The Options of Syncing your Calendar, Contacts, and Mail

Windows phone with a calendar that syncs only
with Google CalDAV and CardDAV accounts.

With technology changing every other day, it’s often overwhelming to be both on the edge of collaborative communications and a functioning person. We’re often drawn into a tool that’s supposed to save us time, but then ends up costing us a lot of time to learn it. Then suddenly there’s something even better and faster and we think to ourselves, “I was supposed to do something today, but I could do it even faster tomorrow if I learn this today.” The time we invested yesterday then feels worthless and we’re hesitant about investing into another technology. It’s happened to me more times than I can count—but all that changes when you have standards!

We've had mailing standards for the last two decades—the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) and Post Office Protocol (POP3)—and these standards have made it possible to send emails between many different types of servers. Similar to how the internet uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as a standard to communicate websites. We've adopted these standards at Merus, because it would be unthinkable not to adopt them, but we've also adopted Distributed Authoring and Versioning (DAV) for calendars and contacts. It’s a standard developed by the engineers with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), or in other words, a bunch of brilliant people shaping the future of the internet. Also, it means we’re not just adopting any standard, but the standard that you can expect to see over and over again in the years ahead of us. These engineers created WebDAV, an extension for HTTP that enables users to edit and manage files on servers, which has CalDAV (for calendars) and CardDAV (for contacts) within it. These standards allow you to create a calendar and contact list that can be edited and managed on any device.

This is important if you want to have flexibility with your devices and what applications you can use on your devices. I doubt you want to be forced into using a calendar by any particular company. While a particular company can create very useful tools, it’s convenient to be able to change to a different calendar system without any switching costs. These standards give you that convenience and you can use the calendar of your choice when using Merus, rather than be forced into using what we want you to use. While Apple has taken the initiative to adopt the standard, thereby making it easy for iOS users to sync their data, Google hasn't integrated it into their software yet. Instead of these standards being supported by the Android operating system, you’ll have to buy an application to give your device the same functionality as an iOS device. The application, CalDAV-Sync, is very cheap, but it’s still a cost (especially if you’re with a large firm) and I've requested them to make the appropriate changes to it. It seems Google is trying to stay competitive by not supporting the standard, but the solution isn't very expensive either, and it's possible that they're integrating it at this very moment. It's more of an inconvenience to the user, but we have a guide on how to do it. They may not want their users to use calendars and contact lists other than their own, but here at Merus, we want you to have options.