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How almost awesome is this!

Syncing Facebook to Google Calendar to the iPhone.

It describes how to take your Facebook Events, and get them into Google Calendar, then you can get them synchronised to you mobile device using Google Sync (I’ve done that last bit already.) This will save a bit of a headache.

I was prompted to look for this by the recent upgrade to the iPhone Facebook App, which now provides contact synchronisation with your Contacts on the phone. The problem I found wihth this though is that it’s very non-descriptive as to what it actually synchronises.

According to several newsgroup posts, it only synchronises the profile photo to the contact, and even then it overwrites the ones that you choose. So I went looking for a better solution, and found this diversion.

Mark iPhone Facebook, GMail, Google

I’ve just been reading up on something cool from Google.

Basically, I wanted to get my calendars on Google Calendar synchronised with my iPhone (because really, my google calendar is my main calendar) and seeing as iPhone OS 3.0 supports the CalDAV standard, it should be a piece of piss.

Anyway. Turns out, you can add the calendar quite easily by following these instructions

http://www.bagofspanners.com/2009/06/17/subscribing-to-google-calendars-via-caldav-in-iphone-os-3-0/

The problem with this approach though is that you only get one calendar. Fine if you only have one, but if you have several (like I do,) then it’s no bloody good.

So, lots of references to this page later…..

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138759&topic=14252

… and I finally twig what’s going on.

Turns out, Google have implemented an Exchange Server which lets you synchronise Calendar items and Contacts with your account.

Reading between the lines, you have to be careful regarding the contacts in your GMail account, as possibly they end up on your iPhone and any contacts on your iPhone end up on GMail. It sounds like you can turn that off, but actually it sounds quite useful too. The added plus of that is, if you change the contacts in GMail, they should synchronise back to Address Book on your Mac once you plug you iPhone back in. So, one address book to rule them all.

The added plus is, you get all of your calendars on you iPhone and you can add and remove items to your hearts content!

Mark Computers, iPhone Calendar, Contacts, GMail, Google, iPhone, Sync