Configuring Google Voice as mobile phone voice mail

Google Voice is a versatile service. I save about $80 a month, for example, by using my GV to call Canada from my US based mobile phone.

GV is also commonly used as a primary phone number router. Anyone calling that number is redirected to one or more phones you specify. You can program how the routing works.

Lastly, GV can be used as an alternate voice mail service. That's how I use it on my son's phone. I configured his phone to forward unanswered calls to Google Voice instead of phone voice mail. If he doesn't pick up the call is forwarded to GV, which answers after one ring (it doesn't, for example, create a loop by forwarding back to the mobile). [SEE UPDATE]

I added this GV number to our AT&T Family "A List", so (assuming AT&T actually allows a GV number!) there are no minutes associated with forwarding to this number (though forwarding will use up minutes on the plan, so it is charged like standard voice mail).

There are many ways to play with a GV setup, I'm sure I'll tweak this configuration further.

Update: There's always a catch. It occurred to me that, as far as GV "knows", the call is coming from a validated mobile phone that GV forwards too. The default GV behavior is that validated phones, when calling in, go direct to the voice mail menu! So all callers would go directly to voice mail control. I had to use the Google Voice advanced options to turn off the 'go to voice mail' feature and instead require an asterisk and PIN to get to the admin menu. When using GV in this mode it's probably safer and simpler to remove forwarding/routing phones.

Tasks from Palm to iPhone via Toodledo

I don't think this was available when I moved my PalmOS tasks to my iPhone.

Toodledo will import PalmOS Task archives: Toodledo : Palm PDA Import/Export.

So you can import your tasks to Toodledo, then sync them to your iPhone using either the Toodledo iPhone app or Appigo's Todo.app.

I've used Toodledo and Appigo Todo.app for over a year. Neither is perfect, but they're both a solid B+. I really don't know a better solution.

PS. How could they be better? Well, if Appigo doesn't make any more bone-headed changes to the Todo.app (they've mercifully reversed some past mistakes), and if Toodledo stopped deleting tasks > 1 yo and changed quick search to scan all task fields, then they'd be a solid A.

Update: Incidentally, I'm experimenting with the RSS feed view of my tasks in Google Reader. I think I'll figure out a good use for this feature.

iPhone bug: not updating last played or playlist count for podcasts

When you listen to a podcast on an iPhone (OS 3.1) the Play Count and Last Played values are not being updated.

I think these fields are being updated for non-podcast material. (Some users report unpredictable updating.)

This bug is messing up my Smart playlists.

Unfortunately it's not new. I can find reports on it in iPhone OS 2.

Update 9/11/2010: The bug persists into iOS 4.1 and iTunes 10.

Blogger is broken - the undocumented 5000 post limit

Blogger has an undocumented 5,000 post limit. At least one of my blogs is well past that limit. Using the blogger dashboard I am unable to search for, view, or edit about 400 posts written in 2003 and 2004.

The bug was recognized in July 22nd 2009. At that time Google was "working on a fix".

It's almost October, so they may not be working terribly hard.

I came across this bug when I went searching for an old post on my 3G iPod -- and discovered it was AWOL.

Fear the cloud.

Update: It's not fixed in draft.blogger.com either. The dashboard does display the correct post count of 5,336. However, if you have the 'show edit' feature enabled and you're authenticated, you can browse to older posts and edit them by clicking the 'pencil' icon.

Update 9/25/09: Here's a July article from Google's official "known issues" feed.

Update 12/22/09: Still broken. Google broke radio silence to say they plan to fix this "early next year". I assume this means it will be fixed around June 30, 2010 -- about one year after Google broke the archives. A one year turnaround is pretty impressive - in a bad way.

Update 7/30/10: It's fixed! They did that very quietly.

Update 9/2014: No, it's not fixed.

Old firewire iPod still working with iTunes 9.01

Since Apple's been tweaking iTunes to block the (USB) Palm Pre, I wondered if my old firewire iPod would be collateral damage.

