Unable to print from Chrome on macOS Mojave - use Cmd-Opt-P to print using system dialog

Over the the past year Google made several changes to macOS Chrome printing including hiding the "print using system dialog" option and removing their Cloud printing. I rarely use Chrome and almost never print from it so I ignored these changes. Sadly I recently discovered I was unable to print from Chrome on macOS Mojave. The error message is:

The selected printer is not available or not installed correctly. 

Check your printer or try selecting another printer.

A Google search found several reports but no good fix. Reinstalling Chrome didn't help.

There is a workaround. It turns out there's still a way to print using the system dialog. Cmd-Opt-P or holding option key and choosing Print from file menu brings up the system dialog. That works.

I don't know if this bug is Mojave specific. The workaround is good enough for me, I dislike Chrome in general. At some point I'll try Edge for macOS.

The panicky M1 MacBook Air known as Crashy

Nine weeks ago I replaced Emily's 9yo 11" Air with a 2021 M1 Air. Shortly after we passed the return date I realized I'd made a bad decision. The M1 Air panicked so often that it's forever known to us as "Crashy" the M1 Air. On some days Emily would see a spontaneous restart several times a day.

I don't think it's a hardware problem; among other things it's passed repeated hardware tests.  I suspect using Migration Assistant to move from High Sierra didn't help, but I don't think that's all of it. There's something bizarre with residual parental controls on my son's account that I can't seem to clear -- but Apple's parental controls/Screen Time have been horked for my family for years across iOS and now macOS. I don't think that's all of it.

I think it's mostly a bug with Fast User Switching and maybe Chrome/Google Software. We know that Fast User Switching can kill Mail.app spotlight search until corespotlightd is restarted, so we know some defect is leaking across user sessions. We also know that Fast User Switching is disabled by default on Big Sur, which suggests Apple is worried about it. (Maybe the weird Screen Time behavior is playing a role.)

So after doing every possible fix short of wiping the drive and reinstalling data from backup I removed every trace of Chrome and Google software [1] and I turned off FUS. Since then we've had no more crashes.

Eventually I'm going to restore FUS. This is a multi-user machine and we want it to work properly. When I do that I'll make every user admin because Big Sur does not display a Panic report to non-admin users -- then look for a log report. If Crashy stays up then the finger points to Chrome.

I really wish we'd bought an Intel Air. The 2020 Intel Air was basically perfect.

[1] My son used Chrome, Emily is Safari only. After one crash Emily was asked if she wanted to restart Chrome -- but she wasn't using Chrome. Suspicious for more leakage across user sessions.

PS. At one point I saw a very long thread on Apple Discussions about M1's crashing. It vanished. Here's a shorter thread and another.

Update 4/19/2021: Removing Chrome and disabling Fast User Switching eliminated the panics. We are doing ok without both so we aren't doing further testing. I don't miss Chrome and Emily and my son don't mind logging out.

Update 6/18/2021: By Big Sur 11.4 Crashy was fixed. We're keeping the name however. Fast User Switching is on but I never did reinstall Chrome. We bought our M1 Air around Jan 20, 2021 and 11.4 came out 5/24/2021, so it took five months for Apple to fix the damned thing. Eclectic Company wrote an article about M1 instability under Big Sur.

Chrome malware: Managed by your organization

I think my son installed a "managed by your organization" chrome malware extension when he was trying to find Flash. This one showed in Chrome as "searches.network"

The obsolete Federal government website required for his US census enumerator job probably directed him to get Flash. I wouldn't be shocked if he got the malware directly from the Federal site. US government web sites are notoriously insecure. [1]

This class of malware now works by installing an unsigned profile on the user's Mac that activates Chrome's "managed by your organization" mode. It locks the home page and search page so traffic is routed through the malware's server and it prevents a Chrome reset. (It may do other things as well of course.)  For some reason it locked him into Bing, which was a dead giveaway. Smarter malware wouldn't have changed the default search engine.

Once upon a time a quick Google search would have explained how to remove the malware. This is 2020 though, so Google's search results on this topic are mostly garbage. I found one result on a garbage site, however, that must have been partly based on a real site. That clued me to the profile. Once I deleted it then I could do a full Chrome reset. Once I knew the fix I found this guide, which covered the territory. (I can't tell who manages the site, I hope they make money by malware app referrals rather than anything more ominous.)

