Google knows everything.

I have finally completed the jump onto the Google bandwagon by getting organized with Google Calendar and shrugging off that Google now knows that I have CS4641 Machine Learning on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:05pm to 4:25pm in the Klaus Advanced Computing building. Sooner or later all of our personal data will be in the “Cloud,” because who really wants to manually sync their calendars, documents, contacts, etc. over three or four devices? I know I don’t.

There is a link in the right sidebar to my Google Calendar, so that you can check when I have something planned or not. You may use it to catch me during the week, or just out of plain curiosity.

For the fellow KDE users out there, you can sync your Google calendar and contacts with Kontact (or Korganizer) using Akonadi. The Akonadi Google Resource did not make it into KDE 4.3, but it can easily be grabbed and install from the KDE SVN repositories.

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/pim/googledata googledata
cd googledata/
mkdir build
cd build/
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`
make && make install

Once the resources have been installed, pull up the configuration window for Akonadi (either through the System Settings or the Akonadi Tray Utility). Click “Add…” and you should see the Akonadi Google Calendar Resource at the top.

Click “Ok” and then enter your Google account information in the dialog box that is opened. Confirm and close the Akonadi configuration window.

Next, open Kontact (or Korganizer). Click the plus symbol at top right of the calendar list.

Select “Akonadi (Provides access…” from the top of the list and click “Ok.” In the “Resource Configuration” dialog that opens, change the default label in the “Name:” field to something more useful and then click “Ok.”

You’re all done! You should be able to see your Google calendar and add, edit, or delete events. The Akonadi resource automatically performs a two-way sync of all events in the calendar; however, it is currently limited to only the first of your Google calendars. Hopefully, complete support for data synchronization with Google will be part of KDE 4.4.

Interesting fact: The instructions for setting up Google Sync on the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch involves Microsoft Exchange. Quite amusing.