Loopt: don't be fooled by their iPhone location feature

Nobody has ever signed up for the service, but for $15 a month AT&T will provide location tracking for any phone. It's hard to imagine how crummy this must be, which is why you'll only find out about this if you study your phone options.

By contrast MobileMe will track your iPhone using the built in GPS device supplemented by WiFi location sniffing and cell tower triangulation.

If you aren't a slave to Apple you may have a phone that works properly with Latitude, enabling free location tracking.

Which brings us to Loopt ...

Daring Fireball Linked List: Loopt Now Optionally Updates Your Location Continually

... Via a deal with AT&T, Loopt — a location-based social networking service — can now track and update the location of your iPhone even when the Loopt app isn’t running.

... This is a server-to-server system between Loopt and AT&T. ... it’s a $4 per month addition to your AT&T bill.

It looks like AT&T is enabling Loopt to do for $4/month what AT&T wants $15/month for. Seems like a steep discount, but AT&T isn't doing any of the app development or support and nobody was buying AT&T's product anyway.

In addition to costing about $50 a year (MobileMe is about the same price) the Loopt service can't use the phone's GPS -- it's relying on cell tower triangulation. So the accuracy will be good in dense urban areas, poor in areas with fewer towers.

MobileMe seems like the better option, except, bizarrely but typically, Apple doesn't provide any location sharing option with MobileMe.

Sucks.

FCC, please continue to pummel Apple.

iPhone battery: toast in 14 months

As expected, my 3G iPhone battery is toast about 13 months after I bought my 3G iPhone. It doesn't make it through a day of my typical network use with lightweight talking.

I'm a heavy duty user, so I expect most people will get something closer to 15-18 months on the 3G battery.

I'll be buying the 3GS soon and the 3G will go to Emily. I'll get a $100 battery swap before I pass it on.

Update 9/26/09: I lied - Emily got the 3GS.

Macintouch: impressive set of Snow Leopard reviews

IMacintouch reviews more closely resemble my own experience than most other reviews.

Today they've got quite a bit of coverage online, and a plug to buy Snow Leopard through their Amazon affiliate link. Note their very useful compatibility lists (see also)! ...

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about Apple Macintosh, iTunes, iPhone and more...

... Our Snow Leopard Review - all 11,000+ words of it - is now available for your reading pleasure. We cover planning, migration and installation; the new Finder and QuickTime X; additional features and refinements; security and technology (which we published earlier in standalone form); and our conclusions, plus links for additional information...

We also have an updated Snow Leopard FAQ today, covering a variety of issues from AppleTalk printers to 64-bit operations to QuickTime.

Our latest Snow Leopard compatibility reports include notes about printers, Nisus, Cornerstone (a Subversion client), QuickTime websites, AIM, Tivo, astronomy applications, music software, PTH Pasteboard, Garmin, Adobe PDF Printer, 4Sight Fax, Quickbooks, SATA, the GPGMail plug-in, SnapScan, FileMaker and much, much more. [See also our Snow Leopard Compatibility List.]

Other Snow Leopard reader reports notes touch on a Server evaluation program, Up-to-Date program installs, Java, Finder/user interface issues, Flash and permissions repair, Mail problems, Time Machine vs. open files, 64-bit details, haxies, DFS, Samba, Bluetooth, installation experiences, "cu" and locationd, among many other things.

(Note: if you're buying Snow Leopard, we do appreciate purchases through our Amazon Snow Leopard links, because these help us cover the costs of running this free website, at no expense to you, while you simultaneously benefit from Amazon's discount prices.)

I'm a skeptic, but I am getting the impression that 10.6.0 is far less buggy than 10.5.0. Note 10.5.1 is expected within the next 2-3 weeks.

Update: Looks like there are serious issues with FileMaker 10:

... FileMaker Pro 10 has issues such as .fp7 not opening (not such a big deal, open FMP10 first then open the file) but export to Excel doesn't work, and that's more significant as there is no work-around. No update available yet...

I'm still on FileMaker 8, so it wouldn't be surprising if the update breaks that release. Replacing FM would make 10.6 very expensive for me. On the other hand another reader reported FM 5 was working!

iPhone app review -- check Gizmodo's nifty fifty

Every iPhone user should pay a visit to Gizmodo's iPhone apps directory. It's the best way to find apps you've been missing -- because Apple's site is a pretty useless guide to the enormous app world.