Before I did this I followed advice from a trusted source and installed the free (but suspiciously marketed) Malwarebyte antiviral. It found nothing. I'll try running one or two more antivirals (AVG, Sophos). Malwarebyte is an easy uninstall, so points for them.

[1] I am the solo family geek, my digital-age children seem to prefer the 18th century. My theory is the latest generation has the same take on computers that, at the same age, I had on automobile engines. It should just work, and if it doesn't work an old person might understand it.

Chrome: Default pjkljhegncpnkpknbcohdijeoejaedia quit unexpectedly

For years I’ve launched gmail and gcalendar on my Mac using apps in my user/application folder I’d named gCal.app and gMail.app. I loved them. Not only did they let me go directly to gCal and gMail from spotlight they also opened in my preferred user profile rather than the last user profile I’d used.

Today they crash on use.

Intermittently I got this error message:

Default pjkljhegncpnkpknbcohdijeoejaedia quit unexpectedly.

That looks like malware, but apparently pjkljhegncpnkpknbcohdijeoejaedia is an undocumented internal Google Chrome extension. (Very cute Google.)

After a bit of research I believe those apps were known as Chrome apps, and years ago Google supported creating them on the Mac. Google ended support in 2017. I think the apps lived in a Chrome folder that was removed, but on my machine they survived because I’d moved copies into a user folder.

Today my extended use luck ran out. Now they crash [1] under Chrome 75.0.3770.100. I suspect my Mac was updated today or yesterday, this version of Chrome was released June 18.

I REALLY miss the desktop app functionality. “Progressive Web Apps” were supposed to replace it but I don’t think they happened [2]. I might try this 2018 tip to see if I can restore it.

Or maybe the next release of Chrome will fix the crash :-).

- fn -

[1] sample start of log

Process: app_mode_loader [1087]
Path: /Users/USER/*/gCal (jfaughnan).app/Contents/MacOS/app_mode_loader
Identifier: com.google.Chrome.app.Default-ejjicmeblgpmajnghnpcppodonldlgfn-internal
Version: 4.5.6 (2564.97)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: ??? [1]
Responsible: app_mode_loader [1087]
User ID: 502

Date/Time: 2019-06-29 14:33:12.397 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.14.5 (18F132)
Report Version: 12
Anonymous UUID: C285F89D-D3A8-7245-0199-81B760782A83

Time Awake Since Boot: 2100 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BREAKPOINT (SIGTRAP)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal: Trace/BPT trap: 5
Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0x5
Terminating Process: exc handler [1087]

Application Specific Information:
dyld2 mode

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

[2] No, didn’t happen on Mac. Over a year late now:

Progressive Web Apps on Desktop 
Progressive Web Apps now work on the desktop, including Chrome OS and Windows, with support for Mac and Linux coming soon.

For Google macOS is not a priority platform.

 

Fixing Google Chrome Mac Update Error: 12 - success after years of failure.

I’ve been waging a desultory war on a Google Chrome Mac Update Error 12 bug for years. I can’t remember when Chrome updated itself correctly on my Mac, but I didn’t really dig into the bug. I figured Google would fix it sooner or later, in the meantime I’ve been manually downloading Chrome installers every few months (not a great idea obviously).

Today I gave up on Google and started work on the bug. The key to finding the answer was logging into my admin account, starting Console, clearing the log, then watching what showed up as I started Chrome and opened the About screen while Chrome tried to update and generated the usual error: 12 message. I saw something like this:

 …. CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page(0x1000): p=809[GoogleSoftwareUp] clearing CS_VALID …

Searching on that string I found an old AskDifferent post on a related topic. That pointed to 

 /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources

where, like Daniel Azuelos, I found these file dates. 

Yeah, 2012.

The fix is to quite Chrome, delete  /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate (root Library, not User), reinstall Google Software Update Installer and restart. Then you get something like this:

Yeah, 2014. A bit better.

Then, still from my Admin Account, I ran Chrome and stepped through several versions of the Chrome About screen:

 

then

Do the relaunch, then ..

Setup up Automatic Updates for All Users (I’ll be impressed if this actually works!):

First automatic update in my memory.

