Bento 3 gets encryption - mildly interesting

Bento annoys me. I'm on FileMaker 8 because I'm waiting for FileMaker Inc to do something useful for me -- like the ability to use FM power on OS X data stores. Instead FM has delivered yet another version of Bento, providing brain dead access to OS X data stores.

This release has one potentially interesting feature:

Bento 3 - All Features | FileMaker

... Use the new field type called “Encrypted” to store sensitive data, like web site logins and banking details.

Unlock encrypted fields to display contents by entering the database password.

Assign a database password to your entire Bento database. You will be prompted for the password upon launching Bento. Once the correct password is entered, Bento will open your database giving you full access to all your libraries.

Assign a sharing password to allow others access to your shared libraries. This password is different from the database password and only allows access to specific libraries that you have chosen to share over a local area network

If Bento for iPhone ALSO gets encryption then I may have to, very grudgingly and painfully, consider sending FileMaker money they don't deserve.

Grump.

Beejive - IM for iPhone as an SMS replacement

Now that iPhone OS 3 has notifications, I'd like to try to use Beejive as an SMS alternative.

Problem is, the default behavior of Beejive is to disconnect from the Beejive server a minutes to hours after use. When that happens, there are no more iPhone notifications.

If you want Beejive to behave more like SMS it looks like you need to set a very long Session Timeout. As long as you use Beejive once within that time it keeps your session running. I chose 7 days for Emily and I (but really we want "forever").

At least that's how I think it works, because as of today Beejive's online directions are for OS 3 and an earlier Beejive release.

This is not a good sign. Did the entire company (3 people?) implode?

I've written asking them for an explanation of the obsolete documentation.

Update 10/5/09: No response to my email. I discovered this am I was logged out -- but I shouldn't have been.

Update 12/4/09: More instances of being logged out, or Google thinking I'm offline when I'm supposed to be connected. The iPhone notification/IM infrastructure seems too fragile and demanding for this type of use.

iPhone Google Sync - Mail and Google Apps

I've been a pretty happy Google ActiveSync (Exchange services) customer since they saved my iPhone last February. The only downside has been that you can only have one Exchange account per phone, so if my employer ever enables Exchange support for iPhones I'll have some touch choices.

Today I've got some updates based on configuring Emily's new 3GS yesterday. One update is that you can now configure this for Google Apps accounts like our family domain, another is the difference between IMAP email and ActiveSync email.

Since Emily's primary email is through our family domain (free) Google App suite I had to learn the Google Apps configuration. It's a bit obscure, but not too bad.

First, your Google Apps domain admin has to go to Mobile Services setup and enable synchronization.

Then you have to follow Google's Exchange services setup directions on your phone. It's a bit weird, since it's easy to miss the step where you get the option to enter the Google server address.

So far, not so bad. But, of course, you're a power user. You have to push it, don't you? You want to be able to sync all your subscribed calendars to your iPhone, not just your primary calendar.

This is where it gets weird. I'll tell you what I did ...

1. In iPhone Safari enter the URL http://m.google.com from the phone.
2. Look for the link that does setup for Google Apps. It's easy to miss, I think its towards the bottom of the screen you see.
3. Do the Google Apps setup. NOW when you enter http://m.google.com you see a new Google Apps section. Look for "Sync" and click it.
4. Now you get to see all your Google calendar subscriptions and you can add all of them.

Clearly this is a beta type configuration, I assume Google will fix it up some day (though sometimes they don't fix things!).

So far this is much like what I did for my personal Gmail setup, just with a few odd quirks. Mail, however, is new. You can enable an ActiveSync connection to Gmail instead of the older IMAP connection I use.

For Emily I enabled ActiveSync mail. If you're doing Contacts and Calendar it's an easy way to add email. From what I'd read I assumed it would behave very much like IMAP, but that's wrong. If you have Mail sound on in Settings then every time email hits your inbox your phone "pings" -- even if it's asleep. So your email behaves more like instant messaging (or BB email). The mail icon always shows the current unread message count, and it updates within a second or two of email transmission. [see update]

We turned off the "ping" sound -- though it would be "nice" to be able to configure that for certain senders.

One last comment that's probably most relevant to BlackBerry users. Until we retired Emily's Pearl she used 'Missing Sync for BlackBerry' to sync to Address Book, and Google Sync/BlackBerry to sync to Contacts. This meant she had one address book.

Now things aren't so neat. Her Google Contacts sync to her iPhone Exchange account, her Address Book syncs to her iPhone 'on my mac' account. So her old pool of one set of contact has just become two! I have the same problem; I need to explore some solution for the both of us. (Maybe I’ll return to Spanning Sync).

Update: When browsing Emily’s iPhone Contact Groups I found this novel entry at the end of the Groups list: “Google apps Global Address…”. It lets me search all contacts – I wonder if it’s the precursor for some kind of Google Apps Domain directory (an obvious need). As of today there are NO Google hits on this string with “iPhone”, so it must be quite new.

