Network locations in Mac OS X

One of the minor mysteries of OS X - newly explained:

Using network locations in Mac OS X: ...A 'location' is a set of network preferences...

It might have been better if they'd called the tool "custom network preferences", but Locations does have a smoother sound. Most of us rarely need to use anything but Automatic these days, but if you want to experiment with OpenDNS (example: block problem addresses) you can create a custom OpenDNS location.

Unknown Error during iPhone app install or update

Update 9/14/08: Fixed.

I'm getting this error with the iPhone I was given when my original white 3G phone cracked.

Unkown Error On The iPhone | DamienKomala.com

... Ok so every time I try and update or upgrade an application on my iPhone I get this “Unknown Error: 0xE800002E. After some adjustments I was able to find a method to resolve, or at least update my apps. Here’s the key ...

Damien suggests selective installation (see post for details). This worked for me:

1. Delete app from iPhone
2. Delete app from iTunes
3. Click to download. iTunes says I already own the app, offers to redownload.
4. Sync
   

I wonder about an iPhone hardware problem, but I'm hoping it's a corrupted download problem. Re-downloading might fix that.

Update 8/11/08: I'm now seeing the same error with every application update that appears. I think that either my iPhone has a hardware bug or restore from backup doesn't work properly. I hope, and suspect, it's the latter.

This time I tried Damien Komala's tip. I deleted the app from the iPhone, then did a selective app sync with the app unchecked, then checked it.

GrandDialer: will this help my phone bill?

AT&T charges me a fortune to call Canada.

But what if I could use my GrandCentral account to call Canada, then GrandCentral connects me in?

GrandDialer would make that easier:

GrandDialer, an iPhone app for GrandCentral - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

...GrandDialer (iTunes link) allows you to use your iPhone to call people using your GrandCentral telephone number....

This is using the GrandCentral "Click2Call" feature.

8/8/08: It works. Inferior voice quality and some echo, so I don't know how well it will do for my elderly parents. Good lord. This could pay for my iPhone data plan. It appears to be completely legal, but one suspect a bill will appear someday.

Except that the GC site doesn't mention how Click2Call is charged for long distance calls.

Not surprisingly, other folks noticed this a long time ago. Actually a lot of other people.

No wonder people envy me my GrandCentral account.

It's hard being an elder geek -- I miss out on the tricks the youngsters know.

Now I think I know why Google has been moving very slowly with GrandCentral. It sure makes a good club when you're in discussions with telecom companies.

Update 8/18/08: I've been doing this for 2 weeks. Sometimes the voice quality is excellent, sometimes it's weak -- but it does work.

Update 10/19/08: Still works, has saved me about $100 or so. The quality is very good 25% of the time, very poor 25% and marginal 50%. The marginal quality sort of works for my mother, but is worthless for my father. GrandCentral's VOIP quality is on the high end of what I've seen in my prior experiments; VOIP startups just can't get the quality I need (one suspects the phone companies aren't exactly helpful). So it's a good service for free, but they really couldn't charge much and still be worthwhile for me. If I get a bad connection now I just call back with a regular line, I don't retry the GrandCentral connection.

Update 12/3/08: The quality has improved dramatically in the past few weeks. It's now very similar to landline quality. I wonder if Google is getting ready to do something interesting with VOIP. Maybe the phone companies have displeased them ...

Fewer posts, more shared items – Google Reader changes my memory management

My iPhone purchase forced me to move from Bloglines to Google Reader. I don’t regret the move; Bloglines was fine but they were clearly running out of steam. Their inability to produce a mobile version was a sad sign that their day has passed. This is a tough industry.

Among Google Reader’s many great features is a convenient way to share feed items with optional annotations. 

Here’s my list. It’s not obvious or obviously documented, but this share list itself appears to have a feed [1].

I see a lot of things I’d like to keep track of. Some of them get posts here, some don’t. Now that I’m using this mechanism I’ll reduce the number of “pointer posts” here, and instead periodically point to interesting items I’ve shared – with annotations. Since my shared list combines technical and political, pointers from here will filter out the political.

It is not accidental that this mechanism of sharing works very well with Google Reader mobile on the iPhone.

This is, most interestingly, an extension to my memory management strategy. Google works in mysterious ways.

[1] So if you share items from the shared feed …

How to steal my Google account

My old friend Brendan would know the answer to this Google password change security question:







Yes, to steal my Google account, my primary digital identity, all you need to know is my first phone number.

It's ok to sob quietly now. I understand.

I'm 187 years old, so not that many people know my first phone number any more. Only hackers who've broken into other security systems that ask the same question, and about a dozen other people. For anyone under 25 though, this isn't that hard to learn.

Ok, so I'm not a complete idiot. The answer I stored in Google for that question is a a 200 character hex string taken from GRC secure passwords. So you really would be better off stealing my primary password.

Google, on the other hand, is behaving like a complete idiot. Why is this?

That's the interesting question. It leads to some noteworthy conclusions ...

1. Passwords are a complete fail. Schneier has been saying this for years. We are now into the realm of madness. We need multi-factor authentication devices that handle our secondary authentication for us. Yeah, it's not perfect, but, really, this is s#$!@# insane.
2. We live in the age of the tyranny of the mean. Even the vast majority of geeks aren't going to figure out how to sync 1Password with an iPhone. Regular folks are going to use one password everywhere and then forget it. Google, like everyone else with these asinine security question is bowing to the reality that humans didn't evolve to live in a digital world. We're maxing out right now.
   