I suspect this problem arose from years of several intersecting bugs — some belong to Apple’s famously buggy permissions infrastructure, some related to how Google interacts with people who run OS X as non-admin users, some related to how Google Chrome/Updater manages install errors, some related to how Google mangled OS X Library structures over the years.

Once I’d fixed the problem I read Google’s tech support note more carefully (with Mavericks/Mountain Lion their sudo instructions only work if you run as admin, they kind of left that out). This is the relevant bit:

Run the following command. Be careful to enter the command exactly as written:

~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/install.py --uninstall. It may result in a "No such file error"; the next command will address that.

Now run this following command. Again, carefully enter the command exactly as written:

sudo /Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/install.py --uninstall

The first command runs against the User account library. Google acts like there’s ONE user account on the machine, instead of say, an Admin account and many user accounts. Anyway, I didn’t have anything like that in either my Admin or Non-Admin account.

The second is closer to the real fix, but look back at 2012 files. There’s no Install.py file there. The answer was to delete parent folder in /Library, not to try to run a non-existent installer.

PS. MarsEdit image upload really needs a lot of work. Hope the new competition from Blogo will help. Also, this is relevant.

Google Chrome Pinboard integration with custom search engine definition

The health of software is not good. I was reminded of that when I went looking for Pinboard extensions that would better integrate my Pinboard collection with Google Chrome. The official Pinboard Chrome extension was last updated in 2011. That’s too old for safe use, and I don’t trust most 3rd party Chrome extensions.

Happily I remembered Chrome’s custom search engine feature (yeah, from 2011, the year software died, again).

Pinboard’s search string follows the classic pattern for extensibility, an embedded URL of the form:

search my stuff: https://pinboard.in/search/u:jgordon?query=ReplaceMe

search all stuff: https://pinboard.in/search/?query=ReplaceMe&all=Search+All

From these patterns I created two search shortcuts in Chrome in two of my identities [1], these will sync across my Chrome instances:

https://pinboard.in/search/u:jgordon?query=%s

https://pinboard.in/search/?query=%s&all=Search+All

When I was done adding these and cleaning up others Chrome had added automatically [2] I had this:

and here’s what Chrome shows when I type “p aperture” in the omnibus, prior to hitting enter/return:

That’s better, and cleaner, workflow integration than any of the extensions I’ve seen.

- fn -

[1] My biggest Chrome frustration is that in Windows I can specify which identity Chrome should use at launch, but in OS X I have to launch then switch.

[2] It strikes me that this is an attack vector — there’s probably a way for a site to trick Chrome into adding large numbers of these, some with bad actions.

Force Chrome to remember iCloud password - how I ended up with LastPass

I don’t use iCloud for much - Apple’s cloud functionality is almost as lacking as its reliability. Our family has used Google Calendar for 7 years [1], I use Simplenote and nvAlt [3] as an information store, Gmail for email [4] and Toodledo/Todo.app for tasks. [5]

That leaves Contacts in Apple’s badlands — they’re too tightly coupled to iOS and OS X to readily migrate. So Contacts are the only bit of iCloud I use; I have to admit that they have been relatively reliable.

Hang on — this does get to the part about forcing Chrome to remember an iCloud password. But first I need a bit of setup. I have to explain something about corporate life and personal data.

Fifteen years ago many employees mixed their personal and corporate data on business laptops and workstations. It wasn’t unusual to use a single email for both work and personal use. Ever since then the two worlds have been dividing - driven by legal and security concerns. Even thumb drives are encrypted on insertion now; data on the increasingly locked down corporate laptop belongs to the corporation.

Which is fine for email and work documents - they should belong to my employer. Contacts though — they’re a problem. They don’t divide neatly between work and personal — and my work Contacts are pretty important for my future employment and family food. So, when it came time to decide where my Contacts should live, I moved them entirely into the personal sphere.

Which is why I need to use a corporate browser (Chrome [6]) to access iCloud — that’s where all of my Contacts live. I need ‘em when I work. 

Ok, so we’ve established I need to use Chrome to access iCloud. Now the problem — it makes me enter my password way too often. And my passwords aren’t easy to type or remember. There are extensions that once forced Chrome to store this password, but they don’t work any more.

So today I broke down. LastPass has a freemium model for online credential storage; the web app and Chrome extension are free. (LastPass charges for mobile services.) Unlike 1Password, which I use on iOS and OS X, there’s no need to buy a Windows client — and I don’t want to put all my credentials in the Cloud anyway. So I signed up for free LastPass, and created an account with a single stored credential - my iCloud ID and password.

