[Galaxy S I9000 Themes and Apps] Smirny:
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Hey guys!

It's 2011, so if you haven't already taken a step into the cloud, it's time to get started! This guide shows you how to take all your data automatically in the cloud to free your phone storage for things like apps and games, which cannot be accessed through a cloud (yet).

Before I start, I just want to make it clear that this thread should NOT be used to discuss what things are safe in the cloud and all that privacy related stuff. If you have passed your ego and realized that you are not the most important/secret person on this planet with all your documents and stuff being soo secret, then go on, the cloud is waiting for you. If you have problems concerning privacy related topics open a new thread and simply CTRL + W out of here right now. ;)

A second note concerning availability of Internet in some areas:

Before you synchronize everything through a cloud you have to ask yourself how often you loose your internet connection with your mobile. If you find yourself often in areas without coverage or poor connection, or if you have a limited data plan you maybe only should sync your Contacts & Calendars, but not Movies since it would become unusable, or at least very frustrating. In Germany and U.S.A. (I guess) you don't have to worry anymore, I've got full speed connection no matter where I go, but you have to know this for yourself.

Personal Stuff - Contacts, Calendars and more

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First of all, let's start with the obvious stuff. Things like Calendars, E-Mail, Contacts not only can be stored in the cloud, it would be foolish not to do so! In a time when people have more than one device that can access the internet and are "smart" (i.e. can display calendars & stuff, don't blame me for calling that smart, blame the ads :P) it would be terrible when devices can't communicate with each other to sync changes. When your appointment get's delayed it should show up directly on your PC, shouldn't it? But enough of the reasons, let's get this started.

Setting this sync up maybe the easiest of all, because Android is all about syncing these stuff almost by default. You simply have to use the Google Apps GMail for your mail and contacts, Google Calendar for your schedule and so on. Feel free to discover all of the Google Apps and decide for yourself what you need and want.

To set the sync up on your phone simply

Goto Settings -> Accounts and sync -> accountname@gmail.com -> Sync Contacts, Calendar, Gmail, ...

And boom! there you go. All your information is now synced between your devices, no matter where you change any of it.

Photos

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The next thing to sync would be your pictures. For this media type, I have chosen to write a guide about setting up a sync with Google's Picasa Webapp. Although you might choose other Photohosting sites like Flickr or SmugMug, Picasa enjoys a deep integration in the Android system. To set this sync up, you need to go through 2 steps:

1. (Automatic) Upload of your pictures

Like fruit-fanatic Jobs said: "There's an app for that". For this task (and the movies later) the app "Pixelpipe Post and Upload HD" seems to be perfect, since it also got a feature to automatically upload your pics to your Picasa web albums right after you've shot one.

Set-Up Guide:

1. Create a Pixelpipe account

2. Create a "pipe" for your Picasa account

3. Enable "auto upload" in Settings (works like a charm on the Galaxy S)

4. Shoot some pics and try ;)

2. Sync your Picasa web albums to the phone

After we got our Photos up in the cloud, we need a way to view them on our device. Thanks to Google, we can integrate them in our SNS sync in the settings menu:

Goto Settings -> Accounts and sync -> accountname@gmail.com -> Sync Picasa Web Albums

After your next sync (i.e. immediately ;) ) you can find all your Picasa web albums in the Gallery app indicated with a small Picasa logo. This is the major advantage of Picasa, because with your photos being integrated in the gallery, every third party app can use them to modify or distribute your images.

Movies

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In syncing movies, we take a similar way like Photos, also using the Pixelpipe app. Our destination will be Youtube because it delivers us unlimited space. Disadvantages of Youtube are a 15 min limit, but if you don't have a problem with that, Youtube is fine.

To set the sync up, simply add a "pipe" in your Pixelpipe app to Youtube and enable autosync. I recommend to set the video to private or not listed, because but that is again your own choice. You have to choose wether you want to have the whole Youtube Community watching your pretty vids or not ;). You can choose to opt-out on autosync, and only upload when you are on Wifi, since this could really take up some bandwith. The advantage of uploading with the Pixelpipe app over the built in "Share to -> Youtube" option is that you can upload HD video. The built in share option uploads your videos in minor quality.

To view your videos simply fire up your youtube app and enter your Username. Your videos will then be displayed under the "My Videos" tab. To download them again, simply use any of the Youtube video downloader apps available on the market.

Music

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For our favorite tunes, we will use mSpot to access and stream our whole library directly from our phone. First of all you have to download the sync app for your Computer from www.mspot.com and select what you want to send up into the cloud. Note that free Users gain 2 GB of storage, so maybe you need to make a selection on what you want to take with you and what not.

After your music is placed in the cloud you can download the mspot Music app for Android, enter your Username and PW and gain direct access to your music. The only lag I encountered was when starting a song, it takes about 1-2 seconds longer than a local media player like Winamp, but mspot can also access files that are directly stored on your phone.

NOTE: Galaxy devices are having a playback issue right now, where the song sometimes just goes silent and you have to tap on pause and resume to hear something again. Mspot is aware of this issue and working on it.

Data

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Tired of connecting your phone through USB to copy stuff to your device? The answer to that is "Fiabee"! This works best with Google's Browser Chrome since you can directly put images and more into your Fiabee space or send them directly to the device (Link). The advantage of Fiabee is: Space. They are throwing free space away like hell, I just got 16GB because I was an early user -> Try it!

Another service of choice could be DropBox. Here you have a volume that syncs to every device that is connected the cloud, wether it is a desktop computer, netbook, mobile or tablet. An extremely reliable and fast service, which makes sharing with specific persons or groups very easy.

That's it! If you have any suggestion, comment or question, feel free to share your thought!

bye, Smirny

Images used:

Cloud by sergbel

Movies icon by dani1a

Leopard Reflective Camera Icon by LiquidsnakE4

Google Apps by space-for-thought

Own Mixtape cover: PJ - Babylon

Free Database Icons by artistsvalley