Welcome

This is "my" mashed&smashed up personal blog where I try to post useful stuff for people that are into sports, people that want technology to for for them and not vice versa, people looking for solutions to mobile phone problems especially Nokia and Android related, people that are interested in SEO in making money online and more...

MeeGo

So I own a netbook. I used Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook, Windows XP, Windows 7, Moblin and MeeGo as OS on it. THE ALL F....ING SUCK! No wonder I had so many OS installed, they don't work!

Anyway, I started a new blog, selfhosted on Wordpress and I kind of spilled my guts on MeeGo. A love hate MeeGo review. Check it out if you feel like it.

How To Merge, Manage And Backup Your Contacts On Android Mobile Phone Like Samsung Galaxy S

This is what happened. I bought a new smart phone. Samsung Galaxy S. Evil little phone, love it, my first smartphone, my first Android phone. So I asked the guy in the store to transfer my contacts from my old Nokia to Galaxy S. He did, thanks. Then I went home and added my gmail account (actually accounts, 3 of them, but I only synchronized the contacts on one of them) and synchronized the contacts from gmail to my new phone. Then I added my Facebook account and again synchronized my contacts from there. And then...?

Then I looked at my contacts and the thing was a bloody mess. I had almost 1000 contacts, people were doubled, tripled, quadrupled and more. The same person was in my old phone transfered to my new phone, on my SIM card, in my gmail account with possible 3 different emails that he changed over time (or home/work emails) and with his facebook account. Crap. I'm not sure why but almost every person was also doubled so that once appeard as John Doe and once as Doe John. A bloody mess I tell you.

So How To Merge, Manage And Store Your Contacts On Android Mobile Phone Like Samsung Galaxy S?

There is an option to connect contacts right through your phone. But these contacts are then only connected not merged. What's the point of having three connected contacts for the same person, one with home phone, one with work prone, one with first and last name switched etc... when it all could be merged into one contact.

What I did is the following:

Android is all about Google. So I decided that I will manage all my contacts with my gmail account. Account then synchronizes with the phone and your up to date contact list is ready for your use.

1. The first step is to export all the contacts that you have on your phone to your SD card and turn off the gmail account synchronization. There is a setting for both these things in your phone book.

When you have all the contacts exported (as .vcf file) you could open it with KIES (if you are using Samsung software) or actually with any vCard editor and edit your contacts on your PC. Which is light-years faster than editing them on your phone.

But this does not solve the storage/backup part of this problem. So I decided to use gmail account...as said. When you have all your contacts sorted in your gmail acc. you can synchronize them to any android phone you want. Loose a phone, buy a new phone? No problem...

2. So the next step was: open gmail contacts and import all your contacts via .vcf file that you exported. So now you have transfered the mess from your phone to you gmail (actually it is not necessary to have gmail, you can only use the contacts part of it).

3. Clean up!
When you open your contacts there is an option to find duplicates and merge them. So this is the first thing I did.

4. Then there is some legwork to be done. You can either use gmail contacts to go through all your contacts and merge the ones that google missed and fix all the mistakes, tag phone numbers and emails as home/work/other etc... make sure that the first name always comes first and last name last (or you will have trouble sorting them on your phone), add adresses if you want, birthdays, notes... Or you can export your contacts from gmail account as CSV file and open them in excel (save an unchanged backup, just in case!!!). Excel will make your job easier if you and excel are homies :). A few hints: sort by name, sort by last name, sort by number, sort by "included: part of the name" etc... and fix/merge. Either way - it is much easier to edit your contacts on your PC than on your phone.

5. If you have used Excel then first delete all the contacts from your gmail acc. and the import the fixed ones from your cvs file back into the gmail account.

6. Once you have your contacts all neat and sorted out in your gmail account you need to clean up your phone. The best thing to do is to go to Android App Market and search for "delete contacts". Right now there is no way to delete all your contacts through phone setting. You can only delete one by one which would like take me till I'm 50 . Instead install an application that says it can delete ALL OF YOUR CONTACTS (some can only delete certain types of contacts). DELETE THEM!

7. When your phone book is empty log out of your gmail (I'm not sure this is necessary but what the heck...) and turn the account synchronization on your Android phone back on. Make sure you have contact synchronization checked for the gmail account where your contacts are sitting all neat, merged, and ready to be sent to your phone.

8. When the sync is over all your phone contacts will be marked as "g" and will be automaticaly synced between your phone and gmail everytime you edit/add them either on your phone or in your gmail acc.

9. A useful tip - in phonebook settings choose to only show contacts with phone numbers so you won't have all your email only contacts clogging your contact list.

10. And finally - it cant be all good. There are a few problems with having all your contacts synced with gmail:
- you can not (why not?!? I hope this will be fixed soon) sync groups. And you can't add "g" contacts to groups on your phone. This means that no matter what you do in your gmail contacts all your "g" contacts on the phone will be in Google group and you will not be able to assign them to any other group.
- I did not try this but - I heard that you can not assign specific ringtones to specific contacts if your contacts are set like these.

I haven't used any of the mentioned options much so I can live without them. But still.. WTF :)?!

11. That's it, this is how I merged my android phone contacts. Let me know if you found this useful or if you have any other tips for this.

Cheers


Busy, Busy, Busy

I've been pretty very much insanely busy these days. I've read a really cool blueprint for earning a few bucks from making smaller informational niche websites and using adsense. It's not that I have learned anything new but it's all really nicely organized and laid out. A plan that is easy to follow. And what's even more cool is that reading a report like that gave me an immense motivational boost. A boost to get of my ass and start working on my websites again.

