Google Docs is really bad

Every so often I try to do something non-trivial using Google Docs "Documents".

Each time I come away with the same opinion. Google's Document.app is awful.

Try selecting a table embedded within another table row.

That's just the start. Document.app has lots of missing functionality. It's not stuff that's technically impossible to do in Ajax, it's just that Google isn't doing it.

Spreadsheet.app is not nearly so bad. You can even edit it on an iPhone. Unlike, say, a Google Document.

I don't get how people pretend this is some kind of alternative to Word. I am, to put it mildly, no fan of Microsoft Word. Even so, I can't delude myself for a nano-moment that Google's Document.app is in the same class as Word. Especially not Word:Mac 2008*.

It's weird that anyone pretends otherwise.

* I've only recently begun using this version of Word. I am disturbed by the suspicion that I might like it.

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SurveyMonkey and web apps for meeting setup

I've seen this site used with quick group questions such as dates, places, etc.

SurveyMonkey.com:

... SurveyMonkey has a single purpose: to enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily...

In a similar vein are a number of products for setting up meeting times and spots ...

• TimeToMeet: visual calendar sync
• Doodle: this one's quite popular for quick scheduling. Probably next one I'll try. Apparently works without sign-up (smart). No OpenID!
• Tungle: Read-write-web really liked it, I need to study it more. No OpenID! Can work with Google Calendar, but does it require a Google pw (kiss of death).
• TimeBridge: Has iPhone client
• When is Good: No sign up at all.

Ok, so why don't any of these support OpenID?

Big switch on my iPhone sync: CalDAV and Exchange server

In the last episode of ‘As the iPhone Turns’ our hero was getting business contacts to the iPhone via PST export to Outlook on home XP to MobileMe to the iPhone. Office calendar data traveled one way via Google Calendar Sync to Google Calendar. Google Calendar and Contacts went to the iPhone via Google’s Active Sync (Exchange Server) clone. Address Book on OS X synced to MobileMe on several machines. iCal was out of the picture.

Today it’s all shook up. I can now use Exchange server to bring office contacts, calendar and email to my iPhone. Since the iPhone can support only one Exchange Active Sync connection I switched my Google Calendar sync to CalDAV; for now office appts still go there via one way Google Calendar Sync. I still don’t use iCal.

Personal Contacts now go via MobileMe to the iPhone. Google Contacts don’t go anywhere (for now).

The downside is that my office contacts no longer appear in OS X Address Book, but the ease of updating and ability to edit on my iPhone makes up for that. My first impression is that CalDAV is a better fit for Google Calendar than Active Sync, and that Exchange sync works better with a true Exchange server than with Google Calendar.

Hope you followed all that, I’m not sure I did.

Update 12/3/09: I've seen one odd behavior that might be a bug. I can see and edit Emily's calendar. So when Emily invited me to an event I at first accepted, then realized I didn't need to see her event and mine. So I deleted the invited even, so only hers remained. Problem is, her appointment then vanished on my iPhone! but it was viewable on her iPhone and on the web.

So it was still around, I just couldn't see it. I removed the "invited, not coming" data from the event and changed it enough to force a refresh, it then reappeared.

I wonder if there's a problem with deleting an invited appointment while viewing the original appointment on another person's calendar.

iPhone App store boredom - some palliatives

For me the iPhone App Store went from nothing to thrilling to boring in a matter of months.

The excitement was just one casualty of the Battle of Google Voice. I gather there are lots of interesting games coming out, but I don't do games. I haven't found a good app in months; it's 57 channels and nothin' on all over again.

I did find some palliatives.

The App Store.app Genius button does work and it turned up one or two I've not considered. One of them led me in turn to the O'Reilly Best iPhone Apps site, which is two cuts above the competition. Between the two of them I'm looking at QuickOffice and iThoughts.

Even so, there's no cure for the App Store blahs. Cowardice is making Apple boring.

Address book sharing with OS X and MobileMe

Did you know you could share your Address Book through MobileMe, and even allow someone else to edit the entries?

I didn’t think so.

One of the oddest aspects of Apple’s “MobileMe” program is that much of the functionality is distributed between OS X machines, a user-invisible MobileMe repository, iPhones, and a sparse Web GUI. I expect most MobileMe functionality to be exposed through the web GUI, but it doesn’t work that way.

