Google is indeed working on the broken Picasa Web Album iPhoto plug-in

They could do a better job of communication, but Google's photo sharing site has apparently not abandoned their OS X (iPhoto) customer base:

Picasa web albums: not for OS X

... A Google Picasa [web album] developer commented ... The good news is that he's actively working on an update that will announced on the Google Mac blog....

Update 10/15/07: It took two months and Google never changed their download page to notify users it didn't work, but the new version is out.

Picasa web albums: not for OS X

I'd been very fond of Google's Picasa web albums, but about a month ago the iPhoto '08 broke the Google (Picasa) Export Plug-in. It's been a month now and there's been no official admission from Google of the problem and no fixes.

It's time for OS X users to look somewhere besides Google. Too bad the .Mac photo sharing doesn't support full res upload/download. I'll be looking around, suggestions welcome!

Update 9/15/07: A Google Picasa developer commented on my blog, see comments. The good news is that he's actively working on an update that will announced on the Google Mac blog. I don't agree that a single, increasingly buried, comment on the help forum counts as sufficient notification of the problem -- Google should have updated their download page. I haven't come across any alternative I like as much as Picasa web albums, so with this additional notificaton I'll keep waiting.

OS X users: How to get your NBC

I don't watch network TV.

Well, that's not completely true. The other night I was stuck in a Hilton DoubleTree, and, as is often the case with Hilton, their Net access was down. My only reading material was densely technical, so, for the first time in years, I turned on a television. In 30 channels, there was nothing I could tolerate for more than 30 seconds.

So I don't care whether or not NBC's TV shows are available for me to watch. Some Mac users, however, are probably annoyed that NBC's solutions are strictly for Windows.

In that spirit, CNET tells us how to pirate how to pirate NBC. I'll shed no tears for NBC ...

10 Immutable Laws of Security (Microsoft)

An excellent Coding Horror post, about which I'll comment later, pointed to a handy (Microsoft?!) set of security principles. I omitted the stupidly obvious ones that were added so they'd have a list of 10 (Microsoft!):

Microsoft TechNet: 10 Immutable Laws of Security

Law #1: If a bad guy can persuade you to run his program on your computer, it's not your computer anymore
Law #2: If a bad guy can alter the operating system on your computer, it's not your computer anymore
Law #3: If a bad guy has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore Law
Law #4: If you allow a bad guy to upload programs to your website, it's not your website any more
Law #5: Weak passwords trump strong security
Law #6: A computer is only as secure as the administrator is trustworthy
Law #7: Encrypted data is only as secure as the decryption key
Law #8: An out of date virus scanner is only marginally better than no virus scanner at all
Law #9: Absolute anonymity isn't practical, in real life or on the Web

There's nothing here that should be novel to any geek, but it's a nice set to be able to reference. Law #3 is the one most people forget. Even Macintouch fell into the trap of thinking a hack that allows admin access to any OS X machine was a major security breach. That hack requires physical access, so the admin workaround is a trivial security breach. (OS X user account encryption will provide decent security, provided you don't put the password in your keychain!)

Also, Law #8 is a bit dated. Most geeks are giving up on virus scanners for XP/Vista, and OS X doesn't need one (yet).

What is the FullCircle folder doing in my OS X Application Support Folder?

In the process of debugging some very, very annoying Firefox 2.0/Adobe behaviors, and purging my MacBook of anything to do with Adobe (more on that later) I came across a folder called "FullCircle" within my "Application Support" folder. It had MozillaCamino strings in it. What the heck is that, I wondered ...

It's part of the Mozilla feedback/crash reporting system, and it's used by both Camino and Firefox (and probably Mozilla/Netscape too). For example:

Mac OS X 10.4.2: Questions And Answers:

To troubleshoot, I would delete the Firefox and FullCircle folders from / Users / [user] / Library / Application Support, and search for a Mozilla folder or files (on the entire boot drive) and delete them, too. Repair Permissions again, reboot, and then the same problem.

This was surprisingly hard to uncover!

A blog dedicated entirely to calendar interoperability

This guy's been beating the drum for calendar interoperability in a dedicated blog since June 2005!

Calendar Swamp: Calendar swamp is born

When you're up to your necks in appointment alligators, it's hard to remember the original job was to drain the calendar swamp.

Wow, this guy is persistent! I truly sympathize, though I don't have his endurance. I'll definitely add him to my bloglist.

