All Your Base Are Belong To Google: i.e. Android Chaos
Looking at paring back my cellphone bills I was interested in the Chit-Chat thread Can you recommend a bare bones cell phone?
After that thread I went looking at my own last year of actual usage vs. billings and was forced to admit that some form of prepaid service (while traditionally considered "ghetto") actually made sense. The downside is most prepaid carriers offer a truly awful spread of phone options.
I found one I think I can live with, after quickly realizing I'd have to give up the real "tricorder" option that WinMo 6.x offered for something more... limited. Like Phone 7 (ack, ptui! - if you can find it) or more likely Android. In my case an Android phone that's WiFi capable to limit the expense of cellular data.
I placed the order, grabbed the manual online, and started reading in anticipation. One of the first issues you'll face is importing your contacts.
Egad, this looks awful. The docs only offer you the option of "creating a vCard for every contact, getting it onto a microSD card, shoving that into the phone, and manually importing each vCard." There had to be something better.
Checked Outlook where I have all my phone contacts sync'ed already. Nope, no clean "dump all contacts to vCards" in there. Then I looked online and found:
How To: Sync Android With Microsoft Outlook
It isn't pretty.
Quote:
There's a little secret to buying an Android phone, one that you may not learn until it's too late: Google really wants you to use Gmail, Google Contacts, and Google Calendar.
And it goes downhill from there.
Clearly there's a market for a better tool, and hopefully not some Android crapplet with winking Konami Kanata Cat icons.
And people have whinged for years about Microsoft lock-in! I know this won't matter to the teeming hordes who dangle "phone charms" from the lanyard loop and treat their 'tainment phones as pacifiers, but for serious users? Come on!
Android Chaos? I'm thinking Android Apocalypse.
1 Attachment(s)
Re: All Your Base Are Belong To Google: i.e. Android Chaos
In case anyone else bumps into this issue (and from spending a few hours searching it is way too common) I pulled some notes together on the vCard file format that an Android phone might possibly import for you. Maybe somebody else wants to take a shot at adding to the piles of PC software and Android applets that try to handle this task.
It's an RTF WordPad document and it references a Word doc you might want too: vCard, The Electronic Business Card, Version 2.1
It is close to a workable spec for what might import without headaches, it just needs some reorganization. But it's fairly short as it is.
Note that those willing to trust GMail/Google Contacts with personal information, they use an incompatible format but probably are more powerful about the import conversion. This is the path Android tries to force you along, so it probably works best.
2 Attachment(s)
Exporting Outlook Contacts, Importing to Android
Well in case anyone stumbles on this looking for help getting their personal contacts from Outlook (no, not Outlook Express, not Windows Mail, not Live Mail) I have a quick fix that worked for me.
I wrote a WSH script to extract the Contacts from a local ("personal") Outlook .PST file using the Jet Exchange/Outlook IISAM and format them as a multi-contact vCard file (.VCF).
This is pretty easy:
- Download the Outlook2VCard.zip I have attached here to your Desktop.
- On most current Windows versions, right-click, choose Properties, click on the Unblock button.
- Extract Outlook2VCard.wsf to your Desktop.
- Right-click, Edit this to read the instructions at the beginning of the file. Close it without saving.
- Double-click on this file's icon to run it.
- Answer the prompts, which have typical defaults pre-filled.
- Look for the resulting Contacts.vcf on your Desktop.
Ok, not bad. Now to copy them to the phone.
- Connect your Android phone via USB, we're going to copy to the SD card. You may have to set up the USB drivers if this is your first time!
- Open the SD card which ought to look like a drive letter now. This may require looking at your phone for a prompt to allow USB access to the SD card. Ok that prompt. Now you should be able to open the SD card "drive."
- At the root of this "drive" create a folder named something like "imports" so we don't put crud where we can't manage it. Open this folder.
- Drag and drop Contacts.vcf from your Desktop to this imports folder.
- Close the Explorer folder window on the SD card.
- Do the "safe remove" thing via the tray icon, as you do for any Flash Memory drive.
- Unplug your phone's USB cable.
Whew!
Now to import these Contacts:
- Go into your phone.
- Go into Contacts there.
- Open the menu (press your menu key or whatever).
- Choose Import/Export.
- Choose Import.
- Choose SD card.
It should find the Contacts.vcf file and import it with no problems.
