Living in the cloud - Migrating from Mac desktop to Google

When I finally decided to get my Android-based phone, one of my first considerations was how I would sync the data I currently had stored in my desktop Mac applications with the 'droid. I had been relying on iCal and Address Book for some time to keep my contacts and appointments in order, and when I had a Nokia phone, iSync took care of getting it all synced together.

With no desktop sync software available for a Mac/Android combination, I decided that the obvious answer was to migrate everything into Google's cloud. I have been a gMail user for a long time now, but I had never really used the Contacts or Calendar options in anger. In case you're interested, here's how I went about getting my precious data into the right place, ready for pairing with my new phone. Needless to say, all this assumes you've got a Google account!

Firstly - and most importantly - I backed all my existing data up. Of course, Time Machine had been faithfully doing this anyway, but I wanted to be doubly sure that I had a safe, up-to-date copy of everything in case the plan went south. To do this, open up iCal and go to File -> Export -> iCal Archive and choose where to save the file. I decided on the desktop for ease, but you can put it anywhere really. This will back up all your iCal calendars into one easily restorable file.

In Address Book, the process is very similar. Fire it up, and go to File -> Export -> Address Book Archive. Again, this will back everything up into one file.

Save both of those archive files somewhere safe in case the worst happens. You can always get back to square one by importing them back into their respective programs if things don't work out. Once you're happy you're all backed up, the fun can start.

iCal to Google Calendar:

In iCal, your next step is to export each of your calendars - if you've only got one, then you'll only need to do it once. If, like me, you have more than one (one for home, one for work) you'll need to export each one separately. Click on the first calendar in the list on the left of the iCal window, and then go to File -> Export -> Export and select a destination. Repeat for each separate calendar, making sure your file name is different and easily identifiable. Your files will have the suffix .ics on the end.

Then fire up your browser, and go to your Google Calendar - http://www.google.com/calendar/. In the left hand column - under the heading My Calendars - by default, you will just have the one calendar. This is fine if you're only importing one, but if you have more then you will need to create the necessary extras. To do this, click on the little "add" hyperlink, and go about creating the new one. Then, to avoid later confusion, I named my Google calendars as the same things as the ones I was importing - so in my case, I had one called "Home" and one called "Work" to match the .ics files I had exported earlier.

To import your iCal files into Google, the process is quite simple. Click on the "Settings" hyperlink under "My Calendars", and it will take you to a separate settings page where you can see your calendars listed, along with import and export options.

Click on the "Import Calendar" option, and another dialog box appears.

Click browse, navigate to where you saved your .ics file, and then use the dropdown at the bottom to choose which calendar to import into. Repeat for your other calendars as well - choosing a different destination calendar for each of your .ics files. If your calendar is big with a lot of appointments in it, importing might take a while. Just be patient and let it do its thing. Once it has finished, hey presto, you have all your data in your Google Calendars.

Importing Address Book into gMail Contacts

To perform a similar feat with Address Book and Google Contacts, you need to go into Address Book, and choose "Select All" from the "Edit" menu to highlight all of your contacts. Once this is done, go to File -> Export -> Export vCard and a dialog box will ask you where you want to save the resulting file - which will automatically be named "vCards". This is a single file containing all the data from all your contacts, in a form that Google can read.

Then, in your browser, fire up gMail and navigate to the "Contacts" section. Once there, you will see three hyperlinks in the top right hand corner of the window - "Import", "Export" and "Print". Choose "Import" and another dialog will appear.

Choose "Browse" and find your way to where you saved your "vCards" file. Then select "Import" - after a few seconds all your contacts should magically appear, complete with photographs if you used them in Address Book. Success!

These steps, by themselves, will do all you need to to get your calendars and contacts (as well as your gMail) onto your new shiny Android phone. The tight integration between the phone and Google means that you only have to input your username and password once, and then everything syncs up quite seamlessly.

Next steps - if you're interested...

Once your calendars are imported into Google, you can then go about subscribing to your newly-created calendars from inside iCal. This uses CalDAV to allow you to view and edit your Google Calendars from within iCal itself.

