Mac Windows video-conferencing options

After a decade of false starts, maybe oil prices are going to push low end video-conferencing out of the "gutter". (The technology historically been used primarily for porn on the PC side [1], a bit more for family messaging in OS X.)

At the moment we have good working solutions for OS X, though we did better with the discontinued iSight webcam than with the currently available lower quality embedded Mac webams. On the XP side things are much dicier, we really need either USB 3 or to do video compression on the camera (Firewire worked wonderfully; sometimes I really dislike USB).

So how can the good OS X solutions interoperate with quirky PC solutions? This blog post from 2007 and its comments is helpful:

Trying to Video Chat between Mac and Windows? | Times New Rohan

...Finally we both downloaded Skype, and it just worked. We installed the application, created accounts, initiated video chats, and were chatting within minutes. (It is a well behaved Mac application to boot)...

So Skype is one option. The comments also mention iChat interoperability with the newest version of AOL's Instant Messenger and a beta Mac client for Windows Live Meeting.

I'll do some personal experiments and report back. My preferred solution would use iChat on OS X.

Update: I was able to install AIM on my XP box and connect my AIM/AOL username with iChat/MobileMe. The AIM client provides a fairly small video image. During AIM installation you have to be very careful to disable all other AOL-junk installs, and you may wish to delete all the plug-ins. You will be stuck with annoying embedded advertising that cannot be hidden.

I couldn't find much on OS X Live Messenger. There's now a corporate OS X Messenger client, but it requires an Office Communicator 2007 corporate server.

Skype is probably the only other option. I'll take a look at that next.

Update: Skype's high quality video solution is Windows only. Skype annoys me even more than AOL, which is saying quite a bit.

Update: A slightly dated tutorial on AIM and iChat videoconferencing. Some parts are up to date, others are obsolete. If I go forward with this project I'll have to write a post on setting up the AIM client for this use.

[1] Neat link by the way. A 1998 NYT article on how porn was going to drive videoconferencing. Well, it did -- almost to extinction. Turns out porn has a way of ickyfying an entire technology. Good lesson here -- also thank you NYT for letting Google trawl your archives!

Mount your HFS formatted iPod on a Windows machine

In case you want your Mac-formatted iPod to move files back and forth from your work machine:

Featured Windows Download: HFSExplorer Reads Mac-Formatted Hard Drives

Windows only: Free, open source application HFSExplorer reads and extracts files from drives formatted with the HFS+ file system native to Macs. Common uses for HFSExplorer include reading files from your Mac file system from Windows running in Boot Camp or—something I've used it for—grabbing music in Windows from a Mac-formatted iPod....

AT&T iPhone availability: 1-2 weeks

Our local AT&T outlet ran out of iPhones in the first hour or two of the first day. I'd wanted to buy there because of the strategic contractual complexity of our corporate-discount family plan, but I didn't like their initial pre-order policy. I thought Apple might be a better bet ...

Gordon's Tech: iPhone availability widget

... I suspect Apple stores are getting more shipments. AT&T is not offering a similar availability widget, they suggest payment up front and they'll hold a phone when it arrives. Fortune reports they have no phones anywhere, and no word on when they'll receive any.

I'd pay to reserve at an AT&T except I know AT&T is so Satanic that Hell itself could not abide them. (Apple, on the other hand, is merely a close confidante of Beelzebub. AT&T store staff, in my experience, are quite good btw.)...

I passed by my local AT&T shop this noon, and decided to check in. The staff really are excellent, it's not their fault they work for Satan.

Ever staff person was handing out an iPhone to a customer. Turns out they get about 50 a day for people who've pre-ordered; it works out to an average wait of 1-2 weeks (they say 7-21 business days). AT&T no longer charges credit cards on order, they charge only when the phone ships.

AT&T notifies of shipment by email, and receipt by email and phone, or you can obsessively check shipping status at an order status link (Note: when you enter the zip code here, it's the zip code of the AT&T store, not your home/billing zip code). Customers have 7 days to make the pickup, so it's not something to do prior to a trip to Maui. Don't lose the receipt, you need it to get the phone.

I placed my order today.

