Got a domain name idea? Don't try it in the address bar!

Inevitably, there's an industry based on stealing domain name ideas then reselling them back to the creator at a premium.

It's hard to know how big a problem this really is, but this article mentions the selling of "Non-eXisten Domain" (NXC) data:

Stealing domain name research

... It is such a strong urge to type the domain name into the address bar and see what website comes up. Most users think perhaps there is already a company using the name and this will be a quick end to the question. Wrong! This is the most dangerous thing to do. Internet Service Providers (ISP) sell NXD data. You may be asking yourself “What is NXD data and how does that effect my domain research?” Non-eXistent Domain (NXD) Data is a response the DNS system tells the asking computer if resolution on an IP address fails because the domain doesn’t exist. Yes, ISPs sell this data. I personally talked with a representative that gave me her business card and quoted me a six figure number for access to their NXD data. These domain name research companies actually buy this data and register those domains to see what generates money. Their hope is that if people at one ISP represent 1/5000th of the Internet, they might receive 5000 visitors a month from all the other ISPs around the world according to that ratio. So by testing a theory with DNS, people are telling these companies what domains to ‘taste’. Ironically, this type of behavior will have a chilling effect on direct navigation which actually hurts the domain parking industry as a whole...

I suspect the problem is overstated, but I'll personally avoid testing out my domain ideas through the address bar ...

Expose: hold down option key to show window title

Years after Expose came out, I'm still figuring out how best to use it.

Proof positive my brain is turning to stone.

I'm getting there though. I can see the point of this tip.

Leopard tip roundup: Expose cheatsheet, thumbnail slider, video Quick Look - MacUser

Exposé is super handy when it comes to getting a bird’s-eye view of all your open windows—in fact it gets my nomination as one of the most life-changing features of OS X—but it can sometimes be hard to tell at a glance which window you want. Sure, you can mouse over any window to get its title, but you don’t want to have to do that to every window to find the one you want. Turns out there’s an easier way in Leopard: hold down the option key while you’re in Exposé and it’ll overlay the titles for every window.

Heck, I'd forgotten about the mouse over feature in 10.4!

BTW - rule of thumb in the OS X world -- always try the option key to see what it does.

iPhone and iPod video - an essential guide

AppleInsider | Using iPod & iPhone Video Out: Background and In-Depth Review is a unique and essential guide to the surprisingly complex world of iPhone and iPod video output. I know I don't follow it all, but the bottom line is that Apple's new connector strategy may not be driven only by a desire to own the revenue stream from cable peripherals. It's a messy world out there!

Incidentally in the past ten years I picked up an Apple component video out connector. I think it might have been designed for an iBook! Turns out it works with my old iPod, but only if I swap the RCA video and sound connectors (the color codes are wrong). Diliger tells us that camcorder manufacturers gave us the pin order variation:

Apple's iPod headphone jacks had to remain compatible with standard headphones, so Apple reversed the odd pin order used by camcorder makers to deliver a headphone jack that worked fine with regular headphones, but could also deliver video output when used with the iPod AV Cable. Camcorder cables could be used by simply reversing the order that the RCA connector ends are plugged into on the TV side.

OS X Bugs of the week: Image Capture and GarageBand

Two OS X bugs this week: one new and one probably older. Note I run as a non-admin user.

The new one is Image Capture. I presume this one came with this past week's batch of sercurity fixes. When I use IC to transfer files from a memory card, I usually create a new folder to hold them. This week I can create the folder, but I can't use it. IC isn't quite sure it exists. I have to restart IC to get it to see the new folder. Finder can see it. I wouldn't be surprised if this bug shows up elsewhere.

The other bug comes with GarageBand, and it's more of a design flaw. I've never bothered with GB, but my niece is a fan [1]. She created a GB project that I wanted to move from my account to a guest account. I found:

• When moved to Share and then to the Guest desktop the Guest had no access (privilege problem -- the privilege/Share dysfunction is a deep OS X design flaw -- moving to Share should revise privileges)
• When I changed privileges and opened the project in GarageBand GB crashed (I submitted the crash report)

It turns out to share a GB project you need to export as 'archival' so it includes loops rather than references them. Fair enough, the bugs here are:

1. Blowing up because of a reference error is a bug.
2. Why don't the references work on a single machine? I'm suspecting this is yet another case of Apple's depressing move away from global file identifiers to DOS 2.1 hard coded paths, probably coupled with incorrectly storing a referenced file in a user account.
3. The old, old design flaw that moving a package to the Shared folder doesn't set access privileges in a sensible fashion (maybe 10.5 fixes this?).
   

