OS X RSS Visualizer Screen saver works with Google Reader Atom feeds

I found this one by accident.

There's an RSS visualizer in my 10.5.5 OS X screen saver collection. The name is misleading, it works with Atom feeds too. So, for example, my Google Reader generated family newspaper feed will display that way. I haven't tested Flickr or other image feeds, but I suppose they should work.

I prefer our family photos, but it's a nice touch.

BeejiveIM - push notification via MobileMe email

One of several iPhone disappointments is the lack of a subscription/notification API. So only Apple's applications can do background processing and notification. Since Apple doesn't want to give up its share of AT&T's massive texting profits there's no Apple application to support Instant Messaging alternatives to obscenely overpriced SMS messages.

Happily, some applications have found a workaround -- such as Beejive Instant Messaging ...

BeejiveIM - Review | whatsoniphone.com... Get notified instantly when you get a new message (requires with MobileMe or Exchange/ActiveSync push email)...

I presume it's routing an IM notification through email services. That's a bit awkward, but workable. Of course if you're going that route, why not just use email instead of IM?

Now that Google has an SMS/IM gateway it seems one could cobble something together with MobileMe and Gmail ...

Update: Yahoo has push email for the iPhone. I'd forgotten about that. There's a BeejiveIM client for Blackberry, where Push works. Maybe I can make this work ...

Update: I tested using a Yahoo! account I keep for junk email. If you add a Yahoo account to iPhone Mail.app you do indeed get Push services. That is, the settings for Push will show the Yahoo account. Problem is, it's incredibly slow push. Like over a ten minute delay. So Yahoo! email isn't worth bothering with. Just as well, Yahoo gives me a headache every time I visit. This time I see that their user account settings page doesn't render correctly in Firefox. Yahoo is the Detroit of cyberspace.

iPhone: status update and my apps

Gear Diary made a list of the types of iPhone apps professional geek bloggers use. I have many of them, with the exception that Twitter isn't useful for me and I've only now trying to see if there's something useful about Facebook...

Gear Diary's Favorite iPhone/iPod Touch Apps | whatsoniphone.com

On four different lists were:

Evernote
ToDo [jf: Appigo]

On three of the lists are:
Facebook
Twittelator Pro [jf: still trying to figure out a Twitter use case]
eWallet [jf I use 1Password]
Safari

And on two of the lists are:
eReader
Jott
Byline [jf: I use Google Reader]
Around Me [jf: I have Where To?]

My Apps are above, click to make 'em readable. This list, taken from iTunes, doesn't show my heavily used web apps (eg. Google Reader) and it includes a couple I no longer sync to the phone.

Google Reader is my favorite iPhone app - it's amazing. The Google Calendar app for our family calendar is another superb Google web app, then there's Google iPhone search, etc.

The games are for the kids (really) -- and they're invaluable in tight spots (my 9yo played one game during his flu immunization -- worked great).

So lots of good stuff there, but the bad news is that the iPhone sucks as a business tool.

I really thought it would be better than it is, but Apple has dropped the ball. No Calendar API to support over-the-air sync to Google Calendar, a complete lock-out on the cable which means corporate outlook calendars are a no-go [1], and, of course, no cut/copy/paste and truncation of longish notes/memos associated with contacts and calendars. (Oh, and I wish the phone had GPS compass capabilities, but that's a nice-to-have.)

I'm back to carrying around a very aged Palm PDA so I can get access to my corporate contacts and calendar. The only thing that saves Apple for me is that the alternatives are equally lousy.

[1] The only way to get a half-decent business access is to simultaneously use MobileMe for personal data (pathetic) and Exchange Server for corporate data (requires corporate IT approval -- fugget-about-it).

Update 1/5/09: A friend asked for some recommendations, so I've provided some more detail. Some of this duplicates my original post ...

1. Air Sharing: turns phone into webdav server -- store documents there.
2. Remote: control air tunes library
3. Google Mobile: many different web apps, Google Reader is essential
4. Google Earth
5. i41CX: HP 41 emulator - amazing
6. Evernote: take picture, it uploads, does OCR, indexes, store other data in cloud. Now acceptable since they've delivered a way to move data out.
7. AirMe: take picture, send Picasa web album
8. Notebook and Todo: Appigo "notes" and "tasks" management (these have a treacherous design flaw when used together however)
9. NYTimes reader: could be better, but still good
10. Pandora radio: explore music. Terrific.
11. Shazam: recognize music (best for pop though, fails with Jazz, classical.)
12 Wikipanion: great! Optimized Wikipedia client.