I wasn't too worried, it's unlikely that Apple will have to block a firewire fraud, nobody's going to build a device with that connection.

Happily my @2003 30GB "3rd generation" iPod (dock connector) still works with iTunes 9.01 and it's still much faster to sync than any other iPod.

The old firewire iPod is an antique by now, but it's still a pleasure to hold and use. It even has the original battery, for which at one point I received a $50 settlement check (battery life is about ten minutes, so it's always in the cradle). I'm surprised it's still running -- it was the 3rd of its kind after two others were replaced under warrantee -- AND the USB-sync never worked (it was perhaps first iPod to incorporate USB sync, even though it wouldn't charge by USB. My model was/is defective.)

How to unlock the BlackBerry Pearl (AT&T)

This Saturday Emily's AT&T BlackBerry Pearl contract hits the 1y 9m mark. That means she's eligible for a fully subsidized iPhone [1]. Considering how much we've wasted on the Pearl's underused $30/month data plan this iPhone will be a bargain.

The first step in a phone switch is to unlock the old phone. You may be able to do this after you've switched to the new phone, but it's a pain. Do the unlocking before the switch, your phone will still work normally.

Once unlocked a GSM phone can be used on other GSM networks, such as T-Mobile. If you have a foreign Pay-Go SIM you can use the phone abroad. The unlocked phone will also work on the original AT&T network. (Note that in practice some phones are very network specific, and you'll find some quirks or missing functions on a foreign network.)

I've written previously about (authorized) Nokia unlocking, happily the BlackBerry unlock procedure is simpler.

Here's the procedure for network (AT&T) authorized BlackBerry Pearl unlocking. (See How to unlock the BlackBerry Pearl and enter Blackberry Unlock Codes for unauthorized unlock procedures.)

1. Call 611 (AT&T support) from the BB Pearl to request an unlock code. If you're nearing th end of a contract and say you're getting a new phone/contract this is routine. It takes about 10 minutes to walk through the procedure and get an unlock code. You may be asked for the PIN number of your AT&T account.
2. Go to Settings (folder with gears) then options (wrench) then Advanced Options.
3. Select SIM card. (shows phone number and the unique phone ID)
4. Hold down alt key, type MEPD (nothing displays)
5. Hold down alt key, type MEP2 (nothing displays)
6. You will then see a prompt allowing entry of the unlock code.
7. Enter the long unlock code.
8. Hit the enter key. If you take a while to do this the unlock code will clear and you have to reenter it.
9. A "code accepted" message will flash and the SIM screen will show "Security disabled"

Now you're ready for the phone switch. When you make the switch you can also ask the AT&T store to flash an upgrade to the latest version of the phone ROM.

[1] Emily thinks I'm going to take the GS and give her my 18 mo old 3G. Don't tell her she's getting the new one, it's a surprise.

Picasa 3.5 for Mac with iPhoto integration

With release 3.5 the free Google Picasa photo manager and editor app is now cross-platform (Intel only on Mac):

Google Photos Blog: Announcing Picasa 3.5, now with name tags, better geotagging and more

... we launched Picasa for Mac as a beta Labs product 9 months ago. Now that Picasa for Mac has almost all the same features as the PC version, we've decided it's time to remove the beta label. Remember that Picasa for Mac is designed to 'play nice' with iPhoto -- Picasa takes a special read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed, so your iPhoto library isn't ever affected when you use Picasa.

The appeal of Picasa 3.5 for iPhoto users is the tight integration with Picasa web albums, esp. with "Faces" and geotagging.

What’s wrong with iPhone OS 3.1? I think it’s the RAM.

With OS 3 I had to restart my iPhone every 2-3 weeks. If I didn’t it got painfully slow and problematic apps like Byline would crash.

With OS 3.1 and the same apps I need to restart every 3 days – or spend minutes between screen updates.

