Fantastic list of iPhone tips - mostly keyboard

Referral via Daring Fireball - tap tap tap ~ 10 useful iPhone tips & tricks.

There were two things on the list I didn't know about, including how to create 'curly braces' for quotes. I've also reset my phone rather than turn it off when apps slow down, but recovery from off is faster so I might try that.

There are many things about the iPhone that frustrate and worry me, but the virtual keyboard is a work of genius and beauty.

Google's SMS integration - assigning a 406 area code phone number to your Gmail ID

Google has added a (phone) SMS gateway to their Instant Messaging and Video (Chat) Conferencing Gmail extensions.

This would be more interesting if we didn't pay 40 cents every time I sent Emily a text message.

As it is, the most curious part is how they enable Gmail to receive SMS messages ...

Official Gmail Blog: Really new in Labs this time: SMS Text Messaging for chat

... On the receiving end, when you get a text message from Gmail on your phone, it will come from a number in the 406 area code... You can reply to this text on your phone just like you'd reply to any other text. The reply gets routed back to our Gmail servers and shows up in your friend's Gmail chat window...

... messages will come from a [unique] 406 number so you can reply to any message and it will get back to the right person. Messages from the same person will always come from the same number, so you can even bookmark it in your phone....

My interpretation of this cryptic announcement is that the first time you use Gmail to send an SMS message, your Gmail identifier is assigned a unique 406 phone number. From that moment on SMS to that number go to Gmail.

Makes me wonder if there's a GrandCentral angle to all this.

It's not clear whether other phones, with whom you've never communicated, can use that unique number to send Gmail an SMS.

From my perspective this is backwards. I want Google instant messaging on my iPhone, I don't want to bother with SMS at all.

Update: Chris, in comments, notes that 406 is Montana's area code (I also had a 404 typo I've corrected). They chose it to get lots of free numbers.

Apple's iChat (videoconferencing) problem

I was looking at using iChat for some business videoconferencing. That's when I realized what a mess OS X iChat is. Great client software, but a mess on the back end.

iChat depends on  a network service to establish a connection. I thought that could be either MobileMe ($$) or AOL's AIM service.

I have an old AIM account, so I took a look at them today. They're in disastrous shape. I ran into authentication issues, services that were "down", security errors (bad certificate chain) when attempting to create an account in IE 7, etc.

Wow. That makes iChat much less useful. With AOL/AIM dying in the Dacopalypse I don't want to expose anyone to them, but MobileMe isn't an option.

Ben enough, but it gets worse. MobileMe has an AIM depency too.

MobileMe: About expired accounts and iChat

... When you create a MobileMe account, Apple creates an AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account for you that uses your MobileMe member name and password. Your MobileMe account and its entry on the AIM service are linked, so that administrative actions, such as password modifications, are carried over from MobileMe to AIM.

As long as your MobileMe account is active, the associated AIM account will also be active for your use with iChat...

So is MobileMe really using AIM's infrastructure? Brrrr. That's ominous.

At least Intel Macs can use Google Video Chat, and I think Oovoo and Skype will work on any OS X machine.

Apple needs to extricate itself from it's AIM dependency -- yesterday.

Google Tasks show up -- in Gmail?!

I thought Google might add Tasks to Calendar -- but instead they show up as a minimalist Gmail add-on.

No API, no import/export, no calendar integration and, obviously, no synchronization with Appigo's Todo.app.

Reminds me of the pointless task feature Apple added to Mail.app in OS X 10.5 (Apple completely screwed that feature).

Yawn.

Google, my offer stands.

My review: LaCie 1 TB USB 2.0 External Drive 201304U

My 200 MB Venus enclosed backup drives needed a size boost. They're a 2-3 years old anyway, that's getting geriatric for today's short-lived consumer drives.

I like the Venus enclosures, but the fans do tend to die, or just get noisy. I wanted a fanless design since they seem to work with today's cooler drives. I also wanted to get the drive and enclosure together to cut down on the hassle factor.

The LaCie USB enclosure was on sale at Amazon (Black Friday), so that's what I got. Here's my Amazon review ...

Amazon.com: LaCie Hard Disk 1 TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive, Design by Neil Poulton 301304U: Electronics

I bought two of these for my rotating backups at a sale price of $120.

