iPhoto library sharing - the official Apple method

Apple's kb has an article on Sharing iPhoto libraries among multiple users.

Wild, it's more like what one would read on a geek site.

Turns out it can be done more or less safely. Problem is you need an external drive that ignores permissions -- or you can use a disk image in the shared item folder.

Is this some kind of sign that iLife '09 will support multiple iPhoto Library merges?

Ok, so I'm grasping at straws.

Update 3/9/09: The article was revised 1/12/09. I think they added a disk image option to turn off permission checking. If you go the disk image route remember that the standard disk image is hell on backups. Every time you change one byte in a 40GB Library the whole image has to be backed up. Sparse bundle images mitigate this problem, but Retrospect doesn't back up sparse bundle image backup properly (Time Machine does).

I might try this in a folder where my wife and I both have read/write privileges, though I'm concerned Apple didn't mention this obvious solution. I'll want to verify that this actually happens:

Keep in mind that while one user is viewing this library from iPhoto, another user will not be able to open this library at the same time. Instead, an alert message appears indicating that the library is already in use. You will need to quit iPhoto from the other user account before the next user will be able to view or edit this library.

Update 3/9/09b: Ok, I see the problem. It has to do with the way OS X (BSD Unix) manages permissions and it's a deep problem. Even if I create a shared folder and move my Pictures there, each file inside the "Library" (package) is still mine alone. Even if I change permissions on every file so "Parents" can edit them, newly added images will still get one or the other user's permissions. Yech!!

So to share a Photo library between multiple users you really do need to use something that ignores permissions -- or you need a future version of OS X -- or you need to use the Mac OS X Hints ACL hack.

Update 3/10/09: No changes with iPhoto. As I wrote on this Discussion thread, I think the problem is deeply embedded in the design of OS X (BSD Unix?) file sharing:

I don't think this is something that iPhoto can fix, it's really more of an OS problem. I THINK that the problem goes something like this:

1. OS X assigns new files permissions associated with their owner.
2. OS X allows only one owner per file.

So even if one set all the permissions on thousands of Library files to a multi-user group, the first time someone added new items to the Library there would again be inaccessible files.

Using an external drive or a disk image works because one can then ignore permissions, thereby eliminating a vast amount of security as well!

It's really a fairly deep OS problem. I wonder if Snow Leopard tries an alternative approach. I think XP file sharing doesn't have this particular problem, but I can't say for sure.

Interestingly the Apple kb article seems to imply that images ignore permissions. Thinking about how they're used, I bet that's true. Oddly enough, I can't find good google hits on this.

Alas, I can't go the sparsebundle route because my backup software (Retrospect) needs an update to manage these appropriately.

Update 3/19/09: I'm told Retrospect treats the Sparse Bundle as just another package. I'm doing some testing; after copying an iPhoto Library to the Sparse bundle I have:

Original iPhoto Library: 3.7 GB
Sparse Image Bundle version: 3.8 GB in 488 8MB bands (view package contents)

iPhoto editing in the Sparse bundle library can be hard on backups. I changed a rating on a single image, and five bands were revised (40MB of dat to backup).

Now I need to see how Retrospect behaves.

Incidentally, even though file privileges are ignored on this image, they still exist. So if you let multiple people work on Library, then move it to drive where privileges are NOT ignored, won't the Library be trashed until all privileges are corrected?

This feels like a nasty hack to work around a really bad file system design.

Update 4/9/09: Supposedly Apple has secretly fixed this in iLive '09!

Update 5/6/09: I updated another post with information about Retrospect and sparse bundles based on informed comments. It doesn't look good to me.

Using FrontRow for visually impaired OS X users

Front Row is designed for remote control at a distance. So the UI is pretty good for someone with poor vision, and it's much simpler than iTunes.

On the other hand, the remote is only intuitive to computer geeks. It's also difficult for someone with motor problems to use; the menu button, for example, is flush.

You can improve the menu button by putting fuzzy side velcro tape on it, but an alternative is to use the undocumented Front Row Key commands.

