One of the best parts about having a “smart phone” like a Palm Treo Centro is that they offer the ability to take your contacts and calendar on the go. Like most gadgets, the power of these tools are in the functions that aren’t obvious when you take them out of the box. So if you have one of those sexy new Treo’s and your still trying to figure out how to magically get your calendar updated without having to plug in a cord, then this post is for you.

Here is what you need to get started on wirelessly and automatically syncing your Treo device with iCal—the default calendar application on a Mac:

• Palm Treo device—tonight, I setup my wife’s red Centro
• iCal - your desktop calendar
• USB Sync Cable
• Missing Sync or Palm Desktop & Hotsync Manager
• Google Calendar account
  
• BusySync ($25) - Software that syncs your iCal with Google
• GooSync ($Free) - the software that will sync your Palm with Google

Obviously, syncing your Treo with iCal requires an investment of time and money in order to make this work. This alone will help you determine how important keeping your phone and computer in sync is.

The below steps will assume that you have already downloaded and installed each software.

iCal Setup

1. Export your default iCal Calendar to your desktop; name it “google.ics” for later reference
   

Google Calendar Setup

1. In Google Calendar, add a new calendar
   
2. Importing the “google.ics” calendar from your desktop
3. Import the contents into your default Google Calendar; for example, I’ll call it “Kyle”
   

BusySync Setup

1. Open BusySync in your System Preferences
   
2. Click on “Google” (ignoring General, Publish and Subscribe)
3. Click on “Settings” and add your Google user name and password. Leave the remaining settings as default.
4. Select the Google Calendar (on the right pane) that you want to subscribe to; this will cause the calendar “Kyle” to display in iCal. This is now your default iCal calendar.
5. Delete your previous iCal calendar; remember you already made a backup
6. Select the iCal calendars (on the left pane) that you want to publish to Google Calendars; this is not necessary to sync your phone unless you want to sync more than one calendar, ie: personal and business
7. Press the “Sync Now” button on the bottom right

You are now publishing your iCals to Google automatically. Any changes made on iCal or Google Calendars will automatically sync to reflect in both locations.

GooSync Setup

Here’s a quick visual overview how GooSync works:

1. Open www.goosync.com and go to your “Home” tab
2. Click to “Add Device”
3. Download the Palm OS Client Software and install; directions are provided on download page
4. Click on “Connections” and Authenticate your Google settings with your username and password
5. Click “Home” and under “Google Calendar” select “Customise”
6. Now displaying your Google calendars, make sure that the “Kyle” calendar has read/write capabilities as indicated by the icon and that the check boxes for “Sync” and are selected
7. For advance users, check out the tags/categories function. This is how you sync multiple calendars
8. If you’re interested in syncing more than the default past/future appointments, you can change the default settings under “Sync Window.”

You are now ready to setup your Palm Treo for bi-directional syncing.

Palm Treo Setup

1. Locate the GooSync application under your Treo’s “All” screen
2. To alter the settings of this profile tap the Menu icon on your PDA and then select “Options Settings…” from the menu that appears (see screen shot below)
   .
3. The “User” and “Password” settings must be set to the same log-in details that you use for your GooSync.com account (these may not be the same as your Google Calendar account).
4. Click on “Calendar sync options” and setup the software to sync on a regular interval. This will ensure that changes made on your Treo and computer are syncing regularly.

Any calendar changes made on your Treo will now be published on Google Calendar and thus iCal, vice versa.

If you’ve followed the above steps, you should now be syncing beautifully between your Treo > Google > iCal. Have fun!

The hunt for an easy-to-use Mac-based “Getting Things Done” (GTD) system.

If you’ve ever been interested in improving your personal productivity, there’s no doubt you are likely to be familiar with such books as Getting Things Done (GTD) and 4-Hour Work Week. Both books are inspiring, but when it comes down to practical solutions, GTD has become the gold-standard. I highly recommend it if you’ve recently been caught drifting in a conversation because you forgot to do this, or forgot to email her that.

The Perfect GTD System

One of the cornerstones of the GTD personal productivity methodology is having a system that you completely trust. This eliminates the endless questioning of when and where did I put ____________. (For more on what makes a great system, check out this recent blog post on author David Allen’s website.) Unfortunately, the hunt for the perfect GTD-based system isn’t an easy one. There are a lot of options available and there seems to be more coming on the market regularly.

My Specific Needs

Before I jump into the heart of this post, I should give you context for my particular needs. I’m using a Mac, Entourage for email, address book and calendaring and a Palm 755p for my mobile needs. Ideally, I would find a solution that would allow me to sync Entourage and my Palm seamlessly.

After searching for the perfect mac-entourage-palm solution for quite some time, let me save you the hassle; as of 5/13/08, that solution does not exist. While you could hack your way to some form of synchronization, it will not happen easily and without trial and error. This, at the core of GTD, is grounds for distrust. Thus, I needed something simple and trustworthy.

GTD Software Solutions

After narrowing down my options, I chose to test and review: iGTD/iGTD2, OmniFocus, Inbox and Things. The winner is … Things.

Here’s six reason’s why:

• Simple to Use: The learning curve on this software is about 15-20 minutes. If it’s that easy to learn, imagine how easy it is to use on a regular basis
• In Development: The current version of Things is 0.9.1.1 but the new 1.0 version is due out any day. With most anything, I like to be part of something that’s moving forward. Like many of the other apps mentioned, this software is living and breathing. Expect new changes and feature add-ons regularly. For you iPhone users, expect your own version in late-June.
• Gorgeous Interface (see below): Let’s face it, we all like to look at pretty things. The Things interface is not only easy to use, but it’s fun to look at; which makes it more fun to interact with

• Does NOT Synchronize: While this may be a drawback for some, it’s not for me. At this point, unless it can natively sync with Entourage, I’m not interested in trying to make it work. I’ve spent the past six-months trying to get things to sync through SyncServices and it’s a nightmare. Things inability to sync actually puts my mind at rest on the idea. Otherwise, I’d be tempted to keep that loop wide open in an effort to achieve the sync.
• Brilliant Delegation: If you manage people and are regularly assigning tasks for future follow-up, Things has made delegation (@Waiting for) simple and easy to use by adding a “People” reference. This makes adding people to your project or task easy to do and easy to follow up on.
• The Magic Tag Bar: They decided to leave context lists out and use a familiar tagging system instead. At first I didn’t know if I’d like this, but now, it’s brilliant. There are many levels and features to this system; too many to be described in this post, but is here. Overall, it’s much more intuitive.

My Full GTD System

In order to keep my system functional both at the office and while being mobile, the rest of my system is defined by the following:

• Entourage - will track email, address book and calendaring
• Things - will track projects, tasks and due dates
• Palm - will track @Calls, @Errands, @Agenda’s, and @Lists (like books to read, movies to see…all things I generally discover outside of the office).
• Missing Sync: will be used to backup my phone and synchronize it with Entourage

Which do you prefer?

Have you discovered the benefits and joy of utilizing your own GTD system? I’d love to hear about yours. Post your comments below.

Helpful Links

• Buy Getting Things Done (Amazon.com)
• Download Things (Mac only)
• Getting Things Done Defined (Wikipedia)
• David Allen - Author of the book Getting Things Done
• 43Folders - Well-known personal productivity blog
• OSX Task Manager Showdown – iGTD2 vs Inbox vs OmniFocus vs Things - A much more in depth review and analysis of the software mentioned above