Faughnan.com - extended - My Custom Searches

I’ve used Google Page Creator to create a page that holds my custom searches: Faughnan.com - extended - My Custom Searches. As of today there are four custom searches: my stuff, OS X, “foundational content” (work related – industrial ontology) and “Motorola RAZR V3m”. I’ll probably add more. I use these searches quite often, it’s the best way to work around the “marketing” problem in Google searches (first 10 pages of hits are all people selling something).

If you’d like to add to any of these (excepting foundational content, which is work related) let me know, I can add you as a contributor.

Google supports domain-scoped shared resources for families and coops ..

Even I’m having trouble keeping up …

Your Tech Weblog: Personal domain names for more than mail

... As this person notes, members of a family can share a domain name, and each have their own Google e-mail accounts and calendars associated with that domain name. They can then set up calendar sharing so they're always up to speed on scheduled family events. ...

Ok. Put it on the list …

Transiently attach a naked drive to a USB port

This $25 adapter will work with desktop, laptop, SATA, IDE etc (in theory) on OS X and XP

NewerTech® USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter

• Universal to USB2 Adapter
• ATA/IDE/SATA/ATAPI
• Compatible with any 2.5", 3.5", 5.25" IDE or SATA device!
• Supports IDE & enhanced IDE 3.5" internal IDE hard disk
• Supports ATA/ATAPI-6 specification 1.0
• Supports SATA I and SATA II
• USB 2.0 up to 480Mbps transfer speed
• Backwards compatible with USB 1.1
• Plug-and-Play

I don’t need this very often, but probably a few times a year. I’ll put it on my wish list.

eMusic: off-label MP3s - auto-renewing subscription required

eMusic was blessed with priceless NPR coverage this morning …

MP3 music download website, eMusic

.. Start downloading your FREE MP3s today and take two weeks to decide if you like eMusic. If you're not 100% satisfied simply cancel before your trial period ends and there's absolutely no cost…

They require a download manager and it’s subscription based, so it’s not “33 cents an MP3”. It’s $30 for 3 months of 30 downloads/month, so about it’s 33 cents/MP3 if you are good about hitting your monthly maximum. I’d feel better about them it were easier to get their pricing. They auto-renew, which I dislike intensely. I suspect a lot of their margin comes from people failing to hit the monthly limit.

They sell gift subscriptions. I presume those would NOT auto-renew. I’d be inclined to forego the “25 free mp3” and just buy myself a 3 month gift subscription every year or so.

CrashPlan: Another innovative Minnesota company

CrashPlan automates the preferred backup solution used by geeks: store a backup at a friend’s home. As mentioned in their FAQ they also provide a backup store themselves, but they don’t recommend it:

CrashPlan » Support, http://www.crashplan.com/support/faq.vtl

… A typical machine can hold 150GB of data these days. From a typical home ISP, it can take 12 days to get all your data back! During those 12 days, you can forget about using your Internet connection or PC. Did we mention it'll take 2 months for your data to get backed up in the first place?

At $20 a machine, support for OS X and XP, and offsite backup, it’s impressive. It will also support backup across one’s own LAN.

I love the viral feature of how this is sold. “Allowing others to backup to you is free”. Unless, of course, you decide to charge them … heh, heh. Of course they recommend backing up to TWO friends, each of which would backup to … etc, etc.

I’ve seen several peer-to-peer backup solutions, but they spread data over a network of anonymous machines. Recovery will still be tedious, and there’s always the chance of the FBI knocking down the door looking for the key to some weird plot.

I might just do this — I have to check, however, how much data my ISP will let me send.

Hat tip: Andrew

Update 5/2/07: I'm reading about people using this, so it's real. I still haven't implemented, but I'm getting closer.

TidBITS: The new AirPort Extreme sounds very good

By far the best review I’ve seen: TidBITS: AirPort Extreme Updated. A USB adapter is promised, I wonder if it will work on older machines. Note  802.11b support dramatically slows an 802.11n WLAN.

At $180 and support for multiple printers, network storage, attached USB hubs, etc, this is a bargain.

Installing ePocrates for OS X: a vendor on the edge

ePocrates is a widely used prescribing tool. I don't see patients, but I still keep a copy on my Palm. My wife uses hers; it's a significant driver of PDA sales to physicians. Alas, my latest installation shows that ePocrates on the Mac is all but dead.

The first sign of trouble was that ePocrates is using the obsolete .hqx file format to distribute the Installer. That format belongs to the current owners of Stuffit Expander, a notorious bunch of spammers. I had to reinstall StuffIt Expander to open it.

The next sign of trouble was use of the old VISE installer -- an obsolete tool that knows nothing about permissions. It aborted during the early install without an error message. To make a long story short the OS User who is doing the sync has to have admin privileges; I was foolishly trying to install the Mac OS X way -- using an Admin account.

Then, even with new admin privileges for my wife's account, and even with the Firewall off, and even with "enable Internet Connection Sharing" on or off, I couldn't get the ePocratest AutoUpdater application to contact its server. Clicking on "test" did nothing - no error message, nothing.

After a few retries it seemed to sync, but I never got the Rx application! I did get the data sets and the annoying marketing blurbs.

I found the .prc files in the ~/Documents/Palm/User_Name/ePocrates subfolder and made some guesses as to the ones I needed. After a few tries I was able to get the Palm to come up with the Rx data and without an error message.

I'll give ePocrates a break on the later issues -- but not the privileges problems and the total lack of error messages. I'm using Missing Sync to connect an old PalmOS 4.x Samsung i500 to a very modern OS X workstations. It's not surprising there are issues. The sad part is that the install could be very simple. Download a simple .dmg file, click on a few .prc files, check the firewall, and go.

Looking at what ePocrates has delivered I'd bet there's nothing left of the original team. I wonder how well they'll weather the Vista transition; that's going to be a real challenge for Palm as well. Ecosystem changes tend to eliminate the more frail species.

Update 1/16/07: An ePocrates employee who has worked at the Mac version left a comment asking me to contact him. I won't publish the comment (it was just a request to contact him) because it includes his corporate email address, but I will follow-up.

Update 1/22/07: ePocrates did not respond to my f/u email to them.

Update 1/26/07: I recently had to update my XP version of ePocrates. The install ALSO failed, though that could be a corporate firewall issue. The error message simply said the server could not be reached. The XP install offers a large variety of free add-on tools that are not available in the XP install -- though they are all simply prc files that could be easily added to any Palm device.

Also, I was asked for more details on how I got ePocrates working on the Palm. I'll check the backup directory for the device and see if I can enumerate the prc files used.