Undocumented, save for a generous blogger who compiled a list. See his site for the full list, here's my annotated version of an excerpt of it. Note that I used Keyboard Preferences to change the activation/quit key to F13. Unfortunately the F13 key doesn't behave exactly like the Menu button -- it starts and quits rather than moves in and out of menus.

rgbdream.com - Front Row Key Commands

Activation

Enter Front Row	F13
Quit Front Row	F13 (actually any key not used by FR will exit)

Menu actions

Up	Up-arrow
Down	Down-arrow
Select	Space
Previous menu	Escape

Playback controls

Play/Pause	Space
Rewind	Left-arrow
Fast-forward	Right-arrow
Previous track	Command + Left-arrow
Next track	Command + Right-arrow

Volume

Volume Up	Command + Up-arrow
Volume Down	Command + Down-arrow

Depending on your context sometimes the arrow keys also navigate menus and control volume.

I'm experimenting to figure out the right balance of use of a modified remote and the keyboard. I think the remove may win overall, but using the arrow and enter keys might be useful. You can use the kb volume keys to change volume.

MobileMe - Remote system control would make it useful

Apple's MobileMe is monumentally uninteresting -- less useful than .Mac.

Actually, it's worse than that. It's inferior to Google Apps, but since MobileMe is an Apple revenue stream they're incented to discourage Google Apps.

This is unfortunate, because if Apple made some modest changes to OS X 10.5 and MobileMe I'd buy a family package of both.

I want a remote system control option built into MobileMe. In particular I want to have full control of my mother's Mac Mini at all times -- without requiring her to do anything. (See also.)

Apple has all the pieces for this to work; even their toy VNC based remote control would be suffice.

[I first drafted this for .Mac in 2005. Found it while doing some cleanup; it's still true today.]

Toggle grayscale display on OS X with this AppleScript

I was looking for something that would give my mother a few more months of computer use. The OS X grayscale accessibility option looked interesting, but there's no keyboard shortcut for this option.

I thought I could record an AppleScript shortcut, but the accessibility pane is not scriptable. (Apple had, I think, a reasonable accessibility record with Mac Classic, but they tossed that out with OS X. They've been notably half-hearted for years, but some recent threats from Massachusetts may inspire future improvements.).

Apple recommends using System Events, but that's way beyond my limited AppleScript skills. I've made several stabs at figuring out AppleScript, but the damned language just annoys me. I wish they'd deprecate the original and adopt Python's syntax, scoping, etc.

But I digress.

Baltwo, a generous Apple forum poster [1], has written a post with the AppleScript System Events script I was looking for. It works in 10.5.5 ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - Keyboard shortcut to switch between ...

tell application 'System Preferences' to activate
delay 1
tell application 'System Events'
tell process 'System Preferences'
click the menu item 'Universal Access' of the menu 'View' of menu bar 1
click the radio button 'Seeing' of the first tab group of window 'Universal Access'
click the checkbox 'Use grayscale' of tab group 1 of window 'Universal Access'
end tell
end tell
tell application 'System Preferences' to quit"

The script, of course, will break with significant UI changes to the Universal Access pain. It works for now, I'll test it out with 10.4.11 though I think some of the System Events scripting might require 10.5.

Apple has greatly improved their AppleScript support site by the way. I've thought for years that AppleScript would go the way of OS X Services, but it continues on.

[1] You can now "subscribe" to users, and I've "subscribed" to his posts. I wonder sometimes if these are real people, or pseudonyms for Apple employees. written a very large number of forum posts.

Reading in a dark room? A useful trick

My mother has macular degeneration, so I was experimenting with the OS X grayscale feature.

This is one of OS X's accessibility features. Grayscale is a secondary option for what's mislabeled as the "White on Black" display. In fact the option isn't "White on Black", it inverts pixels to produce a negative image. So, yes, text is white on a black background, but colors are inverted to.

The default normal setting is "Black on White". You switch to grayscale with a checkbox. The alternate setting is "White on Black", which can also be switched to grayscale.

It's a bit of weird UI, and there's no keyboard shortcut for the grayscale option. That's a shame, as I suspect being able to toggle the standard display to grayscale would be more useful than the color inversion option.

There's a keyboard option for the inversion though. The default is "Command-Option-Control-8", though like all OS kb options it's easy to change to another combination. I'm sure kids use this feature in the school computer lab all the time.

The tip for non-visually impaired persons is that either the grayscale or the Black on White option both grealy reduce screen light output, and probably reduce battery drain.