Address book sharing is a prime example (warning, Apple’s troubleshooting page on this feature is pretty much a warning not to use it! Obviously, you need to backup the desktop Address Book frequently.

I followed the directions and from my OS X desktop 10.5.8 user account I shared my Address Book with Emily (editing enabled).

Then, from her account I subscribed to my shared Addresses. I then did an iPhone sync to get everything cleared up and saved an archive of her Address Book [1]. Then, and only then, did I turn on MobileMe sync for her desktop contacts (Address Book).

I had to exit her Address Book and restart it to get my addresses to come over to her account. That’s typical of 10.5 Address Book.

It took quite a while, but now Emily has all of my Contacts on her OS X Address Book. They don’t, however, sync to her iPhone via iTunes. They also can’t be seen from the MobileMe web GUI, so I’m sure MobileMe iPhone contacts Sync wouldn’t see them either.

On the Mac though Emily can copy contacts from my list into her address book though, so copies can go to the iPhone.

It’s an interesting feature. We’ll see how useful it is, but to be safe I’ll disable remote editing.

[1] If you ever do a restore you need to immediately restart Address Book to complete it.

OS X Address book: labels and large numbers

I like Address Book far more than iCal, but even so I've underestimated it.

Great features: Mac 101: Two things I love about Address Book.

Update: Poking around Address Book I came across the “share feature”. It’s rather complex, but intriguing. I’ve a later post on how to use this sharing feature.
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Parental Controls - The wikipedia problem solved

I'm setting up a special account on one of our laptops that will be used by my son with light supervision. It will be much more restricted than the account he uses when closely supervised.

So I'm back with Apple's notoriously buggy Parental Controls. It's been a while, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that several old bugs are better in the latest version of Safari and 10.5.

One is acting strangely however. I wonder if it's a new Safari bug. When I limit access to listed web sites, many links within the sight are unavailable. This isn't how it's supposed to work (emphases mine) ...

Mac OS X 10.5: About the Parental Controls Internet content filter

... If 'Allow access to only these websites' is selected in Parental Controls, the Internet content filter blocks any website which is not on the list. When the blocking web page is presented, a list of allowed websites is also shown. If using Safari, allowed websites are displayed as bookmarks in the bookmarks bar.

Note: For most websites, the Internet content filter considers the domain name and not the path. For example, if http://www.example.com is added to the list, then http://pictures.example.com will be allowed, as will http://www.example.com/movies....

The key word here is "most". In one site I tested it works as above. In another, only the main page is accessible. I can't find any documentation that explains why behavior varies by site. I'll try asking on Apple Discussions.

Update 11/20/09: I found a 2008 post on this topic. The user never found a fix, but later, on a different 10.5 machine, the problem resolved.

Update 11/21/09: Wikipedia has a nonstandard approach to IP addresses. I can use ping to find an IP address for simple.wikipedia.org, but I can't use that address in a URL. I suspect this is done to meet some security and confidentiality goal. However this approach may also defeat Parental Controls, which probably works from IP addresses.

Update 11/21/09b: We use OpenDNS on some kid machines, and OpenDNS supports a "shortcut" redirect like "simple" for simple.wikipedia.org. Except it doesn't work for this domain. Wikipedia is doing something unusual with IP addresses, perhaps as a side-effect of protecting user IP addresses. I think Wikipedia manages IP addresses differently for logged in users, so I'm going to explore that option next.

Update 11/21/09c. I dance the geek dance of Dilbertian triumph. What worked for me is the combination of establishing a user account and secure server access (https to wikimedia.org server). The sequence I followed is:

1. From Admin account off content controls for the child account browser.
2. In Child account create a user account on wikipedia and use their secure login: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/simple/wiki/Special:UserLogin. Create a bookmark to this page.
3. Go to main page: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/simple/wiki/Main_Page. Create a bookmark to this page.
4. Now return to Admin account and limit access controls to the above listed bookmarks.

It now works.
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LEGO Digital Designer is pure evil on OS X

I downloaded LEGO Digital Designer : Virtual Building Software for my Lego-crazed 10 yo. It's going to be hard to tell him it doesn't work on OS X.

I got it working on one account, but on another it says there's no internet access (cannot access internet) -- then it hangs. I have to kill it.

It looks and smells like a cheap hacked port from Windows, probably outsourced to the lowest bidder.

