How to setup an iPhone with a prepaid account

Is this how to activate an iPhone if you don't intend to use it much as a phone?

iPhone: Prepay the right way - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

... Buy the iPhone. Connect it to iTunes. Sign up using 999-99-9999 as your social security number. After failing the credit check, select a GoPhone plan. After signing up for a GoPhone plan and being assigned a number and passcode, connect to the AT&T GoPhone funding page as prompted, enter your credit card or debit card information and you're good to go. DO NOT attempt to fund your iPhone over the phone with AT&T. DO NOT set up your iPhone prepaid account in advance with AT&T...

Update 7/2/07: Apparently the prepaid plan can be cheaper than the cheapest fully paid plan. Estimates are about $50/month. If Apple enables VOIP services in the iPhone the prepaid plan will be very popular.

GrandCentral - now I can start using my GC number

My concerns about GC's longevity have been assuaged: 

Official Google Blog: All aboard

We're pleased to announce that we have acquired GrandCentral Communications, a company that provides services for managing your voice communications. ..

... GrandCentral offers many features that complement the phone services you already use. If you have multiple phone numbers (e.g., home, work, cell), you get one phone number that you can set to ring all, some, or none of your phones, based on who's calling. This way, your phone number is tied to you, and not your location or job. The service also gives you one central voice mailbox. You can listen to your voicemails online or from any phone, forward them to anybody, add the caller to your address book, block a caller as spam, and a lot more. You can even listen in on voicemail messages from your phone while they are being recorded, or switch a call from your cell phone to your desk phone and back again. All in all, you'll have a lot more control over your phones...

As I'd hoped back in March, Google acquired them. So I can start putting my number on my business card, and build GC into my daily routine. There's only one catch ... Which identity do I associate this number with? Currently it's not associated with any of the identities Google has for me, but soon I'll have to choose. This will take some thought.

I'd be even happier if Google would add fax-in services to GrandCentral ...

iPhone developer blog

Joe Hewitt is developing  for the iPhone, and blogging about his experience. It's good reading, though Hewitt's blog mixes in some young-libertarian musings that senile commies like me must simply sigh bye.

It's a good way to read about the inner workings of a device I recently described this way (private correspondence):

The RAZR is an Abomination, the antichrist of phones. The antichrist, of course, must precede the Messiah, which therefore must be ...

... Apple is a cruel mistress. She seduces, then torments, her victims. Apple customers have a lot of piercings. There's a connection. Next February would be a great time to get an iPhone. Don't get a new Sprint contract. If you need a phone 'world of wireless' will find a used phone on spec (from eBay) and do the testing, setup and warrantee. No idea if they're reliable but that's what I'll try if my despised RAZR dies (unfortunately it's pretty tough, probably tougher than an iPhone)...

When geeks like Hewitt write that the iPhone is "the first phone that doesn't suck" you can be reasonably sure they own(ed) a RAZR.

Gordon's Tech: Now serving on tech.kateva.org

The url for this blog is now tech.kateva.org, but you you shouldn't have to do anything. If you're reading this your reader has navigated the 301 redirect. If the url doesn't correct itself automatically you may want to change it manually, but then, of course, you probably can't read this.

Site change pending: the 301 redirect didn't work!

[This has been updated from the original. I was optimistic the 301 redirect would mean that feed readers would find the new feed, but neither Bloglines nor Google Reader did.]

I'm going to move this blog to a new google apps domain, but the feed will still be managed by Google/Blogger. You shouldn't won't have to do anything, because:

1. Google will do a URL redirect indefinitely.
2. The specific URL redirect is a "301 redirect", meaning a permanent move. Many feed readers will automatically update their feeds, even though the old feed address will continue to work. The update will take a few minutes to occur.

If, however, you find your feed has gone silent, this post can guide you to the new address (won't work until the move btw).

The main side-effect of the move will be that the last 10 posts will be treated as "new". I've written a bit about how the move is accomplished previously.

The new site, kateva.org, has its own "main page" and will eventually hold two blogs, this tech blog and my "everything else" blog. The urls for the pages will eventually be:

• Gordon's Tech: googlefaughnan.blogspot.com will become tech.kateva.org (today)
  
• Gordon's Notes: jfaughnan.blogspot.com will become notes.kateva.org (in a week or so)
  

My other family, community, and special needs weblogs will stay where they are for now.

I've two reasons to make the move. One is to get away from the whimsical URLs I chose to play with years ago, the other is to move my pseudonymous identify (John Gordon) a few degrees away from my "true name" (John xxxxxxxx).

More after the move ...

Update 7/1/07: After 14 hours neither Google Reader nor Bloglines have updated pre-existing subscriptions. Yech. You should update manually if you can read this. Google Groups Help discussion here.

Update 7/2/07: The Blogger help group samaritans found that Blogger is returning a true 301 redirect, so the fault seems to lie with Bloglines ...

Update 7/3/07: I've not heard anything from Bloglines tech support. One clue might be that the pattern of the Blogger feed has changed:

• old: http://googlefaughnan.blogspot.com/rss/googlefaughnan.xml
  
• new: http://tech.kateva.org/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

This is what the good people on Google Groups help found the 301 message was:

7/2/2007 18:58:21 Trying http://googlefaughnan.blogspot.com
Redirect!
Header:
HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://tech.kateva.org/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Cache-control: private
Content-Length: 205
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:57:37 GMT
Server: GFE/1.3
Connection: Keep-Alive

I'm going to try the redirect using some tools suggested on the Blogger group and see what happens when I try to hit the old url directly.

