Ipod Won't Sleep: fix

My iPod wouldn't sleep. Triggered by disconnecting it from iTunes without dismounting. Reset didn't fix it. Had to reconnect to iTunes, then mount, then dismount properly. Then reset. Now ok.

Backup application built around Amazon S3

JungleDisk is a Mac/Win backup app that uses Amazon's S3 storage. Cost for 15GB of images would be about $3 a month.

I'm not sure I'd put business plans online this way, but I'm going to give it a try for backup of photos.

SuperDuper: a backup backup

My primary backup is still Retrospect, but it's creaky and buggy with a grim future. While I'm waiting for something better I think I'm going to start using SuperDuper to mirror some of my systems. Kind of a redundant backup to my backup that I'll do every few weeks. I use USB enclosure drives for my backups (two enclosures, one offsite), with the new cheap 320GB drives it's not hard to keep a couple of images as well as the Retrospect data.

PS. I am a bit of a nut about backups. In 19 years they've saved me from catastrophic data loss at least five times.

Apple is serious about iPhoto: network effects

The value amplifier once known as 'network effects' and now called 'product ecosystem' has been a huge win with the Apple iPod. Apple is building an ecosystem for its iLife suite -- years after they promised it. Better late then never:

iWeb 1.1: Create a living, growing photo gallery:

Imagine a webpage that's a gallery of family photos. Click on any one of those photos -- say, little Justin making that face where he looks exactly like Uncle Roy -- and you're taken to a page containing a whole album of Justin's baby pictures...

Here's how it works. First, pick any iWeb template (just make sure it's not a photo page template). Next, open the iWeb media browser and select an iPhoto album. Then drag the album onto the template....

iWeb takes over from there, automatically creating a separate photo page containing all the images in the album. At the same time, on the page where you dragged the album, iWeb will display the album's first image (or you can choose any other image from the album). That image will then link to the newly created photo page when you publish. Repeat the process as often as you like, dragging other albums to different locations on the page, creating new links and new photo pages each time you do. And you can keep your photo gallery alive and growing. Just come back later at any time, drag in another album, and republish."

Wow. Enhanced value all around. I may even get a .Mac account since I think iWed supports sync with .Mac rather than mere upload. Between this and the MacBook's ambiguous support for Aperture I'm resigning myself to staying with iPhoto. Now if Apple would only add #$$!$%%@#$$ merge/import of Libraries to iPhoto ...

iWeb 1.1 - now multiple web sites

I recently blogged on iWebSites 1.1, a utility that hacks iWeb to handle multiple sites.

Today TUAW noted iWeb 1.1 has covertly added multi-site support, as well as some other features. I definitely have to play with iWeb.

Update 5/17/06: I did a quick test. iWeb does have decent support for creating links to existing pages and related files. It does not support anchors. You can't highlight text and make it a target for a link, then create a link to it.

This is a shame, but I guess links are "out of scope" for what's very much a novice-friendly product. Alas, it's no "FrontPage 98", but then nothing is any more. Dreamweaver et al are in a different product niche, FrontPage died after 98 and the residual zombie was recently (mercifully) terminated by Microsoft, and several open source FP replacements have failed my tests so far. I've looked at the various Mac web publishing alternatives to iWeb and they weren't much better than iWeb 1.1, so I'm not enthused about them. I think most of the interesting work will be in Ajax web page authoring systems; alas the vendors of those (ex. Google) have "lock-in" front and center in their business plans. No moving web sites around!

Weird IDE hard drive behavior

Last June I wrote about some puzzling experiences with some IDE drives. It was just plain weird. Every drive I tried worked fine when hooked up directly to the motheboard or PCI card IDE slots -- but behavior inside a Vantec enclosure or a Firewire enclosure was much less predictable. I ended up leaving the 200GB Maxtor Diamondmax in my IDE tower and putting the Seagate Barracuda (the best of the drives) in the firewire case.

Yesterday was phase II. I'd outgrown the Vantec removeable enclosures I used for backup and I'd bought two of the lovely Venus USB enclosures I so like. Imagine my surprise when the Maxtor failed during backup, making the same clunky sounds as it had in the Vantec! It then failed during a repartitioning and reformatting (NTFS).

I moved it to a Mac in the same enclosure and ran some intensive workouts there. It never had a problem, swallowing GBs of data. Then I moved it back to XP but plugged it into an old and reliable Orange Micro USB/Firewire card. It reformatted, did a backup, absorbed 100s of GB of data -- no problems.

Weird. I have to guess there's some stable defect in this drive that makes it very sensitive to timing issues of some sort. I'm using it for backup for now, but I'll probably replace it with something I trust more. (I'll update this post with the make of the drive I use at the office -- that one has performed flawlessly in the Venus enclosure.)

IDE drives can be weird when you put them in enclosures. Seagate's done better than Maxtor or WD in my limited trials.

Update 4/17: The Maxtor is definitely flaky. Retrospect Pro, an evil product, breaks it. It goes into some eternal seek mode where it's very busy, but accomplishing nothing. A good lesson in the costs and complexities of flaky hardware. Consumer drives are dirt cheap, but their odd failure modes may be very expensive. Unfortunately I don't think there's a "quality option" available for a consumer buyer at any reasonable price. Nonetheless, I've had better luck lately with Seagate and I'll try them again.

Update 4/17: Ouch. NewEgg's reviewers had very poor ratings for Seagate, and WD isn't so sweet either. I guess there really aren't any good options. I may go for a larger capacity drive on the theory that they might still be competing a bit on quality. Or just give up and figure it's just another example of living in the age where everything is disposable -- except time. (My theory is that we're actually experiencing a LOT of inflation in our economy, but it's hidden by shifting costs to consumers and buy shedding quality. In terms of value delivered per dollar spent, however, I think we're in 1970s style inflation -- only now it's occult.)

Update 5/27: I ended up going through Amazon's reviews. They gave the best sample of feedback, including longer use feedback. Based on that, and a guess that a newer drive would be quieter, cooler and more reliable, I opted for the Western Digital 320GB ATA IDE drive for about $150. So far, so good -- after one week of heavy use. The Seagate drives had awful rating, even though only Seagate seems to "sleep" properly in on of my external enclosures. Maxtor was pretty good, but of course I didn't want another Maxtor. The WD 320 did relatively well with a good number of comments. None did terrific. I notice Apple used Matsushita in my iMac.

Google Notebook: firefox and IE only

Google Notebook is up. Firefox and IE only. I haven't figured out a use for it yet. It looks like much of what it would do I do with Blogger.

What I want is shared workspace, not a notebook that's mine alone. I've installed it, but I'll wait and see if I can figure out a use.