Why the iPhone doesn't do tasks: a theory

Why doesn't the iPhone have the capabilities built into the @1990 PalmPilot? Why can't it do tasks or notes properly? These core functions are the among the demands I list on my non-tech blog:

Gordon's Notes: iPhone: my demands:

... Tasks at least comparable to the 1994 PalmPilot tasks.

Synchronization with Outlook at least comparable to the modern Palm OS (in other words, flawed, but useable). A 256 character limit on contact comments is not acceptable...

My working hypothesis has been that Apple hates me, but maybe I'm taking this a bit personally. Another theory is that the Apple has decided this stuff all has to migrate to the net and they've decided to speed up the process by eliminating all alternatives.

A third explanation occurred to me, and a bit of research supports it. Scott Mace, who has an appropriately despairing blog about calendar sharing and synchronization, mentions that the iPhone's calendar synchronization with Outlook is very weak. That's a clue.

Outlook is a the 8,000 pound Mastodon in the world of calendars, tasks, and contacts. It's the immovable object, and it's not simple to synchronize with. Outlook has a very complex and kludgy way of implementing these core concepts, and Microsoft leveraged that complexity to destroy Palm. Apple may have a few Palm veterans in Cupertino, people who are warning them about what it means to try to manage tasks, appointments, and contacts on Microsoft's turf.

Most iPhones will sync with XP and Vista machines, and eventually with Outlook 2007. If Apple wants this to work half-decently (meaning better than Palm), then the iPhone has to approach contacts, tasks, and appointments in a way that's a reasonable match to a subset of Outlook functionality (the most used fields, for example). If the iPhone does this, then OS X must to.

Problem is, Apple has iCal and the (very peculiar) Address Book on OS X, and they're nothing like Outlook. So Apple needs new versions of iCal and the Address book, but that's not going to happen on 10.4. That kind of change can only come with 10.5, perhaps with a new approach to synchronization.

So my latest tortured theory predicts that Apple won't add new PDA/PIM functionality to the iPhone before OS X 10.5 ships (supposedly in October, though I doubt it will be stable before April). If I'm write we'll see something @ Jan 2008.

New iPod video out has DRM protection built in

Apple tightens the DRM screws ...

Apple locks TV Out in new iPods, breaks video add-ons

... Without disclosing the change to customers, Apple has locked the TV Out feature of the iPod classic and video-capable iPod nano, preventing users from outputting iPod content to their TV sets [jf: except via Apple authenticated devices] as has been done in years past. Going to the Videos > Settings menu brings up a TV Out option that is now unresponsive when clicked, showing only the word “off.” When locked, video content will display on the iPod’s screen, but not on your TV or portable display accessory.

Presently, the only apparent way to turn this feature on is if you connect your iPod to a device with an Apple authentication chip built in. Authentication chips are only available in Apple products, and in a handful of products made by Apple-licensed third-party developers

This is a DRM move, I suspect it's related to Apple's desire to deploy HD video to iPods. This is good, it will teach people some valuable lessons about DRM ...

SMARTReporter: a free drive monitoring application for OS X

I'm going to try this one. From macintouch:

SMARTReporter 2.3 attempts to warn of impending hard drive failure by polling the SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) status technology built in to most modern hard drives. This release now prints more information about the checked disk to the logfile, improves handling of hot-plugged disks (eSATA), fixes some crashers, and makes other changes.

PictureSync: photo service IDs and metadata mapping

There are five people in the universe who'd find this discussion noteworthy: PictureSync » metadata.

I'm one of 'em. Synchronization is harder than most people imagine.

The problems with Picasa Web Albums

I pay Google for my Picasa Web Album storage.

For this I get:

Picasa Help - What are your technical requirements for uploading videos?

Video uploading is only available through Picasa.

and no status updates or acknowledgement that iPhoto 2008 has broken the Picasa Web Album iPhoto plug-in.

I'm definitely feeling like a second class citizen on Google's Picasa web albums.

It doesn't help that Google Video is out of order today as well - no uploads (server failure).

.Mac is looking better these days.

Google Earth Flight Simulator

GE includes a flight simulatory game ...