The first step is a bit drastic (and you can miss this bit out if it's too scary) and it involves deleting your current, locally-stored, calendars from iCal. This will give you a clean sheet to start from, and it will avoid any duplication problems later on. Right click each of your current calendars and choose delete, and they will disappear. You won't be able to delete all of them though - iCal will force you to keep at least one. No matter, because once you've linked to your Google Calendar, you can then delete that stubborn one that won't go away yet.

To link to your Google calendar, go to the "Preferences" menu for iCal. Then click on the "Accounts" tab, and then the little plus symbol in the bottom left of the dialog box. This will present you with the following:

Keep the "Account type" as automatic, and then input your Google email address and password. Click "Create" and iCal will do the rest. You should see your primary Google Calendar appear in the list on the left of the iCal window.

If you've only got one calendar, then that's it - you're done. However, if you have another one (or more) to link to there are further steps to be carried out.

Head back over to your Google Calendar in your browser. Click the "Settings" link again (the one you used before) and then click the second calendar on your list. This will take you into the detailed settings for this particular calendar. Down at the bottom of this screen, you will see a section called "Calendar Address". This will list a Calendar ID - a random string of numbers and letters, followed by "@group.calendar.google.com". Highlight this whole entry and copy it.

Then you need to paste this calendar ID into the following address: /calendar/dav/yourcalendarIDhere@group.calendar.google.com/user/ - obviously replacing the underlined bit with the ID you copied in the previous step. You can do this in Textedit or something similar. Once you've done it, highlight the whole lot, and copy it all again.

Head back to iCal, and go back to the preferences screen. Click the plus sign on the accounts tab again, but this time, instead of going for the "automatic" option, choose "CalDAV" from the dropdown instead:

Type your normal Google username and password in, and then paste the long address string (that you copied previously) into the "Server address" box. Click "Create", and - if you've done your copying and pasting right - your second calendar will appear in iCal underneath your first. Repeat ad infinitum for as many calendars as you've got. Sorted!

Keeping things synced in Address Book is much, much easier. Go to the "Preferences" dialog, click the "accounts" tab and check the box that says "Syncronize with Google". It'll ask for your username and password, but then that's it. Google and Address Book will stay in sync.

So there you have it. I've still got all my contacts in Address book, and all my appointments in iCal - however, they're now also in my Google account too, meaning that my phone is seamlessly and constantly synced as well.

I'm open to any questions, comments and improvements. Just let me know!

Opening up the Market: HTC Legend UK update

I was pleasantly surprised to discover my new HTC Legend alerting me to the fact that it had a firmware update waiting for me earlier today. I knew there was one in the pipeline to address the Market issues that I alluded to in my last post (a number of mainstream apps missing for the Legend) but I wasn't expecting it so soon. As far as I can tell it's an update specifically for UK Legend users on the Vodafone network.

I was given the option of downloading it there and then over my 3G connection, or to wait until there was a wifi connection available. It was only 9MB but I decided to go for the wifi option. The update sat patiently in my notification bar until I returned home, and then it promptly started downloading.

About 5 minutes later, after download, install and restart, I checked the phone's Software Information screen (to get there, go to Settings -> About Phone -> Software Information) and then listed at the bottom was the all-important Software Number, listed as 1.32.161.4. I had been upgraded!

I promptly checked the Android Market and sure enough, all those essential (but previously missing) apps I had been looking for had now appeared. I'm now set up with the full complement of apps that I wanted and pleasingly, they're all pretty much identical to their iPhone counterparts. I've got a few Android-specific ones in there for good measure as well. In no particular order then, here's what I've got (links are to the webpage specific to the Android app):

Evernote - Note-taking app, allowing you to upload photo notes, audio notes and text notes to your online scrapbook for later reference and searching.
Dropbox - Access to your Dropbox and its contents, and again letting you upload files direct from your phone
Shazam - For quick and easy identification of music that you hear, but don't know what it is!
Wordpress - Blog tools and management
Opera Mini - Good browser for when your 3G connection is slow
Google Listen - Podcast downloads, playback and search
NewsRob - RSS reader that syncs with your Google Reader feeds with excellent user interface, and offline caching
BBC News - App for direct access to all of the stories on BBC News
Google Sky Map - Point your phone at the night sky and the app will tell you what constellations you can see
c:geo - Geocaching app allowing you to locate and manage Geocaches, also syncs with your geocaching.com account
My Tracks - Lets you record your journey on Google Maps, complete with times, speeds, elevation etc and upload it
Barcode Scanner - Useful for price comparisons, and increasingly for finding and downloading other apps via QR codes
Astrid - Task manager and to-do list

Any others I should have? Let me know in the comments.