It works fine. So one of my longstanding annoyances has been fixed — I can quickly bring up iCloud Contacts.

- fn - 

[1] Calendars 5.app is essential for the Google Calendar power user — we have it on every phone [2]. My native iOS Calendar syncs to my corporate calendar, Calendars 5 reads the iOS calendar database so it appears inline with my other 17 calendars, including 1 for each family member and one ‘all family’ calendar. Our family grandfathered into free Google Apps accounts, but if we didn’t I’d probably pay for the business service. Free has been nice though.

[2] It’s $7 a user. Since it’s not funded by in app purchases I believe iOS family sharing would allow one purchase to support five users. If it did use in app purchases that wouldn’t work. FWIW we still share a single Apple Store only AppleID, I use a different AppleID with iCloud.

[3] nvAlt is in maintenance mode for now — but so is Notational Velocity. Brett has a commercial replacement in the queue, as of today “it’s amazing and will probably be released”.

[4] Google’s broke Gmail usability with their last UI redo. I use Mail.app on iOS and sometimes Airmail on Mac, but mostly I gnash my teeth and weep and use Gmail.

[5] Nobody would do this by choice. Is a legacy choice.  Works and I hate to change things that work.

[6] The corporate standard is IE 9 — thanks to legacy apps. So IE for corporate apps, Chrome elsewhere.

Start Chrome using a specified "user profile".

I love Chrome's Multiple User feature - aka Identity Management in the G+/Facebook era.

 It's why I switched from Safari to Chrome on OS X. I have a profile for

• My TrueSelf that only a few shall know.
• John (Kateva) Gordon
• My corporate self

I also have profiles I use when I'm assuming my children's identity (ex: Facebook monitoring). All the Profiles sync through Google Cloud including bookmarks, passwords, extensions and so on. So I use the same Profile everywhere.

Even in Darkness, Google does some things well.

I switch my three primary profiles all the time. That's how I know the great weakness of the current implementation. The Profile Google gives me is never the one I want. I frequently have to switch identities, which opens a new window, then hunt that window down ... Meanwhile, the original Window hangs on.

I want some shortcuts that will take me directly to the Profile I want. In both Windows (easily) and Mac (comand line), there are ways to do that as described in SuperUser and Quora:

• How do I start Chrome using a specified "user profile"? - Super User
• Is there a way to create shortcuts for a direct access to a user's profile in the new Google Chrome? - Quora

This is top-secret stuff, these parameters don't show up on the most popular listing of Chrome command line options. 

The command line parameters are of the form:

• chrome --profile-directory="Profile 1" -> Kateva
• chrome --profile-directory="Profile 2" -> Corporate
• chrome --profile-directory="Default" -> Personal

They match the directory names shown in (Win) C:\Users\[userid]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data.

I've created a Windows shortcut for each Profile, now I have to give them unique icons.

The post-Flashback era: removing Java and Flash from OS X

Decades ago, my SE/30 caught a Mac Classic virus. There was a fine freeware antivirus app for the Mac then, maintained by an academic and Mac geek. I used that until OS X came along. After OS X there was no great need for antivirus software, and none worth using.

Alas, as had been long expected, those days are back. There is money to be made now preying on Mac users, and Windows 7 is not the soft target of XP or 95. All Mac geeks have been reviewing the two important articles on Flashback:

• What you need to know about the Flashback trojan | Macworld
• TidBITS Safe Computing: How to Detect and Protect Against Updated Flashback Malware

I've run the 'defaults read' test on the admin account on four machines:

• defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment
• defaults read /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment
• defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

I suspect the last needs to be run on every user account, which is the sort of tedious job antiviral software was built for. So far I haven't found any problems.

I haven't put antiviral software on our Macs yet (OS 10.5, 10.6, 10.7) but i'm taking these measures:

• Uninstall Flash Player and switch default browsers to Chrome (sandboxed Google-owned Flash)
• Uninstall Adobe Acrobat (done long ago)
• Never run as admin user (done long ago)
• Disable Java on all Macs (Java Preferences - delete cache, uncheck JVM)
• Don't install Microsoft Office

I'll move my two Mountain Lion capable machines to the new OS later this summer, and I'll be watching to see what happens with OS X antiviral software. My Win 7 experience with antiviral software means I'll think hard before I take that road.