I’m not the only one to have trouble with 3.1 ..

iPhone 3.1 problems flood our tip box

In the last week, we have had a constant barrage of iPhone issues break through the lines... so much so that we feel it is our duty to inform the two of you who haven't updated what you could experience by updating to version 3.1 of the iPhone OS. This is no small problem, as you can read from the discussions on Apple's website here, here, here, and here.

The first two links are where we're getting the majority of our tips -- random shutdowns and very poor battery life. The second two, bricked phones and general slowness are still worth a mention -- even prompting our own Erica Sadun to do a live walk-through for debrickifying iPhones…

In my case it’s most likely that the phone is running out of working memory (RAM), probably due to memory leaks (applications that grab working memory and don’t release it). This is likely much less of a problem for 3GS owners, they have twice the RAM of earlier models …

… the actual specs are fairly widely known…

CPU (central processing unit):

original iPhone: ARM 11, 412 MHz
iPhone 3G: ARM 11, 412 MHz
iPhone 3GS: ARM Cortex, 600 MHz

GPU (graphics processing unit):

original iPhone: PowerVR MBX Lite
iPhone 3G: PowerVR MBX Lite
iPhone 3GS: PowerVR SGX

RAM (random access memory):

original iPhone: 128 MB
iPhone 3G: 128 MB
iPhone 3GS: 256 MB

At a glance, you’ll notice that the RAM in the 3GS doubled from past iPhone models. Twice the amount of RAM than you’ve had is never a bad thing, but the reality here is far more noteworthy… The older iPhone models have been often considered underpowered when it comes to RAM, so even though the RAM amount is technically doubled, in actual use, you’ll often be working with 4x to 10x the amount of free RAM. And that’s one major aspect that’s contributing to the overall speedier feel of the 3GS…

Anyone remember the original Mac? It shipped with two little memory to run the OS. The original iPhone situation wasn’t quite as bad, but it was close. It’s likely that the 3.1 update uses more RAM for the OS than the 3.0 release, and the change has moved 3G and original iPhone users into the red zone.

With older phones all-but-inevitable memory leaks are exhausting available RAM in a day or two of heavy use, bringing the phones to a grinding halt. The problem will only be exacerbated by newer apps that expect more available RAM.

The cruel reality is that older iPhones are coming to the end of the line. I don’t blame Apple for that – but I do blame them for releasing OS 3.1 onto phones that can’t handle it. If Apple can reduce OS memory leaks and RAM footprint they’ll redeem themselves (a bit), but clearly future OS releases won’t run on older iPhones.

Apple will either need to move to the two version model they follow on desktop machines (currently 10.5 and 10.6 are both supported, I think there may even be some 10.4 updating going on) or they’ll have to launch some kind of trade-up program for older phones.

Coming from me this is just speculation, but I’m going to install Memory Status and update my results here.

Update: Memory Status was last updated in Dec 2008, so it’s not a good bet for OS 3. I bought iSystemInfo for $1. Shortly after a restart it reports 23MB free (23/128 or 18% free). After using Byline and exiting I have 21MB free.

Update 2: When I make a phone call there's about 3-4MB free during the call. Also, it turns out I didn't need to buy iSystemInfo. I already own "AppBox Pro", a "swiss army knife" product that's subsuming free standing apps like a "Clinometer (level)", Flashlight, Ruler, System Info, Battery Life, Currency Converter, etc. AppBox Pro is giving me approximately the same results as iSystemInfo. Incidentally, AppBox Pro has the ugliest icons ever seen on an iPhone. It reminds me of my old Palm.

Update 9/17/09: The Register on "buggiest update yet". I suspect the problems mostly hit 3G users.

iTunes 9 home sharing is mediocre

There's a longstanding issue with iTunes, one that I've been writing about since at least 2005.

Suppose you have have 3 family members with iPhones. Do they all sync to one user account? Our do they each sync to their own account?

If the former everyone shares music and apps (up to five devices), but they also share playlists, address books, iTunes accounts, and calendars (unless they sync via Exchange Server to Google). If the latter then everyone has their own stuff, but they also need to have their own movie, music library and app library.

