Google Lab for Google Apps and the Google Solutions Marketplace

Rumor of a "TinyURL like" service for Google Apps gradually led me to the "Google Labs" zone in the Google Solutions Marketplace:

Google Solutions Marketplace - Vendor Profile: Google Labs:

... Google is making it easier for business customers and schools using Google Apps to also take advantage of our innovations and ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time. We encourage your organization to experiment with the Google Labs features listed below to improve how you communicate and collaborate.

These features all are built by Googlers, hosted on Google App Engine, and domain administrators can install them into their Google Apps account by clicking 'Add it now'...

I tried out the "Short Links" Lab service on our family Google Apps domain.

You begin by defining a subdomain, like "sl" as in "sl.mycustomdomain.com". I clicked "activate" and waited ... and waited ...

Just as I was about to give up the Short Links service appeared on my service setting list.

It's not a TinyURL like service at all! It just lets you create redirects. So, for kateva.org for example, I could redirect "sl.kateva.org/news" to www.faughnan.com/news.html.

Well, that's nice, but not a terribly big deal if you own a domain.

So what else is in the Google Solutions marketplace? Mostly consulting services, but the list of migration and sync solutions is interesting. It includes Spanning Sync, which I use (five star rating there, it really is pretty good).

As of today there are 16 Solution Marketplace entries that reference the iPhone, though most of them have little to do with the iPhone. Not so interesting there ...

The curious story of AAC support - why not?

My SONY car stereo plays non-DRMd AAC tunes, as does my wife's BlackBerry and, I think, my old Nokia.

Why not? AAC is a non-Apple music format, as "standard" as MP3.

So here's the mystery. Why don't the iPod's competitors (not least the Zune) support AAC? I don't think it's that costly to license.

At the Target store, for example, I found a Creative Zen player with AAC support. On their web site however there new "ZEN Mosaic" lacks AAC support. You have to dig down to learn that the ZEN X-Fi and ZEM do have AAC support.

Sandisk has no AAC support in any model.

We have very little DRMd music, but a lot of AAC encoded media. I'd consider a ZEN player for my daughter if it were half the cost of a Nano.

So why so little AAC?

iPhone tips: reboot after updates and Starbucks access

Via Gruber, I learn that AT&T hotspots (including Starbucks) have finally launched their long promised iPhone access service with a tedious connection process:

Accessing AT&T Wi-Fi | Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular

1. Select 'attwifi' from the list of available networks
2. Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap 'continue'
3. You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. You will not be charged for the text message. The SMS link will only be valid for 24 hours at the location it was requested. Another request must be submitted when using another hotspot location.
4. Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot

It's of greater interest to iTouch users and users without 3G access.

On an unrelated topic I've come across vendor recommendations to reboot the iPhone after every app update - esp. for users with several App Store products. Based on personal experience I think that's excellent advice.

The Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5

When upgrading OS X , the cost of the OS is the least of your expenses. There's often software to be replaced [1], an immense amount of time lost to debugging , and the risk that hardware will need to be replaced.

I figured my 3 yo multi-function Brother MFC-7820N was at particular risk. Of course the paper feed has been having trouble, so maybe it's near the end of its lifespan anyway (versus the LaserWriter 360 that preceded it and would have worked for another 20 years if I'd been able to find toner).

In fact the printing worked out of the box with native drivers. There are supposedly native drivers for OS X fax send as well, but I haven't tested that.

After the 10.5.5 update Image Capture even found the device and could drive a scan, but that might have been a residual effect of the 10.4 install. I don't know if that would always work.

The 10.5 update deactivated the Brother "control center" that enables the push-button scan to server feature [2]. Happily, there's a great article on how to restore this functionality in 10.5.5: Inspired by I-57- Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5 .

Briefly, you download the latest drives from Brother's MFC download site, install, then use "DeviceSelector" to point to your network device. See the Inspired article for details.

I also did a firmware update using Brother's Java updater. I had to reset the printer but power cycling it, but then the update worked well. Remove the phone line (!!) to prevent dangerous interruptions, don't pull the power line, don't mess with your Mac during the update. I'll see if this helps with some printer quirks (such as having to power cycle after scanning to restore printing!).