72 hours with the HTC Legend

As you'll be aware by now, I took the plunge with a new phone at the end of last week and got myself an HTC Legend.

Having spent three days setting it up, using it and tinkering with it I thought I'd report my findings so far. Here goes...

The first thing to say is that the phone itself, in terms of its hardware, is absolutely beautiful. The unibody aluminium casing is great to hold, and gives the phone a sense of class. I don't know how long it will remain scuff-free, but I definitely get the sense that it's rugged enough to withstand day-to-day abuse. I got a nice Proporta case for it, so hopefully that will keep it safe.

Next up - initial set up. As any one of a number of YouTube videos will testify, setting up the HTC Legend is an absolute breeze - with one important caveat as far as I'm concerned. The Android OS is so heavily integrated with Google's cloud-based services that I think you might have a more difficult time if you're not a Google account holder. However, I am, and as such everything was very straightforward. Enter your Google account name and password and the phone sets up your email, calendar and contacts without needing any further prompting. Then it asks you if you hold an account with any of Facebook, Flickr or Twitter. Having all three, I proceeded to enter usernames and passwords for those services too, and it went about importing all my contacts from them as well. I was pleased to discover that whilst there is a useful amount of integration between all four of these destinations, contacts are kept distinct on the phone so that you don't end up with an unwieldly amalgamation of everyone from everywhere. You can also select how often the phone syncs those services, and how verbose you want it to be in telling you about any updates. I particularly like the way it gives notifications in the status bar across the top - subtle, but effective.

Setting up the seven home screens is very simple - you can either choose from some presets, or just go ahead and configure your own, which is what I did. You can choose from widgets, programs and shortcuts to provide you with a layout that is unique to you and the way you work. I've got the most common apps on the home screen (calendar, text messages, gMail, Twitter client, Facebook, camera app etc) and then a selection of widgets and shortcuts spread liberally across the other six screens.

I then went on to download some apps from the Android Market - and this is where my first hitch arose. Because the Legend is such a new phone, it has not yet been officially ratified (if that's the right word) by Google, and as such not all the apps are available just yet. I resorted to directly downloading some of the ones I wanted rather than going through the Market because of this. I got hold of Evernote, Dropbox, Shazam, Opera Mini and a few others (all of which I will tell you about in a subsequent post once I've tested them out).

The most impressive App so far is Google Navigation. By upgrading the built-in Google Maps app to the latest version, the phone becomes a fully fledged turn-by-turn SatNav. I was slightly annoyed that it didn't read instructions out loud, until I realised that you needed to also install the text-to-speech synthesiser before it can do this!

I had a bit of a nightmare with getting music tracks onto the phone - but this was a self-induced nightmare really. Copying music across is as simple as drag and drop, but I discovered a lot of my tracks didn't have embedded album art. This is a quirk of iTunes, in that if you rely on automatic retrieval of artwork then iTunes stores it in a separate linked database instead of embedding it. I could have just lived with missing artwork, but my computer OCD got the better of me and I had to fix it. I will detail how I did this in a later post (it's too in-depth to explain here in this overview!).

So - initial impressions after a 72-hour running in period? Well, firstly - and perhaps most importantly - it's NOT an iPhone. There is quite a bit of fettling to be done to get things the way you want them. Without the symbiosis of iTunes, this is very much a hands-on piece of kit. However, the Google integration with the cloud-based services is very impressive which in some ways more than makes up for the lack of iTunes, and I rather like the level of customisation and freedom that Android allows. On the apps front, the Market is very barren by comparison with the Apple App Store, but so far I've got most things that I need. If your need is first-and-foremost for your phone to be a media player, then again this isn't necessarily the phone and/or the OS for you. However - for what I need it is perfect, and the cost saving over the mighty iPhone is a big bonus.

I'm sure there will be a lot more discoveries, joys and frustrations to come, but it's definitely so far, so good.

The stuff of Legend

Just a quick post, but I'm sure you will be heartily relieved to know that my mission to seek out a new mobile phone is all but over.