This is a longstanding pain in the butt.

So when I read that iTunes - 9 did something about music sharing decided to install it on a non-media machine.

Turns out, it does what Apple says:

... With Home Sharing, you can browse the iTunes libraries of up to five authorized computers in your house, import what you like...

Emphasis on IMPORT. If you add a tune to a playlist you COPY the file, even when iTunes is running in multiple user sessions on the same machine.

So everything is duplicated.

It's a lot like old-style iTunes sharing, except now you can copy.

Not interesting. The old problem remains.

See also:

• Working around iTunes lack of multi-user support
• Sync iTunes Libraries Between Two Macs
• Sharing an iTunes library between multiple users

Update 9/10/09: A friend tells me he syncs his wife's iPod twice. Once to the account that holds iTunes, a second time to her personal account. The iTunes settings on each machine control what gets synched. This is an intermediate solution with both advantages and obvious disadvantages (double sync, no personal playlist, no personal ratings, etc, etc). Also if you are sharing your iTunes Library the update may reset permissions.

Update 9/24/09: I upgraded my main library to 9.01 and paid more attention to the language of Home Sharing such as "is for personal use". Note that Home Sharing is for all persons who share the same iTunes account -- which is, in theory, only one person. Apple is walking a fine DRM line here, as they have for many years. They don't target multiple accounts on a single Mac because that represents multiple users, and Home Sharing is really for one user on multiple machines.

twitterfeed: tweet the feed

twitterfeed is takes any kind of public feed and turns it into tweets.

It works with OpenID and uses oauth to talk to Twitter, so it passes my initial screening tests. You don't enter your Twitter credentials and you don't have to remember yet another un/pw.

Now all I need is for Google to provide a Google Reader shared-item-with-note feed that would provide the item name/link and my Google Reader Note. I'd be able to use Google Reader to generate tweets with notes on the things I'm interested in.

Alas, we're waiting for Google to take the next step here ...

Life Hacker - living with Google Voice

Great orientation: How to Ease Your Transition to Google Voice - Google Voice - Lifehacker.

It's one thing to get a list of features, another to learn how to make them work. See also Pogue's brief summary.

Google also recommends Tech Crunch on the Android and Blackberry GV apps (alas, not iPhone - cures you Steve Jobs!).

Setting up Google Voice accounts for Google Apps users

I'm a big fan of Google Voice (boo Apple!), it's saved me about saved me about $1,000 over the past year or so. I'm also a fan of Google Apps for our family through which I've reached the nerdvana of unified calendaring.

So as our eldest moves into junior high I decided it was time to get him his lifelong unique identifier phone number. A number that's under my control -- for now.

Getting an 'invite' to participate is easy, Google is handing out GV numbers on demand now (US only). The tricky part is unifying this with his Google Apps family account.

It turns out you can't really do this. Google Voice is tied to a Google account, you can't log in using Google Apps credentials. In the Google World it's fine to have a Google Apps account, but everyone needs a personal Google Account as well (which makes sense if you think about it long and hard enough).

Here's what I did for my Google Apps users who now also have Google Voice numbers:

1. Request the GV number.
2. Click on the link in the GV invite.
3. Don't bother trying to login with your Google Apps credentials. Click new account.
4. For user name provide your Google Apps user name.
5. For password provide your Google Apps password.

With this setup the GV number feels like it's bound to the Google Apps account, but this is a convenient illusion. It's bound to a completely separate Google account that happens to have the same user name as the Google Apps account.

Very slow 10.5.8 updates on some PPC machines

It's been over a month, so I figured I might as well install 10.5.8. Since my photo work now lives on the Intel MacBook, I did the update first on my G5 iMac.

As usual I did a safe boot first to clear out caches and the like. I disconnected my firewire drive then I rebooted. I installed from the Combo Update. I didn't "repair permissions" because, as near as I can tell, that's bogus.

