Windows/Mac OS X only: Online and desktop calendar-syncing application Calgoo Connect—along with all of the other calendar tools available from Calgoo—are now free. Calgoo Connect syncs Outlook on Windows or iCal on OS X with popular online calendars, namely Google Calendar and 30 Boxes. Granted, syncing Gcal with Outlook is pretty well covered with previously mentioned Google Calendar Sync, but Mac users haven't had a free solution for Gcal-to-iCal sync, which makes the free offering from Calgoo a godsend. All Calgoo products are now freeware, Windows and Mac OS X only.

Alex at the Google Operating System blog hears word that Google Calendar and Gmail will have Gears-supported offline modes in about six weeks, and a few users have already seen accidental offline prompts. Intriguing news, to say the least. Photo by NOTICIAS-TIC.

Firefox with Stylish or Greasemonkey: The talented designers who redesigned your Gmail are back with that similar look for Google Calendar. The Google Calendar Redesigned user style is now available for download as a public beta, and gives your GCal that slick look you've come to love in your inbox. After the jump, get a few full screenshots of what your GCal looks like wearing the Redesigned style.

Just posted an update to the Better GCal Firefox extension, which adds Firefox 3 support, and an updated current timeline. Download it here.

One of the best side effects of using Facebook is knowing when your contacts' birthdays are—but you only see them if you log in. The Facebook application fbCal is out to fix that. Once you install it on Facebook, fbCal creates an iCal file for your Facebook contacts' birthdays as well as Facebook events. Subscribe to the feed in your iCal-enabled calendar app of choice, like Mac's iCal or Google Calendar. When I tried fbCal last night, I subscribed to the resulting birthday .ICS file in Google Calendar, and nothing showed up. This morning, however, all my friends' birthdays were lighting up my schedule, so give it some time to get working. Actually-useful Facebook applications are few and far between, but fbCal is definitely one of them. Thanks, Sam!

Sync your iPhone calendar to multiple Google Calendar listings with NemusSync, a free application for jailbroken iPhones and iPod touches. While other sync utilities have been floating around for a bit, NemusSync doesn't require GooSync or another go-between app to function, and you choose whether the sync is one- or two-way, and which calendar serves as your default. A six-calendar sync took a noticeable amount of time, but I haven't seen any duplicates or other annoying sync problems so far (Edit: But you might want to stick with download-only at first, especially if you're already syncing through iTunes). The developer plans to implement alerts and reminders in future versions; for now, you can use GCal's email reminders or something like IntelliScreen. NemusSync is a free download for jailbroken iPhones and iPod touches, and is available in Installer.app's pre-configured repositories.

Firefox with Greasemonkey: The Gmail Addons Greasemonkey script embeds any page you specify inside Gmail's interface. By default, it comes with Google Calendar and the Google Talk gadget. (If this sounds familiar, it is—Gmail Addons is an update to the previously mentioned Enhance Gmail script.) Add any other web pages to Gmail by following the directions on the script homepage. If you're willing to dig into manually editing the script, Gmail Addons can embed Google Reader, Notebook, Docs, Remember the Milk, or virtually any other web page you'd like next to or below your inbox. Gmail Addons is free, requires the Greasemonkey extension to run.

Tech blogger Amit Agarwal has been receiving suspicious, spam-like alerts from his Google Calendar lately reminding him to collect millions from an ATM, among other things. If you've seen similar GCal spam, your first instinct may be that your account has been hacked. On the contrary, clever spammers are taking advantage of a Google Calendar feature that automatically adds events to your calendar as soon as you're invited—which means all a spammer needs to do is send his spam via GCal's Add Guests feature. To fix this, head to your GCal settings and find the entry labelled, "Automatically add invitations to my calendar," then switch from the default (Yes) to "No, only show invitations to which I have responded." Google should probably switch the default to No, but in the meantime, this tweak will do the trick.

Windows only: For some time now, Google Talk has been more appealing as a web app than in its rarely updated desktop version. That changes, somewhat, with the release of Google Talk Labs Edition for Windows. The desktop client, which looks a lot like its web counterpart, includes the same group chat, emoticons and tabbed talking as the web, and puts pop-up notifications for Google Calendar, Gmail and Orkut events in the corner of your screen—which is a nice, consolidated way of getting that Outlook-like functionality. The big trade-off, however, is the lack of voice calling or file transfer through the Labs Edition, so if those are regular features, you'll likely want to stick with whatever version you're using now. Google Talk Labs Edition is a free download for Windows systems only.

FuseCal is a web app that does something so useful, yet so seemingly rare, that it's hard to believe it's both free and easy to use. The app, currently in alpha, lets you add iCal-based calendars (and a few other formats) to a master calendar, then choose whether all those events, just the ones you pick, or events filtered by keyword will be synced to Outlook, Apple iCal, Google Calendar, or another program. I've only had time to test the Google Calendar->FuseCal->Outlook setup, and it seems to work. Those with web sites can also publish their combined FuseCals on their site. FuseCal is free to use; a sign-up lets you keep your calendars in sync.