Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

shirley — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 09:25:04 -0000

Help. I have an imac and use ical on it. I now have a blackberry. I also have plaxo which I have liked but......I now have tons of duplicates on my ical and on my blackberry. The latter since I downloaded the google sync to my bb because plaxo won't talk to my bb. Any help will be appreciated.....I'm ready to print out calendars, delete them all and start from scratch. :-(

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

LRivers — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:31:48 -0000

Well I read thru all this and was surprised that no one mentioned the security aspect of using these sync programs with exchange/outlook. Whats the downside to using plaxo or google when it comes to securing your systems?

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Jim McNelis — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:08:29 -0000

Plaxo calendar sync between iCal and Google Calendar is nice.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Keith Spanberger — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:24:52 -0000

I have set my Google calendar to sync my Outlook with my BlackBerry. It works great with one small problem... I am getting duplicates BIG TIME!!! HELP PLEASE!!!!! THANKS

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

JSlo — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 02:05:13 -0000

Robert, Thank you for this post. I've been searching for a solution to sync my calendars between work and home, PC and Mac. Plaxo has been working very well since I installed it after reading your post.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Nicholas Quixote — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:38:35 -0000

thank you for this...kept going back and looking at it, wasting time!

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Dave M. — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:24:35 -0000

Robert, I know I'm a little late to this post, but to me Plaxo feels like an adware/spyware app. Oh, I'm sure it's not but it just feels like one. I really felt nervous when I setup an account awhile back.

I use Spanning Sync myself, and it works great sync'ing my Google Calendar with my iCal events and visa-versa. Granted it costs money, but I think I would rather pay the money for something that feels safe rather than something that feels dangerous.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Alex Neth — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:20:36 -0000

I'll add my bad experience with Plaxo. It deleted a bunch of random contacts and I still haven't recovered. I am a paying customer, but their support is the most frustrating kind of awful. It takes them 4 days to come back with a copy/pasted response that blames the user.

I actually liked the Plaxo functionality, but I would not trust my data to it.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Karl Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 15:26:57 -0000

I agree with Andre in #35 I like the idea of the services and how they sell them but damn I hate removing dupes!

Great site by the way. I guess I'm not in the loop anymore as this is my first visit! But I'll be back...

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Anthony Stauffer — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:54:56 -0000

Plaxo can sync to many more services. This results in much more to maintain, and many more things that can go wrong. When you're working with important stuff, this risk is not good. Keep it simple

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

steve — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:36:44 -0000

It's a trust thing. I doubt Plaxo will exist in 5 years. I expect Google will be around far longer.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Andre P. Siregar — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:57:09 -0000

The problem with synchronization is that they don't work as advertised. Maturity-wise, we're just not there yet despite what Plaxo, Yahoo, etc. are saying. I can't tell you how many times I had to de-duplicate my calendar entries because Desktop Outlook, Plaxo, Yahoo Calendar and Pocket Outlook just won't play nice.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

doug m — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:27:31 -0000

i haven't synced my calendars because most of my time is spent at my desk at work, where i have to keep my work schedule apart from everything else. so i simply leave google calendar running in a tab in firefox.

i love the sync-ability of plaxo though, i did sync at home and i haven't missed an appointment since. i'll have to try out google's new sync on a separate machine to see the difference

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

syahidali — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:44:06 -0000

Agreed with Bob.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Steve — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:05:51 -0000

Is this FastCompany's strategy for placing ads on your blog? Testimonials from the Scoble?

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

jonathan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:36:27 -0000

I gave up on the iPhone and went back to Blackberry because I needed some way to manage my calendar. Being on the mac in a company that uses Exchange and outlook (like most med-large corporate environments) is a pain. The new Panther mail app does a little better job of managing calendar items but its not realistic to think you can use it in real life.. Replying to invites, generating events and tracking participants, managing multiple time zones, delegating to an admin.. this is the stuff outlook and exchange do really well.. Entourage handles this pretty well too but putting MS apps on your mac is like putting coke in single malt whiskey. You just don't do it.. And this calendar situation is the universal pain point for mac users at work.. so why on earth doesn't apple fix it? come on.. give me seamless iCal integration and the ability to reply to outlook invites.. then sync it to my iphone over the air.. what is so freaking hard about that? Until apple wakes up, I am back on the corporate dweeb device.. ughhh..

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

suresh — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:38:09 -0000

BuSync is by far the simplest and easiest way to do bi-directional synchronization between iCal and gCal.
http://www.busymac.com/

Unlike SpanningSync which has so many problems...

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Bob DeCecco — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:08:06 -0000

My question is...why bother using multiple calendars?!? I have trouble enough keeping up with one! :)

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Bob — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:07:42 -0000

I use 30Boxes. If there is a sync for it with Outlook, I am unaware of it. But why do I need that anyhow? 30Boxes is available to me whenever I am at a computer.

Simple and works for me.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Ward — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:49:14 -0000

I have the same Plaxo issues as Richard. It syncs up my outlook, but reaccouring and updated appointment are always problems. If one meeting in a series of reacourning appointments gets canceled, Plaxo does not update correctly. It's a pain. I'll give the new Google tool a try and see if it does a better job at it.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Michael Sheehan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:49:05 -0000

Robert

My approach is to always use Google Calendar as the "input" and then subscribe to it from iCal on my various Macs (which then syncs it with my iPhone). Even on my iPhone Google's mobile optimised Calendar page is fine for simple input.

Yes I lose the ability to enter data into my diary on the very few occasions when non of my divices such as Laptop, or iPhone have no connection.

However I'm saved Sync Conflict Hell!

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Court — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:23:56 -0000

Does Plaxo allow you to sync specific calendar folders? For confidentiality purposes it is against our company policy to sync our default calendar with our personal calendars (Google, Hotmail, whatever). As such, I keep a second calendar folder in Outlook with all of my personal events and save events as .ics files to move into Google Calendar. I didn't see this option in the new Google sync, so until that comes out it really isn't much use.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

budgieuk — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:10:41 -0000

The biggest problem I have with Plaxo is that it does NOT sync with the Google Apps version of GMail... so I am really happy that Google have bought out their sync solution .... Now all I have to do is work out why my calendar is full of duplicate entries!

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Michael Koby — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:42:47 -0000

The problem with Plaxo syncing is, in order to get a lot of the cooler features and multiple syncpoints, you have to pay the yearly fee. This is a major turn off.

Also Plaxo still suffers from their early days as a spam-a-lot service and many folks are scared to get an account and give them money.

And finally, I'll second several of the various problems that others have already stated with Plaxo calendar syncing. I too have experienced a couple of them myself.

With Google having released Contact management APIs yesterday, I'd be happy to have my calendar and contact data sync with Google, Outlook, and my BlackBerry. Getting rid of Plaxo altogether.

Re: Plaxo is better than new Google Calendar sync

Alex Barnett — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:34:50 -0000

Robert - agreed mots more could be done in the area. Have a look at what WideLens can do (a Bungee Connect reference app).

http://alexbarnett.net/blog...

You can do all that syncing plus more - and the app is free to all Bungee Connect devs: source code user BSD type license, so they can make / shape as they like.