Leopard and file sharing: but can you share the Shared Folder?

Glenn Fleishman of Tidbits has a new eBook out on Leopard File Sharing and he gives us some highlights here: Leopard Simplifies Sharing.

I am almost ready to hope that OS X users can now SHARE THE #$@% shared folder [1]. Yes, it's true, for years OS X has had a "Shared Folder" on every drive used to share items between users, but that folder couldn't be share with network clients

Just fixing that ridiculous design flaw would justify half of the upgrade price to 10.5. I've asked Fleishman to address that question, I hope he'll update his post.

The more I read about Leopard, the more I realize I might have to admit to being ... errr .... wrong. When Leopard slipped its dates, I figured they were going to have to slip again from October 2007 to April 2008 -- or that the October 2007 release would be pretty crummy.

I still have no intention of messing with 10.5.0, but the early news is damned impressive. It now seems likely 10.5.1, when it comes out in a month or so, will be a truly large leap forward -- maybe the biggest release of OS X since 10.1 made it usable (ok, so 10.4 on Intel was impressive too).

It would be funny if the 10.5 release were to turn out have been under-hyped given all the flack Apple gets for its PR machine.

Update 10/28/07: Yes, you can.

Update 5/30/08: I finally upgraded to 10.5.3. There's no problem with sharing the Shared folder, in fact I think I can share any folder. We haven't been able to do that since MacOS 9.

[1] See:
OS X: Creating a "parents only" shared folder and Odd OS X bug: can't share the shared folder

Generating Sharepoint-friendly URLs (links) using Microsoft Access

This is damned obscure, but it's not documented and I figured it out, so I'll stick it up here.

Maybe it will help someone.

Microsoft Excel, Access, and Sharepoint  2007 (latter is really SQL Server dressed up) all have an implied datatype called the "hyperlink". It's not well documented, I don't think Excel 2007 and Access 2007 implement the hyperlink quite the same way.

Excel has a "hyperlink" function that will generate a hyperlink from a string and a URL, but when I pasted that into a hyperlink field in SP 2007 bad things happened and I had to power cycle by XP box. (typical XP behavior)

On the other hand I couldn't figure out how to generate hyperlinks in Access 2003 or 2007. Here's the trick, and they do work in SP 2007. I assume one column holds the URL and the other the text displayed in the UI.

1. Concatenate URL and text fields (+ operator in Access) to a string of this sort: "friendly name#http://myserver.org/friend.html#"

2. Write out the results to a table.

3. Change the datatype of the column containing "friendly name#http://myserver.org/friend.html#" to "HYPERTEXT".

Now you have the hypertext URLs.

Link to your target SP 2007 list (table really), and join on your identifier, then do an Update query to stuff your hypertext URLs into the appropriate Sharepoint field.

I'm sure there's a better way using VisualBasic for Access, but Microsoft's approach to VBA gives me hives. It's a total mess, I'd much rather spend time learning Objective C or Python.

Gmail gets IMAP: Hallelujah!

I usually try not to blog about something everyone's screaming from the rooftops, but this is genuinely exciting: Gmail gets IMAP - Download Squad.

DS was reporting on a rumor, but they note it's official now.

I moved all my email services to Gmail lately after my longtime ISP, VISI.COM, began messing up in a big way. It took a bit of tweaking to get it all working, but it's been fine ever since. I'd have moved long ago if Gmail had IMAP.

Now I'll be able to move my wife's email to Gmail -- she likes using OS X Mail.app and she works from 3 machines. Until now I had her on VISI's IMAP service.

Big news of the day.

So, can Google's long delayed file server be all that far away?

Update: Good tip on use with Mail.app
Update 10/25: This news post has more setup tip links.
Update 11/16/07: Still more configuration advice. I still haven't gotten around to doing this, mostly because my current setup works! Still, one of these days ...

The end of the Storm worm: interesting lessons

PC World has an educational article on the Storm worm, which is now fading from the scene. Emphases mine.

PC World - Storm Worm Now Just a Squall

... Brandon Enright, a network security analyst at UC San Diego, has been tracking Storm since July and said that, despite the intense publicity that the network of infected computers has received, it's actually been shrinking steadily and is presently a shadow of its former self. On Saturday, he presented his findings at the Toorcon hacker conference in San Diego.

Storm is not really a computer worm. It's a network of computers that have been infected via malicious e-mail messages, and are centrally controlled via the Overnet P-to-P protocol. Enright said he has developed software that crawls through the Storm network and he thinks that he has a pretty accurate estimate of how big Storm really is.

