Gordon's Tech

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

How to charge an iPhone at multiple computers

iPhone 2.0 can't charge via Firewire. It's one of the most annoying "features" of the new phone.

That means I've lost some chargers. Since iPhone 2.0 is a power hog, I need to be able to charge at the office.

The best way to do this would be to use my corporate laptop's USB port, but I don't want to sync the iPhone at work. That would be a disaster. The iPhone can really only sync at one machine.

One trick is to change the "sync automatically" setting to OFF at your normal sync workstation. That setting travels with the iPhone, so it applies everywhere. You can now plug your iPhone in without fear of sync.

Another trick is to hold the home button when you connect the iPhone. That's supposed to disable Sync but I haven't tried it.

Best of all is to to into iTunes preferences and click on the "Syncing" preference. There you can turn off automatic syncing for all iPhones and iPods. That's what I do at work, so I can recharge my devices from my work machine's USB port.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The ultimate AirTunes, iPhone Remote, iTunes setup

This was hoisted from comments on an post I wrote a few weeks ago. My commenter is describing the ideal multi-user iTunes/AirTunes/iTouch Remote configuration.

First from my original post ...

Gordon's Tech: Remote control of iTunes and AppleTV: will AirTunes return?
... Son of a gun, it works. It really, really works. I've been controlling my upstairs Library from my iPhone, streaming music to my AirPort express, and listening to speakers in two rooms. Years after the AirTunes hype died off, Apple finally delivered.
There's even intriguing/worrisome support for multiple libraries, which brings me to a comment from someone who's gone another step beyond me (note this only works if you wisely avoid the plague of DRM)...

The key bit of good news is that I could control my Library even when iTunes was running in a 10.4 background session.

It gets beter though. From Jan ...

It looks like Remote with iPhones/iPod Touch and AirTunes is the solution for for the multi-room audio setup I was waiting for years to come.

I installed several AirPort Express boxes with AirTunes in the rooms and installed 3 users on a mac mini with fast user switching on. All users have their own iTunes setup and have access to a central NAS Server with all the MP3 files. This won´t work with Windows because Windows won´t allow fast user switching running iTunes !

With this setup every family member is able to hear their music independently on different AirTunes outlets. It really works !

Note Jan has one set of files, but 3 libraries. So each user can sync their iPod or iPhone with their own account and save their own Address Book and preferences, but share one set of music.

Excellent. I'm going to do this one day. Note it requires that the music file be on a NAS. I knew I'd want one of those soon.

Escape from Lunarpages - what next?

I've hosted a set of web pages and domains through Lunarpages. The support and quality hasn't been great, but not so bad that it was worth switching.

Recently, however, they went over a cliff. I've been through two significant domain related screw-ups with them in about six weeks.

This was the reply to the latest problem.

Hello, The issue appears to be related to a glitch in the Cpanel software. Sometimes this is caused by a client attempting to add a subdomain as an addon domain. We are awaiting the next cpanel update which should resolve this issue and will update our servers once it is released. We apologize for the inconvenience. -- Should you have any further questions please feel free to contact us. Best Regards

Right. Not only is the reply pretty annoying (no date?), but also the problem occurred with no changes made to cpanel.

So I'm not happy with Lunarpages -- but are there really better choices? Could I, for example, find a reasonable file hosting service combined with a registrar with user configurable CNAME settings?

Well, yes, there's Google Apps/eNom -- but that won't work for the domains I already use.

Here's the list I have of domain registrars (wikipedia list, icann list)

Network Solutions: suspected domain name tasting, advertising on user subdomains
Go Daddy: soft core porn reputation, against net neutrality
eNom: Google partner, but not interested in small customers
Tucows / OpenSRS good values statement
Register.com

Problem is, none of them are too appealing. Seems the entire business is troubled - it looks like 90% of the customer base are name squatters. That's not a group terribly interested in customer service.

So can I find the next best thing to Google -- a quality hosting service that uses eNom? Well, Lunarpages doesn't use eNom, but there 7th on this list. Hmm. Tough bunch!

Ok, what if I look for an OS X friendly service? That might be a measure of a classy outfit. From my own archives I find Dreamhost. Dig a little further, and I see that in 2004 I was deciding between Lunarpages and Dreamhost! (Yes, this blog is a part of my memory.)

Dreamhost is an ICANN approved registrar. They include webdav support, optional VPN services, unlimited subdomains, Jabber instant messaging, custom MX configuration, custom DNS configuration including CNAME revisions ... Not to mention a very elegant and clutter free web site.

So things have changed since 2004. What happens today when I search on the string Lunarpages Dreamhost? I find posts like this one and this one.

I suspect Dreamhost has their own issues. This is a tough business, but it looks like I'm not the first Lunarpages customer to look to Dreamhost.

I think I'll try moving one of the problem domains and see how that goes.

Update: Dreamhost was started by three Harvey Mudd undergrads. As a Caltech alum I actually know of Harvey Mudd -- it's an honorable sort of place.