It also brings back memories of the pre-VGA days on the early PC, when grayscale displays were a big improvement on the Hercules Graphics Card output. I once worked ran Mac OS Classic 7 with a massive > 100 lb grayscale secondary display, running OS X this way puts me back in grad school ...

Apple's Task Fiasco: iCal, Mail.app and the iPhone. It's got to be Jobs fault.

Back when I was patiently waiting for 10.5 to go from moderate disaster to worthwhile, I noted some curious behavior of Tasks in 10.5: What is a task and a note - OS X iCal/Mail/Gmail vs. Outlook vs. Claris Organizer.

From what I read then it semed 10.5 Mail.app was following an unusual Tasks/Notes behaviors last seen in Claris Organizer (later Palm Desktop), and that Mail.app was becoming a PIM without a Calendar.

Which is kind of weird, but I figured it would all make sense when I got 10.5.

Wrong.

First, a digression.

Millions of people use OS X. Lots of well regarded bloggers write about OS X. So how come I'm the only one to get worked up over Apple's astoundingly screwed up approach to Tasks? I mean, I Google to see if anyone else has noticed the problem and I come up with my own comments from before I had 10.5?!

Shades of the Truman Show.

Ok, back to the post.

I think there are still a few deluded people who think Apple is uniformly excellent.

I can cure them of that. Try this experiment with the very latest version of OS X 10.5.5.

1. Create a task A in Mail.app. Notice that you cannot add a Note to it. Your "task" is a one liner.
   
2. Create a note B in Mail.app. Notice that you can "promote" it to a Task ("C"). You will now have a Task C with a Note B [1]
3. Switch to iCal.app. Look at Task C from Step 2. It doesn't have a Note in iCal. Add a note "D" in iCal to Task C.
4. Switch back to Mail.app. You will see Task C with Note B, but you will not see Note D. If you hold your mouse over the task long enough you'll see a read-only view of the iCal Note.
5. Paste plain text into a Mail.app Note. Observe the formatting -- particularly the multiple lines between paragraphs.

So both iCal and Mail.app have their own Task model, with some sort of synchronization of the titles but not the notes. iCal and Mail.app each have their own peculiar implementation of a Note associated with a Task.

I can't recall a comparable design screw-up in 20 years of lots of OSs and platforms.

So how did Apple botch this so badly, and how is this connected to the curious absence of tasks on the iPhone?

Here's my best guess. I don't usually pin Apple's glories or sins on Steve Jobs, but I'll make an exception this time. This has to be his fault.

This smells like a nasty collision between two powerful design teams, neither willing to compromise. When Jobs cares about something, he does seem to resolve these collisions. Obviously he didn't.

Jobs loves the iPhone. It has no tasks. That's another clue.

My guess is that Steve Jobs hates Task lists. He probably has some sort of trick memory and doesn't need them. Maybe it's his rebellion against the left brained world.

We aren't going to see Apple Tasks on the iPhone, or Tasks working on the desktop, until Jobs moves on from Apple.

In the meantime, I suggest

1. Pretend Mail.app does not have tasks.
2. Do not use the Mail.app feature that allows one to create a task linked to an email
3. Do not create a task from a note in Mail.app
4. Do feel free to use Notes in Mail.app if you can imagine any use to them.

If you've read this far, please submit feedback to Apple.

• ical feedback
• mail feedback

Maybe something like this:

Currently Mail and iCal both have a form of "Task" or "To Do" item, but they have different behaviors and Task notes are not shared. So a Task Note created in Mail cannot be read in iCal and vice-versa.

This is not what we expect from Apple. It is embarrassing.

Please integrate Tasks between iCal and Mail. Tasks should have identical attributes, features and Notes in both applications, and should sync with MobileMe and the iPhone.

PS. You can't delete Mail.app tasks, you can only complete them. Sigh.

Update: I found someone else who thinks Apple's implementation is cracked, but I don't think he got as far as sorting out the whacky Notes behavior.

OS X bug: Admin can't take ownership of a locked file

I just ran into a 10.4.11 bug. If I get a chance I'll see if it's fixed in 10.5.

If a regular user locks a file in a shared folder, an admin user cannot unlock it and they cannot change ownership or privileges. The file is inaccessible.