The trusty Nokia E63 will be handed down to GeekWife, and in its place I shall be wielding a gorgeous new HTC Legend.

After much wrangling with various networks, Vodafone came up with an absolutely corking deal on the Legend. This means it'll be by my side for the next 18 months, so I shall be sure to fully document the ups and downs of Android ownership in graphic detail for your reading pleasure.

Expect a post on the setup process in the next few days.

Powerful stuff

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my purchase of the Firestone Audio Fubar IV DAC/headphone amp, and the new lease of life it had given to my digital music setup. I won't repeat myself here, but needless to say I was (and very much still am) incredibly impressed with its performance. I also mentioned in that post that I was considering getting the matching add-on power supply for the Fubar - called The Supplier.

Several Firestone Audio customers were reporting good things on internet forums about the performance gains that the dedicated power supply brought to their original components. This is something that I've always been a little sceptical about, because electricity is electricity, right? Surely it doesn't matter where it comes from, as long as it comes from somewhere. However, I was thinking that the "wall wart" mains adapter that shipped with the Fubar IV looked a bit cheap in comparison to the quality of the unit itself, and with it being a European unit it shipped with a 2-pin plug. This meant I had to use a 2-pin to 3-pin adapter as well. I figured that this combination probably wasn't the best source of power for a component that was all about audio detail and fidelity.

Anyway, it came to my attention that Firestone Audio's website were doing another of their crazy price drops on The Supplier (you need to keep an eye on the site, because these deals are worth looking out for) and it was reduced from 115 Euros to 75 Euros. Taking into account currency conversion and shipping charges, that still meant £25 off the price from any UK dealer. Needless to say, this was the nudge I'd been looking for, and I went and ordered one. I figured that for that relatively modest outlay, I could take a risk and it would be an interesting experiment. If all else failed, there was always eBay!

There was a bit of a delay taking delivery of The Supplier. A combination of popular demand and the Icelandic volcano meant I had to wait three weeks to get my hands on my new purchase. However, the lovely people at Firestone more than made up for this by also sending me their newly-released FRX-001 dedicated audio rack that they've designed exclusively for their components for me to review.

The first thing that I noticed on opening up the box for The Supplier was that again the mains cable was a 2-pin European one, with an adapter to turn it into a UK 3-pin. No matter though. Wanting to really give The Supplier a chance to shine I declined to use this option. The Supplier has a standard figure-of-8 mains socket on its rear, so I simply grabbed a UK-plug figure-of-8 cable that I had lying around and plugged this in instead. I then unplugged the Fubar's original mains lead and hooked up the output of The Supplier to the input on the Fubar, and we were up and running.

With my Grado SR80i's plugged into the Fubar, I decided to leave the system playing some tunes on repeat to give it all a chance to warm up and "settle in". I've absolutely no idea if this actually makes a difference or not, but I thought I'd give it a try. Certainly when I first got the Fubar IV it became better over time, gaining some warmth and clarity as it got run in, so I figured I'd give The Supplier the same benefit.

Itching to try it out, later that day I settled down for my first proper listen. I'd anticipated flicking through a few well-known tracks to test things out. In actual fact, I ended up listening right through four of my favourite albums all the way through from start to finish. I was loving the music so much, I just kept going. The sound was just so natural - warm, yet detailed. Not in the slightest fatiguing. Most of all, enjoyable!

With a more critical head on, the next day I decided to be a bit more analytical. I did some straight A-B swapout testing of The Supplier. Listen to a track with Fubar alone, then listen again with the Supplier. I tried a range of music - electronica, acoustic, rock, classical. All had a definite improvement in clarity and dynamics when listened to with The Supplier. The improvement is, I will admit, subtle - but it's definitely an improvement.

Onto more aesthetic matters, I've now also got my two Firestone components at home in their new dedicated Firestone rack, as you can see in the main photo. Cleverly, the rack has a system of rubber stoppers on the underside of each shelf which stops the components from sliding around when plugging in headphones and the like. The fact that my little head-fi system looks so amazing on its new miniature rack is just the icing on the cake. Superb stuff.

Frankly, this little setup is brilliant on so many levels. It brings genuine hi-fi quality to the world of digital audio convenience, it's relatively cheap and amazingly small. I love it!