How to move a domain name

Moving a domain name from Network Solutions to the OpenSRS service used by my service provider (Lunarpages) was surprisingly complex. For the sake of anyone having to do this, these are the key steps:

1. Go to Network Solutions and login in to my account there.
2. Find the domain name, click on it, and find the control that locks the domain. Unlock it.
3. Now there's another obscure link on the same page that, confusingly, says "lock" or get "transfer code". Click on it and request the code. It's emailed out.
4. Now to to Lunarpages and fill out their form. They needed all kinds of things, including my credit card info (for verification - yes, it's stupid), domain information, copy of domain record, password for my cpanel access, etc.
5. Now it should hopefully transfer ...
   

Google search views: map and timeline

Google has opened their Experimental Search to the public. The cool ones are timeline and map, and you can use them for any Google search (they work best for people, organizations, places):

timeline: use the search term "view:timeline"
map: use the search term "view:map"

Try these:

"dark matter" view:map
"bill clinton" view:timeline

The standard view is "list view" but view:list doesn't work. I tried some other views but didn't find any easter eggs ...

Google redoes their search: Integrated search

The announcement suggests we try the new improved steve jobs search. I took more notice of the the new top menus associated with personalized search. They produce an odd fusion between search and Google services associated with my Gmail username. I'm not sure I see the point, but I'll keep playing with it.

Word 2007 XML File Format Converter for Mac

TUAW has the story. Alas, we all need this. BTW, TUAW is being quite impressive lately.

Disable the 'delete go back' booby trap in Firefox

macosxhints.com - Block the 'Delete goes back' action in Firefox.

It's an OS X hint, but of course it works everywhere. I just disabled it on XP. It's a booby-trap, not a feature.

Best Finder tip ever ...

In column view names are often truncated. There's a fix

Mac 101: Viewing long file names - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

...At the bottom of the column, you'll see two short, vertical "pipes" (pictured above). Double click the pipes, and the window will instantly expand to accommodate the longest file name in the window...

Excellent, but in comments it gets better: "if you option+double-click it will expand all available columns!". Now I'll switch to a very narrow default column view ...

Spanning Sync: the uninstall

Spanning sync had worked pretty well in my limited testing, but I couldn't solve the rest of my gCal sync challenge. Without the whole solution Spanning Sync just didn't offer enough.

Time to uninstall. But wait -- how to uninstall? Uninstalling the very best OS X apps is a drag-and-drop operation, but Spanning Sync includes a PrefPane. I started looking for uninstall directions.

At first things looked bad. The Spanning Sync FAQ doesn't mention uninstalling. One blog post suggested the process is pretty ugly. A search on the Spanning Sync site for "uninstall" returned four irrelevant hits.

I downloaded 1.04 again, and that's where I found an uninstaller. It seems to have worked. So they have one, even if they don't document it.

OS X really ought to have an uninstaller, even if most apps can be uninstalled by deleting them. (Though apps typically leave support data scattered around, you can use spotlight to find them. In the case of an app like Spanning Sync, you need to switch to each user's account and run a search if you want a full cleanup.)

Update 9/4/08: The iPhone made me a Spanning Sync customer after all. Meanwhile, a year or so after I posted this, Spanning Sync finally added a note to their FAQ about uninstalling. I'm glad they relented, but why did that take a year?