[1] I've wondered with Apple bothers with GB. Turns out kids like it -- a lot. GB is the reason my niece is getting a MacBook for her birthday. If Apple gets the bugs out of 10.5 by then that purchase may lead to another Mac in that home (their XP machines are routinely rendered useless by viruses and XP entropic decay). So Apple has quality issues, but they know how to optimize the iLife package to sell machines.

Update 12/27/07: Image Capture PPC doesn't show this bug. It's only in Image Capture Intel, and I suspect the bug isn't truly a part of Image Capture, but rather some Intel specific Finder bug.

Halamka's recommendations for camcorder, TV and computer

LiHalamka's tech picks:k 20" iMac, Sharp Aquos or SONY Bravia TV and two firewire based camcorders. Good picks. I'll ask him to test the camcorders with iChat.

Leopard's account switching bug

When 10.5.3 comes out I'll check to see if this is fixed before installing it. Until then I'm on 10.4...

Macintouch Leopard: Bugs and Fixes

Leopard blocks switching between file shared accounts.

I file shared 2 user accounts on a Leopard (host) computer. From a second Leopard (client) computer I can connect (have read/write access) to the first shared account, then disconnect and connect the second account. But then when I disconnect and try to reconnect to the first account my request is ignored. The only way I can then connect to the first account is to create a new account on the client! But this new client account is also blocked if I switch to the second shared account and try to switch back. A second Leopard client computer on the LAN has the exact same problem.

But Tiger and Panther client machines on the LAN don't have this problem. They can switch between the shared accounts on the Leopard host computer with no problem.

I called Apple Technical Support of 12/10/07 and they were able to duplicate the problem on multiple computers. They are forwarding the issue to Engineering. I'm surprised there aren't more reports on this issue...

Experiments in DRM removal and re-encoding

We don't let much DRM into our lives, but I have a few FairPlay'd tunes I bought the kids when I was less strict.

I'd like to include them in the AAC CDs I put the childrens' playlists on, but our SONY car stereo doesn't do FairPlay. Of course I could burn a CD then re-encode the tunes to MP3 or AAC, but I'd tried that before and the results were awful. The re-encoded tune sounded like AM music (few remember how bad that sounded!).

This time, though, I'd try re-encoding at 320 kbps, no VBR, 44.1 sampling. I figured I'd also try the iMovie HD DRM removal trick. [1]

The iMovie HD trick turned out to be a nuisance -- I'd rather just burn a CD. Curiously, however, I got much better results this time than previously.

The original 5.6 MB FairPlay'd tune turned into a 52MB AIFF audio file which I then turned into two non-FairPlay'd AAC files:

• 128 kpbs (standard): 5.0 MB AAC (so smaller than the original - not good!)
• 320 kbps non VBR 44.1 AAC (max quality AAC using iTunes encoder): 12.5 MB
  

Here's the surprise. They all sounded reasonable using my Bose noise canceling headphones. I'd expect the AIFF and original FairPlay'd tune to sound identical, but I'm not sure I'd be able to tell apart the 128 and 320 kpbs re-encoded tunes.

I don't know why I got better results today than in the past. Maybe last time I tried re-encoding as MP3, and the AAC to AIFF to MP3 transformations are tougher than AAC to AIFF to AAC. Maybe my ears are getting worse.

I wouldn't try it for Jazz or classical music, but at least some pop tunes survived the AAC to AIFF to AAC round trip better than I'd expected. I would favor a high bit rate for the reencoding though; I really don't have very good ears.

[1] The trick relies on a quirk of iMovie HD that is not present in iMovie '08. iMovie HD will export the combination of a FairPlay'd soundtrack and a JPG as a non-DRMd AIFF audio file.

Very poor choices in list sorting: iPhoto trumps everyone

Coding Horror did a nice post recently on poor decisions in list sorting. He's a Windows programmer, so he wouldn't know about even worse list sort implementations by Apple's vaunted development team.

Here's the sort order of albums in iPhoto '08's smart album definition UI:



It looks completely random. Not much fun if you're looking for one of a hundred albums. The only saving grace is that if you know the album you want, you can type the first letter and navigate the list that way.

If iPhoto were smarter, and allowed one to include smart albums in the list, things would be even worse.

iTunes has much more powerful "smart list" (query) definitions that can include other smart playlists (queries) and here Apple did things right (actually, I think they quietly improved this in one of their recent updates):



So Apple isn't completely hopeless! It's just that their talent base isn't unlimited.

That should make non-Apple developers feel a bit better.

The single worst defect of Microsoft Access

There's a lot to dislike about Microsoft Access. Even so, I use it intensively. It's a cross between a chainsaw and a swiss army knife with an unfortunate tendency to occasionally remove vital organs.

Powerful, versatile, dangerous.

When I use Microsoft Access I backup my data files very frequently and I set every linked Access data file I'm not actively editing to 'read only' status to protect it (Access table security model ranks high in its sins).