Some estimates have put Storm at 50 million computers, a number that would give its controllers access to more processing power than the world's most powerful supercomputer. But Enright said that the real story is significantly less terrifying. In July, for example, he said that Storm appeared to have infected about 1.5 million PCs, about 200,000 of which were accessible at any given time....

... Since July, it's been downhill for Storm. That's when antivirus vendors began stepping up their tracking of Storm variants and got a lot better at identifying and cleaning up infected computers, Enright said.

Then on September 11, Microsoft added Storm detection (Microsoft's name for Storm's components is Win32/Nuwar) into its Malicious Software Removal tool, which ships with every Windows system. Overnight, Storm infections dropped by another 20 percent.

Today, Enright said that Storm is about one-tenth of its former size. His most recent data counts 20,000 infected PCs available at any one time, out of a total network of about 160,000 computers. "The size of the network has been falling pretty rapidly and pretty consistently," he said.

Still, Storm has had a remarkably successful run. It's called Storm because it first popped up in mid-January in spam e-mails that offered late-breaking information on powerful storms that had been battering Europe. Users who clicked on the "Full Story.exe" or "Video.exe" attachments that accompanied the spam were infected by malicious software, making them part of the Storm network.

These machines were then used to send out more spam and launch attacks against other computers. The recent MP3 stock spam that was first spotted earlier this week was sent out by the Storm network, Enright said.

Storm was effective because its creators were really good at creating messages that victims would feel compelled to click, Enright said. In its first few days, it managed to infect more than 300,000 computers, making it the worst malware outbreak since 2005. Its creators have since been masters at creating timely messages for their spam and have also had success getting victims to click on fake e-greeting cards.

The Storm network itself is constantly changing, and has used a variety of technologies that have made it an interesting phenomenon to study. In addition to the peer to peer network, it has used rootkit software to disguise its presence on the PC and a server-switching technique called "fast-flux," which makes the Storm servers harder to find on the network.

It's also developed some interesting ways of keeping researchers like Enright at bay. "If you're a researcher and you hit the pages hosting the malware too much... there is an automated process that automatically launches a denial of service [attack] against you," he said. This attack, which floods the victim's computer with a deluge of Internet traffic, knocked part of the UC San Diego network offline when it first struck.

Lately Storm has been responsible for a large quantity of "pump and dump" spam, which tries to temporarily boost the price of penny stocks. But one area that does not seem to be of interest to Storm's creators is identity theft. "Believe it or not, credit card numbers aren't worth that much money," Enright said. "It's much better to make money... via pump and dump."

It's particularly interesting that credit card numbers aren't worth stealing. Is it because there's a glut of numbers on the market, or is identify theft becoming harder?

I'm also impressed that Microsoft could knock 20% of the Storm bots offline with a single update.

Overall, this is very encouraging news. I wonder how profitable the Storm Worm really was. If these pump and dump schemes really worked that speculator behavior would come to neutralize them. (Speculators detecting early versions of the email could preempt the strategy of the scheme owner.)

Hornby on the history of Palm

Tom Hornby has written the Early History of Palm. I remember GRiD, the Zoomer and GeoWorks (wonderful software OS), but I didn't know of Hawkins role in those products.

I'm most interested in the essays to come. Will Hornby identify the critical role of Outlook's data model, and the dominance of Exchange server, in killing the Palm?

OS X 10.5 and MacTel: what the Firefox bug list tells us

Firefox has been updated for 10.5. The list iof what doesn't work in 10.5, and even in 10.4, is an interesting example of how long it's going to take to finish the Intel transition

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.8 Release Notes

* On OS X 10.5 (Leopard), there are known problems with some media plugins as well as Add-ons that contain binary components. Also, the tabs in Preferences > Advanced will not render properly.
* The "Close Other Tabs" action on the shortcut menu of a tab can fail with an error when more than 20 tabs are open.
* Some users have reported problems viewing Macromedia Flash content on Intel Mac computers. To work around this problem, users can remove or move the PowerPC version of "Flash Player Enabler.plugin from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins.
* Java does not run on Intel Core processors under Rosetta.
* There is no Talkback on Intel-based Macs when running natively or under Rosetta. The Apple Crash report program should launch in the event of application crashes.

OS X 10.5 radically changed the graphics layer, so we should expect lots of rendering issues for some time. I suspect that Safari 3.0 will be a better choice on 10.5 that Firefox until Firefox 3.0 comes out. That should end the Rosetta dependence too.

