Google Calendar synergy now generates email reminders

Since webOS 1.2 landed, those of use that depend on our phones to run our lives have encountered a new oddity: we now get calendar reminders via email along with on our devices. While this confused me at first, I quickly realized what the culprit was: Synergy now syncs alarms with Google Calendar. Prior to webOS 1.2, alarms did not sync between Google Calendar and webOS Calendar, which most people didn’t notice, as we tend to manage our calendars from the phone. With 1.2, calendar alarms are now synced, but they push to Google Calendar as both a pop-up alert (in browser and on the phone) and an email alert from Google. Syncing our calendar alarms is a good thing, as the last time I had to get my Pre replaced (prior to 1.2) I nearly missed my next appointment because the phone didn’t alert me.

Right now there doesn’t seem to be any way to disable the email alerts without going to each alarmed calendar entry in Google Calendar and manually switching it off. Since I am dependent on the phone’s alerts to get me moving to where I need to go, I can’t simply go without the alarms. So I adapted and set up a filter in Gmail to automatically mark as read and delete all emails from calendar-notification@google.com. Once implemented it works seamlessly, though hopefully Palm will address this oversight in a future webOS update.

Edit: For clarification, my default reminder setting in Google Calendar is set to none, as it is on my phone. I set alarms for things that require timed action, so not everything in my calendar needs an alert. Prior to webOS 1.2 alarms created on the phone were not sent to Google Calendar.