First, we will have to log into your Gmail account to get your contacts downloaded to your computer. So, head on over to Gmail.com, login, and in the top left hand corner you’ll see a drop down bar. By default it reads “Mail”, so click the down arrow and you’ll see “Contacts” which is where we need to be. We’ll click on the “More” drop down and select export where you’ll be greeted with a box like this:

The Export Pop Up on Gmail

Make sure you select all contacts or the group that you want to export, select to export them as vCard format (which if you notice this can also be done on an Android phone), and save them to your desktop or somewhere easy to find. Once that’s done, we’re finished with Gmail.

iCloud Login

Let’s head on over to the iCloud and login using our iTunes credentials. Once that’s finished, click on the Contact/Address book, at the bottom you’ll see a cog which is where you click, then select import, find your vCard file and upload the file to the iCloud.

iCloud Import

Once you’ve imported the contacts, they’ll load into the address book and are now located on the iCloud. Since you’re automatically signed into your iPhone with the same credentials, they’ll download from the iCloud to your device automatically (unless you’ve changed any settings).

And that’s it! You’ve exported from the Google Cloud and imported your contacts into the Apple iCloud for safe keeping!

The Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0 is the one I will be reviewing in this article and I’ll come out and say it, this is the prettiest media device of this size and design. The Kindle Fire by Amazon is a close competitor to this “mini tablet”, but Samsung is the master of beautifully bright displays. Even though the Player isn’t sporting a Super AMOLED display, it’s still the brightest, clearest, easy to read device I’ve used in months. The five inch WVGA TFT LCD display gives you enough room to place all the widgets and icons you could imagine! The resolution is rather low for a device with such a big screen, only coming in at 800×480 pixels, so you will need to change the launcher from the older version of TouchWiz to something a little more robust such as ADW.EX Launcher to add some more rows and columns to the home screen. The Player also sports support for DivX, putting the power of high def videos within the palm of your hands.

The Player also touts two camera’s, one in the front for video conferencing through apps like Skype and Tango, and the one in the back coming in at a standard 3.2MP for capturing video and stills from your media device. Skype isn’t too bad on the Player, the only downside is you must turn your device to the left do to Skype’s orientation issues. The VGA display is plenty for the Meet Ups, Skype Dates, or Tango Talks you and your friends will be having. The 3.2MP rear camera as stated before is very average. While taking a good picture, I feel that Samsung could have at least thrown a 5.0MP in the rear for clearer pictures and sharper video. The images and videos I’ve shot remind me of my Blackberry 9650 Bold… yes, they are that bad.

The sound that the Player kicks out of it’s tiny speakers is simply amazing! They aren’t Beats by Dre or anything, but the do pump a good amount of sound out for your listening pleasure. The ear buds that came with the device also deliver a decent listening experience and will suit non audiophiles well. The best part about the sound is the different codecs that you get to use! Most Android devices only support OGG, MP3, M4A, and WAV, the Player supports all of them plus WMA and FLAC!

Storage isn’t an issue either. Coming with 8GB’s of internal plus the ability to ramp up to a 32GB micro SD card gives the player a solid 40GB’s of space to hold all of those media files you’ll be enjoying on this little beaut! Now of course this is a Wi-Fi only device, much like the iPod, so you won’t be able to pull content all the time from the Internet unless you use your phone’s hot spot feature or your carrier’s wireless internet options, such as a Mi-Fi. Now, this device does come with a built in GPS, but you will need to be connected to Wi-Fi for maps or download an application the caches them to your SD card, like Co-Pilot Live.

The greatest thing about this device is the OS it runs, Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread! Running Android allows you the option to customize, tweak, and create a truly unique device and experience for you! You can enjoy all the apps from your other Android devices right on the Player. It has a 1GHz Humming Bird processor and gaming is simply a joy on this device. For those of you wondering, it is rootable and there is a community starting around this device, check them out over on xda-developers.com.

I can honestly say that I’ve been using this device as my home Google Voice phone, MP3 player through Bluetooth in my GTI, and my video and game system for those down times. This device is simply put stunning. It outperformed my expectations, and I will continue to fine tune it and tweak it everyday!

This is a cross post from my personal blog CalebFultz.com.

First and foremost, you need to have a Google account on your device. Most of you already have this done, it’s usually put on the device at the initial setup. The reason this is needed is to download things from the Market. Second, we need to gather a couple of things. There are quite a lot of awesome launchers to choose from starting with ADW.Launcher (Free|Paid), Launcher Pro (Free|Paid), GO! Launcher (Free), Launcher 7 (Free|Donate) and SBB Shell 3D (Paid). Some are free, some are paid. ADW.Launcher is the one you’ll be seeing in the screen shots but I will say that I’ve used Launcher Pro for quite sometime and it is an awesome launcher as well. GO! is free and very popular, SPB is unfortunately the most expensive app in the list, running at $15 USD.

Let’s go ahead and start -

After downloading ADW.Launcher from the Market, hit the home button, some of you will be treated with the sight of your new launcher but some of you may see a pop up box like this:

Select ADW.Launcher. Once you have that selected, you’ll see this beautiful sight:

Now, we’re going to go in and theme this beast! Click on the hardware menu button on your device. This could look like 4 squares, 3 lines, or something completely different but most devices have them, usually located at the bottom. You should see a pop up menu with a “More” option, tap that, then you’ll see “ADWSettings”. Click that and you’ll see this:

Now, in the free version you can set your app drawer to either slide side to side or up and down. I prefer the vertical scroll instead of the horizontal pagination. So that’s how that’s what I’ve selected here:

On the paid version, you can have an awesome 3D style vertical scroll where it makes the icons appear to be pulling in and out of the device, really nifty stuff!

Now that you have that selected, let’s theme it!

I download Ice Cream Sandwich Theme by KovDev (Free) which gives you the feeling of running Google’s newest OS installment without harming your device! We need to be in the ADW.Launcher settings again, and select Theme Preferences. You’ll be met with a screen like this:

After setting the theme, hit the home button and you’ll get to see your beautifully themed device for the first time:

Move those icons down to those blank stars and you’ll get something like this:

And by adding a cool widget, you get something like this:

We’ll continue to add more to our devices to make them look more and more unique from the normal everyday Android you have come to know.