Interesting note on Java. Client side Java is now hopping along on one leg ....

Leopard breaks AppleWorks, what about Classic

Leopard, aka OS X 10.5, breaks AppleWorks:

Macintouch: Leopard

....For anyone using AppleWorks, convert your files before you do the migration to Leopard. AppleWorks will not load in Leopard. Some files will open in iWork & Numbers, but others will even break the new programs. Large files seem to be the issue, and converting to Excel or Word formats before the upgrade would be a smart move..."

This is a bit surprising. I wonder what other OS X applications will break with 10.5.

I'm not too surprised though, Apple has always had a somewhat cavalier attitude towards breaking applications. Too bad they don't match that with support for old file formats -- including their own dam$%ed file formats.

Which reminds me -- I wonder if it breaks Classic? Classic won't run on Intel of course, but I run it on my G5 iMac with OS X 10.4.10. There's still not much in the way of children's games or educational software for OS X [1] -- and I sometimes fire up MORE 3.1 or FullWrite Professional to open old files.

Realistically, I should wait until February until I update my G5, or until iPhone 2.0 makes me update. January, after 10.5.1 and updates to Retrospect client and a bunch of other apps I rely on, will be when I update the MacBook.

Overall I'm looking forward to 10.5.1 however. There are many things on the feature list I really want (fully supported screen sharing, remote control, iChat, Apple's new version of "Outlook" called Mail.app, the signed application model, the memory map randomization, built-in PDF manipulation, better scanning support, etc, etc.) This looks like an upgrade for power users, developers, and for the support of good things to come.

[1] Really, there's not much in the way of interesting educational software or children's games on Windows either. That market basically went to Nintendo. There's more support for older software on XP than OS X though.

Clever exploit of Apple's OS transition

Apple will provide $10 upgrades to 10.5 if you've just bought a 10.4 machine. This can be translated into a clever exploit ....

Macs-imizing your Leopard upgrade:

... If the bottom line is the bottom line, the lowest retail price for Leopard is probably $109 at Amazon. However, for a few hundred dollars more, you can get a new Mac now and a copy of OS X in the mail later that you are ethically and legally bound to install on that purchased Mac. The question then becomes: which Mac?...

The Mini is a lovely machine. My mothers has run for over a year with essentially no maintenance. I check in on it every six months or so (she lives pretty far away).

I wonder if a Mini will run OS X 10.5 server? Then you could buy the mini, buy server, put server on the Mini and that $10 10.5 goes to ...

Mindjet MindManager: If it could only do acyclic graphs

Mindjet MindManager is "mind mapping software". It lets users create an outline (hierarchy) that can render as a two-dimensional layout of boxes connected by lines.

MindManager's strengths are its Microsoft Office  integration, its marketing, its attractive output and its corporate orientation. It comes in XP/Vista and OS X versions, the latter is a true OS X app but lacks some functionality. I've written about MindManager before; functionally it's similar to the much older Inspiration but it's a lot prettier.

Pretty counts.

MindManager has one glaring defect -- from a geek point of view. It can only do trees - strict hierarchies. No networks, no matrices, no directed acyclic graphs. No inheritance.

So a box (node) can't belong to to two or more branches (arcs).

This is a pain. Any reasonably complex domain representation needs a node to have multiple memberships.

I think the UI for this is not too hard. This is basically what a "Favorite" does in XP, or a "shortcut" does in OS X. The file lives in a single place in the file system hierarchy, but a reference can appear in another place.

Symantec More 3.1 did something similar with its outlines. You could have a branch appear in more than one place. Multiple inheritance in other words. [1]

MindManager could allow users to click on a box (node) and create a "favorite" that could be dragged and dropped anywhere. They don't even need to implement full references, it would be ok if clicking on a 'favorite' merely took one to the "true" object. (Symantec MORE 3.1 did the full include model.)

If some wants to displace MindManager from my desktop, all they need to do is allow me to model an acyclic graph, or even network. Trees are very 19th century.

Ok, so they have to be pretty as well.

[1] So it's not patentable guys. It's been done.

From PLATO to OS X iCal 3.0 - an illustrated history of Calendaring and Personal Information Management

AppleInsider usually publishes Apple news and rumors with a bit of analysis, so I was bemused by today's Prince McLean article. He's written a brief illustrated history of the past 24 years of calendar-oriented personal information management, including screen shots from Agenda, Notes, MeetingMaker, Organizer and more.

This guy is serious about the PIM/calendar world. He may even be nuttier about this than I am now, though in my heyday I'd have gone a few rounds with him.

