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I often speak to new android users who are having a problem figuring out how to best set up their email, contacts, and calendar. The purpose of this post is to clarify how to best utilize your android device.
The overall vision: When you get an Android device you are making a small commitment to Google. Android is a mobile platform created and maintained by Google. In the past you might have had a palm device, windows mobile device, blackberry, or iphone. Each has its own unique platform and is designed to work differently. With Android you need to transition to using Gmail, Google contacts, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. This transition should be painless and frankly wise. Unlike your palm desktop or outlook software you will be able to access all your important information from anywhere in the world with internet access and unlike Apple’s MobileMe it won’t cost you a thing. Let’s look at each component and how you can make the transition the least painful.
Email: Right now you may be using a combination of webmail addresses (hotmail, yahoo, etc), and professional address (name@yourdomain.com). Your Android device comes with the default Gmail app and another email app. You will at first be tempted to setup all your non-Gmail email accounts in the email app using the pop3 settings just like you would for outlook. This is a mistake because the email app on Android isn’t very good and because it will mean continuing to login to multiple accounts from your desktop every time you want to check your email.
Instead take advantage of the Android’s strengths by logging into your Gmail account and going to the “Accounts” tab in the settings. Here you can setup up to 5 other pop3 or Imap accounts to arrive in your Gmail. Check the box that gives you the option to reply with the same email address instead of the default one. By doing things this way you have turned your Gmail into an Outlook. All your email from different accounts will be routed into your Gmail inbox both online and in your android. When you reply to emails it will show your email address as the one that the email was sent to and not necessarily your Gmail address. This is a good thing!
Contacts: Its important to maintain all your contacts and address book when you change to your Android device. If you currently have your contacts in Outlook, or any other software export them in csv format. This is a standard feature that even yahoo mail offers. Then go into your Gmail and click on “contacts.” Select the option to import and upload the csv file. Presto, all your contacts are now in your Gmail account and on your Android device!
Calendar: Much like your contacts your calendar can be exported in a csv file from outlook and then uploaded into Google Calendar. Just like Gmail and Gmail contacts, your Google Calendar will auto-sync to your Android device. If you can’t survive each day using Google Calendar alone you can download Google sync software for free and set your outlook or Ical to auto-sync with Google Calendar which will in turn auto-sync with your Android device.
Notes & Documents: Google Docs is an amazing online service that comes free to any Google Account holder. Navigate to http://docs.google.com to get started. You can upload or create new excel, word, powerpoint docs etc. Its really an amazing interface. To access these files on your Android device download the “Gdocs” app from the market. This is currently the only decent app for Android to access your Google docs from your phone. You can even create new docs right on the phone and them upload/sync them to your Google docs account. Its also important to note that you do not need the Gdocs app to view/edit your online Google docs. You can just open your Android browser and navigate to the mobile Google docs webpage which is very impressive.
The transition to android should be painless.
Google continues to change our world and Google voice is no exception. Google voice is currently available upon invite only but then again gmail used to be that way too. Your friends that already have Google voice cannot send you an invite but you can request an invite directly from Google. Visit www.google.com/voice for more info on requesting an invite.
What is Google Voice? Google Voice (GV for short) is unlike anything else on the market. Combining voip technology with google innovation, GV provides a simple solution to communicating with your various contacts around the world.
You first choose a number from the large selection provided. This is super innovative as you can search for a specific string of numbers if you choose. Then you enter all of your existing phone numbers including your home phone, cell, work, etc. Here is where it gets fun.
You set up a default setting for numbers that are not listed in your contacts. These settings include a voicemail greeting and where to route their calls (your cell, work, home, etc). Then you setup custom voicemail greetings and settings for groups of contacts. Perhaps you would like family members to always be routed to your cell and hear a more personal voicemail greeting. Work associates on the other hand can be routed to your work line and receive a more professional greeting. When people leave a voicemail message you get an email with the audio as well as a transcripted text of the voicemail message.
In addition your contacts can send you text messages and these will be routed to your cell phone where you can reply. All this without your contacts ever knowing your cell phone number. You can give everyone the same phone number and design a back system to route them accordingly. Its genius!
You can also access all your texts and voice-mails by logging into your gv account on your computer. The dashboard is very much like gmail where you can label and archive voice-mails and texts alike.