I don't have Byline but since it integrates with Google Reader I'm considering it.

Then there are the built-in apps. The huge issue with the iPhone now is the inability to sync directly, or even efficiently, with Google Calendar and the lack of a Calendar API. That's bad enough, but Apple's MobileMe alternative is awful. (Corporate sync is a MUCH harder problem). Eventually people are going to figure out how big a problem this is. (Vendors are starting to deliver entire calendaring/task solutions that completely ignore Apple's built-in solutions and that sync with Google -- but these will only be coming out in the next few months.)

The other big missing app, which I suspect is due to a nasty conflict of interests, is that Apple won't enable any effective instant messaging client -- in fact they have failed to deliver a promised 'push/notification' API so they're foreclosing that entire domain of apps. They want, of course, to keep the huge SMS revenue they share with AT&T.

Update 1/1/10: Jott is now trying to do automated transcription instead of human transcription - obviously to save money. It doesn't work at all for my voice. So Jott is really just a voice snippet recorder now.

Digital video: codecs and containers (wrappers)

An excellent and brief overview of video formats - meaning codecs and wrappers/containers as of late 2008.By Gizmodo. For example: Apple's MOV is a wrapper specification, not a codec. They omit DV (used in camcorder tapes) and the formats Apple uses in their pro video editing packages but it's as good as anything I've seen.

iTunes gift certificates: Use is limited to country of purchase

Each year our children's Aunt and Uncle send iTunes gift certificates. They love 'em.

This year, though, the relatives moved to Canada. When I entered the codes I got this error message:

Your iTunes Store (US) does not match that of the gift certificate (Canadian).

There's nothing about this in the iTunes Store - Credit Card FAQ.

I sent a support email to Apple. I want to at least get a refund back to our relatives.

Apple should include notification of this limitation during the purchase process, and they should have support information on their FAQ including an explanation of how to obtain a refund.

I'll update this post with Apple's response. If the response isn't satisfactory, I'll suggest my relatives ask their credit card company to contest the charge.

Update 12/26/08: Apple has thus far processed one return, I'm hopeful they'll refund the other two certs my in-laws sent.

Update 12/28/08: iTunes support says they've all been refunded.

Camino 2 is coming - and Chrome for OS X

I really like the auto-complete URL feature of Firefox, and nothing beats Firefox's compatibility. Google Chat, for example, works in Firefox, but not in Camino.

On the other hand Firefox 3 is slow and ill-behaved on OS X PPC machines. Camino 1.6.x is much nicer. So I've drifted back to Firefox on my iMac where Google Video Chat doesn't work anyway.

So it's good to know that a new version of Camino is on the way. The new features include an OmniWeb like ability to view tabs over browser windows, though for me OS X Spaces has broken my love of tabs. It's so nice to be able to hit the F9 key and see every open window and move them between Spaces.

It's also great to read that Chrome is coming to OS X ...

Mozilla launches a slick first beta of Camino 2.0 VentureBeat

... Users of Camino will also be happy to know that the team’s project lead, Mike Pinkerton, is currently also working on Chrome, Google’s web browser, for the Mac platform. Progress is being made on it (though slowly) and it should be done at some point in the coming months. Until then, it’ll be Camino-only browsing for me...

The big problem with Safari has been incompatibility and bugs with Google's advanced services. Firefox and Camino have been much better, but Firefox has quality issues and Camino doesn't get the love it deserves. So for a Google-customer like me, the Chrome news is interesting.

Weird Firefox bug: can't uninstall incompatible Add-ons

This is a weird bug. I'm surprised it persists.

Firefox 3 won't run Add-ons that aren't compatible with it.

That's fine, but it won't let you uninstall or remove them either. I think FF 2 did, so this is a new bug.

It's a cosmetic annoyance since the incompatible add-on isn't doing anything, but I'm surprised it hasn't been fixed. It's not exactly subtle.