The article is full of insider tips, like this one ...

AppleInsider | Road to Mac OS X Leopard: iCal 3.0 [Page 3]

... Even home users that have no need for group calendaring will benefit from the new server-side improvements to iCal. That's because Apple didn't just build its iCal Server to fill out a feature check list. It has also begun using it company wide as its own corporate scheduling software in place of Meeting Maker. That means Apple employees are also now using the iCal client, and the result is that iCal itself has progressed rapidly...

Hey, we definitely need group calendaring in our home.  It's not just for Apple. Eventually we'll have five users (six if you count Kateva, but dogs don't care for calendars) on five machines with five calendars.

Now I'm thinking about buying a Mac Mini (Nano?) and running it headless with 10.5 server on it and a big external drive. I've looked over the 10.5 features, and I think Apple spec'd 10.5 from this blog (hey, it's theoretically possible) -- though I also think it will be very buggy for the next six months...

Technical comments on 3G limitations

So Jobs wasn't simply exercising his reality distorter ...

Why Apple's iPhone Doesn't Need 3G - Seeking Alpha

...High bandwidth networks drain batteries. Power consumption of any chip increases according to the frequency squared. That means if you want your network to go 10 times faster, the chip inside your phone managing that network consumes 100 times the power that a slower chip would (It's not quite that simple because of different signaling techniques, but the overall principle still holds). This is why Steve Jobs has decried the power consumption of 3G networks -- that speedy signaling actually matters in a battery-powered device. So why don't European users see this power-draining effect today with their phones? Well, check out the Nokia message boards and you'll find that they do experience some of the effect, but that effect is diminished by the fact that Europe has a much higher density of cell towers than the US does. And since cell phones decrease their radio power output when signal strength is high, the frequency effect of 3G transmission is partially offset by the fact they can use lower power amplifier settings for their radios....

I suspect the truth is more complex, I'm don't think 802.11g is really 25 times more power hungry than 802.11b for example. Maybe 2-3 times, but not 25. All the same, I do believe there's relationship between energy costs and throughput, particularly if the underlying protocol is computationally demanding.

The iPhones bandwidth issues are not a part of my 9 essential iPhone requirements list [1]. I'm much more concerned about using the phone PIM features when there's no network available at all.

[1] I see Apple has addressed item #8. So they only have 8 more to go and they make their big sale.

Why I'll buy Leopard - next January

Nobody seems to care about this, but Apple cares enough to rank it fourth on their list of new Finder features, right after the also incredibly great "back to my mac" feature.

Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - 300+ New Features

Back to My Mac
Connect to any of your Mac computers at home from any Mac on the Internet. Your home computers appear in the shared section of the sidebar. Just click and you’re in.


Instant Screen Sharing from the Finder
Start an interactive screen sharing session with other Macs on your network. Just select the Mac from your sidebar and (if authorized) you can see and control the Mac as if you were right in front of it. Change a system preference, publish an iPhoto library, or add a new playlist to iTunes."

This is going to hurt, because I'm sure Back to My Mac will require a .Mac account. So I'll be buying Leopard for two machines and getting a family .Mac account. Requirements, btw, are well in the scope of my G5 iMac.

10.5 will, of course, break EMC Retrospect Pro (the latest version actually works) and I'll need an update to my VMWare windows emulator. Happily the Retrospect server runs on my ancient XP box so I just need the client update.

I won't, of course, touch anything until 10.5.1 and until both Retrospect and VMWare's updates have been on the market for at least 1 month. I'm guessing January 2008 at the earliest.

I know Andrew will take the arrows for me.

Google/Picasa Web Album uploader for iPhoto 7

Google could have done a much better communication job over the past two months, but there's news of an updated Picasa Web Album uploader.

The web site says they now support iPhoto 4 to 7; the version commitment is a much requested improvement. iPhoto 7 comes with iLife '08, the blog posting here calls it iPhoto '08 (emphases mine):

Today's release of version 1.1 of the Picasa Web Albums Uploaders adds support for Apple's new iPhoto '08... this release installs and updates via Google Updater to ensure that you are running the latest version.

While our first release used a private API to talk with the Picasa Web Albums server, the new version is built on the public Google Data API interfaces and our Objective-C GData Library. This will make it easier for us to keep up with Picasa Web Albums' new features. For example, the iPhoto export plug-in now can convert keywords in iPhoto to tags in Picasa Web Albums.

Our goal is to keep the Uploaders as quick, straightforward utilities that make Picasa Web Albums readily available to Mac users. You can give us feedback about them at the Picasa Help discussion group.