I'm one seriously annoyed customer. Maybe it's time to try to interest Ben in the non-Lego world. Lego doesn't really need our money this holiday season.

Update: It's incompatible with parental controls. If controls are enabled in any way, even if all web access is allowed, it doesn't work. I wonder if it uses some chat protocol to communicate with the server; I know enabling parental controls blocks jabber/google talk protocols in 10.5 (bug).

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Microsoft Access 2007 – RIP

I’ve seen software die.

First the code gets crufty. Features pile on, but half of ‘em don’t work right. Old features might or might not work. There are security holes.

Then a bright new team gets the gig. Old code is hacked out, new ideas are grafted onto old models. Usually you end up with a cacophonous concatenation.

That’s how Access 2007 smells. I know the team tried hard, but it’s a train wreck.

It’s not just a few bugs, or one or two missing features, or a limited design flop. It’s all of the above and more. As a power tool for hacking relational data it’s following the FrontPage path to oblivion.

Yeah, I’ve written before about how bad Access 2007 is. Even so, I think I was in denial. It took trying to complete a significant data manipulation project to make me face facts.

Microsoft isn’t going to fix Access. They want to sell the latest iteration of SQL Server and their Sharepoint services – Access is a costly distraction that happens to work pretty well with the Great Satan (Oracle).

There will be another release or two, then it will follow the path of FrontPage - which was once part of the Office Suite.

See also:

• Access 2007- It's really bad
• Living with Access 2007- -Disabled Mode-, Trust Center, and a Bug
• Microsoft's Access 2003 to Access 2007 animated reference guide (Flash)

I add the despised comment captcha

Gordon's Notes: I add the despised comment captcha.

This blog too. I hope I can turn it off soon.
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Calling from Montreal to St. Paul using Google Voice

I've been using Google Voice for over a year to save about $1,000 on my mobile phone long distance calls from St. Paul to Montreal. I use Google's web tool on iPhone Safari.app to call a number; Google first calls my cell then it calls the remote number.

It's been working very well, especially lately, even though Apple is a greedy coward for purging all GV apps from the iPhone and forcing me to use the inferior Google Web app.

It's good stuff, but of course there are limitations. The first connection in the two connection Google Voice call must be within the US. So if I'm in Montreal, for example, I can't useGoogle Voice to call from Montreal to St. Paul.

Except ... I slowly realized ... I can, from anywhere with a web browser, setup a call from one of my GV registered numbers to any other number on earth.

It's not calling from Montreal to St Paul, it's telling Google to call St. Paul, then, when someone picks up, Google connects to Montreal.

Got that? This Google Voice screen shot might help (imagine 111-1111 were a real number in Montreal, 1660 Stanford how I label our home phone number):

I can only create these connections to numbers that I've registered with Google (and that registration is all but exclusive, no more than two GV users can share a number), so practically speaking it's only useful for me setting up a phone call from my home to wherever I happen to be.

Still, it's an example of the kind of creativity the GV platform allows. (Apple, can we trade 99,000 iPhone apps for the Google Mobile suite?)

iWeb doesn't do tables - and OS X HTML Editor alternatives

I really do need to find a web page authoring solution other than FrontPage 98.

That's not easy. Yeah, FP 98 wasn't perfect. On the other hand, there's almost nothing to compare to it today. I'd stay with it, except it's a bit silly to fire up a Win VM just to run ten year old software.

I tried seeing if I could live with one of Google's many (many) HTML editors -- such as Sites, Google Docs, or Blogger. Briefly - yech. Google's templates are terrifically ugly. I'm no artist, but Google makes Microsoft look inspired. Sites layout seems to require tables -- but you can't make borders vanish. I've been waiting years for Google to stop sucking at this, and it's past time I give up.

So on OS X that leaves only a few options. I tried an early version of Karelia Sandvox, but it didn't impress and it's $60. I'm sure it's better now, but I do own iWeb '09. So that's a logical choice, but iWeb uses a proprietary database format - hard data lock.

As is common in modern software, there are no good choices. For now I'll do throwaway stuff in iWeb while I look for alternatives.

Which brings me to the title of my post. I know iWeb can't be really serious -- because iWeb doesn't do tables. Not at all.

Wow.

