B. Mann Consulting

I'm still using Spanning Sync to sync my local calendars to Google. Calendaring is the main sync issue for me: my phone syncs with my local iCal, and then my local iCal syncs to multiple calendars that I have. This is still a bit tricky, since I have a personal Gmail account as well as multiple Google Apps for Domains accounts. My main request is to support multiple accounts and use the "native" login for that account, rather than having to use one account that has access to all calendars. This does work for calendars, but doesn't work for contacts: your contacts will be synced to only one account.

For calendars only, if you have a Series 60 phone, there is also CalSyncS60. This lets you sync directly from your phone to Google calendar. Except, I never got it to work quite right, and I don't have a data plan at the moment, so syncing would be mainly at the home or office where I have wifi.

At some point I got a ping from someone that was working on a SAML implementation for Drupal. Unfortunately, that was a year ago or more, and trawling my email doesn't seem to surface anything.

So, anyone out there in blog land working on a SAML *SP* (aka client) implementation for Drupal? I have some folks that would like to test interop. Please contact me if you've got something.

Related to this is the Google Apps Authentication module, which lets you use your Drupal database as an authentication source for Google Apps -- the for pay, Enterprise or Education edition. This is a SAML v2.0 IdP implementation as far as I know...

And yes, I'm still a huge OpenID fan. But combining the two standards is even better, since theoretically you could create new Drupal accounts via OpenID, and the Drupal accounts in turn would serve as auth for Google Apps. AKA how to use OpenID with Google :P

So, everyone is writing about the Google Apps Premier Edition. Lots of partners have announced services that integrate with Google Apps today -- see the Google Enterprise Solutions gallery for what's available today.

I've complained before about Google's messed up identity system (it's not fixed yet). And it looks like SXIP is now doing the same thing that it provides for Salesforce: identity management.

I've pinged the folks at SXIP to find out more. Their press release points to SXIP Access, which is their, dare I say it, "previous" solution vs. the OpenID bandwagon? Or maybe not?

Update: I got the scoop from Lori Pike at SXIP: "At this point in time there's no relation between [SXIP Access] and OpenID or SXIP 2.0/DIX." -- and likely there will be a blog post that explains a bit more.