Update: Flashback may be the worst virus-specific malware infection ever.

Organizing kid school accounts with OS X: Chrome to the rescue

In the twilight of the general purpose computer, I struggle to balance OS X and Apple tech, Google services, parental obligations, and getting work done.

Our iOS  and OS X devices are parental controlled -- at least as far as they can be. Among other things, that means Google services are unavailable on child accounts. [1].

Schools, however, make increasing use of Google Apps [2]. This is how I reconcile that use case with our general approach to home computing:

1. You need the username and password for the school Google Apps account. Example: kid_name@school.mn.us.
2. Create a single non-controlled "homework" account on the primary homework machine.
3. Use Google Chrome, not Safari, for this account.
4. In Chrome create a user account for each child. For each account, from Chrome Preferences, choose to sync Google. You will be asked for the school user name and password.
5. Add gmail, docs and so on to the toolbar.

Each child uses this single OS X account with their own Chrome identity. Use of this account requires direct parental supervision. It is used only for homework. On personal OS X accounts our kids don't directly access our Family Google Apps domain, they use OS X Mail.app, for example, to get email. They don't know their Family Google Apps passwords.

[1] Partly by design and partly due to market disinterest, Google services are not compatible with OS Parental Controls.
[2] Alas, this transition occurred even as Google's Hyde crushed its Jeckyl.

ifttt, Google Reader Share, and Wordpress

ifttt has a WordPress channel, including a post action.

Google Reader's share RSS feed is still active, and can be exposed with the Keakon extension.

So using iftt could I blog to Wordpress by clicking the Keakon-Share link in Google Reader?

Be a fun experiment anyway.

Google Chrome sync does not work with 2-step verification

As best I can tell Google's two-factor ("2-step") verification is incompatible with Chrome sync. There are two ways it fails:

1. During initial authentication you are required to enter a full access password, the Authenticator token won't work. (Laughably, Google calls these 'application-specific' passwords. That's a lie. I wish they'd stop repeating it.) This defeats the value of the Authenticator's keystroke-logger protection.

2. You can't use your Google account authentication to encrypt your sync store. Maybe it uses the 'application specific password'. When I try this, Sync hangs - but tells me it has succeeded. Using a separate sync password works.

There are lots of similar bugs with use of two-factor. It's really not finished; I wonder if it's one of the projects that Page has terminated. I still use it, but I don't recommend it to anyone else. The illusion of security may be worse than no security.

Google's Omnibox and implementing Google search alternatives

Since I'm distancing myself from Google 2.0, I was receptive to Phil Bradley's alternative engine advice. I'm testing blekko (spam free) and Duck Duck Go (no tracking). I believe both are wrappers that enhance Google search.

Naturally, this experimentation works best with Chrome's Omnibox. It's very easy to add search engines; Chrome 'detects' an engine during a search site visit and adds them to it's collection. You can make any a default, and define a text shortcut. Type the shortcut in the Omnibox, hit spacebar, and your custom search is ready.

I made Blekko my default, and assigned it the letter 'b'. Google gets 'g', etc.

While I was at it, I defined a search string for one a Google custom search engine that searches my own content (web pages, blog posts): <http://www.google.com/cse?cx=009911250981951822495%3Aphjhjp-tdfa&ie=UTF-8&q=%s>. I already had one for searching my dev team's Rally project.

I can distrust Google and still appreciate Chrome ... right?

• Using the address bar (omnibox) - Google Chrome Help
• Managing search engine options - Google Chrome Help

Update 11/24/2011: I ran a search on moving from blogger to wordpress on both Blekko and Google. Blekko wasn't just a bit better. It was immensely better.

My reader shares are back for now - thanks to Keakon.

My Google Reader shared items are back. My memory is transiently restored ...

How To Restore Sharing Options And Old List Spacing In Google Reader

Reader Sharer is a simple Chrome add-on that restores the sharing functionality to Google Reader..

It's in the Chrome extension store...