Later you can remove the vCards file and the imports folder from the SD card if you wish. And you can delete Outlook2VCard.zip, Outlook2VCard.wsf, and Contacts.vcf from your PC Desktop.
And this is supposed to be a consumer device?
First time I tried this, connecting to the PC it wanted to run a driver setup thing. I let it run,and it didn't work correctly because the setup didn't elevate correctly. I had to unplug the phone's USB cable, uninstall the drivers via Control Panel, plug back in, ignore the install and open the folder offered, manually run the install/setup "as administrator." Then it was ok.
Your experience will almost certainly vary: Android is a bag of misc. software that each phone manufacturer cobbles together in his own way, with extra cruft he bundles in there, etc. Then there are even umpteen versions of the base Android "operating system" you might have one sample of.
But you could also remove the phone's memory card, plug it into a PC "reader" port, and update the card directly before moving it back into the phone.
While I have your attention
Another thing that probably isn't in your phone's "manual" (as they laughingly call it) is where to put stuff like music you already have. No, not the crud they try to get you to buy online using junkware bundled by the manufacturer or carrier. Music you already have.
First note that your Android phone most likely did not include a general media player, no they tend to have a separate craplet for music, movies, etc. And the music player probably doesn't support the "half as big and clean burning" .WMA format that Windows Media Player might have ripped your CDs to.
Sorry, you'll need MP3 format, or something fruity like .OGG files. So maybe go back and re-rip everything making sure you specify MP3 output.
So where to put them?
Nobody tells you that either.
For good results I found some guidelines that work for me. Create these folders in the root of your SD card and plop the appropriate things into the right slots afterward:
Code:
Music Media scanner classifies all media found here as user music.
Podcasts Media scanner classifies all media found here as a podcast.
Ringtones Media scanner classifies all media found here as a ringtone.
Alarms Media scanner classifies all media found here as an alarm sound.
Notifications Media scanner classifies all media found here as a notification sound.
Pictures All photos (excluding those taken with the camera).
Movies All movies (excluding those taken with the camcorder).
Download Miscellaneous downloads.
I found this at Thread: Android Media File Structure (how to store media on the SD card) and it works. It also works with your MP3s in subfolders under the Music, Podcasts, etc. folders.
Office Developer Bonus
See the second attachment here: the hard to find list of ContactItem Property schema.ini Tag values. If you need this you will know, otherwise you won't. Note that I could only get the positive values to work for me.
Re: All Your Base Are Belong To Google: i.e. Android Chaos
Caveat:
The script above was tested against Outlook 2003, the phone has Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread. Other versions might require some adjustments.
Re: All Your Base Are Belong To Google: i.e. Android Chaos
And the hits keep coming...
Calendar should support opening iCal .ics files
Proves my point: iPhone, Android, Phone 7 are not smartphones, but entertainment phones. And of the bunch Android seems to be the worst.
Sad, but I'm making a go of it. Thankfully I don't require true "smart" functionality as much anymore myself.
Re: All Your Base Are Belong To Google: i.e. Android Chaos
Ahh, and more Android churn:
Android Design Problem Areas
Quote:
While it’s great that Android now has a style I believe this has come too late. Android has always been about functionalty before style and this has resulted in over 400,000 apps that now don’t conform to the style. This means that there will never be a level of consistency across all apps in the same way we have on iOS. Also, the combination of Android Design being recommendations rather than app store reviewed requirements means that some developers are bound to go off on their own because they think they know better.
"Style" here refers to UI guidelines, not fad and fashion.
"Functionality" seems to mean "it works under the covers, like from the deeply buried Linux core command line, but may well suck for users of the appliance Android is embedded into."
And of course the whole lack of UI consistency is, well sort of an Android hallmark.
Quote:
Android’s action bar might be poorly placed. Frequently used things should usually be placed near the bottom of the screen. Lots of studies have been done on this, most notable, those by Microsoft that caused the Windows Mobile menu bar to be moved from the top to the bottom of the screen during the OS transition from Palm-sized PC to Pocket PC.
Yep. Back in the days before Phone 7 threw out the baby with the bathwater. Don't look Microsoft-ward for answers today though.
And the kicker is they're off on a jaunt at Google with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) which is where all the new incompatibilities with existing Android platforms and applets comes in.
Gee, can't you just wait for the day you have to drive your car via Android or some Phone 7 follow-on? Egad.
Cars’ Internet connections may change driving life