Update: I reverted Emily to IMAP. The Exchange mail setup was saving drafts her emails to the trash folder every few seconds. This feature needs more work.

Incidentally, Google's IMAP directions, esp the recommended IMAP client settings are badly written. In particular they do a poor job of explaining why one shouldn't use Apple's default Gmail setup. I've done it both ways, and I prefer the way Apple's setup works.

iTunes Library divided between iTunesMusic and iTunes Music

Somehow, in the long and twisted history of my iTunes Library, which has moved from Mac to PC and back again, I ended up with my Library divided between a folder labeled ‘iTunesMusic’ and another labeled ‘iTunes Music’, both within “iTunes Library”.

It’s doubtless been this way for some time, but I only noticed it today. It seems to work fine. Even so I used the iTunes 9 File:Library tool to both consolidate and rationalize to the newish library hierarchy.

It seems to be copying everything over, when it’s done I’ll copy ‘iTunesMusic’ to an external drive and save it – just in case something was missed.

It would be nice if this was somehow related to iTunes not updating last played data on some of my podcasts …

Update 10/8/09: The iTunes Consolidate feature worked well. I deleted my iTunesMusic folder and didn't have any problems (I had backed up of course). This didn't solve the problem with the iPhone "not updating last played" bug -- this is a frustrating and longstanding bug that Apple has to fix.

iTunes 9 missing the rearrange iPhone app option?

Everything seemed pretty fine with Emily's brand new 3GS -- until I tried rearranging her app screens in iTunes 9.

The sync list was there, but not the rearrange screen.

What the ?!

I restarted the phone, speculated it was somehow related to disabling app store access, restarted iTunes, quit and connected a few times ...

Nothing. I was stuck.

Thanks Google ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - iTunes9 / iPhone Rearrange Apps Home ...

... Never occurred to me that it would be 3.01. I have a 3.1 phone so I was confounded when the screen for rearranging apps was missing...

Yep. The phone still had 3.01. I upgraded to 3.1 two weeks ago, I just assumed it was a 3.1 phone. Since her phone syncs on her user account there was no 3.1 update on the system.

It's a bit of a pain, by the way, to now have two downloaded copies of 3.1 on the same machine. There's now one in her user account and one in mine.

AT&T A List feature

When we made a bunch of contract changes today our AT&T store rep (did a great job btw) reminded me of AT&T's "A List" feature. It was activated about a week ago; it's not clear if it's automatically added to every account or if it's being rolled out and, for now, only available on request.

There's no charge and, I'm told, no contract change.

The A List is a set of numbers that can be dialed without a "per minute" charge. I think they're only available on higher end plans. On our family plan we get 10 numbers.

Since in-network mobile calls are already free you don't want to add those. We added our home number (Qwest), my office phone, and several Google Voice numbers (let's see if AT&T allows those!). If this works I won't even spend minutes when I use GV to call Canada.

Numbers must be within the US, there are a few exclusions but I don't recall them all and I can't retrieve the list. Google Voice wasn't mentioned.

Numbers currently take a day or so to be activated.

Update 9/28: All of my numbers were accepted, including our Google Voice numbers. I think people eligible for this feature also have free calls to AT&T mobile phone subscribers; it this is correct you would want to avoid using up an A List slot this way. I think the system will allow you to add an AT&T mobile phone number to the "A List".

Update 9/28b: See comments. " ... you need to be on a 1400+min/mo family plan or a 900+min/mo individual plan for this to be offered." In other words, this makes for good marketing, but no impact on AT&T's revenues. Admirably diabolic.

It might help with 3-4 phone families, though nowadays young-uns don't talk much anyway -- and AT&T isn't reducing their texting fee!

We are really moving to a flat rate for unlimited voice, and a crazy AT&T revenue stream from texting- a cost structure completely disconnected from bandwidth and infrastructure load. It's a weird wired world these days.

Configure AT&T BlackBerry Pearl for T-Mobile PayGo

In a recent flurry of phone switches our old (unlocked) Nokia 6555 went back to AT&T for my son’s family account (so no contract for him)*, Emily got the iPhone 3GS, and her (unlocked) BlackBerry Pearl went to our T-Mobile PayGo account.

 

Here’s a quick list of the setup needed for this transition ..

1. Options:Security options: General Settings:context menu -> wipe handheld
2. Options-Advanced:Applications: delete apps that are no longer useful (no data plan)
3. Insert T-Mobile SIM, restart when replace battery.
4. Options:mobile network: data services off

Actually I didn’t do things precisely in this order, which might be why the phone didn’t “know” its own number (though it did ring when dialed).

The fix was:

1. Options-Advanced:SIM Card:context menu –> Edit SIM Phone Number. Type in T-Mobile number.

After this set of changes it seems to work. I’ve disabled voice mail on this service, so I didn’t try to configure a forwarding number.

 

* AT&T’s software doesn’t handle this very well. The conventional workaround is to add a user with a 1 year contract that’s retroactively dated a year in the past. This marks them as eligible for a phone/contract deal.

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.