Implemented features:
1. The "Your shared items".
2. The "People you follow" view.
3. The "Notes" view.
4. The "Your liked items" view.
5. Share/unshare an item (keyboard shortcut: Shift + F).
6. Share/delete an item with note (keyboard shortcut: Shift + D).
7. Like/unlike an item (keyboard shortcuts: L).
8. Display whether an item has been shared/liked or not.
9. Support both list view and expanded view.
10. Recover some old style for improving readability.

Features unavailable yet:
None?

Can't implement features:
1. Add/delete/display comments for an item. It seems the comment API is not available now.

Source code:
https://bitbucket.org/keakon/reader-sharer/

Currently has 6,400 users. That's far higher than I'd expected.

Source code on Atlassian bitbucket. I think a Firefox version is pending.

The author is "keakon". His blog is Chinese, Google tried to translate it for me but froze. I don't think Google translate likes Blogger's new dynamic pages.

Now if I could figure out a way to save this microblogging archive ...

Google: The Quick, the Sick and the Dead - 4th edition

It's been 4 months since the 3rd edition of Google: The Quick, the Sick and the Dead, so this edition is about two months early. It's time though -- because Google is changing fairly quickly.

Changing quickly, but not improving. In the list below I put in parens the prior QSD rating for each item and I've added a section for the official dead. I've decided to stick with only those Google products I personally use, so I've omitted Android.

Comments below.

The Quick (Q)

• Google Scholar (Q)
• Gmail (Q)
• Chrome browser (Q)
• Picasa Web Albums (Q)
• Calendar (Q)
• Maps and Earth (Q)
• News (Q)
• Google Docs (Q)
• Google Voice (S)

The Sick (S)

• Google Search (Q)
• Google Reader (Q)
• Google’s Data Liberation Front (Q)
• Translate (Q)
• Custom search engines (Q)
• Books  (Q)
• YouTube (Q)
• Google Apps (Q)
• Google Profile (S)
• Google Contacts (S)
• Google Mobile Sync (S)
• Google Video Chat (S)
• Google Checkout (S)
• Orkut (S)
• iGoogle (S)
• Gmail Tasks (D)

The Walking Dead (D)

• Chrome OS (S)
• Buzz (S)
• Blogger (D)
• Google Groups (D)
• Google Sites (D)
• Google Base (D)
• Knol (D)
• Firefox/IE toolbars (D)
• Google Talk (D)
• Google Parental Controls (D)

The Officially Dead - since last edition

• Google Desktop (D)
• Google Wave (D)

Since the last edition there have been three escapes from Walking Dead. Two products are now officially dead and Gmail Tasks has been promoted to merely Sick (still uninteresting). There's been one promotion from Sick to Quick - Google Voice.

Seven products have moved from Quick to Sick - including Search. That's a big one. Google suggest is fun, but Google is losing the splog wars. Too many of the results I get back are splog noise. I love Reader, but the Notes/Comments silliness has to mark it as Sick. I also love the Data Liberation Front, but they're not getting traction any more. I suspect they've lost funding. Translate hasn't made progress on the non-Euro languages, so it's increasingly irrelevant.

Overall, this is a grim time to be a hard core Google user. Of course I don't use Android, and Android gets a lot of press. I wonder, however, given the rest of Google's recent record, how solid Android really is.

I wonder if this performance is ever going to show up in Google's  share price.

See also:

• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #1 (1/09)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #2 (11/09)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #3 (6/10)

Migrating Notes from ToodleDo to ResophNotes and the Simplenote ecosystem

[Shortly after I first wrote this, C.Y. released ResophNotes 1.0.5. Among other things, such as the ability to store notes as indexable .txt files, it has direct support for importing ToodleDo’s CSV file. He’d told me the release was coming soon, I did it my way just for geek fun. I’ve therefore moved the details of what I did to a footnote. BTW, turns out C.Y., like me, migrated to Simplenote from Toodledo/Appigo!]

Once I'd rescued my memory fragments from Outlook 2007 my next goal was to unify them from the former Palm Memos I'd (painfully) migrated to ToodleDo and thus Appigo's Notebook.app.

I've been reasonably happy with the combination of ToodleDo and Appigo, but notes are very much a 2nd class citizen on ToodleDo (they're all about tasks) and their search tools are pretty weak. I also wanted to be able to access and work with my notes from my desktop on Windows and the Mac, to be able to back them up, to have them be exposed to Spotlight search on OS X, to integrate my old corporate Outlook Notes with my old personal former Palm Memos and to have at least one open source repository in the mix. I needed the notes to live in a standard file format (UTF-8 text or RTF) free of all data lock.

