Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools
Spanning Sync announces public beta
- Download the aforementioned zip file
- Install Spanning Sync, which runs as a System Preference pane
- Enter your Google Account credentials, or go get one (they're free, and if you already have something like a Gmail address, you're good to go)
- Select which calendars from iCal you want to sync with Google Calendar (and if you haven't signed into Google Calendar at least once, do so now)
- Press "Sync Now"
- Sit back and marvel at the wonders of desktop + Google Calendar syncing
As of this writing, a price is yet to be announced, though there will be two plans. The first is an annual subscription rate, while the second is a one-time, lifetime purchase for those who want to get past all the riff-raff. Stay tuned for more details.
[Update: Woops - looks like servers fall down, go boom. Spanning Sync has temporarily closed the public beta to new users due to the veritable river of interest overrunning their servers. If you recall your 'Internets 101' lessons, water and server hardware don't mix well. However, users who got set up before they closed the beta are still in - the doors are simply closed to new users until Spanning Sync can add some equipment to handle the load. Their blog post announcing the bad news also states that they hope to re-open the public beta by Wednesday, so we'll keep our eye on things and let you know when new users can begin signing up again.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ozmotear said 7:14PM on 1-30-2007
The title is misleading, this is just an update to the private beta. Those of us that missed the sign-up still have to wait awhile.
BTW - Why no mention of the iTunes/Norway decision announced a few days ago? You'd think that would be big news on an Apple blog.
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Dave Chartier said 7:17PM on 1-30-2007
#1: The title is actually *not* misleading; Charlie emailed me privately to let me know the public beta - meaning: *anyone can download and use the software* - is now available. Hence the word *public* instead of *private*. He let me know before they even announced it on their own blog to help get the word out.
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HT said 7:49PM on 1-30-2007
Works for me, pretty sweet, thanks for the link.
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ossiejnr said 7:57PM on 1-30-2007
I've been waiting for this for ages and now it's finally here....fantastic....or so I thought.
I've just installed the public beta and got it to sync to a new google calendar (after I backed up everything) and it doesn't understand the timezone differences. All day events I have scheduled for the 7th Feb show up in Google as all day events for the 6th Feb......then when the sync occurs again it moves everything in my iCal forward a day.
I can't believe they didn't pick this up during the beta.....anybody over at spanning sync want to comment?
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tim said 8:11PM on 1-30-2007
doesn't work for me. too bad - I was really hoping to utilize this
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Charlie Wood said 8:25PM on 1-30-2007
ossiejnr,
Please create a report by selecting "Reset...", then "Create report", and email the resulting file to beta@spanningsync.com. We'll get it straightened out ASAP.
Thanks!
Charlie
spanningsync.com
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Adam said 8:29PM on 1-30-2007
It kept locking up on me... not so good.
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ossiejnr said 8:32PM on 1-30-2007
Will do Charlie - thanks for the quick response
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Eric said 9:06PM on 1-30-2007
I've synced my calendars and it works as advertised. Awesome! I've been waiting a long time for this service and it looks great. Nice work Spanning Sync. A lot of grumpy and hostile comments above. Before you guys start whining about stuff remember to make sure that its not user error; which often times it is.
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Doug said 9:22PM on 1-30-2007
It took me a couple tries to get it to work, but now it works beautifully! Its everything I had hoped it would be. Very useful. Thanks!
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tim said 9:36PM on 1-30-2007
hmmm... this seems to be a place to get some help. would love to get this to work. can someone tell me what to do when it simply says: "spanning sync encountered an error"?
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Larry Hendricks said 9:56PM on 1-30-2007
Hi all,
We're still in beta and so yes, there's a bug here and there, but we're committed to getting all of these addressed by the time we declare 1.0. If you see any problems at all, PLEASE create a report and send it to beta@spanningsync.com. To create a report:
* Open the pref pane
* Click Reset...
* Click Create Report
* Attach the file that appears on your desktop to the email
Thanks!
Larry
spanningsync.com
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Tim said 10:13PM on 1-30-2007
Glad you're in public beta - but one gripe. All along, you said the public beta would be announced on the SpanningSync blog, yet instead you announced it here. It's still not in the RSS feed for your blog at this writing...
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John Neff said 10:53PM on 1-30-2007
I thought this was the answer to my problem, but apparently it's not. I was hoping that it would sync both ways, but it appears that it just copies my iCal events to the Google Calendar, but not the Google Calendar events to iCal. I had to switch to Google Calendar because I work in groups with people on PCs and it's easy for all of us to contribute to a calendar. I was hoping to switch back to iCal using this utility and be able to contribute to those calendards, but I can't get all the calendars I've built up on Google Calendar over to iCal in order to start the whole thing off. Am I misunderstanding something, or is it the case that this utility just syncs one way, from iCal to GCal?
Thanks!
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mcatherinehirschbiel said 7:34AM on 1-31-2007
Works well so far. The only hitch is that I can't sync multiple iCalendars to one Google Calendar.
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sean said 11:47PM on 1-30-2007
Got this:
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData said: XML parser error:
Unexpected character W at line 2
Old-style plist parser error:
When I tried to launch the second time. It did sync tho :)
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iMatt said 11:30PM on 1-30-2007
You're missing something. Some calendars (e.g. birthdays plucked from address book) will only sync one way. When that happens, it will tell you. Otherwise it is a two-way sync. I've been using it for the past week, and it's worked fine.
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Greg Taylor said 11:38PM on 1-30-2007
Must be getting very popular. I'm getting the following error when I enter in my username:
Due to overwhelming traffic, new user registration has been temporarily suspended. Please visit blog.spanningsync.com for more information.
Can't wait to use this!
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John Neff said 11:49PM on 1-30-2007
You're right! It suddenly worked after the second or third sync. It does sync both ways. Not it's definitely one of my favorite utilities, great job!
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Jesse Madway said 12:00AM on 1-31-2007
If I use Google Calendars as my main calendaring program but do use iCal from time to time, what does this program do that cannot be achieved by simply subscribing to my Google Calendars in iCal? I also publish one iCal calendar and subscribe to that in Google Calendars for the times when I need to enter events in iCal.
I'm just trying to understand what this offers that I am not already getting. Thanks!
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