Email for our 5 year old

Our boys have never had much interest in email, and given the declining use of email by the non-employed it's unlikely they'll ever do much with it.

Our five year old daughter, however, has correspondents. That's not too surprising, our children fit classic gender assumptions remarkably well.

So now she's pinkbunnylover67@hotmail.com.

Cough.

The actual setup is a bit more complex and even more controlled than what I'll outline here, but that's for historical reasons. I'll describe the basic setup first.

The components

1. We have a family domain and a set of companion Google Apps services. I have complete administrative control over that domain.
   
2. I created a non-admin account for her on the family iMac, which will move downstairs where we can easily watch the children using it. On that account I disabled OS X Chat and set up some lightweight family controls (more when I install OS X 10.5.3 next March).
3. OS X Mail using IMAP to Google App Gmail.

The above links to prior posts overstate the complexity a bit. In particular the OS X Mail IMAP setup went very easily. I think Google has simplified their IMAP configuration.

The implementation

1. The Google Apps account is "invisible" and unknown to our daughter. She doesn't know the password or even that it exists. All mail is sent and received throught that account, and all incoming mail is copied to my wife's account. (I could also send a copy to a bloglines email/rss conduit; if I did that then I'd monitor via bloglines.)
2. OS X Mail.app in her account works with Google App Gmail. So I have access to all sent and received email.

It might be she'll never make much use of her email, it's a waning habit for the young. If she does though, we'll be able to track it until she's older and ready for more independence.

Leopard is officially troubled

Leopard is the New Vista, and It's Pissing Me Off is a rant about Leopard -- from PC Magazine. Not from Dvorak.

I read it, and it seems pretty plausible. It matches up with what I hear from friends who've updated.

I, of course, have said for some time that I wouldn't consider Leopard before 10.5.3.

Now I'm thinking 10.5.4.

Apple should have slipped Leopard a solid year, instead of seven months. Beyond the general bugginess I hear off, there's no doubt they made some arrogant, arbitrary and just-plain-dumb UI changes.

The current recommendation has to be:

• Do not install 10.5 on a Tiger machine. Just don't. If you'd like, wait until I do it and say it's safe to proceed. I am very good at finding bad stuff.
• If you can, put off buying new Apple hardware until 10.5.3.
• If you must buy a machine now, don't migrate any apps or settings from old machines. Just move data. Backup rigorously. Install applications carefully and check that they're all Leopard safe.
• Refrain from making rude remarks about Vista.
  

Google desktop for OS X - without search

Google Desktop Search is an idea that didn't work.

It's inferior to Windows Desktop Search on XP, it's irrelevant on Vista, and OS X has Spotlight.

It's obsolete.

So the good news is that OS X Google Desktop installation now allows one to omit the search component:

Don't want Google search but still want Gadgets? No problem - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

...Guess what? As noted in this comment, a subtle 'Choose your own features' link on Google's download page lets you split up the two functions of GD, and just install the Gadget manager without the desktop search component....

Interesting, but I've never found a widget that was really useful -- Apple's have been pretty disappointing. Worse, Google's directory for widgets is a complete mess. They mix up their own high quality widgets with commercial products and pure junk.

So the main news is that Google may be grudgingly accepting that desktop search is not their cup of tea.

The ONE blogger feature I'd really like to see

Dear Google:

Until Ecto works better, or until someone ports Windows Live Writer to OS X, I rely on the Google Toolbar "Send to Blogger" feature.

Unfortunately, the "Send to Blogger" feature lacks editing tools (bullets, images) and, most importantly, has no support for Label (tag) lookup.

If I post as Draft, however, I have to:

1. Right click 'edit posts' and select new window so I get the post listing with proper chrome.
2. Find my draft post.
3. Click on edit.

Annoying.

Please add a new link to the page that appears after I submit a draft. This link would do this:

1. Edit this post (new window)

So I'd have one quick click and I'd get chrome.

Thank you.

john

Back to My Mac router requirements

Mac OS X 10.5: Back to My Mac requires AirPort base station or UPnP-capable third-party router. Even if you use an AirPort base station, you have to have something else with a DSL or Cable connection. That's going to be the problem. It has to either by UPnP compatible, or, I'd guess, it has to be configured to act like a bridge instead of a router.

Another kb article adds NAT-PMP for the ISP router/bridge - and says something very stupid:

... You may need to manually enable UPnP or NAT-PMP on your routers. You might also need to contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider...

Note: Apple AirPort Base Stations are the preferred method for accessing the full potential of your Mac and iLife apps. If configured properly, they should work seamlessly with Back to My Mac.