Credit to Brother for continuing to provide drivers for the scanning button. I don't care for how the software works (basically running an obscure server on the desktop, doubtless a big security hole), but it is a very nice feature [2, again].

[1] Actually most of my old software worked fine with 10.5.5, even s/w that didn't work with 10.5.1.
[2] Why doesn't anyone sell a scanner with embedded Linux that would scan a PDF to a thumb drive?

How to use OS X iCal to sell Microsoft Vista

A few people have complained that Vista is slow.

Personally, I've never touched Vista. I'm willing to bet though, that nothing on Vista could be anywhere near as slow as OS X Leopard's iCal calendaring application. Calendars that were speedy and responsive on Windows 98 can crush a modern OS X 10.5 desktop.

Here's how to sell a Vista solution using OS X:

1. Start with a set of calendars that hav a few thousand events distributed across multiple calendars and iCal subscriptions [1]. (What, your life isn't that busy? Imagine what Obama's calendar looks like.)
2. Use the "period" hack to give Leopard iCal a "list" or "agenda" view of events.
3. Select a set of, say, 50, events from the list view. Using the context menu, move them to a large calendar with a thousand or so events.
4. Go to bed. If you're luck the fifty events will be moved by morning.
   

I remember how awed I was when the hospital I was studying at bought an 80386. Did they really need that much computing power?

That 80386 could have chewed through a few thousand calendar events in no time. Twenty years later a computer with roughly 400 times the power takes over 50 times longer to complete a similar task.

A 20,000 fold decrease in software efficiency is quite an achievement.

Maybe we don't need to worry about the Singularity after all. At the rate we're going the hardware of 2028 will struggle to add single digit numbers.

So what's wrong with OS X and iCal?

There's no easy answer. Apple follows their own set of priorities, and as long as their share price is relatively strong that won't change. In this case I suspect Apple chose a data store architecture that was consistent with Spotlight searches and their own internal aesthetics, rather than a data store that ... you know ... could actually ... perform. Beyond that there must be some nasty OS design constraints and bugs; even the slowest possible data store should be faster than this.

As an Apple customer I'm hoping for great sales of Windows 7 (aka Vista 2.0). Apple needs more fear.

Update 11/2/2008: Bento is just as slow as iCal. I think the data architecture must be the performance killer.

[1] This would be typical of someone migrating from a Palm or Outlook environment. iCal doesn't have the concept of tags or categories, so Palm categories become iCal calendards.

Restoring an iCal event (list) view in Leopard and other iCal oddities

I've been cleaning up my Leopard calendar after my Outlook/Palm to iCal/iPhone migration. It's a long process, during which I often mourn that FileMaker gave us the pathetic Bento rather than extending FileMaker to handle OS X data stores.

A list (aka "tabular") or Agenda view of all events (appointments, tasks) would sure help -- but Apple removed that feature in 10.5. (I blame Apple's penchant for doing insanely stupid things like this for the tooth I broke yesterday.)

There is a workarounds ...

Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | View all events in 10.5’s iCal

While iCal in OS X 10.5 has some nice changes—default event alarms, for instance—there are other changes that weren’t so nice (the loss of the sidebar with its easy-to-use event info still bothers me a lot). Another not-so-welcome change lies in the ability to view all of your events (and/or to dos) in a nice list view. In the 10.4 version of iCal, clicking a list-view-like button on the lower right of the iCal window would bring up a pane showing all your events. That button—and seemingly, the ability to see all your events—is gone in the 10.5 version of iCal.

However, there’s a strange workaround that will create a similar view—why it works, however, isn’t clear to me. To see a list of all your events and to dos, simply type a period (.) in the Search box at the top right of the iCal window.

A single double quote (") character also works.

You can also view iCal events using the Finder's cover flow feature, but that's not a terribly useful feature. It is good to remember that kind:ical will find all iCal events.

From the search/list view you can delete events or select and move them to a specific calendar.

PS. Operations performed on multiple items from the search view are exquisitely slow. They bring my PPC machine to a standstill. It helps to kill the 'mds' (spotlight) process.

Update: After an extended bout of iCal editing I killed my PPC session in a unique fashion. The screen blacked out. I had to hard cycle. There are ugly bugs in iCal!

