New Blogger bug with attaching labels

There's a brand new Blogger bug with labels.

The drop down for attaching new labels to existing posts shows"Publish" where it should show "create new tag".



The Publish really publishes -- I unwittingly published some old draft posts.

I'm seeing this on only one of my blogs, it was fine on another.

The workaround is to first add the label to one post by editing the post, then apply it to the selected group.

Evernote's import/export test (updated)

[see update - as of Sept 2008 Evernote has reformed]

Palm to iPhone migration is hard. In particular, what do we do with Tasks and Notes?

On the Task side we're waiting to see if either Apple decides to support Tasks (I guess their engineers are too young to have complicated lives), Google adds Tasks and iPhone sync, or OmniFocus supports import/export.

On the Notes side I took a look today at Evernote. Evernote follows the new model of web service, desktop app, phone support, and synchronization.

That's a tough development challenge, but it comes with a great business benefit. If customers don't keep paying, they lose access to their data.

I'm cautiously supportive of this model -- it means good developers can get predictable income without having to constantly obsolete existing software. On the other hand, there's a terribly powerful temptation to never quite build export capabilities. This produces Data Lock (see also: Data Lock search), an outcome that has sustained many a software empire. (To it's credit Google has been recently resistant, but maybe being ad supported and wealthy makes virtue easier ...)

The software as service solution means users need to examine and test export capabilities before they sign up with a service, and to retest regularly as the service evolves. If export starts to fail, bail.

So how does Evernote do?

I created a free account and downloaded the OS X desktop app to find out.

Sure enough, there's no import/export for OS X users. So that's a total fail.

Support has more information ...

Questions and Answers | Evernote Corporation

... Yes, you can import notes into Evernote for Windows in Evernote 2.x database (.enb), Evernote 2.x XML (.enx), and (in a future release) Evernote XML (.enx3) formats using the Note Import menu in Evernote Beta for Windows. There is also a Note Import Wizard menu for importing selected image, text, and HTML files. To get imported databases onto a Mac, first import the database into Evernote Beta for Windows, synchronize with the service, and then synchronize the Mac client with the service...

...you can export one or more notes from a notebook as an HTML formatted document from within Evernote for Windows using the Note > Export... menu. You can also export via e-mail using the Note > Send by Email... menu. This feature may be added to the Mac version in a future release....

That's a total fail, even on the better supported Windows platform. The minimum requirement would be a tab delimited export (this would require some data loss since Evernote attaches binary data) and a comprehensive XML export from the Evernote database.

So Evernote is not an option for my Palm to iPhone conversion, and I'd say it's not an option for anyone on any platform until they demonstrate Data Freedom.

Update: Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, responds in comments. Quote:

Data Freedom is vital to our plans. We're serious about Evernote as an "external brain" and that means users have to have confidence that their memories will always be accessible. Part of that accessibility is making sure that users can import/export Evernote data in standard formats with no restrictions. Our current limitations on import/export capabilities are due to developer resource constraints, not any philosophical or business reasons; we can't afford to do import/export poorly because that could muck with your data and flood our support lines. Doing it well takes time.

We're currently testing a full set of Evernote APIs that will give people a lot of options for getting data in and out. We'll roll these out publicly later in the summer. We'll also be expanding the structured import/export capabilities on the local clients, though I don't have a specific date on that yet. We're doing this because data freedom is good for more than just peace of mind - it'll let us build lots of great functionality that we couldn't accomplish with a "walled garden" approach.

I'm glad you like Evernote enough to try it and I hope you take a look at our import/export capabilities once we launch them.

--
Phil Libin

Ok, I'm impressed. I revised the title of my post to "fails ... for now".

If Evernote really does deliver on their Data Freedom promises, I'll be a happy paying customer.

Update 7/27/08: I'm warming to Evernote as I make my painful adjustment to the iPhone. In fact, I expect to become a paying customer it it continues to work as well as it has today.

Evernote appears on initial iPhone tests to have significant value as a transient repository. I send things there I'll process later, including voice notes that may turn into tasks, notes, etc. Thing's I'd have once scrawled on my Palm screen as "ink" work better as Evernote sound fragments with optional metadata.

As a transient repository data lock is not an issue, and if Phil is able to deliver on his data freedom promises it will have more value. The key for me is that it has real value now.

Update 8/17/08: I find this post from 2005:

Laura
Mar 14, 2005 at 12:09 pm

I, too, was waiting eagerly for the web clipping function to be enabled for Firefox. Wait no longer ..

..Now, I’m waiting (im)patiently for some kind of export feature! Evernote obviously is a database, so I’m thinking an export to a comma-delimited file, or a spreadsheet would be nice.

That was three years ago. Phil Libin has no credibility when he talks about data freedom.