Flight Simulator Keyboard Controls - Google Earth User Guide

This document describes the various keyboard combinations that you can use with the flight simulator features of Google Earth. To enter the flight simulator mode, press Ctrl + Alt + A (Command/Open Apple Key + Option + A on the Mac). Once you have entered flight simulator mode for the first time, you can re-enter the mode by choosing Tools > Enter Flight Simulator. To leave flight simulator mode, click Exit Flight Simulator in the top right corner or press Ctrl + Alt + A (Command/Open Apple Key+ Option + A on the Mac)...

Desktop Pictures: the quality source

Sometimes Google can be dim. Search on "desktop pictures" and you get a lot of sites that, at least to me, aren't very useful.

On the other hand, the old "About this Particular Macintosh" site maintains a Desktop Picture archive that's free and excellent. A bit of a hidden gem I guess.

Personally I prefer gray scale images because color images make it hard to find my desktop icons, but I'll try switching some of these to gray scale. The one exception is that in XP at work I use Microsoft's desktop manager, and in that setting I reserve one environment for desktop operations. The other two can have full color backgrounds, and I rely on the backgrounds to tell me what environment I'm in. I'll be using these ...

Apple's iClip 1.0 (iMovie '08) shaft: what they should have done

iClip 1.0 (aka Movie '08) is a nasty trick. It has real promise and some real innovations; with another year of development it could be a great application. It needs a real media management solution, probably extending some of the approaches Aperture takes to managing a media library. iPhoto doesn't cut it as a media management solution. It also needs some of the core functionality that once belonged to iMovie HD. Most of all, it needs another year of work.

In fairness to Apple engineers, maybe it originally relied on functionality that was part of 10.5, and what we see now is a hack designed to work on 10.4. Or maybe it was supposed to be much more than it is, and as schedules slipped Apple threw it out the door in desperation.

Alas, it may well be a great commercial success. That happens. It doesn't change the shafted feeling iMovie HD users are going to experience.

The honorable thing for Apple to have done would have been to provide iMovie HD users with an upgrade path to Final Cut Express (which might also require some updates to FCE, I'm not sure how serious Apple is about that product). In a bit more detail, this is what they could have done:

1. Announce iClip (iVid?): a promising solution for rapidly sharing clips stored in iPhoto.
2. Announce that iMovie was, regrettably, being discontinued.
3. Let iLife '07 users have the option of a $75 transition to Final Cut Express. Some would choose to spend their money on FCE instead of iLife '08, others might choose both.
   

If Apple had taken that route I'm sure some users would still grumble, but they'd be spared the nasty reviews. There's still time for them to reconsider.

Sad Apple moments: Apple abandons file reference indirection

I think the single greatest innovation of the original MacClassic OS was the implementation of unique file identifiers.

Instead of hard coded paths and file names, files were identified by permanent unique identifiers. Applications called the Toolbox to get the current path as needed. Files could be "moved" (renamed, relationship to folders changed, etc), but references didn't break. Everything just worked (as long as the files stayed on the same physical drive).

Since Apple migrated to OS X they've been moving away from this. I looked a few months back and could find almost no documentation of indirection at the file system level in OS X HFS+. Increasingly Apple's applications seem to require fixed paths.

Apple's warped iClip (called iMovie '08 by Apple) is another nail in the coffin for indirection:

Gordon's Tech: iMovie '08: How the heck is it supposed to work?

As an experiment I relocated the iPhoto Library that iClip (iMovie '08) was referencing. I found, again, confirmation that Apple has abandoned file redirection in favor of hard coded paths.

Somewhere an group of former Apple engineers are mourning a great contribution that has been pointlessly abandoned. Whoever you are, wherever you are, thanks team. I appreciate what you did.

Update 2/26/09: A Stack over flow question pointed to the an Apple tech doc on The "/.vol" directory and "volfs" that demonstrates how badly this key innovation was hurt in the switch to OS X:

... This directory is used as the mount point for the "volfs" file system. The "volfs" file system is a key component for supporting the Carbon File Manager APIs on top of the BSD file system. Historically, BSD systems only allow you to access a file or directory by its POSIX path. However, the Carbon File Manager API also allows you to access an item by its catalogue node ID (CNID, a file ID reference or a directory ID). "volfs" provides a bridge between these two models, allowing the Carbon File Manager APIs to work on top of the BSD file system.

So Apple hacked BSD to enable file IDs with OS X, but Carbon is their deprecated API and file IDs are tied to HFS, a decrepit file system. I wasn't able to find mention of a Cocoa API for accessing CNIDs...