I have added a bunch of new content to some of my sites, I've upgraded a few of them with newer scripts and added facebook like button... by the way, I think the like button is pretty cool and can in fact bring you quite a few visitors. It's the most real social interaction that can not be faked. Then I have collected all... I mean all the RSS feed from my sites, support sites, squidoo lenses, hubpages etc... and started adding them to RSS directories.

This is something that I haven't been doing so far. I also purchased a directory submitter and as soon as I am finished with RSS directories I'll start adding sites to directories. When I'm done and my old sites get a small boost from all this I'll focus on new websites...

Well..nothing new here, just an update to add some fresh content to this blog of mine.

Till next time.

Oh, if you have any questions regarding this, you are welcomed to ask them...

Simple CMS or CMS that can manage multiple websites

Just a few links that I have found searching for a content management system - CMS that is simple, easy to mantain and would hopefully also give an option to manage multiple websites on multiple domains from one admin panel. The number of niche websites that I own is growing and I need an efficient way to keep an eye on them. Since sites are really simple I also need a CMS that is simple and lightweight.

I'm not sure if these links are the answer, just some bookmarks for me to research later on...


If you have any more, I am all ears!

Simple CMS or CMS that can manage multiple websites

Just a few links that I have found searching for a content management system - CMS that is simple, easy to mantain and would hopefully also give an option to manage multiple websites on multiple domains from one admin panel. The number of niche websites that I own is growing and I need an efficient way to keep an eye on them. Since sites are really simple I also need a CMS that is simple and lightweight.

I'm not sure if these links are the answer, just some bookmarks for me to research later on...


If you have any more, I am all ears!

More great cookie recipes

It's been a long time. A long time since I wrote something. To make it up I should write about something tasty I think. Something yummy. Something like chocolate chip cookies. With milk. Mmmm.

I must say I am not much of a cook. I mean I love to cook and the results are usually very tasty but I am not educated in a way to know how to make all sorts of basic foods that any cook should know. I am more of a trial and error type, more go with the flow and add what feels right cook.

So when it comes to foods that are not rice+chicken+something I use recipes. So for todays chocolate chip cookies I suggest two really really tasty recipes - you must try the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies recipe and if you are watching your diet then don't miss this healthy chocolate chip cookies recipe.

I didn't miss them :) for sure :) many times :).

Enjoy!

How To Start A Youtube Video At A Certain Time (minutes, seconds)

It happens all the time. There is a clip on Youtube and you want to show a funny, interesting, weird, educational, embarrassing, crazy, naked, stupid... moment to your friends. Or you want to reference something in a video. Or you want to...blah blah blah.

Basically you want the video to start at a certain time so that the viewer doesn't have to wait or fast forward to the section in question. So instead of saying - check out this video and watch for the 1:45 you can simply point to the video so it starts at that exact time.

How do you do that? How do you start a YouTube video at a certain time?

You just need to add this to the end of you videos URL:

#t=01m45s

For instance, if you want to see Megan Fox in bed covered with just a pink blanket don't go just to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lJJOA4gU2U

go straight to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lJJOA4gU2U#t=55s

That's it, enjoy!

Pancakes time!

I love pancakes. I love the thick American pancakes but I especially like the French type - thin crepe pancakes. Filled with Nutella. Yummy. I used to eat pancakes almost everyday when I was a kid. It seem this pancake love stuck with me until today.

So? The crazy weird thing is that I have never ever learned how to make pancakes myself. Until recently. I shaved my beard of shame, fired up my Firefox (3.6 is faster then the previous version I think, thumbs up. also like the personas) anyway - I have found some cool pancake recipes.

Now you would think that I would probably fist go and learn how to make pancakes that I used to eat every day - the thin French crepes. But no :) The first pancakes I have ever made myself (without any help) were these Chinese pancakes. LOL. They are not even real pancakes. But I did use some chopped spring onions and they tasted great.

And this concludes todays "where the hell did this came from" post on my mashed up blog.

AdSense: Samo more AdSense rabmlings

It's been to long since my last post. I've been busy. Busy doing other things. Other things being things that are not connected to Nokia phones (except using mine), AdSense earnings, building links, dissing Joomla templates, posting on blogs, trying out recipes (but still ate lots of great food during the holidays) ... etc, you get it.

But the greatest thing about making money online is - passive income.

Correct that - it can be passive income.

If you have a business model that requires you to write a blog post every day then this is work. If you have sites that sit No.1 in Google and collect clicks from visitors then you don't have to do a damn thing. Then you have passive income.

Not only did I not move even my pinky (I'm lying, I did make one new website, but it's still in the workshop not bringing any money, but I didn't touch my old sites) but my adsense earning blasted all over the place during the holidays.

I even got to the point when I had to start working again - making sure that my host wouldn't cancel my site because of the traffic overload. Some emails to support, a wordpress super cache plugin and a few nerves later things got back to normal. And I can gladly report that my new daily AdSense record is between 140 and 150$ (can't really remember, being lazy :)).

Things turned back sour after the holidays but it got my heart pumping seeing some high numbers in my adsense account. It's a great morale boost and the reason I am working on another site these days.

So what's the point? There is none... well... or maybe this - if you want to have passive income then give some thought to the type of sites you will be building. Sites that constantly need to be updated? Running campaigns that need your everyday attention? Sites the will be obsolete in a year? Etc... this are all examples of sites that I do not see as bearers of passive income. Be lazy and pick the right one.