GooSync - not yet for the iPhone (soon?)

GooSync specializes in SyncML based phone to gCal sync. Nothing yet for the iPhone though:

GooSync - Supported Devices

A synchronisation application is not yet available for the Apple iPhone.

A tech support forum posting mentions (incredibly) Nuevasync. I'm beginning to think that exchange server approach might work, which is kind of an amazing thought.

Here's a tech support post from July 2008, there's considerable frustration with Apple's struggles (or lack of honesty):

I can confirm that our SyncML client partner has a full working prototype for the iPhone, and as soon as Apple officially offer Calendar and Contacts support so will we.

Apple have announced release dates for official iPhone Calendar and Contacts support since the beginning of the year. Unfortunately these releases have never materialized. The Contacts API will be available soon (or so we're told) but still no calendar API set for release. We have offered release dates this year based on information received from Apple, and this information has thus far proven to be unreliable. Obviously with Apple not offering any solid commitments its impossible for us to either.

I can confirm that there have been working clients on offer for "jail-broken" iPhones. These are something that we do not endorse and will not work on v2.0 iPhones.

We can only apologise for this and can assure you we are as frustrated with the situation as you may be. As soon as there are any solid releases we will be sure to let you know.

Update 8/19/08: See comments. GooSync is waiting on app store approval now ...

Google Calendar's CalDAV drives the iMac to Leopard

I knew this was coming soon.

This was the final straw: Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center: "Only iCal 3.x supports CalDAV sync. (iCal 3.x is standard in all versions of Leopard.)".

Farewell Classic.

I'll need some more sleep before I steel myself or the upgrade. The last machine I upgraded to 10.5 blew up.

NuevaSync; iPhone to Google Calendar

This is extreme beta -- only for the brave. Interesting, however. Also some notes on Apple's sync framework, which is obnoxious (emphasis mine):

NuevaSync - Over the Air Synchronization

NuevaSync now has support for several Apple products. You can use the new iPhone® 3G as well as the original iPhone® and iPod® touch with 2.0 firmware.
Visit our device setup instructions for information on configuring your Apple device.

Info

You can sync your contacts with Google (GMail) or Plaxo. You can sync your calendar items with Google Calendar.

Apple has chosen always to sync from a clean slate. That means that when you enable sync, your existing contacts and calendar items will be removed and replaced with the external copies. This is an Apple feature, not a NuevaSync one...

I'm tracking their blog. Some (insane?) people are using NuevaSync already.

iPhone backups and accesing .mdbackup files

Apple - Support - Discussions - Where does iTunes saves iPhone Back-ups ... ... "The backups are in ~Library/Application Support/MobileSync".

On my system MobileSync/Backup has 3 folders. I think this reflects the tumultuous history of my iPhone and the flopped restore procedure. The name of the folder is the unique identifier of your iPod or iPhone:

To back up an attached device, you must specify its target ID. This is the name used for the folder in the MobileSync/Backup directory...

and the name of the files is ...

... the name of each backup file is actually the SHA1 hash of its path...

When I synched my iPhone 1 of the 3 folders was updated, so the others are either inactive backups or correspond to my iPod. (I think they're inactive backup files.)

My backup folder is 70MB but holds almost 1,400 items. It contains a small portion of my 8GB of iPhone data and apps.

The files end in .mdbackup. That leads to some interesting posts:

• TUAW: extracting notes data from an .mdbackup file
• .mdbackup may be Apple binary plists (format)
• a technical five part + discussion of iPhone backups (Oreilly)

The last series is the winner. It includes a post referencing a relatively friendly command line app for extracting data from an .mdbackup file (I've downloaded a copy, you should too - but note that using a command line utility is a non-trivial task. I think you need at least admin privileges and you may need to do more to enable the app to run/):

... You can examine the contents of these files and extract the backed up data from them using my mdhelper utility. It's a command-line Mac-based application that scans through these folders and allows you to extract files. For example, to recover all the png images from your backups, you could issue mdhelper -C png. Run the utility without arguments to see the built-in options...

What mdhelper does is this. It locates all backup folders. It reads in the Info.plist and Manifest.plist files and it lets you extract manifests and files based on a variety of search options. It stores extracted data on your desktop in a recovered iPhone files folder.

Pop back on Monday to learn more about backup files and how to force your iPhone to backup and restore from the Mac command line.

and, when things are really bad, you will appreciate these tips on how to restore from an archive you've made of a "good" backup (I'm sure there will be a GUI tool to do this very soon.):

.. In order to restore a device, you run the AppleMobileBackup program using the restore switch, like this:

./ambackup --restore --target targetid

This throws your iPhone into restore mode and returns any uncorrupted files from the backup folder to your device. This takes quite a bit longer than the backup, so prepare to wait a few minutes for it to complete.