The "Note" is the stupid part. Does Apple think our homes have an ethernet connection to the net?

I won't install Leopard until 10.5.3, so I'm not following the BTMM discussions too closely. I get the impression Apple hacked the security model of OS X to enable BTMM, that makes me wonder how well it works with multi-user configurations. What if another account is running on the Mac I want to get "back to"?

iPhoto '08 is Aperture-Lite

One of the unique features of Apple - Aperture was nondestructive edits. You didn't save an edited copy of your original, you saved an edit list (and perhaps a cached JPEG).

This is from the iPhoto '08 help file:

...When you edit a photo imported to iPhoto ’08, you benefit from the great flexibility and high photo quality of nondestructive editing.

Nondestructive editing allows you to try different adjustments and effects at will⎯there’s no danger that successive edits and saves will degrade your photo’s quality. You’re never more than one version away from your original photo. Instead of saving a new version over the previous one every time you edit a photo, iPhoto ’08 simply remembers all your changes as an edit list...

It's more than just nondestructive edits. iPhoto '08's editing tools feel like simplified versions of Aperture tools, with similar photo effects. Not only that, but iPhoto '08 image editing is almost as slow as Aperture editing.

I used to like iPhoto's red eye tool. I don't like the current tool -- but it's familiar. It's a simplified version of the Aperture red eye tool.

iPhoto video export is broken. Aperture doesn't handle video at all.

I think it's fair to call iPhoto '08 "Aperture-Lite", they increasingly seem to share a significant code base. In the long run this is probably very good [1], but in the short term it's definitely a mixed bag. iPhoto '08 is much slower than iPhoto 6 for many tasks, and then, of course, there's the nasty video export bug.

[1] If we don't see an Aperture update soon, it will be clear the "long run" for Aperture is fairly short. I read that Aperture is being clobbered in the marketplace by Adobe Lightroom, and I'm perpetually amazed that Aperture still doesn't support editing date metadata.

Manage cables

Andrew says this works for him. It's produced by what appears to be a small business: Cable Management System from Cable-Safe: Organization, Management, and Protection of Computer Cables, Wires and Cords.

The picture is pretty impressive. Made in the USA, no less.

iPhoto bug: export video produces video-free file

This post has been rewritten to clean it up.

11/22/07: I learn the hard way that if you use iPhoto '08 (7.1.1)' s "export as current" function on a video file, it exports a video-free stub. So instead of a 40MB file containing 30 seconds of video, you get a 650KB file with 0 seconds of video and a JPEG thumnail of a frame.

The bug causes me to lose 3 unique and irreplaceable family video clips because I often edit on my laptop, then export the "current" images and videos to my server where they get imported into my primary iPhoto Library.

Others experience the same bug. It's trivial to replicate, I even demonstrated it to an Apple store employee on their machines. I also posted it to Macintouch.

Here's on Apple Discussion Thread:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Export AVI from iPhoto destroys video, ...:

I have a 34MB AVI file in iPhoto 7.1 produced in a Canon SD 1000 camera. If I export it as 'current' or 'jpeg' it produces a 56K file. This consists of only the thumbnail, the video data is gone.

(If you're exporting a set of images it's easy to specify JPEG and include a video. Prior versions of iPhoto ignored the 'JPEG' value where it didn't make sense and exported the video.)

If I drag and drop to the video from iPhoto to the desktop it produces a 34MB file on the desktop. I checked another video I recently exported. It was also truncated to 60K...

Update 11/27/07: In another Apple Discussion thread, I hypothesize about the origin of the bug:

... "export as original" works as always, as does drag and drop to the desktop.

The bug is in "export as current". I suspect it's a conceptual error that may be tricky to correct.

What does "current" mean for a video that has no edited version? If you were to ask 1000 users, I think 1000 would say "current" means the most recently edited version of the video.

I suspect (don't have iPhoto at hand right now to test) that when iPhoto '08 works with a video it creates some kind of thumbnail representation that lives in the edited/modified internal folder.

I further hypothesize that the programmer wrote the "current" code in iPhoto '08 so it looks first in the "edited/modified" folder and, if it doesn't find anything, goes to the "original" folder.

That works for images, but, fails for video. The algorithm ends up pulling out the thumbnail stub and exporting that.

Ironically, I wonder if the current behavior was a fix for a bug I'd reported in prior versions of iPhoto -- namely that under certain conditions iPhoto would confused between the "current" and "modified" status of an image. That bug was fixed in iPhoto '08, but my hunch is the fix introduced a much more severe bug...