I wasn't impressed by the case, but I was impressed by the 2 year limited warranty. La Cie has been around for a while, so this long a warranty suggests they expect the drive to last. That's all I care about. For the purposes of storage attached to my backup server performance is irrelevant.

Some quick observations:

1. You could cut an artery on the case. Really, it's a bit silly even without LED glow. I prefer a sturdier case with softer edges.

2. Vents are in back and the base, so you can stack on atop another. I would still recommend not stacking though, these things should stay cool.

3. I believe it's fanless.

4. On XP SP 2 it doesn't spin down. I don't know if it would spin down on a Mac. Too bad, spin down preserves life in these cases.

5. Comes with a standard 2A 12V compact power supply with a modest brick in mid-cord. So easy to plug in. Completely generic brand, not La Cie branded. The power cords is not excessively long, just right for me.

6. The attached USB cable is very short. I have lots of cables, so I was happy to get a new one that's short. I used another cable with this.

7. When you plug it in you have the option of formatting for OS X or XP. I tested both. With OS X it seems to do a full formatting, but with XP it formatted far too quickly. It must have been preformatted. Unfortunately, with XP I ran into some odd behavior with delayed write errors. Could have been chance, but I did a proper full XP format (takes hours) and the drive then behaved properly. I don't like those funny formats, I like to format myself and look for errors. I then follow the formatting with a disk test.

8. Mine came with a Samsung HD103UJ internally, but I suspect that varies.

They seem fine, I'll update this post if I run into problems. I hope to get a few years out of them. I do have to figure out what to do with the old 200-300MB drives. The 300 MB will replace a 200MB drive sitting in a firewire enclosure, but then I'll have to figure out what to do with the others. Maybe I can donate one to a friend who doesn't do backups yet ...

Update 5/6/09: I did run into problems. I discovered I couldn't start the system with the USB drive on. I have to restart with the drive off, then leave it off until startup is done. I don't think this was a LaCie problem, I suspect other causes.

Update 2/2/10: You can't open the #$!$!$ enclosure. Ok, so you can -- if you use credit cards to slightly separate the front, left, and right sides from their tabs then pull out the drive using string that's been threaded through the drive vents. Who the **** would ever make a sell a drive enclosure that couldn't be opened. LaCie, you are on my black list.

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Retrospect restore failing, network flaky – a hardware problem?

Use Reader's subscription trends to eliminate dead blogs

By chance I discovered today that Google Reader has an excellent feature for detecting and eliminating dead subscriptions.

It's not a new feature, so rather than add to the blog clutter with a screen shot I'll direct to a nice post with images ...

Using Trends In Google Reader To Manage RSS Overload

... The Subscription Trends can be very useful because it has a list of Inactive feeds where it shows rss feeds which haven’t been updated since months. Hence you just need to start clicking on the delete or trash button and start unsubscribing from those inactive feeds which are just a burden in your reading list...

I found a bunch that have been inactive for 2 years. Some people, like Tim Berners-Lee only publish every 6-18 months, but these don't fall into that category.

Great feature.

Pixelpipe, Picasa and my Google password

I've used PictureSync for years to upload images from iPhoto SmugMug. Lately I've used a specific iPhoto plug-in for Picasa and SmugMug uploads, but the app did well when I needed it.

Now the author has launched a web service that performs similar functions: Pixelpipe. The beauty of the service is that he can create single high quality uploader for OS X or iPhoto or Windows, and then the middleware will route the image to one or more services.

The good news, at least with regard to Picasa, is that you don't have to provide Pixelpipe with your Picasa/Google password. That would be unthinkable -- I have far too much wrapped up in my Google password to hand it over to a 3rd party. [Update: see comments.]

Google has a good API for this sort of thing. If you're authenticated with Google, then Pixelpipe requests access and Google asks if you want to grant it. Pixelpipe never gets your Google info.

I'm sure not all the services work that way, but Google is the one I care about. My SmugMug un/pw is only for photos, but my Google un/pw is a big chunk of my digital identity.