Most of them I use or are familiar with. The ones I'd recommend that they omitted include*:

• Byline (client for Google Reader): It had quality issues for a while, I wonder if they lost a very key developer. Lately it's been improving.
• Twitterific: good client, good company
• i41CX+: HP 41C emulator (note there's an $8 version now with fewer features)
• Flashlight (free): The app I have is just called "Light" but I don't think it's sold any longer. It works fine. This is the closest equivalent I saw.
• Dual Level: good for hanging things

When I did this review, incidentally, I was surprised to discover that several apps I bought a while ago have been updated in ways that make them far less useful -- often associated with ways to add revenue (inline ads, add-on fees for things that were formerly available). Yech. (Worst offender: Night Stand)

* URLs are app store links. You get them by right clicking on the App name in the top left of the App description. I've idly wondered how to get these, so I played around a bit.

Snow Leopard: Check support for your printer, scanner and multifunction device

It took me a bit of searching to find thisApple kb article:

Mac OS X v10.6: Printer and scanner software

... Brother MFC-7820N CUPS 1.40 P S F...

So it appears that my four year old workhorse multifunction network printer/scanner/fax machine is still somewhat supported. Note the CUPS drivers won't include Brother's ugly Control Center utility, so the push button "scan to machine" function probably won't work.I can live without that however.

I'm skeptical though. The same list shows the HP 1012 as "CUPS" supported -- and that printer did NOT work with 10.5 (the CUPS drivers exist but don't work).

I'll feel better when either Brother's 7820 site says something about 10.6 drivers, or I find real world reports of success. There's some room for optimism since Brother delivered a (documentation free) firmware update for this device as recently as last month.

Four years is an impressive support lifetime for a modern consumer device. It's one of the reason I buy Brother devices rather than from Canon (horrible device drivers) or HP (horrible drivers, lousy support).

So for now I'll hold off on my new iMac purchase until I get some clarity on support for the 7820N. I don't want to repeat my experience with the 10.5 and the HP 1012.

Update: I found some mixed user reports, but overall not bad. Supposedly scan center still works?!

Blogger's new editor -- incredibly, it still sucks

Blogger has taken their fancy rich text editor out of beta. I'm using it now.

Try this

1. In Settings choose the new editor
2. Open an article written and posted using the old editor.

Yeah, that's right, the paragraph breaks are gone. Everything runs together. Heaven help you if you try to edit, depending on your browser/OS combination the results are going to be a mess of missing and doubled line line feeds.

Google is a frustrating mixture of brilliant innovation and flat out incompetence.

I blame it on Marissa Mayer's peculiar hiring practices. Great software needs a genius or two, but it also needs regular smart people who are driven to get things done right. Google has lots of the former, but way too few of the latter.

Update 9/4/09: Note that if you open some posts, the paragraph spacing may seem fine. Try editing and saving them. It will look fine at first, but the output will have no paragraph breaks. This is just so wrong.

Changing practice: GV message rather than BB email

I've been ruined by the iPhone -- touching my wife's Cr*pBerry Pearl makes my fingers burn. I'm counting down to the end of the contract.

Until she gets her iPhone though, we have to live with the Pearl. Today we came up with a significant improvement.

She used to try to use the BB to send me email messages, but it was a painful process. I gave it some thought, and realized that there was no longer any need to use the BB to message me.

Instead we assigned my Google Voice number to quick dial. She leaves a quick voice message, GV transcribes it, and it shows up in my email. Voice apps love her voice; the transcriptions are nearly perfect. Faster, better, cheaper. We'll probably keep doing it even when she's on an iPhone.

For good measure I setup an Gmail filter rule so my GV transcribed messages now get forwarded to work email as well -- so I get them very quickly.

I love Google Voice. It's saving me about $1000 a year in calls to Canada (money taken from AT&T's pocket) and I'm constantly finding new ways to use it to make our lives better.

No wonder Apple's fear of Google has turned them to the Dark Side.

Google has an app status dashboard

I had no idea this page existed. It was referenced in a blog post on today's Gmail outage: Apps Status Dashboard.

There's an RSS feed as well, I've subscribed to it.

Funny thing -- the dashboard doesn't work with Google Chrome. In IE 8 if you click on an icon you get details on the event. In Chrome they're not clickable.