Update 7/23/2008: I ordered on 7/22. The order status link now says the phone was shipped on 7/22 and delivered to the store on 7/23. I emailed the staff person who sold me the phone, and she confirms the phone is waiting. So basically a two day turn around, clearly the floodgates have opened. I never received the email notifications and I didn't find them in my spam filters. So either the email was entered incorrectly or something went wrong. Email isn't nearly as reliable as it once was.

Google profile grows, but no direct OpenID yet

I first realized I was 113... last December:

Gordon's Notes: My Google profile -- another brick in the wall

.... I mentioned a few weeks ago that blogger knows me as 113810027503326386174. My friends call me 113. I wonder if Google will ever recycle that identifier, or if I can confidently carve it on the old tombstone.

Today Google maps has added a new profile link using the same identifier:

http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=113810027503326386174

The maps profile link shows some maps I've created, and a link to 'report this profile'. (That seems an ominous invitation to the ill-intentioned)...

Now I have a full Google Profile. Here's the URL:

http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/113810027503326386174

So I tried a Google search on 113810027503326386174 and I found a Sharing Stuff page I didn't know about

http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/stuff?user=113810027503326386174

The "social stuff" all hangs off of www.google.com/s2, which first gets a mention in a 2006 post.

The Google Profile includes an OpenID bound to my Google identity, I added that last December. Google provides an OpenID through Blogger, but not yet through the Google Profile itself.

I'm accumulating these identity defining attributes on my "address" page.

Reputation management moves forward, but all this social networking stuff is bound to my real world identity. Most of my writing is now under a light pseudonym. So it doesn't quite fit.

More on the evolving profile here ...

MobileMess troubleshooting and why this may be worse than it looks

I think the MobileMe problems are worse than they look ...

MobileMe

...The MobileMe rocky transition is still an ongoing battle for us. We have not been able to successfully synchronize our iCal calendars nor our Address Book to the MobileMe website for 3 days now. The MobileMe website contains OUTDATED information from our Address Book and iCal calendars. We are running Mac OS X 10.5.4 on a MacBook Pro, with the MobileMe 1.1 updater applied. We have tried all the troubleshooting steps on Apple's website, including unregistering & re-registering our computer from the MobileMe system preference, completely resetting our sync data from the MobileMe System Preference, resetting our SyncServices folder using the Terminal command in this tech info article - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1627 - repairing permissions, and running Keychain First Aid. All to no avail...

I deal with synchronization issues professionally, in a high-reliability domain (healthcare). In this domain we call it "integration" or "message-based integration" and the "standards" are HL-7 RIM 3.0 and CDA, formal ontologies (SNOMED), knowledge bases (NDDF for example) and data sets (ICD, CPT, etc).

Synchronization is technically hard. Semantic communication between disparate data models is not only an "unsolved problem", it's not perfectly solvable even with human intervention. To the extent we succeed it's by converging data models.

Technical challenges are one thing, but what makes Synchronization a killer problem is that most executives in most domains don't understand why it's hard. So they don't treat it as something to fear and budget for. Synchronization projects tend to be career killers, so people who know something about synchronization tend to find other work to do.

My fear is that the Apple engineers who understand synchronization have found other projects to work on. Meanwhile Apple execs demanded Exchange support, along with iCal support, along with Outlook support, along with an expectation that it would "just work" (so no options for undirectional messaging, just bidirectional synchronization).

It ain't going to work. iCal and Address Book have very different data models from Exchange/Outlook.

This wouldn't be so bad if the iPhone weren't locked down. If small, smart vendors had access to the hardware connector they could work around Apple's mistakes ...

Things - task management on the Mac

Things - task management on the Mac is another entry in my OS X alternatives to Outlook tasks.

This is nice:

Yours forever. We don't lock you in. Things uses an open XML file format to store your data. This gives third parties a transparent way to communicate with Things.

It's scheduled for release in "summer 2008" (previously "spring 2008").

This review suggests Things might be a rival to OmniFocus, though I doubt they're any better at data import. They claim to have an iPhone client.

Update: It's hard to tell what's going on with them, but I think they put their desktop app on hold to create an iPhone app. The two don't appear to have any current connection or synchronization, and their blog mentions rewriting the desktop app. That's ominous.

Codswallop reader favorite software - including Daylite

Codswallop's reader list of favorite tools is surprisingly good. I recognized most of them, but Daylite is new to me.

