Please tell me, has anybody been able to run an entire Eclipse session (start Eclipse, edit a bunch of project files, run, debug, etc.) without Eclipse crashing? Anybody?

For some reason, Milestones sold in certain parts of the world come without voice input. I purchased my Milestone in Viet Nam and there was no option for voice input. Weird.

Anyway, if you bought a Milestone and want voice input, here’s an easy way to get it that doesn’t involve rooting your phone:

Go to the Market and search for Speak and Send. Install the app. Once installed, run it. It will tell you that it’s missing a component (the voice input stuff) and give you the opportunity to install it. You will have two choices: install from the Market or install from their website. The problem is that the voice input toolkit isn’t available in all Market areas (which is likely why Voice Input isn’t available on all Milestones). Install from their website. Voice input is now available everywhere it should be. If you have the Google Search widget on your homescreen, remove it and re-add it. You’ll see the voice input button now.

You don’t need to keep the Speak n’ Send app–it can be removed. It’s a cool app, though, so you may want to play with it.

Enjoy Voice Input!

After yesterday’s fun trying to get both my Google Apps and my GMail account work on my Milestone (Droid), I decided to write up the steps for others.

First, why do you need to do this? If you have a Google Apps account and it’s your primary account on your phone, you won’t be able to access things like My Maps on Google Maps. Google Apps accounts don’t have that feature.

Second, be aware that the procedure outlined below starts with a factory reset of your phone. You won’t lose any data, but you will lose all installed apps and your home screen settings. Not to worry, though–once you’re back up you can open the Market and go to the Downloads tab to see all of the apps that you had previously downloaded and re-download them. You will have to spend some time redoing your home screen. I use the excellent ADW.Launcher, which saves your Launcher and Desktop settings to your SD card, so restoring my home screen was a snap.

Before you do any work on the phone, you need to associate a gmail.com account with your Google Apps for Domains account. To do this, go to the Google Accounts login page and log in with your Google Apps account (full email address, including your domain name). Under “Try something new” click on GMail and add a new gmail.com account. This account will be used for Buzz if you like, so choose something accordingly. I added chris.dollmont@gmail.com to my account.

You can sign on to your new account and go to Settings. Under Forwarding and POP/IMAP, forward a copy of all incoming mail to your Google Apps for Domains account. I have all mail forward to my domain account and deleted from the GMail account.

You should now have two accounts that are linked together. One is your Google Apps for Domain account and the other is a GMail account. You can access the first from your normal domain login page and the second from gmail.com. Now that that’s taken care of, on to the phone!

First, go to Settings|Privacy and do a “Factory data reset”. When the phone comes back up, set up the phone again with your Google Apps for Domains account. Once the setup is complete, immediately go to Settings|Accounts & Sync. Add your GMail account. If you’re only using your GMail account for linking, you can turn off sync in your GMail account’s sync settings.

Once you’ve added both accounts, go back to restoring your phone. Re-add your apps by going to Market and selecting the Downloads tab. You should see a list of all apps you’ve previously downloaded. Re-download the ones you want again. You can also go back and redo your home screen(s).

Now you can go to Maps and hit the menu key. Under More, select Switch Account. Switch to your Gmail account (gmail.com). Under Layers|More Layers you should now be able to select My Maps and see a list of your saved Map sets.

Note that when you access Maps on your PC web browser, you should show as being signed in to your Gmail account. You can edit your maps here and the changes will be available on your phone. Add directions and routes, add points of interest. Do it from the desktop where it’s easier and sync to your phone automatically. The Google My Maps Editor for Android tool will now work properly, too.

Another side effect of this linking is that you’ll now be able to access Buzz. Sign in through gmail.com to your GMail account and select Buzz from the menu on the left. You can also go to buzz.google.com on your phone and get all the Buzz on Android.

You may also use Google Voice and Google Listen. In fact, as far as I can tell, all of the Google services now work properly. Even the Picasa uploader in Gallery works, when it didn’t before. The only real change I’ve noticed is that I now appeared signed on to all services under my GMail account rather than my domain account, even if I use my domain login.

For those of you who are wondering, I took the step of factory reseting the phone because attempts to add the GMail account kept failing. I had a bunch of other accounts added (Twiiter, Last.FM, etc.). It appears that the reset followed immediately by adding both Google accounts solved the problem.

The whole process is a bit of a pain, but it’s worth it in the end. I think it would be better if Google solved this problem internally somehow, but for now, this process Worked For Me^(tm).

In my last post, I mentioned that I’d figured out a way to get around Google’s limitations on Android.