MobileMe, Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, iTunes and yes, sync Hell

I thought I might finally have a use for MobileMe. I thought I might be able to use it to get some calendar information from work Outlook/Exchange to MobileMe to iCal to my iPhone.

Hah.

You know how this goes. With the last release of MobileMe for Windows Apple disabled calendar synchronization when Exchange is in the mix:

MobileMe Control Panel: Calendars is dimmed, cannot be selected for syncing in Windows:

.... Outlook is installed but connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server, and MobileMe Control Panel 1.2 or later is installed. If Outlook is connected to Exchange, Calendar syncing with MobileMe is not available. For more information about MobileMe and Exchange syncing, see this article...

There's no explanation of why this was disabled in MobileMe 1.2, but I suspect bidirectional MobileMe sync was trashing Exchange calendars [1]. We've heard rumor that Apple is having a dreadful time getting Exchange support working with 10.6; so it's not surprising that a sync setup involving Exchange 2003/2007 <-> Outlook 2003/2007 <-> MobileMe might be umm ... problematic.

Apple should have expected that; synchronization is Hell.

Most confusingly (yes, synchronization is Hell) Apple claims that Contact sync is also forbidden when MobileMe is involved...

MobileMe Control Panel for Windows 1.2 or later will automatically turn off syncing with Outlook for you if you had it setup previously. This text appear when it detects that you are using Outlook with an Exchange Server:

"Syncing of contacts and calendars with Microsoft Outlook is not available while Microsoft Outlook is configured to use Microsoft Exchange Server. You may still directly access your data from Exchange over the air using your iPhone or iPod touch."

You will still be able to sync your contacts with Windows Contacts (on Windows Vista) or Windows Address Book (on Windows XP), as well as with Yahoo or Google contacts, per usual.

When I looked I saw that Contacts sync was not grayed out, but maybe that's sync to Windows Address Book (which should be empty though there's a possibility of some brain blowing reflection from Outlook Contacts).

Apple's kb article mentions using Exchange ActiveSync to get Exchange data on the iPhone, but that's a diabolical trick. We already know that will wipe all personal data from the iPhone -- unless you sync personal data from OS X to MobileMe and MobileMe data to the iPhone.

If your head isn't exploding you're not paying attention. Did I mention synchronization is hell?

Ok, but what about the old iPod-style iPhone Calendar synchronization via iTunes and a USB cable? (Taking MobileMe out of the picture entirely, in case you missed that) ...

... If you are not able to use Exchange ActiveSync, but would like to sync your Outlook data to your iPhone/iPod touch while using Exchange, you can sync your iPhone/iPod touch through iTunes over a USB cable. Note that if you sync an iPhone/iPod touch this way, you will not be able to sync your iPhone/iPod touch over-the-air with MobileMe.

You see, you can sync an iPhone with one of:

1. iTunes to Outlook (w/ or w/o Exchange) via USB cable (then Outlook cannot sync to MobileMe)
2. iTunes to iCal which can in turn sync to MobileMe (OS X only) via USB cable
   
3. MobileMe
4. Exchange Server via ActiveSync
5. MobileMe and Exchange Server via ActiveSync
   

But what about synching one iPhone to iTunes to iCal at home and iTunes to Outlook at work via the USB cable? Although one person reported a solution using Entourage, I'll stick with my understanding that this is strictly impossible.

Which leaves Outlook to Google calendar to Missing Sync to iCal to iPhone via USB cable at home. (Don't even think of making this anything but unidirectional.)

If you understood that last sentence, I'm afraid of you now. If your head just exploded please join the club.

I wonder how things work with the gPhone (Google Android)?

[1] I'm not insane. I would never enable bidirectional sync in this setting, I was looking for unidirectional sync. I imagine Apple felt it would be tacky.

Update 11/3/08: The last option worked.

Apple concedes the gamma war

Photos that appear just right on a Mac seem dark and muddy on a PC.

It's the curse of gamma. Eons ago Apple chose a perfectly reasonable value for this obscure metric of color image contrast. Then Microsoft opted for very cheap displays that had a different value.

We know how that turned out.

In theory, I think (the topic is esoteric), colorsync software should manage the gamma effect. Unfortunately Windows does a terrible job with color management. So the problem remains.

With its next OS, Apple has throw in the towel ...