I'm surprised I've not heard this integrated productivity suite -- but the $1000 5 user license fee might be part of the reason. Their sync would have to be extremely good to justify even a license for Emily and ($400).

On another note, I was surprised to see Total Commander on the list. It's been a while since I've seen a Norton Commander clone. Those were the days ...

Update 7/24/08: Great comment from Carolyn. If Daylite can't do basic task/calendar integration, how can we take them seriously?

Directory of conversion tools

Conversion Central: 101 Tools to Convert Video, Music, Images, PDF and More : Codswallop. There's some good stuff here. It's a reference work a pointer or two. Most XP, some OS X and GNU. There's no date on the post, but I think it's 1-2 years old.

The author also offers a Creative Commons PDF converter and happens to be a mind mapping fan.

These are all rather good signs.

The blog has some other interesting posts, but a peculiar URL: http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/. The blog feed is via FeedBurner, I'll give them a try.

MobileMe - calendar sync and the work-personal-family calendar triad

Grateful I am, to be still on the 60 day free trial of MobileMess. It is at least five months from stability, but at least I can see the skeleton of its future. It looks a tad ominous.

Consider the work-home-family calendar triad.

Last week I missed a haircut. I'd entered it correctly on my personal calendar, but the duplicate entry on my work calendar was off by a day. Both calendars live on my Palm (in different applications, which is one of the thousand cuts that killed the Palm), but I missed an alarm.

Typical. Two separate calendars are lousy, but putting my personal appointments on the work calendar is not optimal. Do I want my meetings with representatives of the Zorgonian trade federation to appear on my work calendar? Earth is not ready to learn of those.

Now imagine that synchronizing you work calendar with MobileMe was not a firing offense (at most companies it would be). Further imagine that synchronizing an Outlook Exchange Client calendar with MobileMe wouldn't trash the work calendar (it would [1]).

You'd still be in trouble. MobileMe is setup so that each user can have a single sync calendar per account. There may be multiple calendars on an account, but you can't sync to them from iCal or Outlook. You'd need to get the family account, and use a different username for each calendar, then share on the family account. I don't have an iPhone or a family account to test this with, but I'm guessing the iPhone would allow sync with only one of the family calendars.

What about Google Calendar, popularly known as gCal? Our Google Apps family calendar allows a very large number of users (100?), so there's lots of wiggle room. There's an open sync API, so vendors can, if they and Google ever get their act together, can implement unidirectonal sync from an Outlook/Exchange work calendar.

From what I've seen of Google Calendar and MobileMe, we're most likely to need gCal. What I fear is that I'll need MobileMe too ... More on that later.

[1] Maybe the iPhone calendar can sync with an Exchange server, but I'm pretty sure the MobileMe calendar can't handle all the eccentric metadata and relationships that are a part of an Outlook/Exchange appointment - including little details like meeting attendees and recurrence exceptions. This wouldn't be too bad if you could do one way (undirectional) "sync" - send work data to MobileMe. This is not supported however.

Remember The Milk - Tasks in the Cloud. Still in the running.

[The first time I wrote this I though RTM tasks had no notes. They can have notes when entered from the web UI. I don't think there's a way to import tasks with notes, the pro versions can sync with Blackberry or Windows Mobile, not Palm.]

My early experience with MobileMe has rekindled my enthusiasm for our familial Google Apps calendar and cloud services.

The missing links are Tasks and Notes.

I'll be tracking Evernote closely, and watching how OmniFocus matures from its rough start. Both promise some sort of application / service / iPhone integration.

So what about Remember The Milk? RTM has a Firefox plugin that provides gCal and gMail integration ...

Remember The Milk - Services / Remember The Milk for Gmail

...No need to check your calendar when setting due dates! Remember The Milk talks to Google Calendar when it detects that you're adding a task related to an event in your calendar, and automagically figures out when your task is due..

Ok, that sounds interesting. So what does RTM do for export? iCal and Atom. Not the easiest for me to process, but potentially useful.

What does RTM do for import? Not too darned much. You can email a list of "tasks". One per line. No due dates, not notes.

That's because RTM tasks are single line items.

Ok, that's not good, but it's not a complete fail either. I need to check out the Pro version.

Missing Sync for iPhone does Notes synchronization

So MobileMe ain't exactly wonderful. What about the alternatives?