The useless error message is: "The operation could not completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code 120)."

You have to log in as the regular user, click get info on the file and uncheck the locked attribute. Then you can change permissions.

It's easy to see how this bug happened. The "Locked" attribute goes back to Mac Classic 6 -- if not earlier. So this is a collision between a very old access control mechanism and OS X privileges.

I wonder if even "root" can take control of this file.

The error message suggests Apple missed this one. I wonder if it was fixed in 10.5 ...

View Your Google Calendar in Outlook 2007

In theory one can subscribe to .ics (webcal in Microsoft's world) calendars using an obscure setting in Outlook 2007's mail data file options.

In practice, despite using Google's secret .ICS URL (no authentication required), and changing the URL from http to webcal, it didn't work. It seemed to work, but nothing happened and the next day the entry was gone.

This web page describes what didn't work, but the comment I'm quoting does work:

View Your Google Calendar in Outlook 2007 :: the How-To Geek

... I found the way to get around the 'cannot verify that the URL is a valid calendar' problem (for Google calendars, at least) was to:

1. paste the private URL for the ICS file into your browser (Firefox, in my case) location bar
2. change the http:// prefix to webcal://
3. hit enter
4. the browser should then offer to launch the external application (Outlook 2007) for you to handle this URL.
5. Follow the Outlook 2007 prompts and it should subscribe to the calendar ...

Comments are great. Thank you Daniel Pauly.

My guess is that some security fix broke the original function and Microsoft hasn't repaired it. I used IE 7 to do this (Daniel used Firefox), in my IE settings it assigns calendar handling to Outlook.

So now I can see my home calendar next to my work calendar. Not too bad, though not fabulous. Read only of course. If you sync your iPhone with Outlook 2007 this would be a good move towards work/home calendar integration.

BTW, you can't subscribe to a Microsoft Online Calendar from Google Calendar. It should work, but doesn't. Posts on this go back over a year in their Google Group. On the other hand, OS X iCal might be able to subscribe.

ICS is a lousy standard, or at least has been poorly implemented.

Reducing mobile phone spam

This PC World article was reprinted in the NYT: Put an end to cell-phone spam., by which they mean text message (SMS) spam.

It's solid. Links to AT&T services that can eliminate email to SMS, abilities to change your SMS identifiers, using spam filtering services, etc.

SMS is a real hack, a billion dollar industry built atop a phone service never intended for human use. Interesting business lesson there.

As a hack it has no defenses at all, and incoming spam costs money.

I think that's why the iPhone team isn't keen to support MMS or SMS -- it's aesthetically revolting and an endless font of costly spam.

So, good advice, but the real solution is to dump SMS.

Toodledo iPhone vs. Appigo Todo.app

I have really appreciated Appigo's Todo.app combined with Toodledo's web service, despite some sync issues [1].

Now, however, there's a serious alternative. Toodledo has launched their own iPhone and iPod Touch client.

The Toodledo app should have a big advantage. The data model should be an exact match for the web site. Same fields, same allowed values (same data dictionary), etc. No funny mappings for priorities, no missing context fields, etc. One vendor to own the synchronization problem.

On the other hand, Appigo has an integrated Notebook app. Their app is mature and reliable, and I've worked around the data model issues. Their aesthetics are much better than Toodledo, and they're not tied to a single web service. If, heaven forfend, Google should ever add tasks to their calendar app, we know Appigo would be on it like flies on ... well .. .quickly anyway.

I think a newcomer could go either way. They're both pay apps, so price might sway some people. (Toodledo is cheaper.)

I'll stay with Todo.app for now -- it works and I like their Notebook.

Competition is good though.

[1] I think these are on Toodledo's side; I've found that transactions don't always complete as expected when I use their web GUI).

Apple's identity and account system is screwed up. Again.

I wrote about Apple's horked account ID system last July:

Gordon's Tech: Apple's messed up Apple ID system: what are they smoking?!

... For years, even after I gave up on .Mac, my Apple ID was jfaughnan@mac.com. That's what my iTunes account and all my iTunes purchases are tied to.

Now, however, iTunes won't let me buy anything because my "email is invalid".

Turns out, somewhere in the bowels of Apple's increasingly messed up corporation, there's a requirement that the AppleID, to which all my transactions are bound, needs to be also my valid email address.