Another possibility is that the bug was introduced as a side-effect of introducing iMovie '08 (iClip really). iMovie is supposed to be able to use iPhoto as a video repository; maybe there was supposed to some versioning behavior introduced in iPhoto '08 to match iMovie '08 and it was pulled prior to release -- leaving some detritus behind.

Update 11/27/07b: I add the following to the Discussion thread. It appears my hypothesis is correct. No denying this one's a nasty bug:

... Check out any "original" folder with a video in it. In the companion modified folder you will find the thumbnail files. They are JPG files with the video prefix -- for example: MVI_0099.jpg (136kb).

When you choose "export as current" iPhoto exports MVI_0099.AVI, also at 136KB. Only now the extension is AVI instead of JPG. However, the extension is incorrect!

In fact iPhoto has exported a JPG with an AVI extension. If you change the extension to JPG then the icon switches to a JPG icon. Open it in preview, it's a JPEG.

So, to summarize: When you choose "export as current" for a video iPhoto looks in the "Modified" folder, finds a JPG file (the thumbnail), then exports the JPG and changes the extension to AVI so it appears in the Finder to be a video file...

10/11/2009: I tested this with iPhoto 2009. If you "export original" you get a video file. If you export current you get a worthless JPG thumbnail - just as in 2007. If you drag and drop you export the video; I think that may be different from 2007.

If you edit in QuickTime and save the video, it replaces the original (destructive edit). Export behaviors are as above.

If I had any faith in Apple this would be amazing, but incompetence is not rare in today's Apple.

Google Custom Search with Bloglines Search OS X mashup

This was fun, but very geeky. It's the kind of experiment that I only get to do on lazy holidays (we do a low key family thanksgiving).

It started because I wanted my Google Co-Op Mac OS X Search custom search engine to also search the Mac OS X blogs I read. (Note: Google may be sunsetting some of the services referenced here.)

I figured I'd have to add my blogs one at a time, but that's kind of tedious. It would be more fun if there was a way to add them all at once.

It turns out Google's custom search engine service (formerly Google Co-Op) now allows one to enter the URL of a web page, and Google will add each linked item as a search engine.

That reminded me of a Bloglines technique I learned exploited about three years ago. One of the key features of Bloglines is the ability to publish your blogroll (including OPML export) and, with a bit of trickery, to publish it in such a way that portions can be embedded in an IFRAME (see example on the right side of our family newspaper).

I went back to the web page I created four years ago and extracted the OS X portion into a separate file.

I then gave Google's custom search engine control panel the URL of my OS X Bloglines file. The result looks like this (bolded blogroll file)

docs.info.apple.com/*
forums.macosxhints.com/*
http://devworld.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/
http://discussions.apple.com/*
http://forum.parallels.com/
http://googlefaughnan.blogspot.com/
http://www.macintouch.com/*
http://www.parallels.com/en/support/
www.faughnan.com/blogroll_mac.html
www.macosxhints.com/*

I don't think it's working quite yet, but I'm sure it will be live soon.

Update 11/22/07: It's broken. I tried it with both dynamic html (original) and static html, but Google is not finding test results belong to the blogs I added "by reference". If I add the individual blogs by hand Google does search them, so this looks like a bug. I'll try it again next week.

I've posted a "bug report".

Update 11/23/07: Yes, it's a bug. OMR has found:

So it seems that the makeannotations tool is not working reliably at this time.
It frequently returns the "Bad Request" error, even for a valid request.

Update 11/24/07: It's probably coincidental, but since OMR replied to my post and identified the bug Google's makeannotations tool has started working. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to support javascript generated pages, at least not the way Bloglines generates the pages. I'm going to see if bloglines wants to look into this.

Google sunset: Page Creator and Co-op?

In the course of drafting a geeky post on my latest experiment to my Google custom search pages, I went hunting for links to some of the pieces.

That's when I discovered that they weren't on the "Gmail menu" any more.

The "Gmail menu" is the set of links that appear atop the standard Google product pages. Today mine looks like this:

Web Images Products News Maps Gmail more ▼
Blog Search Blogger Books Calendar Documents Finance Groups Labs Orkut Patents Photos Reader Scholar Video

This is the list of products Google wants us to use. The list used to include a link to "more", which pointed to Google Labs, but that link has been removed. It also used to include a link to Google Page Creator, but that's been demoted all the way to a "red icon" "beta" entry on the Google Labs menu. (Looking at the list, it appears that red, yellow, green refer to the relative health of the project following the euro conventions.)

In other words, Google Page Creator is being sunset. I expect they'll replace it with something considerably better, but the transition will be painful. I use GPC a fair bit for some of my Google App sites, so I'm mildly concerned about how Google will manage the pending switch. I wouldn't advise anyone to start using PGC today.

