A simple way to synchronize Google Calendar and an Ipod on the road
August 23rd, 2006
Synchronizing the Ipod calendar is very simple, it only require, that you place your ical-file in the Calendar folder on the Ipod. Syncing with Google Calendar only requires that you download your private calendar file. If access your Google Calendar, and navigate to [settings]-[Calendar]-["calendar name"], then you just have to right click on the “ical” logo by the private address, and select to save it to the Calendar folder on the Ipod.
Even though this is pretty simple, it could be fun to make it even simpler, having a script on the ipod for one-click updates. Personally I would download the ical file with wget, this i by default installed in most Unix/Linux system, and is available for windows by downloding the unixutils from http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/, and extracting the wget file (around 200kb.). Afterwards all you need to do is place the wget file and a windows bat file in the root of the ipod.
Example of update-ipod-calendar.bat (just swap the http address for Google Calendar address).
cd Calendar
..\wget http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/example_of_address/basic.ics
It should be even easier to compose a unix shell-scripts which accomplishes the same. And within minutes, and by just adding three small files, my Ipod can synchronize with Google calendar on both Windows and Unix systems, without installing anything on the machine.
Entry Filed under: Ipod, google calendar
6 Comments Add your own
1. John Mort | August 7th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Annoyingly, when I manually run wget on the command line this works just fine, but for some reason I get a 404 error when I try running the commands with a bat file.
2. jens | August 7th, 2007 at 11:46 am
That sound weird – have you checked in the output, if the bat file calls the complete adress?
3. Richard | September 9th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Great idea…not working exactly for me yet. Just got ipod video 30g yesterday.
Resolving http://www.google.com... done.
Connecting to http://www.google.comip.address:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 404 Not Found
10:46:16 ERROR 404: Not Found.
Have
4. Richard | September 9th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Have a nice day
5. Richard | September 9th, 2007 at 8:44 am
If there are any %’s they have to be doubled up.
ex.
harry001%gOrilla.com
would have to be
harry001%%gOrilla.com
blessings
6. John Mort | September 12th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Hah, I came across this page again when I was readdressing the problem. Your advice was helpful, there is a (percentage sign)40 in each of the ical URLs. For some reason when I entered this manually it worked fine, but when I ran it from the bat file it removed the (percentage)4 from the URL. So I just swapped the (percentage sign)40 with a @ in the bat file and now it works perfectly!
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