AppleInsider | Snow Leopard to see HFS compression, default gamma switch

...Macs to date have typically employed a lower-contrast but lighter 1.8 gamma level, but the new Snow Leopard build now changes this to a deeper 2.2 gamma that was previously only an option in earlier Mac OS X editions...

Today if you use a Gamma of 2.2 you can make your images look good, but the rest of the OS looks nasty. With 10.6 the OS will look good with a gamma of 2.2.

I suspect our old photos will look good in 10.6 as long as they have color profiles embedded, but going forward photos will look good even on color-damaged Windows clients.

So this is actually a good thing, though it's also an admission of defeat.

gContacts for iPhone: well worth my $2.00

I installed gContacts after reading this Ars review about a Google Contacts view app ...

gContacts brings Google contacts to iPhone

... Offered in the App Store for $1.99, gContacts is more or less a dedicated address book application for the Googlers amongst us. It can view both contacts and suggested contacts for one or more accounts, offering full access to contact information like phone numbers, a contact's photo, e-mail addresses, job information, and any notes you've attached.

gContacts also integrates pretty well with other iPhone applications, allowing you to call contacts and draft an e-mail...

Someday I might get around to reconciling my primary address book with my Gmail contacts, but that day is months away (esp. since Bento, which was my primary strategy for reconciliation, is so feeble).

The big weakness, other than being read-only is that gContacts has no search. Still, it does bring a heck of a lot of email information to my iPhone.

Worth $2. More if they ever add search ...

Update 10/28/08: It's no longer sold. No explanation. I assume Apple would have used their kill switch if it were doing something illegal. I suspect the name turned out to be copyrighted already.

Update 10/29/08: The author responded in Apple Discussions. The take down was trademark related. The app should return with a different logo and possibly a different name.

How gigabit ethernet can replace firewire for system migration

As long as you have two fairly modern machines, you can connect them without a router ..

Creating a small Ethernet network

...Some later Macintosh computers can automatically detect and reconfigure pinouts so that a crossover cable is not required and/or may be used interchangeably with a standard cable.

I'd forgotten about cross-over cables, I wonder what year Macs became auto-configuring.

Incidentally, in my experience Gigabit ethernet connected drive services feel much faster than locally connected USB drives.

No sound with Flash on OS X

My Flash videos were silent. Audio seemed to be working otherwise. I reinstalled Flash, but silence still reigned.

Mac OS X Hints had several old fixes: A possible fix for no sound in Flash on Intel Macs. The most direct fix involved running a Midi utility to correct the sound sampling rate, but my sampling rate was fine.

Turns out there's a wee little sound control in Flash video. It's independent of the system sound. Mine had somehow been set to the lowest value.

Who knew?

My Griffin Clarifi iPhone 3G case review (close-up lens)

Amazon.com: Clarifi W Easydock Iphone 3G: Camera & Photo

I dropped my iPhone four feet to the basement floor the other day. It bounced nicely, but I decided it was time to spring for the Clarifi and its close-up lens.

The good news it that I can now take great close-up pictures of text. Business cards, journal article titles, newspaper headlines -- no problem. I'll be doing this a lot, in combination with Evernote's storage.

The bad news is that it bulks up my iPhone. It feels much heavier and thicker. I'm sure there's a lot of perception in this, but I wonder if I'll end up deciding it's too much bulk for every day use.

The case is black, so my white iPhone is now hard to find in the dark. Kind of defeats the purpose. I put a white Apple sticker on one side, and I'll look for something neon green to add. I hate loosing expensive hardware.

The magnifying lens has an obvious design flaw. There's a mild locking indent in the closed position, but not lock indent in the open position. Sigh. Let's hope this gets fixed in a future version.

I suggest try before you buy. You could try any hard shell case to test the bulk effect, they're all pretty similar. If you are going to get a polycarbonate case, the macro lens makes this the best bet.

I bought the case from TechNGnet, an Amazon-associate I'd never heard of. No-one else had any in stock, and Griffin forces direct buyers to set up a username and password. I hate doing that.

TechNGnet did well, but like most associates they charge a goodly shipping fee. $7 in this case, but it did come very quickly. Even with the shipping fee they were less expensive than Griffin, and I didn't have to setup a un/pw to order.