After sharing the calendar from my Google Apps domain to my placeholder GMail account, everything appeared to be fine. I could once again see my calendar items, and all appeared to be right with the world.

Until I opened Google Talk.

You see, Google Talk gets its contact list from the primary account. In this case, that had become my Google Mail account, not my Google Apps account which held all my actual contacts. It looks as though I’d have to move my contacts from Google Apps to my Google Mail account! Argh! Frustrating and confusing.

There has to be a better way.

I hate it that I love you.

I have been using Google Apps for Domains for my dollmont.net mail for years. My mail, calendar, contacts–basically, my life, are all right there. It made going to Android a no-brainer. Google syncs with all of that beautifully.

Except when it doesn’t.

Living in Ho Chi Minh City means having to carry a map with you everywhere. Google Maps works surprisingly well, and I use it all the time. The one problem I’ve had is that “My Maps” on my computer doesn’t sync with Maps on Android, because Maps on Android doesn’t support syncing with accounts from Google Apps for Domains. So I started looking for a solution.

One idea is that you can add another Google account to GMail and link it to your Apps for Domains account. This works, and it’s how I got access to Google Buzz (which also doesn’t support Apps accounts). It’s a little bit of hoop-jumping because you either have two email accounts to check or you have to set up the GMail account to forward all mail to your Apps account.

Even though this setup works properly with things like Buzz, it still doesn’t work right with Maps. I was still unable to view My Maps on my Milestone. Google says that you simply need to add the GMail account under Accounts & Sync in setup, but this never worked for me.

Today, I took the radical step of factory resetting my phone and adding the GMail account as the primary account and the Apps account as the secondary. Lo and behold, My Maps now works! I can view all my saved points and, what’s even better, I can plot routes on my laptop, save them to My Maps, and view them on my phone! Wonderful!

If only I had a calendar…

It turns out that Android 2.x only supports calendar syncing to the primary account. In this case, that’s now my placeholder GMail account and not my Apps account, which is where all the calendar data is stored. Right now, I’m setting up calendar sharing between the two accounts so that the GMail account will ‘see’ the events in the Apps account, and I hope that works.

There are times when I wish their motto was “Don’t be frustrating” instead of “Don’t be evil”.

For me, the iPhone vs. other debate ended when I walked into a TMobile store and put hands on the G1. I picked it up and never really looked back. I loved that phone. Friends with iPhones would show off their latest and greatest app, and I would just smile. The G1 did everything I needed it to do, and more. It was a great phone.

I speak of it in the past tense because I recently picked up a Motorola Milestone. For those of you who don’t know, the Milestone is the international (or GSM) version of the Motorola Droid. I had a number of choices of Android phones here but chose the Milestone because of it’s excellent design and superb hardware keyboard.

Smartphones really change the way you work. I use my phone as a biff, a simple way to tell me when new mail has arrived. Oddly, even if I’m on my laptop, I grab my phone to check new mail. It’s simply much faster to pre-process the inbox from the phone. I just tap the messages that need to be archived and hit ‘archive’. I tap the messages that are obvious crap and hit ‘delete’. It takes seconds to pare everything down to just what I need to read. And because I use GMail, the changes I make to my inbox on my phone are almost immediately reflected on my laptop. Efficient mail handling.

Viet Nam is a bit different when it comes to phones and service. Here, you tend to purchase the phone you like then head off to a provider to get a SIM card. Some providers offer discounts on certain phones. Some providers, like VietTel, have exclusives on certain phones, like the iPhone. Since you have to buy the iPhone at VietTel, it’s assumed you’ll get service there. But you can really get service anywhere.

Part of the reason for this is that there’s no CDMA here–it’s all GSM. Phones inter operate between networks. Pull out your SIM card, drop it in a different phone, and you’re good to go. Don’t like the service you’re getting from MobiPhone? Go get a VietTel SIM. A side effect of this, of course, is that people’s numbers sometimes change numerous times. Some people have multiple SIM cards. There are phones here with multiple SIM card slots. It can get very confusing.

Back to the Milestone. This is an excellent phone. It’s currently running the 2.1 version of Android, and I’m eagerly awaiting the update to 2.2. The phone is blazingly fast and very responsive. Currently, I only use EDGE data because I can almost always find good wifi when I need to connect to the net from the phone. The only issue I’ve had is that the phone sometimes decides to spontaneously reboot. It almost always happens overnight, and typically happens every 3 to 4 days. I’m hoping the 2.2 update fixes this problem.