 

Update 9/2/09: Well, today it works fine in Chrome. I retried after a reader said it worked fine. Probably a random minor Chrome buglet.

Aperture's unsupported image message - a false alarm but a real problem

(see Updates. I've left this post roughly as it unfolded, but this wasn't an Aperture bug.)

The latest incarnation of an old Aperture bug is particularly nasty.

You get a project where only outlines of images can be seen. Click on them and you get a red square with white text saying "unsupported image format'. Restart doesn't fix this, there's no known fix. It's what you get with unsupported RAW images, but it occurs with old RAW images.

Here's one threat on the topic: Apple - Support - Discussions - Unsupported Image Format ...

There's a new release of Aperture, but no news if it has a fix. It's too big for me to download over a lousy hotel connection.

Aperture is a pro project. You can imagine how happy Aperture pro users must be to lose their work this way.

Update: The "unsupported image format" error is a red herring. I experimented with dragging the project out of Aperture, then inspecting the contents (right click, open package). It contains metadata, but no images. The images appear to have been lost by Aperture, leaving only misleading metadata. I suspect there's an image loss bug that can be triggered by moving images between projects contained in different folders.

Update 2: I'm going to run the consistency check described in Apple's Aperture troubleshooting page. I'd moved this Library from another machine, and I think that's an unsupported action. I see now I have 'read only' permissions for the Package -- I'm surprised it works at all. I have changed Package Permissions to read/write. I'm going to save a copy before I do this however.

Update 3: After I changed package permissions I ran the consistency check (Command-opt click on Aperture, hold cmd-opt until get dialog) to fix other permissions. That concluded without a message. I then restarted Aperture and this time ran the database repair. That found the images that had vanished earlier and restored the project with correct values.

So this problem began with my copying a library to a new machine, which is not entirely kosher. Then I failed to check permissions on the library/package. That meant Aperture could do some things, but other things would fail (no permissions). This particularly impacted copies on folders -- so when I tried to copy images into a project in a certain folder only some of the data was copied -- the pictures were orphaned. (This is arguably a bug, Aperture should detect the copy failure.)

The unsupported image message was a red herring.

Google Reader messes up the shared tag feed - includes items shared by those I follow

Something odd his happening with my Google Reader - "MacOSX" shared posts. I'm seeing posts I know I didn't share - including posts I've not yet read!

They are OS X related and they're mostly interesting. So is it due to some corruption with the (increasingly buggy) Byline iPhone app I use? Some mixture of what I share and what those I follow share? Google Reader bugs?

Weird. I'll have to track this ...

Update: I think it's a Google issue. The items showing in the public feed don't match what GR shows in its shared items list.

Update 2: My tag-specific shared item feed obtained from my "manage subscriptions" "folder and tag" list includes not only my shared items, but also items from blogs I follow that have been independently shared by people I follow! This is interesting, but, Google, so very, very wrong. Please don't make me explain why this is wrong, just think about it for a moment.

OS X Preview PDF display - it has limits

Montreal offers a detailed PDF map of the island ..

montreal.com - general tourist info

... See this Google map of the metropolitan area or download the incredibly detailed city map (pdf format) from the Montreal transit site ...

It's a richly detailed 4.4 MB pure vector PDF.

I tried viewing it in OS X Preview.app. Not such a good idea. Preview pegged my MacBook at 98% CPU and a GB or so of memory.

This is the first time OS X Preview has disappointed me. I hadn't realized it was such a light duty application. I'm contemplating installing Adobe's product, something I try very hard to avoid given Adobe's astounding record of installer dysfunction.

Using Google Voice when traveling internationally

When we visit the old country (Canada) I put my AT&T iPhone in airport mode. So no cell services and no data services. It will work in Canada, but even the voice charges are prohibitive.

So what do I do about for people calling my cell phone while I'm away? How should people from work get in touch with me?

Enter Google Voice.

I forwarded my iPhone number to my local Google Voice number (it's in iPhone settings under phone). In Google Voice turn off forwarding to the iPhone [1] and all other numbers.

Now calls to my mobile to go my GV voice mail. All messages are transcribed, and an email is sent to my Gmail account with the transcription and a link to the audio (which plays, interestingly, in the iPhone's video player -- weird, but it works).

