Google Contacts is now a standalone page

I'd not realized that Google contacts was actually a standalone web page rendered within Gmail. In retrospect that explains why it seems so different from the rest of Gmail, and why Gmail integration is incomplete.

Personally I don't like Google's contact manager -- I preferred the prior approach. Still, it really does make sense for Google to have Contacts as a distinct service. They're used for more than email.

Here's how to see your contacts in their own page. This would look particularly good in chrome-less Chrome:

Google Contacts

Google has recently updated the stand-alone contacts page by adding a logo and a more prominent search box. Unfortunately, the URL is not user-friendly: http://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager.

Recent updates to my iPhone notes post

I keep finding more good and bad iPhone features.

Other than the missing cut and paste (I'm sure it's hung up by patent fights), the current bizarre problems are search and long launch times ...

Gordon's Tech: iPhone notes you won't read elsewhere:

...The Address Book was very slow to launch with 2.0 (4 secs on my phone), but Google Mobile search also searches the Address Book -- and it's fast. Apple 'improved' the launch time with version 2.1 by speeding address book launch and slowing down the launch time of every other iPhone app.

Search on the Address book is first and last name only. If you define a company name, search is on the company name only....

BBC mobile page for all and iPhone iPlayer for the UK

The BBC has a mobile page. Using the preferences link at page bottom you can experiment with various versions and bookmark the one you like. I have a version on my iPhone "home page" as an icon -- next to Google News mobile, the disappointing NYT reader, and the excellent Google Reader Mobile.

The BBC has also announced streaming audio support for the iPhone over WiFi only using their evil iPlayer service. This service allows only 7 days of access, in contrast to a far superior podcast alternatives that allows unlimited access after download. Evil, definitely.

Earlier versions of iPlayer were Flash based and wouldn't work on an iPhone, so they've had to concede to Apple's non-Flash policy.

The BBC announced this, but they don't say how to access iPlayer. If you go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer via a 3G connection from the US you get the Flash version -- it won't work. Comments point out that iPlayer service is UK only, so US users would need some kind of proxy service to test.

gPhone oops

On the one hand, Apple is giving geeks The Fear.

So we feel forbidden love. On the other hand ...

T-mobile G1: Android and T-Mobile G1's Five Most Obnoxious Flaws

Topping the list, it's tightly integrated with your Google account—so tightly that you can only use one Google account with the phone.

Last time I looked I had about six Google App accounts, two of which I use pretty regularly -- including on my iPhone.

Forbidden love - the open G1 gPhone

Apple's rejections of iPhone apps that "confuse" users by "duplicating" Apple functionality are now top secret.

So it's not surprising that we geek iPhone users feel the love that dare not speak its name ...

A First Look at Googles New Phone - Pogue’s Posts - New York Times Blog

... Android, and the G1, are open. Open, open, open, in ways that would make Steve Jobs cringe. You can unlock this phone after 90 days—that is, use any SIM card from any carrier in it. The operating system is free and open-source, meaning that any company can make changes without consulting or paying Google. The App store is completely open, too; T-Mobile and Google say they won’t censor programs that they don’t approve of, as Apple does with the iPhone store. Yes, even if someone writes a Skype-like program that lets people avoid using up T-Mobile cellular voice minutes.

Android is not as beautiful or engaging as the iPhone’s software, but it’s infinitely superior to Windows Mobile—and it’s open. The G1 is only the first phone to use it, the first of many; it’s going to be an exciting ride.

T-Mobile already supports VOIP over WiFi, so the Skype-like option isn't appealing. It comes with the phone.

T-Mobile and AT&T are both SIM based. The no-contract cost of the G1 is about the same as the contract-extension cost of the iPhone. So it might be iPhone-price competitive for a current AT&T customer to buy a G1 with T-Mobile, plug in the AT&T SIM card, and cancel the T-Mobile service.

Gee, you don't imagine they thought of that?

Go Google, Go.

(Alas, I wish I could say Apple will pay for their closed shop strategy, but I'm not prepared to bet against the tyranny of the mean.)

Sharepoint list or library corruption bug: Do not set the “required” value on any Sharepoint column

I don’t generally post on Sharepoint bugs, though I run into a lot of them at work. I’ll make an exception here because this is a nasty bug, and I wasn’t able to locate any descriptions of via Google. So if anyone else runs into it, this post might be helpful.

This bug manifested with a Sharepoint 2007 document library. This library had custom fields (columns, attributes, metadata, etc) like “group”, “tags”, “author” etc.

One day we were unable to see or edit those custom columns in the standard (web) view. It was as though they had vanished. We could see them in the Access/Excel-like “data sheet” view, so the data was there. We could even edit the values in that view.

It wasn't easy for our IT group to figure out what had happened. It seems that under some circumstances setting a field as "required", when rows already exist with null values for the field, will corrupt a Sharepoint list.

It can only be repaired, with difficulty using, Sharepoint Designer.

There is no fix date from Microsoft this bug. For the time being the required attribute value should not be used in a Sharepoint list.

There are worse things about Sharepoint (the world’s most inane file share and document management system) but they’re design flaws, not bugs. Up to now this is the nastiest SP 2007 bug I’ve personally experienced.

Jacob uses Dappit to create a public RSS feed from my Google Shared Feed web page

Jacob takes pity on my frustrations with the unsharable Google Reader shared items feed.

He creates a Dappit feed from the shareable shared items web page version of the shared items.

Family Medicine Notes

... Poor John. He couldn't get an RSS feed out of google reader without a COOKIE. Enter Dappit Kinda nuts to get the RSS from what is essentially a screen-scrape of the HTML. Oh well .. in desperate times, we take desperate measures."

Lord, what a hack! My brain recoils from the horror.

I couldn't get the Dappit link to load on first test, but I'll try again tonight. Maybe this will embarrass Google?

At the least I'll have another Feed generator service to compare to the 2-3 like services I use to monitor Dyer's feedless page (version 2).