just an asterisk

Many of us lack fancy iPhones, Blackberrys and other portable media devices.  Without these, we find ourselves without certain things at our fingertips: etch-e-sketch applications, chatting tools, and perhaps most crippling our calendars.  In my calendar during my blackberry days, I would store business event details, trip directions, grocery lists, flight confirmation numbers in my calendar entries; they would be accessible at the touch of a button – wherever I happened to be.

For those of use who lack these devices, many of us have an alternative to gleam these benefits of a mobile world – the iPod.  Most iPods have within their capabilities an often forgotten calendar and contacts functions that can easily be synced with your Outlook or Apple iCal calendars (NB – its under the “Extras” header).

For those who are Mac and iCal users the process is fairly simple through iTunes (version 7 or higher).  After your iPod is plugged in, go to your contacts tab in iTunes, check the box for sync iCal calendar appropriately, click the “apply” button and voila! Now every time you sync your iPod your calendar within your iPod will be updated as well.

For Windows Outlook users, there are a few more steps but they are still not overly complicated.  As with before, the first step is to connect your iPod.   For the next step, go to the Preferences section on the edit menu and once there go to the iPod Tab and then the Calendars tab under the iPod tab.  Once there now the fun part, select “Synchronize calendars from Microsoft Outlook”, click “OK” and a message will appear asking if you would like iTunes to access your iTunes data.  Here select allow access and choose a time limit for how long that access will be permitted.  Click “Yes” on this pop up and then click “OK,” closing your iTune preferences. As a Mac user, I have not done this myself.  But I am told that you will need to give iTunes access to your Outlook calendar through the dialog every time you sync your Outlook calendar with your iPod.

For advanced steps for Google Calendar users, there are a few methods to sync your Google Calendar with this feature. Which I will discuss next time …

Ned Young is a friend of the animals and is the founder and contributor to aroundthecouch.com – a blog of musings on sports, pop culture, politics and the like.