Voice input on the Milestone

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!

Mixing and matching Google Apps and GMail accounts on Android

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).