Google Co-Op, which is integral to my pending post, has vanished. It's not on the Lab page and it's no longer on the Gmail drop down menu. Google's still doing press releases about their coop-subsuming custom search engine program though, so I'm hopeful this will be relaunched in some other form. (update: looks like Co-Op was subsumed into CSE last March)

My mental model of Google is that It worships the algorithm, abhors the satanic tree hierarchy , and considers natural selection to be the ultimate algorithm (good and deity). All of this can be seen in their product approach. Google Co-Op, for example, still has a page and seems active, but there's no exposure of a "parent" page. It will survive or die based on the evolution of the links that point to it.

Like this one.

iPhoto 7.1 (iLife 2008): that red eye is really bad

I like most of iPhoto 7.1, but the more I use it the more I'm appalled by the red eye "correction". Red eye in iPhoto 7.1 is a gray-blue splotch applied to anything with red pigment -- including skin.

You can see the effect in this picture of my son. I set the red eye to max and stamped away. Of course this isn't how you'd use red-eye correction, but it shows the problem. They've messed up the color detection algorithm and the edge-detection (automatic setting) has also failed. It's about as "smart" as a hammer.

Imagine how bad this looks on eyes. Anyone treated this way looks robotic.

Red eye correction in iPhoto 1 through 6 was quite good, so it took me a while to realize how bad it became in iPhoto 7. I'm tempted to imagine an angry developer deliberately sabotaging the product, but I'll put money on incompetence any day.

I would now advise anyone with iPhoto 6 to stick with it. Don't upgrade.

I finally replace my decrepit Palm Tungsten E2 with a ...

Palm Tungsten E2.

Let me explain.

It's been four years since I wrote a review of the original Tungsten E. Three years since aggravation with the flaky T|E (bad switch) drove me to the short-lived SONY CLIE TJ-27. One year and nine months since the CLIE gasped its last and I reluctantly switched to the Tungsten E2 (same bad switch [2]):

...When the last of its styli was lost, then it would go to the junk drawer. I was ready for the end. I cursed each moment with its hell-spawned stylus - a demented offspring of a toothpick and needle. The earth itself had rebelled against that satanic tool -- there were no replacements anywhere. If I did not already despise SONY for their spyware scam, I would loathe them for that stylus.

And yet, I did not entirely welcome the end. I knew that the noble lineage of the US Robotics Pilot was fallow. True, the CLIE was a twisted shadow of its grandfather -- the Vx, and its great-grandfather -- the III, but what better options were there? The much disliked Tungsten E2? (Let us not speak of the father -- the ill-fated Tungsten E -- nor of the bastard IIIxe.)...

That E2, I swore, would be my last Palm device. Something better had to come along ...

Something like the iPhone.

But the iPhone isn't ready. It doesn't meet my minimum set of requirements and version 2 is at least four months away. Too long for my crashy T/E2 and it's too short battery life.

I thought I might buy an HP Windows Mobile, but nobody I trust can tolerate WM. Blackberry definitely, but that would foreclose an iPhone. Blackberry is my fallback option, and I'm not ready to give up yet.

That left Palm. I needed a stopgap that I was pretty sure would work with minimal pain. So I bought another E2.

Sigh.

At least my old chargers, SD card, and styli work with the new device.

I backed up my Palm and Outlook data [1] and just synced. Most everything works, except I have to resync my KeySuite office data to get my work life onboard [3].

So, really, it was pretty painless. The new E2 appears identical to the old one, and they both run Garnet 5.4.7. The new one is definitely faster, but I can't see why it should be. I doubt they have different CPUs.

I should be safe now until February. If iPhone progress is as slow as I expect it to be, I might continue to use the T/E2 as my work PDA.

Footnotes

[1] That's not easy of course, you have to track down the secret location of Outlook's data file: "C:\Documents and Settings\jfaughnan\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook".

[2] I think even the best Palm of all time, the Vx (ok, so the i500 is a contender), had a bad switch. It tells you something important about Palm that they can't, or won't, spec a on/off switch that lasts two years.

[3] I've given up on any vendor ever delivering a product that would given me an integrated calendar/tasks/notes on the PDA and home, while synching only work related data at the office. It's not easy to do this and I'm the only customer who cares about this.

Windows 2003 Server for the home

Microsoft's Windows Home Server supports their excellent remote access software and provides an integrated backup and media server solution. Note it runs on a variant of the rock solid Windows 2003 Server OS, not Vista. So it's the only variant of XP Microsoft actively sells, though they aren't marketing WHS very hard - yet.

In the meantime Apple's Time Machine can't backup up to a (slow) USB drive hanging off an Airport.