Update 11/9/08: Signing up for SmugMug does require a un/pw, but that's a much smaller risk than handing over my Google credentials. I commenter tells us that SmugMug will also move to the "OAuth" standard, so even that won't be necessary. I recommend, however, that when you share a password like this you use either a unique password or, more practically, the password you use for all the stuff you don't really care about.

In the crash of '08 a big advantage of Pixelpipe is you can spread your risks. I pay for storage at both Picasa and SmugMug -- and I have lots of it. Might as well replicate anything I send to SmugMug at Picasa.

Apple blocking email to some domains

I've had a Spamcop address for years.

Apple has been silently deleting email sent to Spamcop.net accounts, possibly it's a bug, possibly for fear that bot-captured MobileMe generated spam will add MobileMe to a blacklist ...

macosxhints.com - A caution on MobileMe outbound email domain filtering

This is a hint regarding a serious problem for MobileMe users: Outgoing mail via smtp.me.com may not actually be sent if it is sent to certain domains. If a message is caught in this domain filter, it is silently dropped without notification to the user. None of the recipients of the message will receive it, even if they are not in the filtered domain. This problem occurs with mail sent through Apple's Mail app, on the iPhone or on Mac computers. It does not happen when sending via the MobileMe webmail interface. So far, only spamcop.net has been identified as a domain filtered by smtp.me.com, but there may be others.

This problem is testable and repeatable as of this writing; you can test it yourself as follows. On a Mac or iPhone, use Mail to create a new message using your MobileMe account. In the To field, put support@spamcop.net, in the CC field, enter a valid personal email address, and in the Subject field, put test, then send the message. You will not receive the cc message, and you will not receive an acknowledgment from spamcop.net. Try sending from a non MobileMe account; you will receive both very quickly.

More discussion of the problem can be found in this thread on Apple's discussions site. This has been happening for months, apparently since the transition from mac.com. The problem has been reported to Apple, and apparently some in frontline support are aware of it, but others are not. In the meantime, all MobileMe users should be aware that their outgoing mail is apparently filtered by domain. If you're sending to a spamcop.net address, be aware that the mail will not be sent to any recipient, nor will you be notified of the problem.

It's the silent policy that's unforgivable. If this is policy rather than bug then Apple has jumped the shark.

So that brother who's not speaking to you any more? Maybe it's because you didn't respond to the desperate email he sent from his MobileMe account a month ago, the one Apple silently deleted.

Excellent single page Excel keyboard shortcut reference

Many I didn't know but should use: Free Microsoft Excel Cheat Sheet to Download and Print.

Camino - the best of Safari and Firefox

I've been using Camino on our ancient G3 iBook for ages. Amazingly, it runs pretty well!

More recently, I gave up on using Firefox 3 on a G5. I think it really expects a dual core CPU; it's dog slow on a single core machine. I use it on my MacBook, but on my G5 iMac I use Camino.

There are some page issues -- especially with Google's more obscure applications (Page Creator). Some sites serve up 2nd rate pages because they don't recognize the browser; in most cases Camino would do fine with their Firefox stuff.

Mostly, though it's been great. Since it's a Cocoa app you get OS X services, classy looks, use of the system dictionary, use of the Keychain etc.

Now we have Camino 1.6 with some great features. Among them are excellent AppleScript support and feed detection (but, happily, not a feed reader) that works with your preferred reader.

There's only one little glitch with 1.6. Sometimes Camino windows get "stuck" to a (Spaces) Space. I can't easily move them to new "Spaces" the way I do my Firefox windows. It's inconsistent, but annoying. Since it's erratic I assume it's a bug, not a misguided feature. Mostly I can move the windows.

I'm sure it will be fixed soon.

Camino is a great piece of open source software.

Update: It's supposed to work with Google Reader, but danged if I can make it work using the Feed Reader preferences setting! There's zero documentation other than the mention of the feature, and I found nothing in my web searches.

Update 12/4/08: See comments for a recommendation about optimized builds and this terrific site. I'm still trying to figure out how we're supposed to be able to subscribe to a feed using Google Reader!

Share anything in your Google Reader Share feed

I'm addicted to Google Reader on my desktop and my iPhone. I love the ability to share posts and add quick comments; I wish more people advertised their shared posts (here's mine: web version and feed version).

