Ask NerdGirl: Facebook Names Take Priority, Don’t Let Them Know You Ignored Them, Have To Give Google Your Information, Desire Better Colors, and Finding Favorite People
by n3rdg1rl
Jul 16, 2010 10:00 PM –
Not the most positive post I’ve ever had, but sometimes that how the questions are. Android isn’t perfect…but at least it’s not the iPhone!
Hi nerdgirl,
I just got the myTouch Slide two days ago and I’m still figuring out how to work it. I have my contacts linked with Facebook and my contact names change to Facebook names. Is there a way that I can stop that from happening and keep MY original name for the contacts? I’ve tried as many different ways as I can think of. Please help!
Unfortunately, there is no “easy” way to do this. The only way is after the contacts have been linked is to manually change each one. I would recommend doing this through Google Contacts on the computer and not on the phone. It will be way easier that way.
Hi NerdGirl,
One of my old phones had a function where if you rejected a call, the caller would not know that he had been rejected (i.e. instead of the call going straight to voicemail, the call would ring out and then go to voicemail). Is there something similar for Android?
Thanks,
Phil
I know this works on my phone, but I’m not sure if it’s for all phones. If you press the “Back” arrow on your phone it will ignore the call and silence your ringer, but let it ring on the callers end. I don’t know why this handy tip isn’t published anywhere. I just found it out by accident.
nerd girl,
I just got a droid phone. I currently use Outlook 07 on my business computer for my contacts, calendar, and email. I have my hughes.net email come to Outlook. I’m a one woman shop so there is no exchange servers involved here.
I have a hughes.net email account and I got that coming to the Droid after several gyrations. It’s not coming through Outlook. It’s coming to the Droid directly from the hughes.net servers.
Here’s the question. Ideally it would be good to get my contacts, calendar and email coming from Outlook to my droid.
Is that possible without putting everything into the Google cloud??? (I’d rather not).
Thanks for any help you can offer.
Not enough of a nerd girl,
Susan
Unfortunately, when you have a Google based phone, without Exchange, there is no way to easily do this.
You can get your email to come to your phone. To configure Hughesnet email use the following settings:
- Name = Your full name
- Email Address = <username>@hughes.net
- Incoming Mail Server = mail.hughes.net
- Outgoing Mail Server = smtp.hughes.net
- User Name = <username>@hughes.net
- Password = Your password
- Make sure you check that it’s marked for “Outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.
- Do not enable SAP of SSL
You can set this up as a second account in your phone so you at least get your mail. As far as contacts and calendar are concerned, you will have to sync that up through Outlook using Google Sync to get them to your phone.
Ok, so I’ve just gotten a new HTC Desire and very much love it. But when adjusting the screen brightness I’ve noticed something that has started to worry me. When the screen is at a very low brightness, everything goes somewhat pink. I’m leaving on a month long trip in about a week and would REALLY like a reply soon so as I can know if this is something to worry about, so that I can know if I need to take it back and have the phone replaced.
So is this a problem? Or am I just paranoid about my new phone?
It is not a problem. Even on new phones, like the HTC Incredible, the colors tend to be more than 30% over-saturated and the Incredible has almost the same screen as the Desire. Nothing’s wrong with your phone, just wanky display specifications.
Hi Nerdgirl,
Is it possible to prioritize which groups in “people” (VIP, Family, Friends, Co-workers, etc) so you can set or choose which lists first?
From the Home screen, to “People”, which are listed alphabetically. In order to have your preferred list of people come out first, can you assign them to a group that will come out before the contacts starting with an “A”
My work around that might help is to set the contacts I want to come out first with an ”A” Ex: A Dad, A Patty, A Johnny, A Mom.
Thanks,
NerdBob
PS. Great site!!!
This is a work around I’ve been using for years myself. Now I just put the people I call most in the Favorites category and set the Groups widget on my home screen so they are just one touch away.
~n3rdg1rl