DreamHost promotion: unlimited storage - ends 9/10

Figures. I sign up, and a few weeks later DreamHost has a big promotion:

Web Hosting by DreamHost Web Hosting
UNLIMITED Storage
UNLIMITED Bandwidth
ends Sept 10th

They say "$6/mo", but that's only if you sign up for several years. Really figure $10 a month or so.

I'm really impressed with them. I think you can do far worse for the price.

If you use my registration code (KATEVA), you might get $50 off (max discount) on sign-up -- though I'm not sure if that applies for the "unlimited storage" promo.

Google: STOP the Page Creator to Sites MobileMess

Google has at least 6 different environments for authoring something like a web page [1].

So it's not hard to understand why they want to discontinue one of them ...

About Google Page Creator

... We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites, which offers many of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like site-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see and edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and Google docs.

If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to Google Sites later this year...

Ok, that's great, but right now Google is doing a "MobileMess". They're replacing one incomplete solution with an even less complete solution.

Sure, Sites can embed gadgets -- but I haven't been able to make good use of their other supposed advantages. In particular the "file management" is not a significant improvement over Page Creator's very feeble solution (if you control your domain you can create a Page Creator/domain solution that works pretty well, but that's another topic).

On the other hand Sites pages look awful in Safari/iPhone. Ok, so they look lousy anywhere -- can't Google hire some graphics designers? Still, they're worse than lousy on the iPhone. On any browser the Sites "footer" dynamically expands (why?!), but on the iPhone this tricks Safari/iPhone into filling most of the half-VGA screen with an ugly, empty, footer.

Yes, you can embed Gadgets into Sites pages, but Google has done a lousy job of organizing the Gadget library. In any case, most of Google products generate Javascript code (see Custom Search Engines) - not Gadgets. Sites disallows Javascript (probably for security and CPU burden reasons). So a lot of the things you can embed in Page Creator pages, or even in Blogger posts, can't be embedded in Sites.

There are other issues with Sites -- though Google is slowly chipping away at some of them. Maybe in a year or two Sites will be an adequate replacement for Page Creator.

It's not ready now.

Learn from Apple's foot-shooting blunders Google. Don't migrate until Sites is ready.

[1] Page Creator, Sites, Blogger, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Docs

See also:

• Sites and Co-op being Sunset Nov 2007
  
• Sites and Page Creator Feb 2008
• Page Creator to End Aug 2008
  

Misadventures: finding a new home for my Google custom seraches

I'm a big fan of Google Custom Search. I've made my old Page Creator Google hosted custom search page into my start page everywhere.

Alas, Page Creator is going - even though Sites isn't ready. So I really ought to find a new home -- and add some new searches. In particular, I wanted to add a custom search that searched all the web but had the following biases:

• my web pages and my blogs
• all the sources referenced in my Google Reader OPML page (ie. my blogroll)
  

Oh, and I wanted the resulting search page to render cleanly in my iPhone.

Of course this turned out to be far harder than I'd imagined. In fact, I'm stymied at the moment.

Creating the new search engine was easy. I exported my Google Reader OPML file and imported into into a new custom search engine using the Advanced feature of "upload annotations".

When I looked at moving the search engines however, I discovered the CSE function that had generated the code for my my old Page Creator Google hosted custom search page was gone!

In its place were a scattered set of ways to embed a search engine. Some appeared in the code tab of a search engine control panel, others appeared only in the "homepage" of a search engine, and one on the CSE overview page that added the entire set to my iGoogle page.

I think there's a bit of entropy setting in here!

I tried adding a Gadget to a Sites page. I knew Sites forbids Javascript, so I couldn't use the other code generation options. I found the code with the hidden Gadget URL on the homepages of my custom searches, I extracted that URL (see prior link) and used the almost invisible "add URL" option you can find in the Sites add gadget dialog.

That worked, but Sites pages look awful on the iPhone.

So then I tried taking the various code fragments generated by the CSE links and embedding them in the (obsolete) Google pages -- but they either failed to work on Google Apps Pages or they worked with Firefox but not the iPhone.

Lastly I tried creating a barebones blog as a faux page management solution. That actually worked well from an editing perspective, but even with some template hacks (remove search bar) the iPhone display was not as good as a simple web page. I tried looking for an iPhone template -- no problem there. I found hundreds of blogger iPhone templates. Turns out there's a mini-industry of Blogger templates and WordPress themes. Trouble is, half the sites look crooked as can be. Blogger doesn't provide an official template.