If you want to restore your phone from a folder that is different from the target ID normally used, supply a source folder name as follows:

./ambackup --restore --target targetid --source sourcefoldername

If the source folder is not found in the backups folder, one is created. If it is found, that manifest and those files are used to restore your iPhone...

I've zipped a copy of my latest "good" backup, and retrospect backs up these files too. It's good to know I can, if things are desperate, scrape lost data from these files.

Update 8/20/08: The iTunes Preferences "Syncing" panel lists the backups by name and date. You can delete unwanted backups there. It only lists my iPhone backups.

Update 12/21/10: If you are looking for a particular device backup in a set of backup folders, you need to look for the manifest.plist file in each directory. Open it in a text editor and scroll down. You'll see the name of the device.

Google Page Creator to end

I noted last year that Google Page Creator was being sunset.

Now it's official. Google will transfer some Pages content to corresponding Sites and provide a download option for users who don't want to use Sites.

This is a nuisance of course, but I'm not complaining too much - yet. Sites is improving and I'm glad Google is putting some resources into this service. My Google irritation will all depend on how careful they are about the migration.

How files will be managed is still a mystery. You can attach a file to a Sites page, but it's awkward. Google Page Creator had more file upload options, but even those were weak. I'd be reasonably happy over the transition if Sites were to allow JavaScript and if Sites gets true file management.

My biggest effort will be translating my Minnesota Special Hockey web site from Page Creator to Sites. That could be ugly. My other Page Creator uses are more modest, but they include kateva.org.

Google Operating System has a good set of tips for people looking to get ahead of the rush ...

Export Files from Google Page Creator:

... Google Sites will add some of the missing features by the time Google closes Page Creator, but those who want to move to a different service or maybe to buy a domain can already export the files.

Requirement #1. There are three kinds of files that are trapped inside Page Creator: uploaded files and web pages created using the editor which can be public or unpublished. The following exporting tool can only work for uploaded files and the public web pages. ..

Requirement #2. Another prerequisite for the exporting tool is a software that downloads all the files linked from a page. For Internet Explorer, try the excellent download manager FlashGet (I use the classic version). For Firefox, there's an extension called DownThemAll that has some of the features from FlashGet...

iPhone ToDo app and why my reviews are better than the rest

I bought Appigo's ToDo.app ($10) for my iPhone (currently I think of my phone as iTease). (BTW, Appigo has a Google Group for this app.)

I've been using it with Toodledo. I'd considered a switch switch to Remember the Milk but Toodledo tech support helped me with my major concern -- the ability to apply operations to sets of items. The combined cost of ToDo.app ($10) and Toodledo ($17) together is $27 - a good fraction of MobileMe. Too bad Apple hates us.

Here's what conventional, good, reviewers will tell you about ToDo.app

Macworld | iPhone Central | Review: Todo 1.1.1 for iPhone and iPod touch

... it’s in creating and organizing tasks that Todo really shines, offering many more features than Zenbe Lists or any of the basic to-do apps I covered a few weeks ago.

As with other apps, you can create multiple lists of tasks; you add new lists and tasks using the plus (+) button at the top of the main lists screen or any individual list screen, respectively. When viewing a list, tapping on a task’s circle marks the task as complete; depending on your settings, completed tasks disappear completely or are moved to a Completed section at the bottom of the current list..

... Creating a new task demonstrates Todo’s best attribute: offering many options and features while keeping the interface simple and easy to use. In addition to naming a new task, you can specify a due date, a repeating schedule, and a priority (1, 2, 3, or none); you can also include a text note...

This is what you only get from me:

1. If you try to switch services, say from ToodleDo to RTM, every item on your list is deleted. So you can't decide to use one service, then switch. [Update: Appigo consciously decided to do this for the initial release, they will probably make this configurable in a future release.]
   
2. Tasks can belong to only one list/category/tag. (Very much like Palm -- in fact ToDo.app is pretty much a functional clone of the original Palm To Do app).
3. There are no alerts or alarms on tasks.
4. There's no search. I really need search. Of course this is a problem across the entire iPhone. [Update: Appigo expects to deliver search in a near term release]
   
5. It's crashed once in light use.

Update 9/22/08: I'm a regular Appigo ToDo.app customer. It's a great product, but there's a scary specter looming.

ScribeFire: so many updates, so little progress

Ive been intermittently using the ScribeFire: a Firefox extension blog editor for about a year.

The "release fast and often" strategy is fashionable now, but ScribeFire is a good counter-example.

It still only shows recently used "labels"/"categories" from blogger. It still doesn't handle blogger's line wrapping correctly.

These aren't subtle things, and they aren't new. They've been present from day one.

Windows Live Writer is proof that, given sufficient genius, these problems are solvable [1]. Release often is not a panacea.

[1] WLW is also proof that there's life at Microsoft. Nobody has released anything comparable for OS X.