliable and less memory-intensive.

Also, in Leopard it now allows the syncing of iCal-Address Book’s Birthday calendar, as well as CalDAV and subscribed calendars.

The developers are quick to point out, however, that Leopard users are still experiencing problems, ranging from data loss to minor annoyances. They offer a short and a lengthy explanation and some tips on how to unstick Leopard iCal when things go wrong.

Spanning Sync casts USD 25 for one year and USD 65 for a life-time licence, although a free trial copy is available from its web site .gmail, google calendar, ical, address book, syncing, leopard, caldav

Do It is a very clever little task manager app with almost ever option one could hope for — iCal and Address Book integration, a Quicksilver plugin, syncing, lists for each context, skins and more. (See the extensive review in an earlier Hawk Wings post).

The developer has just released Do It 2.4 which adds localisations for Russian, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch and Traditional Chinese, and a few other tweaks like smarter item sorting in its to-do lists.

Since I last looked at it, other new features have been added, including extra options for handling completed tasks:

This is an application worth checking out. If my heart didn’t already belong to MailTags , I’d be using it myself.

Do It is donationware and available from the developer’s web site .productivity, task manager, to-do lists, ical, address book, quicksilver, syncing, contexts,