I've stopped for now. It's sad, but I bet I'll get the best results crafting a page in ... FrontPage 98.

I'll come back to this one -- I feel like I've taken a walk on the dark side of Google.

Update 9/8/08: Wow, was this ever trivial do using FrontPage 98. Instead of wasting an hour with various messed up Google authoring tools, five minutes with FP gave me a decent result. I've created a subdomain redirect, so search.faughnan.com should shortly go to my iPhone friendly custom search page.

It's not quite right -- somehow iPhone is guessing a bit off for initial page size. I'll have to read a bit about iPhone web optimization. Also the code that Google's CSE generates embeds a fairly bulky gadget -- I preferred the old simple forms. It works though, I'll tweak it as needed. ( think this meta tag might help; I used viewport=720.

Proof that Google needs to reexamine their Page Creator/Sites strategies.

Update 4/11/11: Three years later I adore my custom search engines. I use them all the time. Some things have changed however. When I created a new search engine for special needs services in MSP I couldn't find the code snippets I was looking for on the Custom Search Engine configuration panel. I could only find some ichy dynamic javascript stuff that didn't work well on blogger. The trick for a "search element" hosting option engine is to go to the Google page generated for the search engine and use the "add this search engine" link to get a simple embedded script statement.

Pogue's iPhone tips

I really like Pogue and teams' iPhone the Missing Manual. (emphasis team - Pogue is a brand these days). $17 from Amazon, $25 where I bought it.

You can see how good the book is from the very valuable tips Pogue/O'Reilly gives away for free. Definitely worth a read by any iPhone user -- even if you have his book.

iPhone work/home synchronization and dual machine sync - not impossible

I wrote a few weeks ago that the iPhone was unlikely to support work/home calendar integration. I previously wrote that you can't sync via the USB cable to two different machines.

Wrong on both counts.

First Alan Faichney tells me he follows this routine:

the [home] iTunes machine is the "primary" machine and gets to do the backup. The route I use to synchronise uses Entourage:

• Exchange Server

• <- work network ->

• Entourage on laptop

• <- laptop sync services ->

• iCal on laptop

• <- USB / iTunes sync ->

• iPhone

The whole Entourage calendar is synched to a single iCal calendar (called "Entourage"!) It means that iCal can't see Outlook categories (Groupcal tried to do this better on Tiger, but it always ended in tears for me), but it does mean that you can keep personal iCal / iPhone calendars out of Exchange Server.

I'm pretty sure I don't follow Alan's setup completely, but it seems the secret is using iCal between the iPhone and Entourage.

So that tells us what's possible if you hack the loopholes, but David Pogue's iPhone Tips and Tricks tells us that Apple has a supported framework for work/home synchronization and an approved method for synchronizing at multiple machines. (Yes, I bought the book. I hate to pay $25 for a computer book, but Pogue had me with these tips. It's a beautiful book and he has the deep knowledge.)

First of all, if you set iTunes to only do manual sync (no auto sync), then you can configure it to sync some things at one machine, and different things at another machine. It can do the backup at home, for example. You probably can't safely sync the same items at two machines however. So this is good for syncing iTunes at home and for what Alan does, but it doesn't get you to easy work/home calendar unification.

To get work/home integration you must abandon the old world of physical connections for calendar and contacts synchronization. Yes, Apple has a vision, and it doesn't involve the USB cable.

The iPhone has a concept of wireless calendar (and contact) providers. So you can have one provider that's MobileMe (personal data) and one that's Exchange server. Both can coexist. I haven't tried this yet myself, but I will research it.

When you go this route I don't think you can sync your iPhone with iCal any longer -- the world of physical cable based synchronization is gone. On the other hand iCal will sync (hourly) with MobileMe, and iCal will sync via Spanning Sync with Google Calendar, so if you're feeling very brave I suppose iCal might bridge gCal and MobileMe, and MobileMe will bridge to the iPhone, which can also connect to exchange server ...

What's the chance of that all working?

Seems low, but the fact that there is some path to work/home calendar sync is heartening.

Now if MobileMe would introduce calendar sharing/subscription or a connection to gCal, or if Google introduces an MobileMe like calendar service for the iPhone ...

Update 11/2/08: North221 has a good comment explaining how Entourage enables selective sync, but it's pretty much read only. I have a later article on work home calendar sync using Google Calendar and Spanning Sync.