Update 10/3/08: Evernote has reformed, and Phil Libin has credibility again. They have an API and XML import/export. It's not the simple tab delimited format anyone can use, but that format is a poor match for Evernote's data complexity. Full credit for turning the corner!

Update 12/27/09: I took a look at Evernote again. The OS X manual still doesn't reference any import tool other than using Evernote's own XML format.

Apple can't do synchronization - again

In 20 years before the mast I've seen synchronization work effectively in one configuration -- the original Palm and Palm Desktop.

Beyond that, it's been a thrash. I've done thousands of synchronizations, and I count myself fortunate to run into problems only once monthly or so. I know a bit about translation between diverse data models, so I'm a bit sympathetic.

Synchronization is hard. The original Palm team had more than one genius, though they must have left in later years.

Apple doesn't have the knack. They're quite bad at sync ...

TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: MobileMe Fails to Launch Well, But Finally Launches

... .Mac synchronization has been the bane of my life for years, with it working erratically, duplicating entries, and working magically without intervention for periods of time. During the MobileMe transition, my laptop Address Book locked up, and despite all efforts won't synchronize at all even when it says it has. (I've deleted its data store, reset the sync, and repaired disk permissions.)

My office desktop Mac restored hundreds of deleted entries, many duplicated, which must have been cached at .Mac, even though they were removed. I went through and reculled my contacts. My iPhone, which is now set and apparently working with live sync, appears to have an out-of-date set of contact entries from after the duplicates were added back in and before I culled...

The worst of the hard problems in software development is one that executives think is easy to solve -- because they don't know they don't know. These problems tend to get funded with about 1/10 of the necessary resources.

I think that's what Apple has done with synchronization. Underfunded development by an order of magnitude ...

MobileMe trials require a credit card

I thought I'd take a look, but I'm not ready to provide a credit card ...

MobileMe Signup

....A credit card is required to start your free trial. After your trial ends, your card will be charged an annual subscription fee of $99.00. Don't worry, you can cancel your subscription online at any time during the trial...

Too big a chance I'd forget and be enrolled with whatever test ID I use.

One acceptable reason for this policy would be to reduce spammer abuse.

Using Blogger: Camino in place of Firefox 3

Things were going too well with Blogger. It had been months since a real disaster. Heck, I was even using Blogger in Draft (draft.blogger.com)!

Then, after installing Firefox 3, the wellness resolved ...

Gordon's Tech: Blogger a mess with Firefox 3

... Every other post I've written over the past 3-5 days has had problems with lost line breaks. All my text runs together. It's as though Blogger had broken their age-old management of paragraph breaks. I've tried Safari 3, Firefox 3, ScribeFire, XP, OSX, Blogger-standard and Blogger-in-Draft...

I'm not sure what's going wrong, but on various posts Blogger will abruptly treat the text as though it were true HTML -- instead of treating paragraph breaks as though they included a paragraph tag.

I think the trick is having edited it at one point with Firefox 3 and the Blogger in Draft editor. I think there's some style sheet persistence that's not exposed to the HTML editor. Subsequent editing with FF 3, even when Blogger in Draft is disabled, can trigger the problem.

Once a post gets into this mode, there's no escaping it -- turning off Blogger in Draft or using the HTML editor doesn't fix things.

I've found I can fix the post using either the superb Windows Live Writer (XP only) or Safari 3.

I've disabled the beta/draft version of blogger and returned to regular Blogger. On XP I can avoid this by simply using WLW. On OS X though I don't want to revert to FF 2. Safari 3 doesn't work very well with regular Blogger. So how can I get FF 2 type behavior on OS X?

Easy, use Camino. Works great.

I'll take another look at things in a couple of weeks, but until then I'll stay with Camino for my OS X blogging.

OmniFocus for iPhone and OS X – a webdav odyssey and a really big problem with OmniFocus

(Note: Firefox 2/3/Safari 3/Blogger 2/1/draft is messing up my post formatting big time. I had to open this post in Windows Live Writer (yay!) to repair it. It’s quite an impressive set of bugs we got there!)

This post has more than a couple of updates. It gives a sense of how messy this iPhone transition is going to be.

Briefly, the two immediate problems are that OmniFocus can’t import tab or csv delimited data and iPhone synchronization requires a webdav server. The second is a hassle, the first is a killer.

Here’s how it all evolved.

--

The first post

I’ve been waiting eagerly for OmniFocus desktop/iPhone. It’s a key piece of my struggle to migrate off the Palm platform.

I'm a registered OmniOutliner Pro customer, so I get a good break on the full app price. The iPhone companion is $20. It sounds like there's a way to sync with a LAN WebDav server, I'm looking forward to directions on how to do that.

