Both tools on this post are free, will sit on your tray and won’t bother you, while maintaining your contacts and calendar synced. I’m gonna show you the easiest way to do it.

Google Calendar Sync

Download page: http://www.google.com/support/cal..wer=89955
(Direct link to download)

Installation

1. Read through the Google Calendar Sync Terms of Service, and click I Agree.
2. Follow through the Installation Options and click Install to finish the set-up process.
3. Once Google Calendar Sync is installed on your computer, the Google Calendar Sync Settings window will appear:

Just enter your email/password and click Save. If you don’t want to sync back to Google Calendar choose “1 way: Google Calendar to Microsoft Outlook”

You are now syncing Google Calendar with Outlook!

Go Contact Sync

As the name says this is the plugin that’s gonna sync your Gmail Contacts. It supports contact categories and contact photos so your contacts will look exactly the same.

Download page: http://www.webgear.co.nz/Pr../GOContactSync.aspx
(Direct link to download)

Installation

1. Follow the setup instructions..
2. After installed, choose Start > All Programs > GO Contact Sync

Just enter your email/password, make sure Sync Profile is not empty (enter any text, the program doesn’t allow it to be empty) and click Sync. Also check “Run program at startup“ .

You may be prompted by Outlook that a program is trying to access it. Grant permission to it for 5 minutes.

You are now syncing Gmail Contacts with Outlook!

Conclusion

Because Go Contact is still in beta you may some notices from the program that an error has ocurred. I found that a restart to the program solves it. I don’t know what the error means but a future release should correct the bug.

Also you are not limited to Outlook. With your Outlook synced you can keep your mobile also synced without spending money; I keep my Nokia N70 synced by bluetooth (maybe a future blog post). I just tell Nokia Suite to sync Outlook with my Nokia everytime its in range and now I have Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts on my pocket 24/7.

Questions/Problems

If you have any questions or problems just reply on the comments.

This area is intended for everyone new to PHP. It opens with a series of informal, entertaining tutorials written by Vikram Vaswani, founder and CEO of Melonfire. These tutorials build on a previously-published 5-part series which has now been updated and extended to embrace PHP 5, making parts of it suitable for those of you who already have worked with PHP 4 in the past.

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