So, should I change it? I have a bad feeling about what would happen then....

Update: I found a link to Apple's Profile service, where you can change the email associated with your Apple ID.

You can't do this from the iTunes store itself -- even though iTunes kept sending me back to the account view.

After I updated the email stored in the profile service, I returned to the Apple store, and AGAIN I got the notice about a bad email address. This time, however, the account link showed a page with a NEW field in addition to my non-editable jfaughnan@mac.com account -- one holding my updated email address. I clicked done and this time I got a notice that my Apple account had been created! Despite that ominous language my purchase history was intact, the account was not created, it was updated.

After all of that I was able to buy "Voice Record" for my iPhone...

Since that screw-up I've been able to purchase quite a few Apple Store items. Today, though, when I tried to make a purchase through my iPhone, I got the same "bad email" message.

When I visit my Apple account via iTunes I see ...

So now my Apple ID field is editable.

So if I change it, what happens to all of my music and software and Apple Store records tied to that Apple ID?

Yeah. I bet they all vanish.

Apple has an FAQ page that sort of suggests that you can have multiple email addresses/Apple IDs all tied to the same account. On the other hand they also say:

... Even after your MobileMe account expires, you can continue to sign in and purchase music using your old MobileMe account name and password. You should specify a new email address in My Info, though, so you can continue to receive your invoices from iTunes...

Right.

Long odds they have at least two systems for managing identities and purchases, and they aren't reconciled.

$%@%!%

So I try myinfo.apple.com. There I find the email address I'd entered in July is gone! The email has reverted back to jfaughnan@mac.com. There I also find I can't edit my Apple ID. Apple warns me: "You cannot change this Apple ID because it is tied to a MobileMe account
and/or an iChat ID.".

Obviously jfaughnan@mac.com isn't tied to a MobileMe account and I've never used it for iChat, so, yes, Apple is kind of messed up.

Continuing on, I'll change my email. Again. It seems to work. Again.

On a hunch, I sign out of iTunes and try signing in with my newly valid email address. That doesn't work. So what does iTunes show now?

Again two lines, and again there are "errors and omissions" -- except there aren't any on my side. Just Apple's errors and omissions.

Damn it.

Update 3/4/09: Now iTunes again has me with two identies, and I'm seeing some odd behavior with iPhone updates. Apple's screwing up again.

Blurred fonts in 10.5

When I updated my 10.4.11 iMac to 10.5 I noticed some AppleWorks apps were rendering with quite nasty looking fonts.

I thought that was an AppleWorks problem, but today I started up iTunes 8.01 and this is what the EULA looked like (click to see full res).

Yeck. Unfortunately I'm not a font guy, so I can't tell which font is causing the trouble. In fact, I know very little about OS X fonts.

Two knowledge base articles (yay for my custom search) helped:

• 10.5 Fonts list
• Font Locations
  

Font Locations are pretty much what one would expect. There's a location for the user, for all users and for the system. I had nothing in the user folder.

In my System Fonts folder the dates of the fonts were Oct 2, 2007, Sep 28, 2007 and Sep 23, 2007.

In the Apps Fonts folder I saw the same 3 dates. So I figured anything with those dates was good.

I also found 23 fonts with dates from 2004 to 2007. I suspect some of those came with AppleWorks. Palatino was on that list, it also comes with iWork that was once installed on this machine.

I've removed those fonts for now. I'll use Onyx to clean up the font caches (safe boot only clears caches for the account used to login) then see how things go. I can then add back the fonts I removed and inspect them with Font Book.

I guess I'll learn a bit about fonts. I suspect there's a 10.5 bug somewhere in all this ...

Update: I can't find information on how to make iTunes redisplay the EULA so I switched users and opened 8.01 for the first time in a different account. It displayed properly. Then I went into the iTunes App Package and hunted down "License.rtf", then pasted the text into Nisus. The text is clear now, in Nisus it shows as Lucida Grande. So I don't know if I fixed anything, but I won't bother with Onyx for the moment.

I did check AppleWorks and many fonts still render badly in the spreadsheet. I'm thinking that one's an AppleWorks problem, maybe a really old problem.

Wikipedia has an excellent article on OS X fonts.

Feeds, IE 7 and Outlook 2007 – The Horror

I knew the XP feed reader situation was limited.