For on, there's Missing Sync, which we've used with Palm devices and Blackberry devices on OS X:

The Missing Sync for iPhone - Synchronize Mac OS X and iPhone 

... The Notes application on the iPhone is great for jotting down everything from meeting minutes and brilliant ideas to reminders and shopping lists. But you can't organize notes into categories, search your notes, or copy and paste content. Unless you use The Missing Sync to transfer your iPhone notes into Microsoft Entourage, Bare Bones Yojimbo or Mark/Space Notebook (included with The Missing Sync)....

That sounds interesting.

The Mark/Space migration assistant will also move Contacts and Calendar from a Palm device to an iPhone on OS X.

That still leaves Tasks in the cold though.

This is all going to take a lot more work ...

Safe to try Blogger in Draft again?

Blogger may have fixed a nasty bug:

Blogger in Draft: New toolbar, AJAX saving, and other fixes for the post editor

...Line breaking is no longer lost when editing a post in the old editor that was first written in the new editor...

I think the bug also showed if you switched post editors from Safari to Firefox, so we'll see if it's really fixed.

MobileMe: Perspective of a crusty Palm veteran

I'll update this post as I explore the quirks of MobileMe. As I'd promised, I signed up:

Gordon's Tech:

... The 5 member MobileMe family pack is $130 on Amazon - a $20 savings. As usual, best to order via Macintouch.com to give them a bit of a boost...

I didn't take advantage of the Amazon option, I decided to get the process out of the way. Since it's possible to upgrade from an individual to a family account, I decided to only buy what I need for the moment. When I do that update I'll document how the pricing works.

I did opt for the free trial; Apple converts me to a paid account unless I cancel. I had a typo in my original user name so I had to cancel once -- I think Apple would be wise to provide a username review before they complete the signup! My account starts one month after the Free Trial signup, so it does look like this gives me an extra month.

My first question is whether I could get the username that was associated with a former .Mac account. I was able to do that. I checked the old address before and after signing up -- the old email bounces.

Interestingly my Apple Store account, through which I make Apple purchases, is bound to my old .Mac email address. Currently that email address cannot be changed without discarding my Apple account and its associated purchase data -- so Apple doesn't have a current email address for me! I think they've missed something here. I wonder if they'll figure out the problem or if I'll have to discard that account.

Notes follow. In general the PIM/PDA services in MobileMe are a close match to OS X Address book and iCal.

1. There's an order of declining support as follows:
   OS X 10.5 > OS X 10.4.11/Intel > Vista > XP > OS X 10.4.11/PPC.
   Yes, the absolute rock bottom support is Tiger, not XP. As of today only the iDisk works on 10.4.11/PPC Tiger (reports of Tiger success are Intel only).
   
2. Calendars can be organized into Calendar Groups, Groups allow toggling of all members. Calendars may be more robust than the weak Palm model, and may even have advantages over Outlook 2003 calendars.
   
3. I uninstalled the problematic Google calendar Sync before testing Outlook Calendar sync. There's no control of calendar synchronization direction, it's all or nothing. On initial sync when data exists the app does allow additional details.
   
4. Tasks are very weak. Tasks have a minuscule note field, plain text only (no RTF), capacity > 500 characters. They have a description, completion status, due date (no start date), calendar association and, oddly enough, a URL. Task filtering, sorting and organizing is significantly inferior to the earliest US Robotics PalmPilot. Tasks must be associated with a single calendar; checking or unchecking display of a calendar controls display of calendar-associated tasks
5. OS X iCal users have task synchronization, but Outlook users do not. Tasks in MobileMe (and iCal) are so weak it's hard to imagine being able to synchronize them with Outlook. Perhaps that has something to do with why there are still no iPhone tasks -- Apple's OS X Task management is so feeble compared to Outlook that Apple may be hoping the majority of users won't notice their absence! (They may be right.)
   