To learn about OmniFocus desktop and OmniFocus/iPhone you need to first download and test the latest Sneaky Peek Build. Then pay $20 for the iPhone app. The OmniGroup is great about free upgrades, so there's no financial downside to buying both apps now if you're sure they're right for you. I know the OmniGroup will make them work -- they have the talent. I'll have some early impressions in a few days.

The First Update: After checking out the pref files in OF, it's clear you need a real webdav server. Desktop OS X can be hacked to enable Apache's webdav services, but it's too much work for me. I'm shopping around for a nice Java webdav server I can run in my user account, but I think those are oddly hard to find. OS X Server has webdav services enabled, but that's too much trouble too. I probably just need to pay for Mobile.me. I might as well have Apple deduct a monthly stipend directly from my employer ....

Update: Ok, so neither XDrive nor Windows Live Skydrive provide webdav access (box.net might?). Free webdav access is pretty much nonexistent, and even commercial solutions are not common. Resin used to be open source with a good webdav service; whatever the owners may say it feels pretty closed source now.

The W3C has a WebDav server, but it feels dusty and is very XP/Unix centric.

I used to use a WebDav service in the 90s, it really feels like WebDav has slipped away since then. Really, MobileMe might be the only practical WebDav solution outside of OS X Server! Too bad GDrive has gone missing.

So why has WebDav become so unpopular? Too easy to abuse? Insecure? It's not like we see better file sharing services around!

Update: umm ... maybe webdav services with Plone? Here's Apple's download blurb on Plone, but contrary to the description it now downloads an Intel only unified installer version 2.5.

The Plone site (use versiontracker) has a UNIX installer for version 3.1.2, you need to run terminal to install it in your user account. Since I'm only interested for now in supporting webdav sync for the iPhone from my WLAN I installed it as a regular user rather than as a root user service. Be warned, however, after compilation the install is 250MB!

I think this may also not be a fully complaint WEBDAV implementation.

A thread in the OMNI Group Forums mentioned box.net, but that service is blocked by many corporate filtering services (which supports my suspicion that the reason webdav is so hard to find is that webdav services are often used illegally).

“Final” update: Well, I installed Plone into 10.4.11 with the universal UNIX installer and edited the .conf file to enable localhost:1980 webdav services. Incredibly, 10.4.11 finder worked perfectly. Unfortunately OmniFocus didn't. At first it gave a basic can't connect error message, on retry it crashed and I sent the OmniGroup a crash report.

Final update plus: After all of the above, I find in early testing that OmniFocus has basically no data import/export capabilities I can use.

Here's what I read from an OmniGroup Forum post:

1. If your organization has any development capacity, it is not difficult to write a specialised importer using Applescript. This would give you the most efficient workflow.

2. For a quick and dirty solution in the interim, you can use search and replace to convert your CSV text into tab-delimited text, and use Omnioutliner to import that. Omnifocus can import Omnioutliner files.

Hookaayyy. I can hire a developer to write an AppleScript importer to move Outlook tasks into OmiFocus?I don't think so.

So cross out OmniFocus! I'll keep the skeleton of my original post. At least I learned something about webdav services and Plone!

Looks like it will take longer than expected to come up with a good iPhone task management solution...]

Final-Final update plus: Ken Case of OmniFocus replies in comments:

Just thought I'd mention that we're planning to add the ability to import CSV files to OmniFocus, it's just not there yet. (The priority for 1.0 was to get the basic workflow and functionality working, and the priority for the in-progress 1.1 release is synchronization. Hopefully CSV import will make it into 1.2!)By the way, here's a pointer to the best tutorial I've seen on setting up WebDAV on your Mac.

The referenced webdav directions are for 10.5 workstation Apache and are very well laid out. The directions include lines like "be sure to use sudo", so they're not written for most users. Maybe OmniFocus will write a one-click utility to enable Apache WebDav? Lastly, I work in software development, and in my world "hopefully" means -- "if we're visited by space alien coders", but the OmniGroup may operate on a higher plane.

Bottom line: I'm going to be carrying a Palm around for a long time yet.

Uninstalling applications from the iPhone

I’m always curious about how application uninstallation works.

By way of comparison, the Palm never had a proper uninstaller.

I’m surprised I’m saying something good about the phone I’m supposed to buy tomorrow, but this is well thought out.

Syncing Applications from the App Store

… If you delete an Application from your iTunes library, the next time you sync your iPhone or iPod touch with that computer it will be removed from the device. If you delete an application from your device, but not from your iTunes library, it will be synced back to your device the next time your connect to iTunes.

If you normally sync applications to your device from one computer and then connect it to iTunes on another computer, iTunes will not attempt to sync applications from that library. Applications can only be synced from one iTunes library. If you are connected your iPhone or iPod touch to an iTunes library that you don't normally sync with, you can still transfer purchased applications from the device by choosing File > Transfer Purchases in iTunes.

It’s an extension of how music is managed on the iPod.