On the other hand, I’d done some lightweight feed reading with IE 7. Yeah, it’s very limited, but it didn’t seem too bad.

Then I “upgraded” my corporate environment to Office 2007.

Words fail me.

Yes, there are apparently some nice Outlook improvements, though I’m not sure how well they really work. Certainly many longstanding issues were not fixed; it looks like the Outlook team got half way through their deliverables and then moved into salvage mode.

On the other hand, I’d grown accustomed to the combination of Windows Search 4.0 (XP) and the old Outlook/MSN search toolbar. The combined result was excellent.

The toolbar doesn’t work in Outlook 2007. The built-in “instant” search (standard on Vista, requires Windows Search installation on XP) is … well … inexplicably bad. Who … how … what …

I can’t go on.

Oh, and it’s slow, very, very slow (though that may be related to next issue).

Okay. Maybe I can fix search. I’ll get used to using the deskbar shortcuts and typing complex syntax. I’ll live without the cross-PST conversation threading. I’ll rebuild my GB indices.

Let’s try the Feeds. Wow, Microsoft has a unified IE and Outlook feed service. How elegant. A systems service. Works fine with a paltry number of feeds, let’s try the 150+ feeds from my Onfolio OPML file …

My hard drive goes into blitzkrieg mode. My system grinds to a halt. The indexer starts to whine. Outlook is trying to get thousands of feed messages and cache them locally. The cache is being replicated, I think, to Exchange server. My exchange server sync error messages are piling up.

Ok. Time to bail. The Feed capability was lousy anyway. No way to aggregate into folders, no group counts, etc. Not clear I can do password protected feeds.

Oh. I can’t delete 150 Feeds all at once. I have to delete them one at a time. Three clicks per feed. 500 #$!$$%!% clicks. [9/9/08: see update, this is not entirely correct.]

There must be a better way. Here’s one tip …

Biztalk Patterns: Delete all RSS feeds from IE 7 on Vista

Annoying. If you need to delete all of the RSS feeds setup on your IE7, you will have to select each entry, right click, select delete, select OK. A quicker way is to go straight to the folder: C:\Users\awing\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Feeds and delete them from there.

On XP C:\Documents and Settings\*******\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Feeds is the right setting. I have to logout to be able to delete the feeds and cache.

Except Outlook recovers them – probably from Exchange server. So the above folder is empty, but the feeds are gone.

I discover I can alternate tapping the ‘Delete’ and ‘Y’ keys and get through the list fairly quickly.

Now I’ll discover if removing the RSS feeds will fix my performance issues, and if rebuilding the indices will make search tolerable. I might try reinstalling Windows Search 4.0.

Until now I’ve assumed Microsoft would recover from their relatively tough times. They have immense cash reserves. Vista 2.0/Windows 7 will be good enough.

Now I’m not so sure.

The rot is really deep.

Update 10/9/08

• Microsoft is aware of lots of performance issues with Outlook 2007
  
• RSS integration is a known, big, performance issues. Here's how to disable it.
• There's a way to remove and maintain feeds in Outlook, it's buried away in the Email options tab. See the latter half of this article. Even after removing the feeds, however, you must manually delete the saved articles.
• There might be a way to safely configure feeds in Outlook. I'm experimenting with storing the feeds in a separate PST that's not indexed. I'm finding bugs though.
• Even after I'd moved all the bad feeds to the trash (Delted Items) I couldn't empty the deleted items folder. I got this error message: "Are you sure you want to permanently delete all the items and subfolders in the "Deleted Items" folder?" I dropped the folders one inside the other to group then, then deleted the groups. For 100 items. The hectic grouping went fairly quickly. I finally got down to a single feed folder that wouldn't delete. Now Outlook said "Cannot delete this folder ... click Properties to check your permissions ... Outlook is synchronizing local changes ...". Finally, deep within, I found a folder called "Sync Issues" that I couldn't delete. I think that was the cause all along, unrelated to the feed issues. Life with Microsoft is tough. I put "Sync Issues" back in the root, Outlook needs it.