So, lots of bad news. But one insanity stands out above all the rest.

Access has a compulsion to break queries when you use linked files. This is one of those mult-ipart design problems:

1. The crummy security models and lousy organizational tools means that serious work requires lots of linkages to remote ODBC and Access data sources. (This ability to link across diverse data sources is actually a great power of Access, it extends to Sharepoint's SQL Server tables.)
2. Links to local sources use hard coded paths.
3. When a hard coded path changes, or a referenced table name changes, a trap has been set. The first time one opens a query referencing the link to the changed item, the query breaks. Joins vanish. Column names get odd prefixes. There's no warning and no protection.
   

There are some partial protections:

1. Use the drive letter substitution trick to reduce the hard coded path problem.
2. Wrap linked tables in a simple query that you can validate first, then have all other queries reference these "wrapper" queries. It's easy to fix the wrappers, and you don't break all the other queries.
   

If Access 2007 had fixed this behavior I'd be using it today, but since it's buggy and has design regressions I'm sticking with Access 2003.

There, I feel better now.

Google Street View comes to the Twin Cities

About a week ago I noticed a non-working street view icon floating around Saint Paul. Ok, floating around the virtual Saint Paul in Google's server.

I wondered if it was a herald, and, yes, now we have Street View in the Twin Cities. Alas, for better or worse, the Saint Paul coverage ends one block east of my home. So I can't show the Street View image of our house.

I can show my favorite coffee shop though:



The images were taken in summer, so they seem a bit odd in our snowy December.

I wish to be among the first to welcome our Glorious Googlian overlords to the twin cities.

Will Apple abandon Aperture?

The Aperture bloggers I read are worried about Aperture's future. They've even wondering how they could migrate to another platform. How can they ever move their metadata? What about all those RAW images that will render differently in any other toolkit?

Cue evil laughter.

They're doomed of course. Once you commit to a program like Aperture you're owned. I know a thing or two about that business.

So would Apple really abandon a project they once seemed to have such interest in? Isn't digital media their core market?

I can think of a few reasons, based on my own experience and what I read:

1. Adobe Lightroom is doing well. It's said to be more popular than Aperture even on the Mac, and of course it's very successful on Windows.
2. Apple has done a miserable job positioning Aperture as an upgrade from iPhoto. It's their natural market, and they've blown it. The pricing is wrong, they don't migrate enough iPhoto metadata, and you can't edit dates.
3. Aperture is not staying ahead of iPhoto. In fact, iPhoto '08 seems to use a lot of Aperture source code (including the icky parts).
   
4. Aperture has a bizarre UI. It's pointlessly idiosyncratic. Tiny fonts, ultra-skinny scrollbars, it looks nothing like a Cocoa app. Heck, it doesn't look like a proper Carbon app. What the heck is it written in? Was it originally written for Linux?
5. Aperture is dog slow. It's not merely the fancy GPU based image processing, the database work is way slow as well.
6. Did I mention Aperture doesn't even have a proper OS X Help file? I think it must be a Java app!
7. You can't edit date metadata, you've never been able to edit dates, this hasn't been fixed despite several major updates. The fact that it's never been addressed speaks loudly.
8. Aperture has gone a long time without a significant upgrade, despite 1-7.
   

So, what do I think? Will Apple really abandon digital photography?

I don't think they'll give up completely, but I can imagine them giving up on the Aperture code base. I think a lot of iPhoto customers, and even many Pros, would pay for an iPhoto-Pro that could import Aperture projects and iPhoto Libraries.

If we don't see a really major update of Aperture by March 2008 I wouldn't recommend any new Aperture purchases. Even if Apple does provide a conversion path to "iPhoto Pro", I suspect there will be rough spots.

I switch to Qwest DSL Platinum

I used to have an ISDN broadband connection.

Hey, everyone has a special story.

When I switched to DSL I went with VISI.COM, a local company. They provided great services back then, before a series of management changes. Alas, they were dependent on Qwest for connectivity, and Qwest had other priorities. Meanwhile my ActionTec router was behaving miserably.

I considered cable, but that sounded equally bad -- especially since we don't have cable television (or much of any television, actually).

The ActionTec finally died, and I decided to try a higher grade of service, in the hope it would come with better gear. I'd become disenchanted with VISI over the past few months, though their support people were always great, so I figured I'd just go with Qwest/MSN - doing a Qwest DSL | High-speed Internet Upgrade. At least with Qwest I'd have one place to call.

I didn't get any deals doing it by phone -- except they waived the connection fee. My new 2WIRE router cost $100. The Qwest rep I spoke with was, wait for it ... efficient, funny, charming, and even a bit sarcastic. I'm guessing phone support isn't her regular job.

The economy can't be all that good, by the way, because lately I've been getting excellent phone service from a variety of companies. That's a sign skilled people are having to take whatever jobs they can find.

