Spanning Sync to add Address Book synchronization (updated)

If you're like me you probably have a Gmail account. Some people use Gmail as their full-time email, others just for large attachments or times when your ISP's email is fubar. Either way, there's no denying the convenience of a good webmail account and I find Gmail to be the best of the lot.

As a Mac user I'm totally wrapped up in Address Book and iCal. The latter mostly because it's invaluable to sync and subscribe to multiple calendars – iCal's practically a requirement for any modern family, especially one that uses iPhones.

There are times, however, when it's necessary to share calendars with people who aren't Mac users and that's where Google apps come in. They're super-convenient, free and, well, they work with that other platform too. But who wants to maintain a Google Calendar and iCal? Not me.

Spanning Sync provides an easy way to sync iCal with your Google Calendars and vice versa.

With Spanning Sync, your iCal calendars are kept in sync with Google Calendar, which means you can use the best features of both to manage your schedule.

Today comes news that version 2 will add contact syncing from Address Book to Google contacts. A demo screencast is posted on the Spanning Sync blog. The best news comes at the very end of the screencast – Spanning Sync 2 will be a free upgrade. No word on when the 2.0 update will be available though.

Spanning Sync is free for 15 days, after which you can sign up for either a US$25 one-year subscription or a US$65 one-time purchase.

Update: Charlie Wood from Spanning Sync told me to expect to see a public beta of Spanning Sync v2.0 "soon." He didn't want to commit to anything, thinks it's reasonable to expect it within the next couple of weeks.

Also, since they sell Spanning Sync on a subscription basis, all upgrades – both major and minor – are always free for paid subscribers. This hasn't gotten much attention but is worth noting. I hate being surprised by upgrade charges.