I think the only safe way to configure RSS feeds is to move the feed storage to a PST file and, perhaps, turn off indexing until it's all settled. Microsoft's documentation on this is pathetic, but this page is great:

... You can modify the RSS feed in Tools, Account Settings by using the Change Folder button on the RSS Feeds tab, but this action changes the folder location only for new items; all existing items stay in the old folder. Also, with this method if you want to move items to a different folder that has the name of the feed, you have to create that folder first. The solution to this problem is to use Outlook's Move folder command. Right-click the folder you want to move and select Move . This method not only moves the folder and all items in it, but also preserves the RSS feed link. If you rename the folder with Outlook's Rename command, RSS feeds will recognize the new name and still deliver to the correct location.

If you don’t want to use the default delivery location for your RSS feeds, you can change the location through the registry so that all new RSS feeds are stored in a PST called RSS Feeds. To change the default delivery location for RSS items, you create a DWORD called DisableRoaming with a value of 1 under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Options\RSS.

If the RSS subkey doesn't exist, you can create it under Options by right clicking and selecting New, Key. The PST file is created and added to your Outlook profile as soon as Outlook detects the registry change so that all new RSS feed subscriptions are added to the RSS Feeds PST. The benefits of storing your RSS feeds in a separate PST are that you'll use less space in your Exchange mailbox and you can manage the RSS feeds separately from mailbox items such as your email and calendar.

If you do choose to use a PST for your RSS feeds, you should be aware that Outlook doesn't show flagged PST items on the To-Do bar automatically, but you can configure it to do so. On the General tab of your PST’s properties, select the Display reminders and tasks from this folder in the To-Do Bar check box. Here's another tip:

You can keep Windows Desktop Search—and, consequently, Outlook's search, because they use the same index—from searching the RSS Feeds PST by clicking the down arrow next to All Mail Items in Outlook's Mail pane and clearing the RSS Feed check box.

RSS folder management can be tricky in Outlook 2007. Next month I plan to write about the Common Feed List (CFL) in Outlook 2007 as well as about some additional features—and limitations—of Outlook 2007's RSS implementation.

Synchronization is Hell.

In the past few days I've run into cryptic synchronization errors from Sharepoint, Outlook, Exchange server, and Spanning Sync. Messages like

Task 'SharePoint' reported error (0x80004005) : '"****- PTO" starting on Monday, November 24, 2008, at 12:00 AM (server time) was not copied because Outlook does not support skipping over a later occurrence of the same recurring appointment...

Funny, I saw a similar Spanning Sync warning about deleting the first instance of a recurring appointment in gCal.

Synchronization between apps with identical data models is Heck. That's what Palm Desktop and Palm OS did in the good old days, and what Toodledo iPhone does with ToodleDo web today.

Synchronization between different data models, such as iCal with gCal, or Todo.app with ToodleDo web service, is HELL.

Really. Try hard to avoid jobs that involve message passing between different data models, or take 'em but ask for a lot of money.

Update 10/21/08: Exhibit #43145515 from Outlook 2007 subscription to a gCal ICS feed:

Task 'Internet Calendar Subscriptions' reported error (0x000710D2) : 'The VEVENT, "Baseball ", defined near line 2061, contains a recurrence pattern that has no instances.'

Update 11/9/08: Synchronization Hell destroys the folder/category relations of hundreds of my iPhone Notes and Tasks. Also, time zone problems between Outlook 2007, gSyncIt and Google Calendar when one views a gCal from a time zone different than the time zone for which the sync occurred, or when the Outlook even has a time zone other than default. Since time zones are Hell, and Synchronization is Hell, what do we call synchronization involving time zones?

Update 1/22/09: Many months after the multiple sync hells associate with migrating my Outlook/Palm Calendar to my iPhone I find out many birthday events were duplicated or prematurely terminated -- so I'm late with my father's card.

Update 2/7/09: Two more examples -- OS X vs. Gmail Contact data models and NuevaSync and "bad" Google Contacts.

Update 2/14/09: An oldie but goodie.

Update 3/18/09: Both Google Outlook Sync to Calendar (gCal) and Google's iPhone Exchange Sync service get messed up, leading to a massive debugging exercise.

Update 4/27/09: Google Calendar Sync disaster returns. This time, the monster is even stronger.

Update 5/15/09: I beat back the Google Calendar Sync monster, then take a huge, complex, but maybe successful run at the horrors of Project Contact.

