iPhone availability widget

Minnesota is among the 21 states with no current iPhone availability.

What a nuisance.

Apple has a widget that works only after 9pm (local time?) to check local Apple Store stocks:

Apple Retail Store - iPhone availability at the Apple Store

Check availability after 9:00 p.m. the night before you plan to visit an Apple Retail Store.

Get there early. Shipments arrive most days, but be sure to arrive early since iPhone 3G is sold on a first come, first served basis.

I'd prefer to buy at an AT&T store due to the tactical complexity of AT&T's deliberately evil contracts, but I suspect Apple stores are getting more shipments. AT&T is not offering a similar availability widget, they suggest payment up front and they'll hold a phone when it arrives. Fortune reports they have no phones anywhere, and no word on when they'll receive any.

I'd pay to reserve at an AT&T except I know AT&T is so Satanic that Hell itself could not abide them. (Apple, on the other hand, is merely a close confidante of Beelzebub. AT&T store staff, in my experience, are quite good btw.)

Update 7/15/08 9pm: no iPhones available in Minnesota. Ok, 1 8GB white.
Update 7/16/0810pm: none at all

Epocrates Rx is out for the iPhone (and iTouch)

Epocrates Rx is available for the iPhone.

Not the web version -- the true iPhone client.

Free medical PDA software: Epocrates Rx for iPhone / iPod touch:

• Apple iPhone/iPod touch with OS 2.0
• Minimum available memory 8 MB
• 20K per free health plan formulary selected

This is only for healthcare professionals -- Epocrates makes its money based on prescriber licensees.

It's a big deal for physicians, my wife couldn't switch from her Palm to her Blackberry Pearl until Epocrates was available for the Pearl. My friend Andrew keeps his Palm for the same reason.

The iPhone is going to be really big in healthcare; this is one important landmark. As soon as the line dies down and I can get my phone, I'll give it a try. It's distributed by the Apple Store (free), but you need an Epocrates account to use it.

Find unchecked songs in iTunes -- still need this workaround

Three years after this clever hint was written, there's still no other way to find all unchecked items in iTunes. You can't directly sort or filter on checked status.

This becomes important when your Library outgrows your iPod. Movies can do that to any iPod. (Note that the tip works up to 99,999 items and you need to first define all checked to find all unchecked.)

macosxhints.com - Use a Smart Playlist to see unchecked songs in iTunes

Part 1: Create a playlist with all checked songs in your library:

1. Create a new Smart Playlist in iTunes.
2. Uncheck "Match the following condition" in the new playlist dialog. This will cause all songs to be in the playlist.
3. Check the box by "Limit to" and fill it out with a very large number -- one that is much larger than the number of songs in your library (say, 300,000). Again, this will cause the playlist to include ALL songs.
4. Check "Match only Checked Songs" and leave "Live Updating" checked. This will only match songs that are checked.
5. Click OK and name the Playlist "Songs (Checked)".

This playlist now includes all the checked songs in your library.

Part 2: Create a playlist with all the unchecked songs in your library:

1. Create a new Smart Playlist in iTunes.
2. This time, leave "Match the following condition" checked.
3. As the condition, select "Playlist is not 'Songs (Checked)'"
4. Click OK and name the Playlist "Songs (Unchecked)".

Apple, please make the checkbox state a full fledged column/attribute.

PS. This tip surprisingly hard to find in Google. I first went through several forum posts that had no answers. Maybe this post will help. Comments also include an AppleScript alternative and some interesting workarounds to iPod management.

The problem with tabbed browsing ...

I'm used to applications containing related windows.

So at work Word has documents, Excel has spreadsheets, Outlook has email, Explorer has files, etc.

So I tab between apps, then navigate tabs within apps.

This breaks down in the world of tabbed browsers. Do I tab between browser windows, or click within a window between tabs? How do I mix browser tabs with applications outside the browser? How do I organize windows into OS X Space?

It doesn't help that even FF 3 hasn't learned from the OmniWeb example of hierarchical views of windows and tabs, allowing reorganization at least within a browser space.

I need a better conceptual model for organizing like this -- views of documents, views of spreadsheets, etc. The tabbed browser approach was a good start, but it's only a start.

There's nothing new here of course, but it really is time to think differently. I'm inclined now to think that we need to get rid of tabs and certainly, absolutely, get rid of the "application owns the window" model.

Just give me windows. Then let me use OS X spaces, and the ability to navigate and reorganize the windows within spaces. In any app I need to be able to see all windows owned by the app, to expedite finding and organizing what I'm interested in.

Moving Outlook/Palm contacts to the iPhone via MobileMe

iTunes reads in Outlook data (which can sync with a Palm PDA), then sends it to MobileMe. No mention is made of calendar, notes or task synchronization. iTunes by itself has some capability to browse calendar data, but I’ve never tested that.

TUAW Review: MobileMe - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

…Windows and MobileMe: Windows and MobileMe play surprisingly nicely together. MobileMe comes pre-packaged with iTunes 7.7 for Windows, and lives as a Control Panel item. You can then choose to sync contacts, email, and bookmarks. For bookmarks, you can choose which browser to sync with, and MobileMe works with Safari (of course), Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7. IE7, though, doesn't work a hundred percent with the web apps, so Apple recommends you use Safari or Firefox instead. For more information about how to connect your Windows computer to MobileMe, you can visit Apple's MobileMe support page.

I couldn’t find anything more on the MobileMe support page. I’ll update this post if I find more details in Apple’s kb or support. I’ve yet to purchase MobileMe – waiting until it’s been stabilized.

The best feature in Safari 3.1: drag and drop urls

There are a few features of Internet Explorer I really like.

Save as archive for example, which creates a MIME formatted version of a web page in a single .mht file.

Most of all though, I like the drag and drop URLs. Click on a title bar URL, drag it to an edit field, and IE creates a link using the title of the source page.

Every other browser, as best I can recall, simply displays the URL. (I just verified that Firefox 3 just copies the URL.)

Today, on a whim, I tried the drag and drop operation into a Blogger "compose" box. Here's an example of what I got: Gordon's Tech: iTunes library: recreate, move and more.

So Safari has adopted IE's behavior.

Did it always do that? When did this change?

Great improvement. Now if Firefox could only learn this trick ...

iTunes library: recreate, move and more

I've moved my iTunes Library a few times. As far as I can recall, whatever I did worked. I've even moved it from Mac to PC and back again.

Here are the official ways to move and, if necessary, regenerate your iTunes Library:

• How to move your iTunes library
  
• How to re-create your iTunes library
• Moving your iTunes Library via an iPod (new in iTunes 7 - archive)
  

Here are the unofficial ways I've done things like this in years past. I recommend the official route, but if you get stuck these resources might provide ideas:

• Moving iTunes Libraries: the SMB version
  
• Rescuing a wrecked iTunes Library -- one approach
  
• Merging or combining two iTunes libraries
  

If you want to do more with your iTunes Library, consider PowerTunes. I've no personal experience, but I've used iPhoto Library Manager from the same author.

So, lots of options. Which brings me to the inspiration for this post - a completely confused article on Mac OS X Hints. How can it be that genuine OS X geeks don't know to search Apple's knowledge base?

To be fair, I tried a Google search on the topic and the results were pretty bad. Then I tried iTunes Help, and that was useless. Searching Apple's knowledge base worked though. This should really be in Apple's Help file, so I'll give my fellow geeks a bit of slack.

Maybe this post will help Google do a bit better ...

Update 8/16/08: I tried again today, and now Google's search works just fine. Coincidence, I'm sure.