GR is really a work of genius. There are so many fine touches, like navigating a feed list by spacebar, great keyboard shortcuts, search options, etc. The only thing I miss is Yahoo! Pipes compatibility.

I've become so accustomed now using GR's shared items option that I resent being unable to comment on plain-old 20th century web pages.

I dimly remembered there was a way around that problem. Sure enough ...

Official Google Reader Blog: Share anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

... Share anything with a bookmarklet - Just drag this link from the Notes page up to your browser's bookmark bar and click, click, click your way to easy, no-subscription sharing in Reader. You can share any content from any web page, even if the site doesn't have a feed. For even more control over what gets shared, select some text from the page before clicking the 'Note in Reader' bookmarklet and your selection will appear as the item's body. There's also a space for you to add an editorial note when you need to let your friends know why you are sharing something. You can always uncheck 'Add to shared items' if you want to add something to Reader without also adding it to your shared items...

I just tried it. If you look at my shared pages web view on 12/3/08 you'll find an excerpt from a NYT article on a peculiar health insurance initiative.

It's a great middle-path between simply reading and blogging. Now if Google would only add a "starred item" option ...

EMC Retrospect's fake Mozy online backup integration

A recent update to my Retrospect Professional for Windows [1] put a Mozy link on my Retrospect left sided navigation bar.

Well that seemed interesting. I followed the link to setup a free Mozy account. Mozy would be interesting if I could treat it like any other Retrospect backup set. A Google search turned up a plausible explanation ...

EMC’s Iomega and Mozy Divisions Offer Combined Desktop and Cloud-Based Backup | Xconomy

The three units are Walnut Creek, CA-based Dantz Development Corporation (acquired by EMC in 2004), makers of Retrospect backup software for Windows and Macintosh computers; Utah-based Mozy (acquired last September), which offers online backup services for consumers and businesses; and San Diego-based Iomega (acquired in April), which makes external hard drives. The organizations said that starting this summer, new portable and desktop hard drives from Iomega will come with instructions on how to download a free version of Retrospect Express that also helps buyers sign up for the free or premium versions of Mozy’s online service

I sign up for the free 2GB account. Of courses I'd never buy without testing.

Ok, now to fire up Retrospect Pro and ...

And Mozy does not show up in my Backup Set options. It doesn't appear in the Help file. There's a page on Retrospect's site but, you know, it isn't very precise about how the two "work together" ...

No. It can't be. I've been conned! It's just a stupid hyperlink! There's really no integration. Argghhhhh.

And I was just starting to think kindly about Retrospect. It's much less buggy than it was two years ago. Still way too complex for non-geeks, but reliable is good.

That'll teach me to think kind thoughts of software vendors! EMC just ripped off 20 minutes of my too-short time on earth.

How bloody annoying.

[1] It mostly backups my Macs, but it works so I keep it on my ancient XP box.

Google Apps calendars - need to display current time-zone in the UI

A few weeks ago I noticed issues with Google Calendar synchronization related to how Google Mobile Apps Calendar vs. Google Apps Calendar handled time zone assignment.

Around that time Google changed their Calendar App behavior to display events in the user-specified settings time zone (not, I think, by IP address location assignment).

The problem is, they don't display the time zone information in the user interface. The only place to set time-zone is in the Settings, and then you have to remember to change it back as you travel.

They need to change their display from

Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2008

to

Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2008 Central Time

where a click on "central time" would allow time zone to be changed. When appointment details are shown the applicable time zone should be included.

It's disturbing that Google implemented the time zone behavior changes without making these very obvious UI changes.

Using SiteSucker to backup my Blogger blogs - and my extended memory

For several years I've used Teleport Pro to create local searchable and browsable copies of my Blogger blogs.

That way, if Google falls to the The Dapocalypse I'll at least have my own copy of my extended cybernetic memory. More recently Google has added the ability to export one's blog in a google-readable format, so I do that as well.

Recently Teleport Pro ran out of gas. I hit a 65K limit for its URL database. TP has great support, and the author referred me to a $165 upgrade to their professional web spider. I've been very pleased with TPP, so if I weren't (with occasional regrets) primarily an OS X shop these days I'd pay for the upgrade.