The install proceeded normally until it got to the "2 minute" mark. Then the update appeared to hang. The progress bar was frozen, displaying "Install time remaining: About 2 minutes".

Ok. This is Apple after all. We have to expect things not to work properly. I was only mildly suprised.

Happily, I found a most useful reference while I waited ...

...Apple - Support - Discussions - OS 10.5.8 update failure ...

I'm getting the same thing where the installer is stuck at 2 mins.

BUT.

I know it's doing something.

If you bring up the installer log by going Command - L ... and then select 'Show Errors Only' and change it to 'Show All Logs' you'll see it's writing some metadata into the Receipts folder....

Great tip, I didn't know about the installer log. I'm also seeing leisurely, updates to Receipts folder metadata. (Quite a few entries in the error list too!)

Another response speculates that there's some "code signing" going on. Some PPC updates are said to take hours to complete.

Update pending.

Update: It concluded properly. Here are the final log results ...

Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: **** Summary Information ****
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: Operation Elapsed time
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: -----------------------------
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: script 2441.19 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: zero 0.36 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: install 2992.16 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: validate 32.83 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: os 0.00 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: extract 464.22 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: receipt 4.49 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: disk 1.08 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: config 49.33 seconds

It took about 90 minutes to complete the update, most of which was spent on those very slow metadata writes.

Here are the results for an Intel MacBook:

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: **** Summary Information ****

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: Operation Elapsed time

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: -----------------------------

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: script 381.73 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: zero 0.08 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: install 744.83 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: validate 17.36 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: os 0.00 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: extract 311.78 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: receipt 0.91 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: disk 1.01 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: config 33.04 seconds

On the Intel machine the install took about 20 minutes -- so about 1/4 to 1/5 the time.

Update b: I went to do a scan and my Epson Scan software died. I don't know if this was the update, but I'm suspicious. Epson put out a new version a few days ago that's supposed to cover 10.6 too:

Scanner Driver and EPSON Scan Utility v3.28
Intel-based Macs with OS X (v10.4.4 - v10.6.x), PowerPC Macs with OS X (v10.3.9 - v10.5.x)
epson13224.dmg - 18.6MB - posted on 09/01/09

The installation didn't change my problem, but it resolved away after a reboot. I suspect it was unrelated to the update; I've not used the scanner for a bit.

The new Epson scan utility does cure a few old bugs however.

How to restore a lost iPhoto '09 facebook connection

Every so often I like to go through my Facebook Application settings. Sometimes I see things like 'Ads and Pages' that I don't recall authorizing, or I find apps I no longer use.

For example, I found an Aperture export app. I'd tried using export to Facebook from Aperture, but it didn't work for me (buggy?). So I deleted it. Funny thing is, I don't remember anything about a FB app, that was an OS X app...

[Ok, I'll cheat. As you'll see below, I later realize that when you use a Facebook "feature" on the desktop, there's a companion Facebook "app".]

That's how I came across some funky iPhoto Uploader app without any author or profile information to speak of, but with mediocre reviews. I don't need that shoddy app I thought, I've been using the built-in function that comes with iPhoto '09. So I deleted it.

Then a thought occurred to me.

Yes, I returned to iPhoto, and now when I clicked on the albums that sort-of-synchronize with my FB albums I got an error message saying the upload had failed ...

... authentication with server failed. Please check your login and password information...

Oopsie.

Clearly that mysterious iPhoto Uploader app was the 'companion' to iPhoto '09 (I wonder if it's a real "app" or just some kind of authentication framework shoehorned into the "app" slot.)

So how could I restore it? Apple doesn't provide any documentation on this sort of thing -- that would be against their religion. I played around briefly, here's what worked

1. select any old picture
2. click the facebook button to upload it to FB
3. you'll see the upload button is grayed out. Click the "change account" button. You'll now be able to reenter your un/pw credentials.

After you reenter credentials you can sync your FB albums again, and the iPhoto Uploader "app" will reappear in your Facebook app settings page.

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.