Update: RapidWeaver has grown up a lot since I looked at it years ago. I was really impressed by this ...

...The RapidWeaver Sandwich file format (.rwsw) is a completely open file format. We call them "RapidWeaver Sandwiches" because it's easy to open them up and see the filling. In the Finder, they’re viewed as normal ‘bundles’ however inside it’s all developer-friendly XML...

Of course that doesn't mean I could do anything with this format, but I'm impressed they talk about it. I couldn't find out much about how Sandvox stores its data. I did get the impression that it can be tricky to move RapidWeaver work from one machine to another -- that's a serious problem.

I wish I wasn't the only person in the universe who worried about data freedom and exit strategies!

Update b: While it doesn't have tables, I have to admit that the iWeb page I did looks quite nice and it was very easy to put together.

Update 11/9/09: In my very first iWeb page I ran into a weird bug. This doesn't mean iWeb is necessarily unusually buggy -- bugs love me. I had a text field that had one URL in iWeb and another on the web. I tried lots of tricks to fix the bug, but nothing worked. Finally I deleted the text field -- and another object vanished with it! Somehow it was entangled with an image that had a link to. I had to carefully remove the text object only letter at a time, then recreate it to clear the bug.

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Google Account storage allotment bug

Google has some paid storage issues.

When I look at My Google Account Personal Settings, I see I'm using 83% of my Storage Space (8.27 GB).

However, in Gmail it says I'm using 9.9 GB of 17.2 GB (57%).

In the manage storage view It says I'm using

• Gmail: 1.6 of 8.33 GB (19%)
• Picasa: 1 GB (100%)
• Paid Storage: Picasa 8.27 GB (83%), Available 1.73 GB (17%)

So from some views I'm seeing the sum of my standard Gmail allotment plus 1 GB from Picasa, in other views I'm seeing a percentage of the sum of all my allotments, and lastly I see a view where all the storage allotments are segregated.

These are unlikely to all be correct.

Update 11/10/09: Google is redoing their storage plans, so maybe things will clear up. I don't see the new options yet.

Update 11/11/09: My primary storage now shows 80GB for $20. Here's how it's recorded across Google:

• Gmail's view: 9.9 GB (11%) of 87.2 GB
• Account Personal Settings view: 8.27GB (10%) of 80 GB

manage storage view:

Free (total is about 8.27 but Gmail grows continuously)

• Gmail: 1.6 (22%) of 7.27
• Picasa: 1.0 (100%) of 1.0

Paid (80 GB)

• Picasa: 8.27 GB (10%)
• Gmail: 0GB (0%)
• Available: 71.73 GB (90%)

Purchase storage view

• 8.27GB (10%) in use

So it's still somewhat scrambled but the Manage Storage Screen now gets things straight. I seem to have 80GB in my general storage pool, 1 GB in free Picasa storage, and 7+ GB (it increments continuously) of free Gmail storage. So I have over 88GB total. It's still not clear if I can use any of my Gmail allotment for Picasa work, but I suspect not. It looks like future Gmail overflow would go into my 80GB pool, but these days Gmail is back to growing faster than my use.

Now that my storage is north of 80GB however Google can take their time sorting out the varying reports. I have enough for now and I can go back to using Picasa Web albums freely. I'll stay with the $20 a year plan, this gives me headroom for the next few years.

So do this mean gDrive is finally coming?
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Google Dashboard - authorized access (revoke)

The most interesting bit of my Google Dashboard is the Account - "websites authorized to access" link.

That link showed all the sites that exchange data via my Google ID, including 4-5 I no longer use. I revoked their access.

Since Google owns my soul my Dashboard goes on and on -- but this was the one new thing I recognized. There are about 18 other Google Services I use that aren't on the Dashboard.

Google is my master.

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When Google and Google Apps Collide

Most of our family Google Services are tied to our family domain and Google Apps. That doesn't work for Google Voice though, so I had to create "true" Google accounts for each family member with a GV number. I used our Google Apps emails as the user name.

Turns out, this has an interesting side-effect. Google binds calendars to a user name, so there's a calendar for emily@our_family_domain in Google Apps. So, you might wonder, what happens if you go to calendar.google.com when logged in to the standard Google Account with the Google Apps email?

Then you find your Null calendar ...

Get thee to the null calendar!

Google struggles with their Google Apps/Google Account dichotomies.

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