• WHAT: A way to sync your cell phone with Google's calendar
• WHY: Reduce device clutter, keep your calendar in your pocket
• COST: Free basic service, $40/year for premium service

If you're a regular reader of The Wireless Wizard's blog you'll know that I'm on a constant mission to reduce the number of devices that I carry with me without losing (and in some cases gaining) functionality.  I gave up my Treo long ago, for example, because I am able to collect my mail on my cell phone (details in another posting) and found that I could carry my contacts and calendar on, of all things, my iPod.  That wasn't enough, though, as I often don't have the iPod with me so I was on the hunt for a service that would allow me to sync a phone - any phone - with my calendar on Google.  Given the popularity of Google's web-based services it seems like a good thing to tell you about. 

The service that ties this all together is called "GooSync" (Google calendar syncing... get it?) and works beautifully, and free if you can live with the basic service that allows the syncing of a single Google calendar with your cell phone.   If you have more than one calendar (I do) you might want to spring for the $40 annual fee (charged in British pounds, actually, as the company is based overseas).  In actuality, a lot of Macintosh users can already accomplish this; I was able to until I got a new Motorola V3xx RAZR... it's the "3G" version and doesn't conform 100% with web standards.  So, given that the Mac didn't have a sync module for that phone I went looking for another solution. 

What I wound up doing was syncing the calendar on my Mac (I am an avid fan of iCal - a great application that comes standard on the Mac and has really thorough and deep functionality) with Google's Calendar through another application called "Spanning Sync."   A lot of people - including me - believe that Apple should do a better job of supporting the inherent syncing function with various phones.  Aside from the occasional phone that doesn't work at all there are certain fields that don't function even on the phones that do work with Apple's iSync. 

Personal feelings about what Apple should be providing (not to mention how the cell phone manufacturers fall down on the job in this area) this solution, costing a total of about $60/year for the Mac, works well.  And, if you use Google's calendar as your primary calendar - and lots of people do - and have everything in a single calendar on Google, then this entire solution will be free.  

It's a great comfort to know that my entire schedule is in my pocket.  All of the latest appointments and events, including recurring events and events with odd timings (every first Thursday of the month, for example) sync beautifully to the RAZR V3xx and would work equally well with any phone that's on GooSync's list of approved devices.   Whatever I add to the phone gets synced to Google calendar (and then to iCal, as I prefer using a desktop application for my calendar) and vice-versa.  It's elegant, accurate and inexpensive.