So when I travel voice messages will reach me whenever my iPhone has WiFi services, which is usually a few times a day. Not bad.

When I cross into the US I just turn on the iPhone and turn off forwarding.

Now to see what happens if I try to may a GV call from Canada (I think it won't let me do this, but I'll give it a try).

[1] If you forget to do this, you can set up an infinite loop. GV forwards to the phone which forwards to GV. Ok, so I forgot. Turns out the phone rings for a while but GV eventually goes to voice mail (because you're not picking up the forwarding). If you turn off forwarding to the phone GV picks up incoming calls immediately.

Update 8/26/2013: A more sophisticated version of this.

iPhone notifications – two services that create notifications for email

In the past week or so I’ve come across two different services that create iPhone notifications upon email receipt. One here:

macosxhints.com - Push any email to the iPhone via third-party app

There have been several hints in the past, including these two of mine, with regards to using push email on the iPhone, or using MobileMe with custom reply-to entries, etc. A new application called PushMail ($5; App Store link) seems to me to be the ideal way of using push email (or any mail) on the iPhone…

… Essentially, PushMail gives you your own new email address, something like a@dopushmail.com. Everything that gets sent to that address has a push notification displayed on your phone. The notification displays the sender, the subject, and as much of the email as can fit in a notification. So, you can configure your regular email addresses to all forward a copy of your email to that new address, and you will have your email pushed to you.

This is an option in the settings for most webmail email services such as Gmail, or you can configure procmail to forward a copy, if you've got control of your email server. ..

..You can to the same for free using text free lite - lookup in appstore textfree, they will give you a push enabled smth@textfree.us address, then just forward to that address…

and another:

TUAW: Apple approved Gmail app for iPhone. Has hell frozen over?

TechCrunch is reporting today that an iPhone App that utilizes the Apple Push Notification system to let you know you have new Gmail is about to hit the app store. The app, called GPush, is developed by Tiverias Apps, and gives Gmail users an instant notification that new mail has arrived. iPhone users will still have to read their mail, either in a browser or the Apple Mail client, but the notifications will be essentially instant.

GPush will be US$0.99 for a week, then will be sold for $1.99 after.

The Tiverias sight has more on GPush including an FAQ. It does work with Google Apps.

That means I could create an email account on one of our family Google Apps domains just for push email. Then I could use that whenever I have something I want to be notified of, like an email notification related to a Google Calendar event. Using an account like this has a very important advantage – the way GPush works their server has to hold your account un/pw:

Should I be concerned about providing my password to GPush?

When we created the app, we committed first and foremost to security. We are using multiple levels of encryption including SSL and obfuscation. We had a penetration testing team run their analysis on the server and passed their certification.

Briefly, HELL YES you should be concerned. My Gmail credentials are among the most valuable “things” I own. Steal my car please – at least that’s insured! (It’s also very crummy.) I’m not giving the keys to the empire to any vendor. A purpose build Google Apps account though – that I could do.

I’ll provide an update on how well this works.

We can now tweet from Google Reader

When you click the Twitter link Google Reader opens Twitter with a URL shortened link to the post ..

A flurry of features for feed readers

We've made it easier to share posts you like to Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, and more, with our new 'Send to' feature...

Just head over to the settings page, and enable the services you want to use.... you can create your own 'Send to' link with a URL template...

To share an item on one of your sites, simply click the 'Send to' button and choose your service. If you're into keyboard shortcuts, 'shift-t' will do the same.

It's a lesser version of what I wanted Byline to do. It's interesting, but, darn it, they got it wrong! I want a single button that would let me write a comment for sharing in Google Reader, and have that comment (length limited) go to Twitter. Also there's no option to send a post to multiple sites at the same time.

You can also send to Blogger, but it sends the entire page to the editor. I don't know if I'll find it very useful for blogging.

Overall, it's a step in the right direction, but only a smallish step.

Update 4/25/10: This is still not a part of the mobile reader UI. I think it's a dead end.

Verizon's WiFi service doesn't support OS X

This surprised me ...

Macintouch - Mac Marginalization:

... the rumor is that Verizon intends to support Mac users on its WiFi service in October, about 4 months after making the service available to Windows users. Such a delay could have been avoided by simply using platform agnostic user-verification methods....

Verizon chose to use some proprietary logon app?! That's such a peculiar choice it casts doubt on all of Verizon's technical judgment.