I don't like it when Microsoft makes things I want. Windows Live Writer and Windows Home Server are annoying me.

Reverting from Office 2007 to Office 2003: MAPI32.DLL vs. MSMAPI32.dll

When my XP boxen go to heck, they do it all at once.

One one front I'm a defeated geek. I had to abandon hope for my "possessed" (really, it is) corporate Dell Latitude (XP SP2 +) -- I'm now wiping the drive and starting over. This is the first time in years of fighting with Microsoft's OSs that I've actually capitulated up and wiped a drive. There was something eating away at the process that authenticated me as an administrative user, with lots of curious side-effects.

The other problem seemed simpler. Access 2007 is a dud, and the rest of Office 2007 is nothing to write home about. It was time to revert a Windows 2003 server to Office 2003.

Easy, I thought. Just uninstall, restart to be safe, install Office 2003 Pro and then apply Office SP 3.

Wrong. I was getting "MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version" error messages.

I hate those. They bring back bad memories of running Outlook and Eudora in the old days. MAPI32.DLL was one of Microsoft's tools to kill the competition.

I followed the old trick of locating and renaming MAPI32.DLL. No joy.

Turns out the error message is a fraud. The real problem is another file (emphases mine)

2. Locate and then open the following folder on your computer:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Msmapi\1033
3. Right-click the MSMapi32.dll file, and then click Rename.
Note The file (Msmapi32.dll) that you are renaming differs from the file (Mapi32.dll) that is mentioned in the error message.
4. Type Msmapi32.old, and then press ENTER to rename the file.
5. Start Outlook 2003.

I want to cry. Really, the wrong file name in the error message? Oh, and the kb article is wrong. The bug isn't with the beta version of Office 2007, it's with any version.

That worked, but on Outlook startup I got two messages something like this:

ordinal 7867 cannot be found in mso.dll

Try googling on that one! Nothing I could find.

Outlook then said some app was messing it up and offered to repair the problem. That worked.

Now to go back to spend the rest of my day trying to restore my primary XP workstation. So much for my planned vacation day tomorrow.

People used to wonder why I didn't like Microsoft products. I don't get those questions any more. I read recently that some preposterous number of IT execs are actually considering replacing some of their XP machines with OS X or Linux. I assume they're venting and bluffing, that seem a true mission impossible.

On the other hand, if I were doing a small business startup, I'd be building around OS X workstations running XP in a VM. Use OS X whenever possible, but have XP around to run Office 2003 and any vertical apps that are essential. Whenever XP misbehaves, just delete the VM and stick in a new one.

PS. I checked what happened to the original MAPI32.DLL I'd pointlessly renamed. It was dated 3/25/2003. A new one was created of a slightly different size dated 2/17/2007. I also found yet another MAPI32.DLL dated 12/10/2002. It's not too early for a drink is it?

Update 1/4/07: Despite the above, I still couldn't SEND email. I use Outlook primarily from my laptop, so I let this problem fester for a while. Today I removed my Exchange configuration from that instance of Outlook and deleted an old pst file I was using. I then restored the Exchange connection. Now I can send, but I notice that 'cached exchange mode' is no longer available.

Kindle: DRM only - no PDFs

The obvious knock on Amazon's Kindle is the DRM. If Amazon goes away, so do your books.

This isn't that big a deal for me. We long ago ran out of room for books, most books I buy I give away. I only keep a few, and those I could continue to buy as paper books.

Most of my books are ephemera. I'd need a house for books alone if I kept them all.

The bigger objection, for me, is that the Kindle can't read PDFs or any other eBook format:

Daring Fireball: DUM

...With iPods, while the iTunes Store is the only source for DRM-protected content that iPods support, you can easily fill your iPod with any popular non-DRM audio format other than WMA. Kindle supports a few other formats than its proprietary .azw, but the only way to use it for its main purpose — as a digital reader for popular mainstream books — is via its own proprietary DRM-protected format. I.e., Kindle actually is what ignorant critics have claimed regarding the iPod: a device designed to lock you in to a single provider of both hardware and digital content. You can easily and happily use an iPod without ever buying anything from the iTunes Store; without Amazon’s DRM-protected content, a Kindle is the world’s worst handheld computer...

I agree with DF. More than the DRM, it's the closure to any other format that marks this as a gift horse in need of dental inspection.

Update 11/19/07: DF might have been unfair. It's true they don't do PDF (a big negative), but Kindle can accept .DOC, txt and a few other formats.

On the other hand, you can't use it during takeoff and landing, or when you're stranded on the runway. It's electronic, remember? This alone would rule out the Kindle as a travel companion. Back to the paperback.