Update 5/20/10: Different models for reminders in Google/iPhone synchronization mess up family events.

Update 7/18/10: MobileMe contact synchronization model has poor key design.

Update 7/21/2011: 1Password fails to sync - they have problems

Update 7/21/11: Contact Sync Hell brings my iMac to its knees

Update 9/30/11: More MobileMe Hades: Consolidating Contacts: From Outlook to Address Book via MobileMe and the 5th Circle

Update 6/27/2012: iCloud makes MobileMe look good.

WebDAV, Microsoft, DreamHost and the insane slash and pound hack

You know you're a geek when this kind of thing just drains your spirits.

It's the sheer stupidity of it -- on so many levels.

Mostly it's Microsoft's stupidity, but DreamHost deserves a whack as well.

For weeks I've been unable to connect to one of my DreamHost WebDav servers from XP machines. Works from OS X, not XP.

When I try from XP I get a windows SMB-style authentication dialog. I enter the un and password and get another version of the same dialog, but this one has a domain-authentication style username -- like ww.faughnan.com/username (yes, ww, not www).

The un/pw won't work, I just keep returning to the same dialog.

Finally, today, I worked my way through DreamHost's exceedingly annoying wiki documentation and found this little clause buried away:

WebDAV How-To Access - DreamHost

... Make this very 'important adjustment' to the file path: add the slash/ and pound# to the end of your path 'without quotes' like this: ' /# ' ...

Doesn't that just drain the life from ya? Buried away in the wiki? So incredibly obscure -- an obvious hack ...

So it works. When I enter my webdav address as http://www.faughnan.com/sillyservername/# the authentication succeeds.

So where the hell does this come from? You can't do a Google search on "/#" so I tried "slash pound XP webdav" and found this kind guidance (the old document refers to XP Home as though only it had this problem, but I use XP Pro):

You cannot access a WebDAV Web folder from a Windows XP-based client computer

WebDAV and the Troubled "Microsoft Way" of Implementation

... Misleading "feature" 298353: Add Network Place Wizard Saves the Location http:// as \\ in a Network Shortcut

... Workaround: use a port number after the domain, or use a trailing /. or a /# on any URL to use WebDAV properly in the setup wizard.
+ e.g.: http://www.atarex.com:80
+ e.g.: http://www.atarex.com/.
+ e.g.: https://www.atarex.com/#

... Explanation: the :port number on the domain name, the trailing slash dot "/.", or slash pound "/#" at the end of the URL prevents the bug which interprets the resource as a M$ network drive/SMB server

So this isn't the whole story but it's a hint.

More recently, there's this kb article which basically says "yeah, we know it's broken. Tough bunnies":

... This problem occurs when your users try to connect to a Web site whose address is something other than the root of the site....

... Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section of this article...

That led me back to this hidden 2004 DreamHost article from an old archive (I said DH deserved blame here). Turns out the problem is XP SP2 disabled BasicAuth (maybe for good reasons);

... After installing Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, you will no longer be able to connect to your account using WebDAV.

DreamHost uses BasicAuth (basic authentication) to verify your username and password when you connect to your account via WebDAV. Service Pack 2 for Windows XP disables support for BasicAuth.

You can enable BasicAuth in SP2 by adding the following registry key and setting it to a non-zero value:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters\UseBasicAuth (DWORD)

Reboot your machine, and WebDAV will begin working properly.

We are currently evaluating using options other than BasicAuth to resolve this issue. In the meantime, the workaround posted above will get the job done.

... comment: It is important to note that Microsoft disabled BasicAuth for a good reason. BasicAuth sends the username/password to the server in the clear, i.e. if someone is sniffing packets, they will be able to grab the password...

Ok, so this was disabled in 2004 for good reasons, but DreamHost still hasn't come up with a good solution?! They don't have a better authentication model?!

I'll report here whatever I get back from DreamHost -- including nothing.

Update: My DH support inquiry is tracking number: 2718630.

Update 10/10/08: DreamHost replied. It was an honest reply. Basically ...

• The support person admits the situation is not good, they'll push it up to the admin level.
• They liked the idea of a link from the webdav page to the supporting documentation
• WebDav hasn't been popular, so they haven't invested in it. (Of course that may be related to it not working as well.)
  
• Vista has the same problem.