Update: Even better. Dreamhost offers free hosting for non-profits and they mention use of Google Apps as a deployment option. Perfect. I'll move the Google App based non-profit site I help with first and see how well Dreamhost does. That will eliminate one of domains Lunarpages messed up and I can transfer domain ownership to the non-profit at the same time. Once we see how that goes I'll post with further comments.

Update 8/2/08: Today Lunarpages ~~misconfigured their server and associated an xml mime type with all my pages~~ installed a security update that interacted with changes they'd made to my .htaccess file and took all my pages offline with an obnoxious XML error message. None of them render. I'm now relocating to Dreamhost; I'll have some future blog posts about the migration experience. I'll move all the files first, then the domains last. I have to think about domain migration sequence.

Update 8/29/08: If you sign up with DreamHost and use my promo code, you get the maximal $50 1st year discount. The code is KATEVA.

Things touch 1.1 adds task sync with desktop app

I sync ToDo.app with Toodledo (RTM is an alternative). If Things had had desktop sync 10 days ago, and if it had import and export abilities from the desktop, I might have tried it ...

Things touch 1.1 Syncs, Syncs, Syncs : Things Blog : Cultured Code
This morning, Apple gave the green light for Things touch 1.1. The most prominent new feature is the ability to sync with the desktop version of Things...
... both your Mac and your iPhone/iPod touch have to be connected to the same wireless network. To turn on syncing, start Things on the desktop, go to Preferences > iPhone, and follow the on-screen instructions...
...there are quite a few to-do items on our list. First, the desktop app will see some long awaited improvements that will push it closer to 1.0. .. we will keep you updated on our progress via Twitter.

As is true of every iPhone developer except Missing Sync, the sync is network based.

iPhone developers do seem to love Twitter.

Fixes for iPhone App install problems

Update 9/14/08: Fixed.

I think the problems describe here are a variant of the “unknown error” issues I’ve run into following a difficult iPhone restore procedure. It smells to me like a mismatched DRM-motivated unique identifier. I’d recommend trying ..

Expect to lose all app-related data from your phone.
Mount phone, don’t allow sync. (If you hold home button on connection it won’t sync, I always disable auto sync).
Go to tab for applications, switch to selective sync, uncheck problem app.
Sync. (This will remove problem app from phone – and all data)
Go to tag for applications, check the problem ap.
Sync. This should fix things. Data will be gone

If that doesn’t next up is to restore the phone from a previous backup.

Mount phone, don’t allow sync. (If you hold home button on connection it won’t sync, I always disable auto sync).
Right click on phone.
Restore from backup. Expect to lose new data. Restore takes a LONG time, you have to resync music, etc, you lose all passwords, some config settings.

Or try this …

iPhone OS 2.0.2: Fix for Apps Crashing, Not Launching and Missing Music - iPhone Atlas

… In other cases, you may need to delete the actual update files, then re-download and restore. Delete the update files, located in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates under Mac OS X or C:/documents and settings/[yourusername]/Application Data/Apple Computer/iTunes/iPhone Software in Windows…

Monday, August 18, 2008

Palm to iPhone - the summary

I'm wrapping up my series on migrating my personal data from the Palm/Outlook/XP to the iPhone/OS X/Cloud. I've yet to figure out how to manage my work data as well, that will be the subject of future posts.

On the left, a picture of my battered Tungsten E|2. It's my sixth or seventh Palm, and my second E|2. Like most Palm devices the on/off switch died within six months of purchase.

Palm can't make power switches. Or rather, they don't like them to last.

Note there are eight action buttons, four silkscreen and four physical (omitting the center button -- I hardly ever use it). Note the nice search button -- the iPhone doesn't have global search (maybe for a good reason).

Below is the current iPhone. Not coincidentally, the top row corresponds to the four physical buttons on my Palm. The special bottom row, however, is taken over the the phone, google, map, iPod.

The Calendar and Contacts are a close match to the Palm. They sync with iCal and Address Book by USB cable. One improvemnet is that iCal also subscribes to my wife's BlackBerry/Google Calendar, so get to see her appointments on my iPhone (read-only). (iCal further syncs my primary calendar with gCal using Spanning Sync; I've put MobileMe on hold until Apple does some major fixes).

The ToDo.app doesn't sync with iCal, it syncs with Toodledo. My family Google Calendar also gets a feed from Toodledo, it shows tasks as all day events.

On the far right is Evernote, the anxiety provoking home for my Palm Notes and more. They sync to the Evernote service.

The following posts may be of interest to anyone who's trying to migrate a Palm device from Outlook/XP to an iPhone using OS X/Cloud ...

iPhone 2.0.2: fast contacts from phone

This Ars commenter is right:

Apple says bug fixes ahoy in new iPhone 2.0.2 firmware

...This update definitely fixed the lag in loading contacts in the Phone app. I can start scrolling as soon as the app appears now

Strangely, there's still a lag when loading them in the Contacts app...

Weird. Contacts still has a 2-3 second lag (though it varies), but phone has no lag when viewing contacts. Grand Dialer, which also brings up contacts, also has lost its lag.

I haven't noted any other changes. In Minneapolis-Saint Paul I haven't had the reception problems some markets have, iPhone reception is no worse than the previous 3G Nokia phone I had.

I wonder if it will fix my app update problem.