Permissions bug in OS X 10.5 - unable to update applications

I hate OS X permissions problems.

There were enough of them before Apple introduced ACLs in 10.4 alongside UNIX permissions. The dual parallel systems hasn't made things any easier.

Evil apps, like just about anything that Adobe makes or anything that uses a VISE installer, are prone to wreck permissions. Rumor has it that using "apply to enclosed items" changes to the Application and Utilities folders can have unexpected consequences.

To add injury to insult, running "Repair Permissions" from the OS X disk utility app never seems to fix anything. (I think that's a Potemkin application).

So, I had a permissions problem. Again.
Since upgrading to 10.5, when I try to update applications by dropping new versions into my (all user) Applications folder I get this message -- despite entering my admin credentials on request: "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items."

The target application will be partly removed at this point. I have to delete it (no problems) and then drop the new one on.

A minor annoyance, but aggravating.

I figured I'd have to fix it sooner or later, but today my daughter complained that her evil Flash using kid sites were crashing. Time to update Adobe's little OS X virus, aka Flash. Except I was getting Access denied errors from the evil VISE (of course) installer. I'd already tried repairing permissions, so I knew I had to do more.

Others had run into the same problem: Apple - Support - Discussions - The operation cannot be completed - you .... VK (level 4!) advised (modified slightly here):

... sounds like you have incorrect permissions and ACLs on your Applications folder.

Run the following terminal commands from an admin account ... copy and paste the commands into a terminal window.

sudo chown -R root:admin /Applications
(This will reset the ownership on /Applications to system defaults.)

You'll have to enter your admin password when its requested. You won't see anything when you enter it. These tasks can take a few minutes to complete, so just wait -- there's no progress dialog. Depending how long execution takes you may need to reenter your password. Wait for the prompt to return before entering commands.

next

sudo chmod -R g+w,+X /Applications
(this should set unix permissions correctly)

next

sudo chmod -RN /Applications
(this will delete all ACLs from everything in /Applications)

next

sudo chmod +a "everyone deny delete" /Applications /Applications/Utilities
(this will put the necessary ACLs back where they belong)

I tried installing the latest version of Onyx to see if it had a bundled fix, but it didn't. So, with some reluctance, I followed the above.

I then did a safe boot restart, then a regular restart, and then I ran repair permissions from Disk Utility. DU didn't like the settings VK recommended -- it changed many of them. I'm not sure who's right here, because an evil app can mess up the permissions database (Ex. an Adobe product) and repair permissions might be getting bad advice.

After that I run Adobe's Flash Installer (drag it from the DMG file to run it). It still gave me access errors, but I was pretty sure I'd removed all Flash stuff by hand. I suspect Adobe's Flash uninstaller is old.

I tried the Flash 9 for Intell installer again (drag it from DMG file to run) and this time I didn't get any privilege warnings.

So now I'll see how my next app update goes. Next step is probably a clean install.

Non-geeks don't have a chance with this stuff - or bad design?

1. Having both ACLs and BSD permissions at the same time is just asking for trouble.
2. It's wrong that badly behaved installers should be able to wreck permissions. (Apple should at least put up a warning ... something like ... "this ill-bred Adobe product is going to wreck your system, we recommend Aperture instead ..."
3. Repair permissions ought to work better than it does. It shouldn't be getting its settings from a corruptible source.

Update 11/20/08: Some better fixes have been discovered.

Update 9/16/10: The official fix.

Sync with MobileMe - how to control the direction of the initial sync

The MobileMe help file was useless, but this Apple forum post has the answer. In this case the configuration will overwrite iCal with MobileMe data, but you can invert the direction at step 6.

Apple - Support - Discussions - Help overwriting iCal with Cloud ...

1) Open MobileMe Preferences, and click on the 'Sync' tab.
2) Ensure that 'Synchronise with MobileMe' to 'Manual'
3) Click on 'Advanced...'
4) Click on 'Reset Sync Data...'
5) A window will appear, saying 'Replace: {All Sync Info}'. Use the list to change this to:
Replace: {Calendars}
6) Make sure that the animated arrow is flowing from the cloud to the mac. You can change its direction by clicking on the arrows underneath the image.
7) Click on replace.

I did this with the 10.4 .Mac preferences (after update, the name doesn't change) and it worked there.

It's not obvious how to do this for only one of the many sync options you have. I think if you switch to manual sync, then uncheck all but the item you want to sync uni-directionally, you can leave the other sync items untouched.