HELP! Need to get G1 Working or Dieter Will Kill Me!

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Okay, so the G1 says I have voicemail, however I have the iPhone Visual Voicemail plan, which I can't access via the G1, can I?

I don't have a regular voicemail PIN, so calling in is a non-starter, unless I go ask Rogers to set one up...

Never thought of this!
 
A few weird things:

I have a 802.11n network with an AppleTV that's always super fast, but it's definitely taken a hit down to G speeds. I'm running the G1 with WiFi on. I've never had a problem with the iPhone or iPod Touch with WiFi on, but I'm wondering if the G1 hits the network much more often, causing it to drop down to G mode for compatibility?

Also, contacts continue to be my bane. I basically can't call people, because Google contacts doesn't seem to put names and numbers together. I type in a name and get no number for it, and people call who should be in my address book but Google has no names to match. It's totally severed the relationship.

(I'm synching Address Book to Google Contacts)

Last funny: I hit up Casey's iPhone review on MobileChrome and it popped up a requester asking if I wanted to watch it in YouTube App or in the browser. I chose YouTube App and it worked flawlessly. I then went back and chose Browser to see if there was a plugin for inline display, and all I got was the web page with a warning saying I needed to install Java and Flash to watch the video. Why is Browser an option if that's the result?
 
I too found google contacts to be a bit frustrating, but then I found the option to turn off that annoying "add any person I've ever contacted via gmail to my contacts". Then there was the mind-numbing process of correcting all the screwups that happened when I tried to export my contacts from Palm Desktop, and import them to google.
Now it works perfectly, except of course for the fact that google thinks we all want to sort by first name, since there's no separate fields for first and last.

Oh, and here's a link to Google's own instructions on how to enable syncing between iCal and Google Calendar, which they for some reason make very hard to find (it's not even a top search result in google):
Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center
 
Re: HELP!

A few weird things:

I have a 802.11n network with an AppleTV that's always super fast, but it's definitely taken a hit down to G speeds. I'm running the G1 with WiFi on. I've never had a problem with the iPhone or iPod Touch with WiFi on, but I'm wondering if the G1 hits the network much more often, causing it to drop down to G mode for compatibility?
Sounds improbable but to test the theory you might try comparing the internet speed on the G1 and iPhone assuming you still have an iPhone in the house. There is even a Market app to do that: Speedtest. Glad your AppleTV is fast because mine is all over the place.

Also, contacts continue to be my bane. I basically can't call people, because Google contacts doesn't seem to put names and numbers together. I type in a name and get no number for it, and people call who should be in my address book but Google has no names to match. It's totally severed the relationship.

(I'm synching Address Book to Google Contacts)
My, you do have a knack for conjuring up the evil spirits! :eek: I have seen photos of a mysterious Google sync option in the Address Book preferences but that is apparently for iPhone eyes only. I simply exported the Address Book to Google which was fairly clean. What fields do not map properly? Might it have something to do with how your Address Book is set up?

Last funny: I hit up Casey's iPhone review on MobileChrome and it popped up a requester asking if I wanted to watch it in YouTube App or in the browser. I chose YouTube App and it worked flawlessly. I then went back and chose Browser to see if there was a plugin for inline display, and all I got was the web page with a warning saying I needed to install Java and Flash to watch the video. Why is Browser an option if that's the result?
Probably because Flash is planned but not yet implemented. There are several little gotchas like that in Android. Can you find the others during your time with the G1?
 
I ran into the same problem getting my contacts up to Gmail. CompanionLink makes an excellent product (Google Android sync). I followed Google's instructions but if I had a contact with only the first name it did as you and others said - orphaned the number. CompanionLink brings it over cleanly. The only problem I had was numbers listed as "other" didn't come thru. But everything else ("home", "mobile", "work",etc) uploaded fine (to get around this I just changed "other" to a valid field).

It also syncs your calendar. And you can set the interval - as short as 15 minutes. So you can change or update an email address in your G1, knowing when you need to send that email via your POP3 account in Outlook it will be there.
 
I too found google contacts to be a bit frustrating, but then I found the option to turn off that annoying "add any person I've ever contacted via gmail to my contacts". Then there was the mind-numbing process of correcting all the screwups that happened when I tried to export my contacts from Palm Desktop, and import them to google.
Now it works perfectly, except of course for the fact that google thinks we all want to sort by first name, since there's no separate fields for first and last.