Update 10/30/08: I'm tolerating the extra bulk of the case, and I haven't had too much trouble with the lens obscuring photos. The macro ability makes the iPhone camera far more useful for me. One unexpected benefit is that I'm not accidentally switching the phone into vibrate mode. The case protects the 'silencer' switch; it now only moves when I want it to.

Update 11/8/08: Pocket crud gets trapped behind the sliding lens -- so you need to spend more time cleaning the lenses than normally. The lens should be kept closed when the case is stowed; this would be easier if it had a much stronger open/close detent.

Update 3/21/2010: I finally pried off the lens and turned this into a regular case. The fatal flaw was the lack of a proper indent. The lens would ruin pictures by sliding into place. The cheap plastic lens was also a dust magnet, and very hard to clean.

iPhone displays only 1500 characters from a calendar note

I get off my plane, confidently open my iPhone Calendar to check where I'm staying and ... the note is truncated!

WTF?!

I retrieved the data from my Gmail calendar (no truncation there!). So what's the deal?

It was surprisingly hard to find out about this iPhone Calendar.app limitation. An Apple discussion forum post by Everett Marshall was the only source I found:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Outlook calendar entries get truncated ...

... To address your specific issue (and I have the same frustration with travel itins being cutoff ...gggggrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!) the ENTIRE note is actually on the phone. You just can't see it.

What you can do is select 'Edit' for the note in question. Then touch the Note to enter Edit mode. The entire note is there.

I guess someone at Apple has decided if 140 characters is good enough for Twitter, 1,500 characters is more than enough for an iPhone user's Note field.

Fix it Apple. This is basic stuff. Oh...And while you're at it why not make phone numbers clickable in the note field....

Sometimes Apple's decisions make me want to bonk my head on the wall. Palm did better than this 10 years ago!

I confirmed that if you try to edit the note text, you get a small window you can scroll through. I don't know what the field limitation really is; Outlook will go to 32,000 characters. I suspect the iPhone limit is less than that.

I suspect the limit applies to all Apple iPhone Notes but I can't confirm that.

I'll add this to my growing list of surprising things about the iPhone (along with more detail on the dry finger problem!).

Office Online: don't bother

I've experimented with Office Online's calendar sharing features:

Publish a calendar on Office Online - Outlook - Microsoft Office Online

... You can use the Microsoft Office Outlook Calendar Sharing Service to publish and share and calendars on Microsoft Office Online with other people. You have control over who can view the calendar and who can remove the calendar at any time....

Don't bother. They've messed up their security certs so badly Firefox and Safari/iPhone fight hard to stay away. It all smells abandoned; so much for Microsoft's Office in the Cloud strategy.

I think this initiative was overtaken by the Outlook Connector for Windows Live.

Update: Nope. Outlook Connector just displays Windows Live calendars in Outlook; they can then be edited in either environment. It doesn't get Outlook calendars to Windows Live.

Office 2007 Diagnostics includes memory and disk check tools

I was trying to decrypt my latest Microsoft Office 2007 XP puzzle – why Outlook was telling me …

"Either there is no default mail client or the current mail client cannot fulfill the message request. Please run Microsoft Office Outlook and set it as the default mail client."

The word on the street is that this is, you guessed it, a MAPI32.DLL version problem.

All together now, sag to your desk and cry out “OS X, Why hast though forsaken me?”

We wander lost in the desert of XP …

Anyway, a google hit mentioned a useful first attack is the new Microsoft Office 2007 diagnostics test:

Diagnose and repair crashing Office programs by using Office Diagnostics - Help and How-to - Microsoft Office Online

… Microsoft Office Diagnostics in the 2007 Microsoft Office system is a series of diagnostic tests that can help you discover why your computer is crashing (closing abnormally). The diagnostic tests can solve some problems directly and might identify ways that you can solve other problems…

Yeah, it’s in my Office install, along with the usual set of neglected goodies. It includes a memory tester and disk diagnostic, so it’s a handy tool for all kinds of problems.

The Setup Diagnostic packages can take a VERY long time to run.

Update: The Setup Diagnostics (formerly Office Repair) took one unspecified "corrective action". The problem is gone. I bet it fixed the MAPI32.DLL problem. It's not obvious how to get more information from the results.