6. There are no Note equivalents.
   
7. Contacts are reasonably robust. Simpler than the baroque Outlook contacts, more complete that the simple Palm contact, exact match to the OS X address book.
8. Account options allow one to cancel an account, set time zone, change alternate email address, and allocate storage (I minimized email storage).
9. You can transfer a personal domain to MobileMe management and get iWeb '08 integration. It will be interesting to see what else they add to this.
10. There's no equivalent to the old .Mac web page services. Unless they add something else it's iWeb only, which means XP users will be shortchaged. (I even recall when .Mac had some blogging tool -- Apple used to add and remove services fairly frequently when I was a member.)
11. MobileMe email provides disposable aliases. This is a great feature. If you ever donate money to a political party, use a disposable alias. Parties are exempt from anti-spam laws.
12. MobileMe email supports forwarding. I am forwarding to Gmail for now.
13. Junk mail filtering is not enabled by default (weird). Junk mail filtering has complicated implications for Mac OX Mail.app.
14. The iDisk contains remnants of .Mac, including a "Groups" folder. Groups are not a part of MobileMe.
    
15. The iDisk also has an installer for the old OS X .Mac backup program.
16. The iDisk Public Folder access can be password controlled. There is only one public password -- you can't assign folder-level access. There's some confusion in the documentation about the public URL and webdav connections. There's no web UI for access control, you use the MobileMe Control Panel installed with iTunes/XP, the MobileMe Preference panel in 10.5, or the obsolete .Mac preference in Tiger (10.4).
    
17. iDisk supports Vista and OS X direct (webdav) access. XP direct webdav access is not officially supported. Some docs make mention of a MobileMe client, I don't know if the old XP iDisk client still works. I entered the string "http://idisk.me.com/[myusername]" into the XP "Add Network Place" dialog, and after a few false starts (user error?) my username and pw were accepted. Performance is slow, but it works.
    
18. When I tried synchronizing from my 10.5 machine after all updates, I got this calendar error message "MobileMe Calendar could not start because it was unable to load any calendars from the server. Try reloading Calendar. If this problem persists, contact MobileMe Support." After a restart I was able to load.
19. Safari/Window can't load my MobileMe calendar. It hangs -- probably too many events. Firefox 3.01/XP is able to load it. Safari OS X and Firefox 3.01/OS X can also load the calendar.
20. I miss Microsoft. Hell frozen.
21. When synchronizing multiple items (bookmarks, calendar, etc) with MobileMe a sync warning appears when any one of the items being synchronized is undergoing its first sync. MobileMe requests a user decision for the sync. Problem is, the UI does not allow the decision to be applied to a single item type, it applies to all item types.
22. The XP MobileMe Settings application is installed with iTunes 7.7 and cannot be separately uninstalled. If you decide, like me, to give it a rest, you can't uninstall. Instead, you sign out.
23. The MobileMe calendar doesn't support subscribing to ICS feeds, and it doesn't support publishing ICS feeds. At the moment this disturbs me more than many other failings of MobileMe.
    

More to follow. Last update 7/28/08.

Pogue on MobileMe - best review so far

Pogue has the best MobileMe review to date: State of the Art - In Sync to Pierce the Cloud - NYTimes.com.

Since MobileMe does tasks, I wonder if can work with my tasks through the iPhone browser -- at least for now.

Well, I guess I'm signing up for MobileMe. Resistance appears futile.

It will give me something to do while I wait for the iPhone to resupply. As of yesterday there are zero iPhones in Minnesota. If we don't see phones by next week people are going to start muttering about the Wii supply story.

Update: The 5 member MobileMe family pack is $130 on Amazon - a $20 savings. As usual, best to order via Macintouch.com to give them a bit of a boost. By happy coincidence we are a family of five humans -- these days most family offers max out at four. Kateva will have to do without.

How to uninstall an OS X preference pane - as an admin user

Dang. I've always removed Preference Panes by hunting them down in the file system.

Turns out there's an official way (with one catch) that works in 10.4 and 10.5:

Mac 101: Remove unwanted System Preference panes - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) To uninstall System Preference panes, just right-click (or control click if you have a one button mouse) on the preference pane icon and select 'remove x preference pane.'

The catch is, you need to be logged in as an administrative user! If you're a non-admin user you don't see anything; there's not even a "gray menu" (tested in 10.4). That's why I never noticed it -- I don't run as an admin user. I'm used to OS X asking for a privilege escalation for admin tasks.

So this is not well implemented in 10.4. It should be a menu item for non-admin users, and ask for a un/pw when it's selected. I wonder if Apple fixed that in 10.5?