The last bit almost sounds like an apology. The language of the post is a bit ambiguous, but it sounds like they've updated both the standalone OS X and the iPhoto plug-in uploaders. The Keyword to Tag conversion is much appreciated.

Update 10/27/07: Unfortunately, there's a significant regression in the new uploader. The old uploader concatenated the iPhoto Name and Description fields. The new uploader maps the Name to PWA caption and ignores Description. This behavior should be configurable, but, more importantly, Google needs to open source the uploader so users can configure it.

Update 10/27/07b: Someone who seems pretty knowledgeable responded to my Google Groups post. Their was real thought put into the design, though I fear the thought was misguided. It actually uses the Name field value if it's been changed, otherwise it uses the Description field value. So the behavior is going to seem unpredictable to many users. The author clearly is not an iPhoto expert, or he'd have known that Batch Update makes it trivially easy to set the Name value to a date or meaningful string with counter; so that edits to comments are an easy extension. This needs to be fixed.

Disposing of an old Apple Computer, Palm's "any mobile" recycling program, the Blackberry exchange and quality CRTs for the elderly

del.icio.us tags: jfaughnan, gordon, apple, palm, recycling

TUAW has a great article on donating and discarding an old Mac: How to safely dispose of an old Mac. I didn't know Apple would accept an old machine and/or monitor upon purchase of a new machine, so one strategy is to keep the junk in the attic until you buy a new one.

Which reminds me of a post I never finished. Palm may be a vampire leaching off pale customers and forgotten innovation, but they are trying to look less bad by indirect means:

Brighthand: Get Any Mobile Device Recycled for Free

... Palm's recycling program is completely free -- that includes the cost of shipping -- and takes cellphones and handhelds in any condition, from any brand and also any old accessories that go with it.

All consumers have to do is download a pre-paid mailing label from Palm's web site, or pick one up at a Palm retail store. This service is apparently only available in the United States....

The Brighthand article has links to directions for erasing PDA data.

BlackBerry has yet another option. They'll not only recycle your old phone/smartphone, they'll give you "fair market value" credit towards your new BlackBerry:

BlackBerry Trade Up Program

Take your existing wireless device and turn it into a brand new, slim and stylish BlackBerry® smartphone. The BlackBerry Trade Up Program gives you the fair market value of your existing wireless device to use towards the purchase of the BlackBerry smartphone of your choice.

If your cell phone actually works many local groups will take them for 911 calling (women's shelters, etc).

On the other hand, nobody wants pre-XP computer donations. Don't bother, that's a purely recycling project. A good CRT can still find a home, especially for people with visual impairments who suffer from the fixed-pitch LCD problem. I think a group that works with the visually impaired might be interested in those, or look for an elderly computer user.

Ok, so I've done my insignificant part for the environment. Now if I can only figure out a way to get rid of all those plastic baggies ...

When a feature really is a feature: iChat AV's mirror mode

Today I found that the Canon ZR-850 and the SONY DCR-HC96 camcorders (SONY has to be in its cradle), when connected to a MacBook with a firewire cable, will produce fabulous iChat video. I had thought this capability had vanished!

It's just what we need for our workgroup videoconferencing. I tested on printed material, and I had no trouble reading the print on the display ... except ... (emphases mine):

Audio/Video conferencing - XvsXP.com, Mac OS X vs. Windows XP

... iChat AV has a number of niceties. It appropriately flips local video left to right, so your own image will behave just like a mirror. When you plug in an iSight and open the shutter, iChat launches automatically. If you're listening to music in iTunes, it will stop when you accept an audio or video invitation. Any currently playing DVD video will either pause or mute, depending on your DVD Player settings.

iChat supports video-conferencing with up to 4 people (provided you meet the requirements - a minimum of a dual 800 MHz G4 to participate, and a dual 1 GHz G4 to initiate a chat session). Rather than having separate windows for each person, each participant is displayed in one window with their video streams angled to create the impression of sitting around a conference table. There's even a reflection below each video stream - very slick...

UPDATE: I deleted the portion where I then ranted about this mirror image stuff, because posts on Apple's Discussion forum confirmed - the recipient sees the writing correctly.

Also, once we had the results of this test, a search on 'camcorder' 'iChat' and 'conferencing' produced some helpful references. They're mostly familiar to me, I'd just thought there were no compatible camcorders left on the market.

• Derrick Story - video conferencing using iSight 2003/06/27
• EZ Jim 2006