My iPhone cracks. Of course. And a new restore glitch.

When I quoted TUAW's coverage of the 3G iPhone plastic crack problem last week, I heard the bells tolling ...

Gordon's Tech: Check your 3G iPhone for cracks

... Cracks 'appearing' in new iPhone 3Gs - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

...The problem is not the plastic, but that the metal frame is too small for the plastic to lock on without causing the stress fractures.' It's pretty clear Apple has a manufacturing defect on its hands.

For those with cracks, taking it back to the Apple Store (or possibly the mobile phone retailer where you made your original purchase) is your only recourse. Several people have noted here and elsewhere that they've successfully had their handset replaced after a careful inspection....

I knew this would happen to me. Apple hates me.

Two thin cracks appeared today next to the volume control and the vibrate toggle switches. No trauma of course, so pretty much what others have seen.

I was near the Apple store getting my son his well earned summer Lego prize, so I figured I'd give 'em a try. A keen young floor staffer was ready to swap the phone on the spot, but since I'd bought it at AT&T I had to go through the "Genius Bar". That took a long time, the Mall of America store was very busy. I saw quite a few new iPhones going out the door.

Ben probably got an hour of computer game time in -- about twice what he's usually allowed. He was a happy camper.

The "Genius" was less keen on a swap, and seemed to be half-heartedly looking for a way out. Or maybe he was just tired and unsure of the procedure for an AT&T phone. Eventually they made the swap for another white phone -- you can't change colors.

I got the distinct impression that Apple has not yet defined a process for the cracks, that each store has to set its own policy.

This is what I learned about the swap process:

1. You should wipe your phone beforehand. I am kicking myself that I didn't do this -- it could have been done in the store. Of course the "Genius" might have mentioned this too, but I think we were both tired. I changed my primary Google password last night.
2. You need to clear any lock password.
3. They want the receipt (of course) and all accessories, box, etc. Ended up though that only the phone was swapped.
4. They tried to register the phone, but due to technical problems I didn't have my Apple ID available. This turned out to be unnecessary, with iPhone 2.0 a simple SIM swap activates a new phone.

So now we see if the problem recurs. Rumor has it that Apple knows what went wrong, and that only white 3G phones in a specific serial number range are affected.

Once I got home the restore process was a bit ugly. The standard restore wouldn't work because the phone had OS 2.0, and the restore wanted 2.01. I had to:

1. Set up as a new phone. First of all I disabled the sync phone as it was trying to sync all the apps.
2. Once it was on 2.01 I clicked the "Restore" button to set it back to factory status (wipe the name I gave it). This took a VERY long time and it included firmware restore.
3. Then I let it mount again. This time I was able to go through the expected "Set Up Your iPhone" procedure, including the option to restore from backup.
4. Then it said it was restoring the phone's settings, and the phone reset again.
5. Once again I came to the "Set Up Your iPhone" screen, this time it said an iPhone had been previously synced. I had the option of restoring from "iPhone" (created at step 3) or my prior backup. When I selected my prior backup I got the "restoring iPhone from backup dialog".
6. After a longer delay the iPhone displayed a ghostly numeric keypad with the message "voice mail password incorrect ... enter voice mail password". I also had to reenter our WiFi password, my email password, etc. Reassuringly, the backup doesn't store the passwords.
7. Then it was done.

Update

Or not.

After I restored I started trying to use the phone. None of my installed apps worked except Google Mobile. I think my dictionary settings have been lost too. Looks like the iPhone restore was a total fail.

I'm now going through another install. Time to backup my desktop calendar and address book!

Update:

Ok, I finally got the restore to work. Here's what I did:

1. Let it register as a new phone. Now I stopped getting the "Set Up Your iPhone" screens. I think they're buggy.
2. After my "temp" phone mounted, I right clicked and chose "restore from backup" from the iPhone context menu.
3. That restore worked. I did have to reenter my AT&T voice mail PIN and all stored passwords. I also had to redo all sync from iTunes.

Update 10/21/09: About 10 months later the replacement iPhone developed a 1 cm crack in the top right back corner. No other cracks. This could easily have been traumatic. The phone seems fine otherwise.

Laptop short of space? Remember NTFS compression.

I’d forgotten about NTFS compression. This thorough review, Thrilling tales of NTFS compression, reminded me that it’s a reliable tool for a few circumstances: (Quotes are from the Dans Data link):

• Laptop short of space: “Program Files contains a lot of stuff that's read moderately often but not written to very much, which is a good access profile for compression to have no perceptible speed impact at all, after the half-hour or whatever you'll be waiting for everything in a typical large-ish Program Files, on a laptop with a slow-ish CPU, to be compressed…
  
  … You can't expect a terribly large amount of compression from this, but when I tried it, I turned a 35.4Gb Program Files into a 27.6Gb one - 78% of its previous size, and a perfectly worthwhile 7.8Gb saved…”
• Microsoft Access databases (however this may impact I/O slightly). These compress extremely well.
• Windows BMPs – though almost no-one would keep these around outside of (gasp) screen shots pasted into PowerPoint.

Practically speaking, I think NTFS compression is most useful if you have to carry around a lot of large Microsoft Access databases on a laptop (consider using NTFS on a directory) or if you need to free up a few GBs on any laptop.

NTFS compression is not compatible with NTFS encryption (which most people will want to avoid, see the linked DD article). I don’t know if it’s compatible with other encryption schemes corporations apply to hard drives these days.

I think the closest OS X equivalent would be the 10.5 expandable sparse images.