The MSN part of the deal is irrelevant. I get all my ISP services,including IMAP email, from Google Apps anyway.

The changeover could have been worse. This morning we lost internet service, and this afternoon the the router in the box we put out for it. After 5pm I plugged in the $100 WIRE router (no wifi, which is great since we use an Apple Airport Extreme) and it connected quickly.

Alas, the box didn't contain our un/pw for the connection or even for MSN. For that stuff you have to install Qwest's "QuickConnect" software.

I sighed deeply and started it up on my XP machine. I didn't want Qwest's vile code infesting my Mac.

Minutes later the splashscreen was still drawing.

Evidently they wrote this app using a new programming language that runs in a sandbox that runs in a 68030 emulator running in a non-compiled Java 1.0 VM.

Or maybe there's code running in the background outsourcing Qwest's computational work.

It chugged along a bit further, but by now I'd decided I didn't want this dreck infesting even my XP box. So I fired up 192.168.0.1, found the screen for adding un/pw, and called Qwest.

The tech person was, again, very good. She promptly gave me my Qwest un/pw and, for what it's worth, my MSN un/pw (guess I need a mail forwarder there [1]).

So far it's been fine. I'll update with this post as I learn how well it works, and, most of all, learn how much it will really cost. (Signing a contract with a phone company is good practice for besting Lucifer in a tough deal. I suspect it will be about $50 a month when all is done.)

[1] MSN won't forward to a gmail account, so I had to use my custom domain. Cowards. MSN sign-in creates a Windows LIVE account, with all sorts of nasty authentication issues, so use a very strong password.

Update: no MSN actually doesn't forward at all - despite what they say. It rejected faughnan.com and spamcop.net. Incompetent cowards.

Update 9/17/08: Qwest has done well. No complaints.

iPhoto '08: don't embed metadata in JPEG originals

I've written previously that iPhoto '08 is Aperture-Lite, but with nastier bugs. Apple appears to use a lot of the same source code for both now.

So I decided to retest export behavior in iPhoto and see if it was still smarter than Aperture.

In particular, Aperture is very dumb when managing an export of mixed JPEG and RAW files. If you select JPEG format rather than current format, Aperture doesn't simply export the original JPEG, it processes the JPEG and then repeats the lossy compression.

Dumb.

iPhoto used to be smarter. If a JPEG original was untouched, and you specified export as JPEG, iPhoto would export the original JPEG. Perfect.

The good news is iPhoto is still smarter than Aperture. If you specify export as JPEG on a mixture of RAW and JPEG images with "maximum quality", iPhoto will export the JPEGs without transformation.

EXCEPT, if you embed metadata like rating and title. In that case iPhoto expands the original and writes a new file that's been recompressed.

So a 1.8 MB unedited JPEG original becomes a 4MB export if the metadata feature has been used. A bigger file with quality loss due to repeat lossy compression.

Yech.

It doesn't have to be this way. GraphicConverter and other apps will allow EXIF header changes without a lossy compression cycle.

So iPhoto's JPEG handling isn't quite as stupid as Aperture's, but it's headed that way.

How do you replace iPhone 1.0 with iPhone 2.0?

Given all the restrictions Apple has placed on iPhones, does that mean we can't sell an old iPhone if we buy a new one?

Apple - Support - Discussions - Replacing my iPhone with the next ...

.... Suppose I buy an iPhone today using Apple's plan.

Sometime in the next year Apple, according to what Jobs has publicly said, will produce a new model. Say it costs $500 for new customers.

Suppose I decide to buy the new model.

Would I be able to buy it for $500? What am I allowed to do with my old phone? Can I sell it? Can I give it away? Can I transfer it to my wife?

Update: Here's the answer from the Apple Discussion thread (link above) ...

... You can sell your phone to another person. They can go to AT&T and get a SIM for the iPhone...then go home and activate it with their account. Very similar to when you get back a refurbished phone or a replacement from an Apple Store (just a bit reversed)...

... You could sell your iPhone to me and before handing it over, the iPhone includes an option to erase all data and settings and you would remove the SIM card and transfer it to your new iPhone.

I would visit a local AT&T Store and request a new SIM card for the used iPhone I purchased which would allow me to activate this iPhone with my existing AT&T number or if I wasn't an existing AT&T subscriber I would need to become one via the iTunes activation process with AT&T...

So if you're an AT&T subscriber who's interested in the iPhone, you might be able to get a used 1.0 phone fairly inexpensively when the 2.0 phone comes out (perhaps in ?).

Google project inventory

The FSJ satire site is also an "insider" gossip site. I really liked this list of Google projects - with status. It's incomplete of course, I could add another six I've personally used.

Still, a good reference.

Update: a less sarcastic review - for 2007.