Instead I decided to re-evaluate an OS X spider I'd tested years ago: SiteSucker for OS X. It's donationware (Paypal, sigh) and a quick download with no nasty system side-effects. I'd used it years ago, but even back then my much smaller blogs broke it. I had to set it aside.

I used it to download the site that broke Teleport Pro. It's not nearly as fast as TP Pro, and it wasn't able to handle blogger's tag links (I need to contact the author) but, overnight, it completed the download of over 15,000 separate files related to about 4,000 posts occupying 560MB of disk space (clearly the actual text is the least of the content). The download doesn't include any images, they're included by reference since I constrained the spider to my blogger path.

The first time I did the download I forgot to localize my links, so I couldn't navigate internally. The localization seems to work for some links, but not, as mentioned earlier, for the tag links.

I suspect Teleport Pro is a more robust solution -- but it's XP only and it can no longer handle my blog. Site Sucker looks very promising. I'm going to try tuning it and corresponding with the author about the tag links. If it passes my further tests I'll add configuration notes to this post and I'll be making a donation (much as I dislike using PayPal!).

Entourage perspective on OS X Sync Services

Ths article by a Program Manager in Microsoft's Mac Business Unit gave me some new insights into OS X sync services. It illustrates how very hard it is to do synchronization of any sort between disparate products. Perfection is impossible, the best vendors can do is reduce the outrage rate.

Synchronization is Hell.

Andy Ruff includes a discrete link to a section of Apple's developer documentation on the Sync Services Truth Database. To the bloodied sync veteran every word in these paragraphs could be written in blood (Entourage, according to Andy Ruff, defined a schema for Notes since Apple didn't have one. I find Apple's approach to schema definitions interesting.) ...

... The truth database contains an aggregate of all the client’s records. Consequently, the truth database uses a canonical schema that is an aggregate of all the schemas used by all the clients.

A sync schema is based on an entity-relationship model similar to that used by other Cocoa technologies. Read Cocoa Design Patterns in Cocoa Fundamentals Guide to learn more about entity-relationship models and terms such as entity, property, attribute, relationship, to-one, and to-many.

You can use one of the existing sync schemas—for example, for contacts, calendars, and bookmarks— extend one of these schemas or create your own. If you extend a schema or create your own, then you need to create an entity model for your custom objects and save it in a schema format that Sync Services understands.

This format, called sync schema, is a property list that specifies details about the entities in your model. For entities, you might specify the name of the entity and names of its attributes and relationships (collectively referred to as its properties). For attributes, you might specify the name of the attribute and its data type. For relationships, you might specify the name, destination entity name, cardinality, and delete rule. See “Creating a Sync Schema” for a complete description of the sync schema property list.

A sync schema defines a template for records stored in a database whose records are of a particular type (records belong to an entity) and may have relationships to other records. Records stored in the truth database are dictionary objects with key-value pairs, one for each property defined in the entity. Each record dictionary also has an entity name property and an associated unique record identifier. The record identifier is not stored with the record but is instead used by the client and sync engine when referring to a record. The truth database can also store custom fields in a record that are not defined in the schema. For example, these fields can be used to store client information added by a device.

The truth database doesn’t store arbitrary key-value coding-compliant objects—it stores record dictionaries. Therefore, unless all your entities are dictionaries, you typically transform records back and forth between the sync engine’s record representation and your client’s object representation. However, when fast syncing, you can apply changes only to properties—you don’t need to push and pull entire records when only a few property values changed.

Because the truth database is an aggregate of all the client schemas, it can contain a lot of information that your application doesn’t care about. Your client can filter the records that it pushes and pulls in several different ways...

The more I suffer with Apple's approach to Calendars, Tasks (phhhtt!) and Notes/Memos the more I'm interested in Entourage. The problem is there's no way for a 3rd party to sync directly with the iPhone Calendar. Microsoft would have to create a complete Entourage-friendly iPhone PIM suite, and I rather doubt they're going to do that.

Update: Macintouch has a great, meaning despair-filled, thread on Entourage to iPhone synchronization. Synchronizing disparate data models is not a soluble problem. Even a deity-equivalent AI can't perfectly reconcile disparate data models.