How do iPod Podcasts work?

Can I make better use of my iPod Touch's calendar?

• Please help me use the calendar feature on my iPod Touch more effectively. I bought an iPod Touch a few months ago, and it's great. Specifically, it's great for music/podcasts, photos and a few apps I really enjoy. One of the main reasons I bought it was for the calendar feature, however, and I'm finding it hard to use the calendar effectively. This manifests itself in three ways: 1. It's hard for my big fingers to "type" on the calendar keyboard (though I'm getting better at this with practice). 2. I cannot sync with my work calendar (Groupwise). 3. I have many recurring appointments that don't fit in with the recurrence offerings of the calendar (e.g., I want to schedule a meeting the third Wednesday of every month, and that is not feasible from what I've seen of the recurrence options). My hope is to include both work and personal events on my Touch calendar. (Right now, I type in everything on it - all my personal events and work events when I find the time/inclination.) For the time being, I use Novell Groupwise as my work calendar/e-mail program. My employer may switch to Outlook sometime this calendar year. I use PCs both at home and at work. The second and third issues - the (non-)syncing and recurrence issues - are the big ones for me. Can anyone suggest full or partial solutions that do not involve hacking the iPod or anything particularly technical? Here's all I've come up with so far: 1. Buy a Mac, use iCal, sync with iCal. Pros: full-keyboard typing, iCal seems to have better recurrence features than the Touch calendar (from what I've heard). Cons: no syncing with Groupwise of which I'm aware; spending more than the cost of the Touch on a separate computer to partially fix this problem seems utterly inane. 2. Sync via Outlook at home. Pros: full-keyboard typing, presumably better recurrence options (it's been a while since I used Outlook and cannot recall if appointment recurrences are better than with the Touch). Cons: Getting appointments from the Groupwise work calendar to Outlook. (I've read of workarounds that include such steps as setting up Google Calendars that, frankly, seem like as much or more work than typing everything in manually! Moreover, I'm not sure Groupwise can sync with Google Calendars.) 3. Learn of a kick-ass third party app - a separate calendar app altogether or something else - that addresses one or more of these issues. I haven't seen anything yet. 4. Buy a cheap PDA and use that as my calendar. Pros: hopefully it would work! Cons: may have syncing issues as well (I think Groupwise really is a problem regarding syncing); adds another device that I'd really rather not have to contend with. 5. Use a paper calendar. Pros: no gadgetry or tricky technology to fret about. Cons: I have abysmal handwriting; having bought the Touch, conceding abject defeat on its calendar function is an unpleasant proposition. The status quo (manually typing in everything and contending with limited recurrence options) is aggravating but tolerable. If there is a solution that might hinge on my eventual workplace conversion to Outlook, I'm willing to limp along as I have been doing thus far. I'll certainly consider any solutions that involve intermediate steps such as establishing a Google Calendar, but I'll confess that doing so sounds like more trouble than it's worth. Thanks in advance for reading this long question and for any ideas or suggestions.

• Answer:

  Here is the solution I use, and may help you. http://nuevasync.com/ offers free syncing of Google calenders. Groupwise sucks hard. It does have an outlook connector so that other devices can connect. Try to finagle your IT department to let you have that. I haven't had a chance to try and pull the data from groupwise through the oracle connector yet, though I think I read about it working. so I intend to pull that groupwise data to my google Calender. and continue to use Nuevasync to sync the google calendar to my touch. Nuevasync will sync multiple calenders, so make your groupwise calender a different calender in Google, then It will be a different color in your Touch calender.