That's where I'm at, but since I'm only using it for a week, I'm not sure it's worth the massive effort. It just keeps breaking up my contacts. I have like 5 Dieter's now, one each per number and addy, and searching brings up blanks. Sync is hard, I know, but Google nails Mail and Calendar, so maybe I expect that in Contacts too.

Oh, and here's a link to Google's own instructions on how to enable syncing between iCal and Google Calendar, which they for some reason make very hard to find (it's not even a top search result in google):
Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center

Thanks! What I'm actually looking for is the other way around. I want to subscribe to my MobileMe calendar in gCal. I can get the CalDAV addresses, but can't find where to subscribe in gCal?
 
My, you do have a knack for conjuring up the evil spirits! :eek: I have seen photos of a mysterious Google sync option in the Address Book preferences but that is apparently for iPhone eyes only. I simply exported the Address Book to Google which was fairly clean. What fields do not map properly? Might it have something to do with how your Address Book is set up?

I probably should have done the export, but even still, Gmail contacts is just so full of data so disconnected that its basically useless, and now it's polluted my Address Book (since I went with the Sync).

Probably because Flash is planned but not yet implemented. There are several little gotchas like that in Android. Can you find the others during your time with the G1?

I don't think they anticipated users as stupid as me. I would appreciate little UI pop-ups saying "Open Keyboard to Enter URL" and they may want to consider removing non-implemented options so as not to confuse us stupid types :)
 
Nice! I'll look into this!

I ran into the same problem getting my contacts up to Gmail. CompanionLink makes an excellent product (Google Android sync). I followed Google's instructions but if I had a contact with only the first name it did as you and others said - orphaned the number. CompanionLink brings it over cleanly. The only problem I had was numbers listed as "other" didn't come thru. But everything else ("home", "mobile", "work",etc) uploaded fine (to get around this I just changed "other" to a valid field).

It also syncs your calendar. And you can set the interval - as short as 15 minutes. So you can change or update an email address in your G1, knowing when you need to send that email via your POP3 account in Outlook it will be there.
 
I probably should have done the export, but even still, Gmail contacts is just so full of data so disconnected that its basically useless, and now it's polluted my Address Book (since I went with the Sync).

Poor Rene! I had the most wretched time syncing my messy gmail contacts as well. I just chalked it up to the first week annoyances of switching phones. I found that the simplest way for me to avoid having everyone on earth in my contacts list is to clean up my contacts online and separate them out into groups. Rather than syncing all contacts, I just synced to the groups that I wanted.

A bit of work, but hey. Now my gmail contacts are in order.

By the way, I find that the Anycut, Weather Channel, and twidroid are great apps. Also, Divide and Conquer, coloroid, and Pac Man are kind of addictive.

Good Luck!

EDIT: Oh, and SpellDial too.
 
Re: 3G incompatibility

No 3G love from AT&T on the G1, T-Mobile's weird choice in 3G bands killed that.
Don't blame T-Mobile, point the finger at our strange marketplace where carriers buy frequencies and can then lock out other carriers. It's a mess! To add insult, our 3G networks are incompatible with the rest of the world. :(

I live in a more rural area where the inconsistent coverage drives us crazy. My wife has a phone from a different carrier so that we have a better chance of connecting in a given location. Stupid! :mad:

By next year some phones may have universal 3G chipsets that work throughout the frequency spectrum. That will help although what we really need is a coordinated system in which we can roam at will without all the petty turf wars.
 
Hey the messy contacts thing is not relegated to only the G1. When I went from Palm to WM at work I ended up importing the biggest glob of mess via exchange and outlook. I had over 2500 entries. Thing thing about the iphone, in 3 months I never managed to have any syncing of any entries except the ones I put in by hand.
 
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some general info about exchange server functions?

hey there, i know it's frustrating to not have that exchange connection. i'm standing by (impatiently) till next year for that killer android exchange server app. i know you are an iphone guy... can you tell us what kind or kinds of exchange server apps out there are that work with iphone and iphone 3G?
 
Hey the messy contacts thing is not relegated to only the G1. When I went from Palm to WM at work I ended up importing the biggest glob of mess via exchange and outlook. I had over 2500 entries. Thing thing about the iphone, in 3 months I never managed to have any syncing of any entries except the ones I put in by hand.

I went from the Treo 680 to the original iPhone. Didn't have any problem. I think I used MarkSpace to handle it. Funnily, MobileMe will still label contacts as coming from Palm when it tries to resolve contacts, so the meta never dies!
 
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