Sounds like a lot, but the combination of ResophNotes (XP and higher - free but do donate), Simplenote (Cloud, ad-supported or $9/year - I paid - see documentation), Simplenote.app (iPhone and iPad app, free) and Notational Velocity (open source, OS X - documentation) gave me everything I wanted -- plus Chrome extensions for editing.

There was only one thing standing in my way. How could I get my ToodleDo notes into Simplenote?

I knew that ResophNotes (Win) would import Outlook's peculiar CSV files (embedded paragraphs!), but the developer, C.Y. I still days away from releasing a more general CSV import feature. I was impatient, so this is what I did. (see footnote [1])

During my early import experiments, because I used a Mac for part of the process, I ran into character encoding problems. Since ResophNotes doesn't yet have note multiselect and delete [2] I had to find its database and delete it.

ResophNotes exports and imports .RSN files (yay! backup!), but that's not how it works with notes. I found them in "C:\Documents and Settings\jfaughnan" in a .ResophNotes folder (hidden). To delete them and start over you have to quit ResophNotes, then find the instance in Task Manager Processes and kill it, then you can delete the files.

That let me start over again.

BTW, here's how the notes look in Notational Velocity's "Notational Notes" store:

Yes, each note a separate Rich Text file (I may convert to safer plain text) -- all Spotlight indexed.

Just in time for my birthday.

Nerdvana.

[1] Now that ResophNotes has direct ToodleDo import, I’ll include this as a reference for how one might support CSV variants other than ToodleDo or Outlook. My procedure was especially weird because I happened to have a Mac at hand…

1. Use ToodleDo's Notes CSV export to my Mac.
2. Import into FileMaker and use Calculation field to merge the ToodleDo Title and Notes into an Outlook style "Note Body". I next renamed the ToodleDo "Folder" column to Category.
3. Created FileMaker columns to match Outlook's names, and exported as CSV. I had to paste this string in as the first row: "Note Body","Categories","Note Color","Priority","Sensitivity". I left all values except Note Body and Category null. In retrospect I should have appended "Categories" as a string to the end of "Note Body" to facilitate search.
4. I used TextWrangler to clean up some character encoding CR/LF issues. This was only necessary because I got a Mac in the mix. Curse that ancient CR/LF screwup. It seems to have survived into the world of UTF-8 encoding.
5. I fired up my Fusion VM (way better than it first was on 10.6) and my old XP image and moved the file over. I opened it in Word and saved as UTF-8 to remove any residual character encoding issues.
6. I imported into ResophNotes. When I was sure all was well, I synchronized ResophNotes with Simplenotes and all my notes merged into one lovely repository. I fired up Notational Velocity in another window and confirmed all was fine there as well.

[2] Since the latest version can store as .txt files, I assume one could just delete all the .txt files! I haven’t tried this tough.

Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, SimpleNote for iPhone and Notational Velocity

I had despaired of rescuing my notes from Outlook 2007.

I'd written hundreds over time. In the old days I used Palm products that would sync with Outlook, so I could carry them with me. Now my iPhone, after years of struggle, gives me good Outlook sync with Contacts and Calendars. Notes and Tasks, however, have been orphaned. There's no real hope of an Outlook Notes to iPhone sync solution; although a few people use Outlook Tasks almost nobody uses Outlook Notes.

I've learned to live without corporate Outlook Tasks (I schedule my time on a 3 week plan basis), but I wanted those notes. I decided they needed to live within either ToodleDo Notes/Appigo Notebook, iPhone Notes (unlikely), or the Simplenote / NotationalVelocity universe (for various reasons I've given up on Evernote).

Today I discovered ResophNotes, a Windows app that syncs with the Simplenote cloud data store. The Simplenote cloud data store, of course, also syncs with Notational velocity (open source, OS X Spotlight indexed), OS X Tinderbox, OS X Yojimbe (3rd party sync), and there's a Chrome extension for editing notes.

I exported my Outlook 2007 notes to Outlook's odd CSV format (includes line feeds!), then I imported into ResophNotes and synchronized with Simplenote's cloud store. Then on my iPhone I viewed them in the Simplenote iPhone client.

