Syncing your brand new N900 phone with google calendars and gnome evolution can be a really tedious task. I managed to bond all three of them successfully and get full two-way syncs from all components. We are going to sync the N900 with google calendars and then sync evolution with google calendars.

Syncing N900 with google calendars

Maemo 5 supports ActiveSync protocol which is used to synchronise Microsoft Exchange calendars, emails and contacts. Google calendar also supports activesync and that's the way we are going to sync. I followed these instructions (taken from here):

Device: Nokia N900
Carrier: unlocked
Country / Language: US-English
OS / Browser / build number (if applicable): Maemo v1.2009.42.11

I was unable to find any instructions on how to sync Google Mail, Calendar, and Contacts with my n900. So, I tried using the instructions for the Symbian v3/v5 phones. Two of three were successful. One of the successes does have a catch. So others don't have to spend the time I did experimenting here are the instructions for synchronizing Google Mail, Calendar, and Contacts with the n900 firmware v1.2009.42.11.

Gmail sync settings can be created on the n900 by either:

A. Activating the mail wizard by clicking on the "email" icon for the first time.

or

B. Within the "Settings" menu in the "Email" submenu press on the top status bar with "E-mail" pulldown and another submenu with a "New account" button will appear.

After you input your Gmail e-mail address most of the fields will populate themselves. In fact, almost ALL the fields will automatically populate themselves (finally effortless mail!). Just in case, check these settings:

For incoming server: port 993
For outgoing server: port 465

Calendar AND contacts sync settings can be created by:

1st Open settings menu.
2nd Open "Email for Exchange" submenu.
3rd Filling in the fields as:

a. Server: m.google.com
b. Port: 443
c. Secure connection: check yes
d. Conflict resolution: your choice
e. User name: joe.blow@gmail.com
f. Password: your password
g. Domain: leave blank
h. Synchronize e-mail: leave unchecked.
i. Synchronize calendar and tasks: check yes.
k. Calendar: N900 (to populate existing calendar) or create a new one
j. Synchronize calendar back: your choice
k. Synchronize completed tasks: your choice
l. Synchronize contacts: check yes
m. First synchronization: your choice

A note of caution: For this sync to work your calendar must be empty. If you have already used the synchronization tool to transfer the calendar data from your old phone to your n900 it will not allow you to write the Google calendar data from the server into it. The n900 calendar will remain as a local, unsynchronized calendar and you must create another calendar for synchronization purposes. However, I believe this is not the best way to go. Instead, if you have already transferred your calendar data from your old phone open the n900's calendar, select all, and delete. Then the Google server will synchronize its data with the N900 calendar.

Note 1: It is really important to initially have an empty calendar on the N900. I was trying with a calendar which already had entries and I always got a "Server is not responding error".

Note 2: The first time I succeeded it worked great for a couple of syncs but then I got again the "Server is not responding error". Deleting all entries and fully re-syncing fixed the problem.

Syncing Gnome's Evolution with Google calendars

Evolution supports Google calendars natively and it also supports Caldav another calendar protocol, also supported by google. Unfortunately none of them works on my machine. I found online hundreds of complains about broken functionality. And even if you manage to get them working they are totally unreliable.

Therefore I skipped evolution's build-in sync functionality and moved to gcaldaemon. From the project's website we learn that "GCALDaemon is an OS-independent Java program that offers two-way synchronization between Google Calendar and various iCalendar compatible calendar applications. GCALDaemon is primarily designed as a calendar synchronizer but it can also be used as a Gmail notifier, Address Book importer, Gmail terminal and RSS feed converter."

Gcaldaemon provides working syncing with google calendars. I don't need the fancy http features so I just setup it up for file synchronising, using the "dial-up internet" instructions from the project's website. So using gcalcdaemon I sync my google calendar with a local file in my computer.

Then in evolution you can add a new local calendar and specify the location of that new calendar (new feature in gnome 2.28 ) and order evolution to update the calendar when the file changes on disk (e.g. when gcaldaemon get new updates from your google calendar).

The sync runs fine for the last two days. I tried unicode entries, creating, deleting and editing entries from all three of them and everything works like a charm!

Yeah! I just got accepted to upload my first maemo 5 application to maemo extras-testing repository. A simple, working stopwatch and a wannabe countdown timer with rotation support.

Build using python and the nice pluthon eclipse based ide. The tutorials on maemo.org for PyMaemo are really good and you can always use source code from other applications for tips and tricks. This is my first gtk / maemo application and looks like is pretty easy to get started with maemo development.

Now go on, enable the extras-devel repository on your n900 and install stopwatch!

launchpad.net repository for stopwatch

This year I got my christmas present three months earlier. During the keynotes of the first day at the Maemo Summit 2009, it was announced that everybody will get a brand new pre-release N900 for bug reporting, fixing and general development! A few hours later, the lunch room was full of happy hackers playing around with our new toy and luckily I was one of them Well, we have to return it on april 30th but still it's a nice 6-month present.

The device is awesome, very good build quality and of course runs Maemo. And hey, you can actually get a root shell without nasty hacks...

The summit was great overall, lots of familiar faces, excitment about the new meamo era and of course fun. For all you who didn't attend the summit, you can view the videos and the slides from the official website.