Calgoo: Syncing Calendars

Nikhil Rastogi, Mar 16, 2008 0900 hrs IST

If you're the organised kind, you might want to check out Calgoo, a cross-platform app that lets you sync calendar data with many popular calendars -- including Google and Outlook

Expert Rating:

Easy to set up and use, good syncing, very Outlook-like.

A memory hog, still a bit buggy, sluggish at times.

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EXPERT REVIEW

Calgoo talk about silly names! Why, I've seen Web 2.0 sites with better monikers! When I first came across this on the Internet, I laughed; I thought it was some kind April Fool's joke (or a funny app). Who would name their software something that ends in "goo"? Well, someone did, and no, not someone in Armenia or Mongolia: a Canadian company, which goes by the same name beat that! ("Hi! I'm John. I work for Calgoo!" "Sorry?" "CAL-GOO. 'Goo' as in, you know, well, how do I put it")

Nutty name notwithstanding, Calgoo is a good product; it's basically a calendar app that perhaps started off with the Google Calendar syncing idea, therefore the "goo." Actually, when you get used to it, it sounds better than the "gooCal" that I thought up.

Working With Calgoo
Setting up Calgoo is simple (most installations nowadays are, aren't they?). It's a hefty 40 MB download; I call it hefty for the simple reason that this app, in its previous version (1.3.2) was 17 MB, and now in its latest iteration (v1.6.1) has gotten fatter by 200%. (So much would version 2.0 weigh now a hundred MB?)

In any case, for Calgoo to work properly, you'll need to have the latest version of Java on your system. There have been reports of old Java versions causing some issues. (Note that Windows Update doesn't update Java for you.)

As soon as you start the program, you're greeted with a Wizard that guides you through the process of setting up an account. Here you have several options to set up a calendar other than Google. Skip the first choice where it says "I want to create a new Calgoo calendar". More on this later.

The second option is where you select other calendar services to sync with, such as Google Calendar.

This is where you'll need to enter private information such as your Gmail username and password. Google wasn't too happy when they heard about this, but you can read the blog post that explains this. If you're still paranoid about security, I'd suggest creating a new Gmail account and try the calendar syncing.

After this, it's just like any other calendar: you have a day, week, and month setup (the default). Double-click a day; an "Add Event" dialog box comes up, along with the Calendar it's being added in.