It worked better than I'd expected.

Now I can move my old (originally Palm III Notes, now ToodleDo/Appigo Notebook) personal notes to the same cloud store. I'll sign up for the $10/year premium Simplenote service. (Currently I have free version.) If Simplenote belly up the rich ecosystem and open source Notational Velocity desktop solution provides the insurance I need.

A good day.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: The rise of software rental (aka software as service)
• Moving Palm notes to Toodledo via CSV file - what worked. (Hard!)
• Appigo Notebook is coming to the iPhone
• Kiss your Google Notebook good-bye
• Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes (Aug 2008 - dated)
• Toodledo gets it
• Appigo and Toodledo – nasty emergent design flaw makes a mess of my iPhone Notes and Tasks
• Evernote's import/export test (updated)

Update 7/31/10: The author of ResophNotes tells me he's preparing a new version that will import CSV files -- like the ones ToodleDo Notes export creates. Incidentally, I discovered that FileMaker Pro 8 does a great job opening Outlook's CSV files with embedded line feeds. I never imagined ...

The Blogger in Draft line spacing bug - illustrated

In a kind rebuttal of my claim that Blogger is troubled, Rick Klau, a Google Product Manager, wrote:

… There is a new text editor available on www.blogger.com (available under settings) which is the default on Blogger in Draft. It significantly improves the authoring interface, addresses a number of the issues you referred to, and opens up a number of integration opportunities for us with other Google properties - we're doing QA on the next batch of integrations right now…

When I described the longstanding troubles I’ve had with the Blogger in Draft rich text editor Rick responded;

… Odd to hear about formatting problems with Draft's editor - it's pretty rock solid. Please ping me with any indications of what you're seeing - that's almost certainly a bug that we'll want to fix if it persist…

So I’m pleased to say I have a good example of the bug. I believe it’s related to the old CR/LF, CR, LF problems in DOS/Windows, MacOS and Unix – augmented by the transition to the unicode standard. (I’ve read recently that all of Google’s new tools require translation to unicode).

Here’s a recent post of mine, authored using Windows Live Writer (Windows only) as it renders in Chrome 4.0.249.78 after posting (it shows the same way in WLW):

Here’s how it looks in Blogger Classic using Chrome:

And here is how it renders in Blogger In Draft using Chrome:

Yes, the line spacing is wrecked. From past experience, this is messy to fix up. When you fix the line spacing here, it comes out double-spaced on publishing.

I’ll point Rick to this post. Hope it helps!

Update 1/29/10: Based on Rick's comment below, Google is looking into this one.

Update 2/1/2010: There's a similar bug with Safari on OS X. When you quote a block of text everything double spaces.

Update 3/10/2010: I just had blogger in draft completely screw up a post composed 100% in Chrome on XP. It's far from ready.

Firefox: Please fix your darned URL drag and drop behavior

This is what you get when you drag and drop a location field URL onto a rich text editing field from four different browsers (all on XP):

Chrome*: Gordon's Tech- The best feature in Safari 3.1- drag and drop urls

Safari: Gordon's Tech Blogger BlogThis! Drag and drop URLs

IE 8: Gordon's Tech Firefox One thing IE does far better -- and FF could do it to

Firefox: http://tech.kateva.org/2007/07/firefox-one-thing-ie-does-far-better.html

IE has had this behavior since at least IE 3 (was there an earlier version?). Safari (webkit) added it in 3.1, and Chrome has always had it.

I love the fact that these 3 browsers display the page title field. It’s annoying that Firefox doesn’t.

Now, this isn’t the biggest problem with Firefox today. Still, it’s symptomatic.

I used to use Firefox everywhere. I now use Chrome on XP, Safari on OS X, and Camino on our 10.3 iBook.

Firefox, please get better!

* Chrome is the only one to put the hyphen after the name of the blog. Nice touch.

Google has an app status dashboard

I had no idea this page existed. It was referenced in a blog post on today's Gmail outage: Apps Status Dashboard.

There's an RSS feed as well, I've subscribed to it.

Funny thing -- the dashboard doesn't work with Google Chrome. In IE 8 if you click on an icon you get details on the event. In Chrome they're not clickable.

 

Update 9/2/09: Well, today it works fine in Chrome. I retried after a reader said it worked fine. Probably a random minor Chrome buglet.