One more thing! In comparing GV’s international calling rates with those of Skype and Magicjack I found GV to be cheaper to call countries that I call. To make an international call I only need to login to my online account and enter the number and click call. GV will then call the number and my cell phone connecting me to the call.
What is the Google Voice App for Android? The recently released official GV app for android brings all the great settings described above right to your cell.
Features include:
1. Make international call via GV right from your cell phone using GV’s cheap rates.
2. Send and receive text messages via your GV number/account.
3. Listen to & read GV voicemails.
4. Add call credit (for international calls) right from the phone.
The possibilities become endless!!!!
Those of us who have been with Android since the beginning have been waiting anxiously for an app that would connect us with Blogger, the blogspot website by google.
First attempts were quite horrible and while we are still not satisfied I’m glad to have discovered AndroBlogger! AndroBlogger has a very smooth interface and allows you to connect to your primary blog on blogspot.com You can add/edit posts & view comments.
Its still missing some important components such as adding pictures and tags to posts, and having access to multiple blogs on your blogger account.
I’m grateful that all of our websites/blogs are in the wordpress platform but for you blogspot folk give AndroBlogger a try.
Screenshots:
Source: http://code.google.com/p/androblogger/
T-mobile has just released an official visual voicemail application for the android market and best of all there is no additional charge. You will need to call customer service to ask them to add the service to your plan before you will be able to use the service. For those of you who have to this point been using your traditional voicemail,
I think you will be super pleased! What can be better then coming back from a business meeting in which you missed 5 calls actually knowing which of your callers left you a voicemail and how long it is.
For those of you who have been using PF Fusion or YouMail to this point I think you will be excited to have an official app at your fingertips. The features appear similar so far but the real appeal is that its official.
We are stilling hoping t-mobile will add a feature to read a written transcription of each voicemail (available via youmail for an additional fee) but for now everything seems to be going well!
Download the T-Mobile Visual Voicemail app from the android market and then call 611 to activate the service before opening the app.
Today I set out to test out more Android Twitter applications. Its been a little while afterall and we have to assume that developers will improve their apps and come out with new ones.
I tested 15 total apps of which most were free. I only purchased the two paid apps that had the highest user ratings. I don’t see much need to discuss those apps that didn’t meet the standard but let me lay out the few that I feel really pass the test.
Twidroid. We have talked about this one before and it continues to be my favorite. I use it for my personal twitter account (@jacobspaulsen) and it is the very best at running in the background. It will always notify you when you have new replies, dms, etc. Lots of ways to change configuration settings makes it the most customizable. By far the most options and flexibility.
Twit2go. This one was new to me today and I’m impressed so far. I’m hopeful that it will truly run in the background and the interface is nothing short of beautiful. I had a couple of force close issues because I kept telling it to refresh, not knowing it does it automatically. It doesn’t show you that its working but with a little faith on my part it did its job perfectly without me hassling it.
Itweet. This is probably my very favorite interface and while the app has great features I have 3 issues with it. First it costs money and while I’m always willing to pay for good work, I don’t see any need with all the great free apps available. Second, It doesn’t truly run in the background. You have to remember to open it every once in awhile to keep it checking for replies and DMs. Third, it takes up a lot of space.
TwitterRide. Well this is an ok app giving you all the twitter functions that you need in a light app but once again it doesn’t run in the background. Only if its running will you receive notifications.
Swift. Not yet available in the market the promising twitter app from http://www.swift-app.com is already available for download from their site. It looks a little on the big size but I’m loving it so far. The interface is certainly good looking enough and the functionality seems to be all there. I will cross my fingers for the next few days hoping it will truly run in the background and if it does… you can be sure you will hear more about this app from me.
That’s it for today. Let me know if you use a different app that you think the world of!
Our friends who developed DroidAnalytics have done it again with Droidsense.
Adsense – Google adsense is a widely used advertising revenue system for internet marketers and web developers. Anyone can sign up for a free adsense account which will give the user html code to embed into their website. This code will display ads relevant to the content on the page and when ads are clcicked the user is compensated. Its the way a lot of online organizations pay the bills and fund their projects.
Droidsense – It is currently the only adsense app in the market I could find but honestly I don’t need more selection. Very inexpensive, this app is a no-brainer for any adsense user. They even have a demo version you can tryout until you are convinced.
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