Update 7/3/07: Bloglines may be absolved! Google uses a different syntax for RSS feeds on custom domain vs. traditional blogger. It appears the 301 redirect only changes the domain, so a subscription that references the RSS feed will break during a transition and cannot be updated.

Repairing and replacing an old iBook keyboard

Our dual USB white G3 iBook, somehow, lives on. The hinge s broken, so we never close it. When we move it, we carry it open. (I try to put it to sleep first, but sometimes the drive is spinning. It survives.) We replaced it with a MacBook last fall, but it lives on as the kitchen web client and family slideshow server. The location, setup, and low care requirement means it's still heavily used.

Recently, the "L" key broke. Happily there are several places to buy keys and attachment mechanisms for prices ranging from $5 (refurb key, probably just fine) to $9 (key and hinge) to $20 (key and hinge, never used, Apple) to varying prices up to $100 + shipping for a new keyboard. I opted for a used keyboard for $26 (incl. shipping) from Mac Recycling (see update)...

I chose the used keyboard option since the old one is a real mess, infested with generations of dog hair and varied unmentionables. I'm sure other keys are going to break. If the replacement kb works I'll have a supply of two of each keys, excepting the "L" key of course. A wonderfully obsessive web page tells us how to disassemble and clean an iBook's keyboard, so I feel reasonably prepared. (A few days later the site disappeared! This alternate guide is excellent.)

The prices per key do explain why even broken iBooks have some value to resellers. It's a real win-win; I'm quite happy to pay $5 for a working refurbished key and that means an old but relatively clean iBook keyboard is worth something. When this machine finally dies, (lord knows when, it seems it might go on for years) I'll cast around to see if anyone wants to pay shipping fees to get the relic and its working Airport card.

Update 7/7/07: The Mac Recycling (macrecycling.com) keyboard arrived with one key off and a kink in one side. I was angry at first, figuring they'd sent me a bum keyboard. On closer inspection though I see that the FedEx shipped box is creased along one edge. I think the keyboard was probably fine when it left Mac Recycling, but they might have done a better job packing it.

Thanks to some manuals I downloaded from the superb PowerBookMedic site I was able to replace the dislodged shift key and install the keyboard; so far it works though one top tab didn't quite fit and I had to press in the side where it had been kinked. In any case it's firmly in place.

Next time though I'll go with either PowerBookMedic or iFixit.com; I owe them for the excellent repair books they provide. I recommend downloading the one that fits your laptop and keeping it at hand.

Update 7/18/07: Mac Recycling (macrecycling.com) did not respond to the message I left on their web site. Email isn't as reliable as it once was, so there's a 10% chance they're not crooks. Unfortunately, there's a 90% chance they are crooks. Don't have anything to do with them.

How Bloglines or Google Reader could (does?) handle comment tracking

This idea is a freebie, anyone can use it. (It's not patentable though, since I just wrote about it here, and for one other reason described below.)

Weblog comments don't fit the current syndication model. Most blogs don't support subscribing to a specific post's comment feed, and even if they did the overhead of creating and tracking such transient feeds doesn't scale.

Email notification of new comments is occasionally supported, but I'm trying to shrink my email, not grow it. Still, email is the right approach -- if it were integrated with a blog reader. Bloglines and Google Reader could manage the integration.

Here's the simplest version of the approach, using Bloglines as an example.

1. My bloglines account has a new "subscription" called "Comments Subscription". It also provides me with an email address corresponding to that subscription. I can change that email address any time I want. For example: jfaughnan.gwyt8ytt@bloglines.com
   
2. I enter that email address into blogs that support email notification of comments. Then I get notification via my feed reader. Notifications include links to the blog comments section.
3. When I start getting spam, I throw away the email address and get another.
   

There are obvious more complex variations on this idea using public keys, password protection, etc.

Here's the funny bit. Bloglines does this now, but they don't describe its use for subscribing to comments. They provide it as a throwaway email address to use with vendors and other unsavory correspondents. I discovered they had this feature by accident as I was composing this blog post and looking up the term they use for their feed trackers ("subscription", of course).

If they provided a bit of guidance on how to use it, they'd get more use. The only problem with their current implementation is that the randomly generated addresses cannot be remembered. I've implemented a redirect from one of my domains so I have memorable transient addresses, but Bloglines needs to allow us to specify the email address of the form "jfaughnan.____@bloglines.com.

Update 7/1/07: This works pretty well. I have a few google app domains, so I created a user on one of them to support this process. I then gave that user a Gmail Nickname, a relatively new Gmail feature that allows one to create and destroy public identities as needed while somewhat shielding one's private identity. The Gmail nickname is the key. It's memorable, and disposable. The Gmail nickname redirects to the special purpose user, which keeps the notifications in the inbox (why not?) while forwarding to the disposable but not memorable bloglines notifier address.

This redirect, combined with Bloglines email service, gives me the comment notification functionality I'm seeking. Of course it only works with blog services that support email notification for comments, but if this catches on more of them will. Note that everything in this chain is disposable, but the first line of defense is the Gmail nickname. When that's discovered by spammers it's trivial to change (I used an incrementing number for now).

Of course this is way too complex for anyone but an insane geek who lives constantly with redirection, but Bloglines could implement all this by allowing users to create memorable but disposable "nicknames" for their Bloglines subscription, or simply let users specify the personalized subscription address.