Kontact is a really powerful tool for organizing your appointments, todos and contacts. Unfortunately there is no way to sync it with a mobile device or a syncml server like Funambol. A solution for that is currently in development, but is not ready for stable use. In the meantime there are at least possibilities to show the data from an android based mobile device in Kontact. Todos are read only with this solution, appointments and contacts should be not, but I ran into several problems like doubled entries, so I do not use Kontact for creating new entries. I use the phone or the Google webinterface instead
You need a Google Mail and also a Rememberthemilk account. So if you do not want or even if you are not allowed to sync your data to third party services you should not follow this howto.
Part 1 is about preparing your Kubuntu and your Android mobile device.
Kubuntu 9.10:
Of course Kontact is installed by default, but we need to install a plugin for Akonadi that can access the Google data. Installation can be done on the command line with
sudo apt-get install akonadi-kde-resource-googledata
As you can see we’ll have to use Akonadi to sync the android phone with Kontact. Part 2 will be about the configuration of Akonadi and Kontact.
Android:
My device is a Samsung Galaxy, but the next steps should be the same for all Android based mobile devices that run Android 1.5. There are several replacements for the default calendar and contacts applications in the market, anyway I am happy with them, so there is nothing more to do for contacts and calendar than syncing to google with the integrated sync option. For todos I’m using an application called Astrid (link only works with the Android browser). I do not know if Astrid is in the market everywhere around the world, anyhow you can download it from Launchpad. Astrid’s configuration will be part 3.
Part 2 is here.
4 Comments
Although it is a good advice to keep your private data private, you should keep in mind that especially with contacts, you don’t trust your data to third parties but the data of your contacts, which is likely to be very sensitive, and the person behind those contacts might not really appreciate you sharing their data with the world. I know I would not.
I thought about that problem some time ago, before I bought an Android based mobile phone. Of course I know about the problems some people have with Google, but I think they are only half as bad as their reputation is. I can’t imagine that a big concern like google steals my private contacts and use them for commercial or whatever. 99 % of my friends and business partners use Outlook for storing their contact data and I nevertheless I give them my phone number. Of course I would respect the wish, if anybody does not want to be stored in my phone. I do not especially ask, but who does that?
[...] Dieser Eintrag wurde auf Twitter von Planet Ubuntu und ecubuntu, da Alex erwähnt. da Alex sagte: ♺ @planetubuntu: Sync your Android phone with Kubuntu 9.10 – part 1: http://bit.ly/QDl2S [...]
I am using Android 1.6 (on G1), Kubuntu and RTM with Astrid also. Looking forward to the next parts!
Someone actually losing a handheld device in an accesible state seems a greater chance of date loss to me than storing my data an google servers – their business model depends so much on our trust, they couldn’t disappoint us.