Great set of iPhone apps to investigate

What's On (My) iPhone includes a Flash widget for that justifies the "First Screen" application set of an iPhone power user. Both the apps and the justifications are interesting.

I can see there will come a day when I might consider paying AT&T their SMS tax. (Though I'm hoping iPhone 3 may avert that.)

iPhone car charger solutions

There were a lot of things about my iPhone that bugged me 6 months ago. Some of them will persist, others have been fixed, or I've found workarounds, or they should be fixed with version 3.

There's one in particular, however, that still burns. Apple stopped supporting 12V (firewire, automotive adapter) charging for iPods and iPhones.

This meant that a large number of integrated automotive solutions, from low end car chargers to high end automotive sound systems, including my SONY radio and my Griffin FM transmitter stopped, working.

Apple never explained - of course.

This one decision earned Apple a lot of customer ire, and affirmed my desire for more Fear in Apple's future.

I've purchased a number of cheap USB chargers car chargers, but they've been very unreliable and many don't work with my iPhone. Meanwhile my reliable firewire/12V car adapters go unused. I've spitefully refused to purchase a new adapter, but our latest family trip convinced me I need to give in. My phone kept running out of juice about 3 pm. After six months of use the iPhone can't make it through the day. Map use, email, gaming, GPS, entertainment, push calendar sync, occasional conversation -- it's too much for a middle-aged battery.

I need regular power for the computer.

So I had to look at what's available. I know from past experience that unbranded chargers/adapters are worthless. The device has to have a good name and the negative Amazon reviews can't be too bad. Kensington devices look like they have some quality issues, so that leaves one of my favorite vendors - Griffin.

From Griffin we have:

• PowerJolt SE: very simple, and on sale now. I'd prefer a non-integrated cable however and the coiled cable is too bulky for travel.
• PowerJolt for iPhone: Just the power supply. Amazon's listing is incorrect; it describes an older version of this. Has detachable cable.
  
• Griffin firewire to USB converter: Not yet available on Amazon, but available directly from Griffin. This would allow me to use my existing devices, and it's compact for travel. Very appealing. [Update: back-orded at Griffin, so I'll just pre-order via Amazon.]
  

The latter two are good options. On balance I think I'll take a try on the firewire to USB converter, even though there are no Amazon reviews yet. That would allow me to use several devices I already own. Griffin has a 30 day return policy so if it doesn't work out I can send it back. I may also buy the PowerJolt separately.

Update 5/5/09: The PowerJolt for iPhone is perfect, I asked Amazon to correct the listing. Even better, the Firewire to USB converter also works!

Google reader shared items to Facebook

Inspired by Peter C I've been experimenting with incorporating my Google Reader Shared Items feed into my Facebook stream.

I had a surprisingly hard time figuring out how to do this; I had to carefully read some posts in the "Google Reader" Facebook page (Peter explained it to me, but I didn't get it). Judging from those posts, I'm not the only one flailing about. The trick is the "settings" button beneath the "Write something" field on the "Wall". If you click it it a new area appears as below ...

You can add any feed, there's a shortcut for Google Reader. I clicked on it, then opened my Google Reader Shared Items web page and copy/pasted that URL. The feed is first named with a long digit, but you can rename it to something meaningful. The long string of digits is the user name, don't change it. I share a lot of posts, so I was worried I'd overload my feed. So far, however, it's concatenating several items into a single transaction, like this ...

That's not too bad. I'll just have to track and see how the feed behaves. It's ironic that even as the power user desktop feed reader market dies, millions are consuming feeds via Facebook without any idea of what's behind the scenes.

Update 3/30/09: Uh-oh. The setup seems fine, but nothing I share is appearing on Facebook.


Update 3/30/09b: Another set showed up. Maybe it updates once daily? That would be fine.


Update 4/19/09: It started updating several times a day, which was much too high a volume for my friends. I had to turn it off. The update behavior seemed unpredictable.


Update 4/25/10: I decided I'd try this again but link Facebook to a single blog. Alas, it looks like this feature was discontinued. I don't think there's a way to do this without an app of some kind. The most recent summary I could find on this topic was posted in mashable.com August 2009, but even that is out of date.

Facebook is all about lockin, so this type of functionality is going to be fragile. I suspect most vendors have given up. Twitter, for all of the things about it that truly annoy me, is not a lock in solution. (So sad that Google mangled Buzz.)

Looking around a bit, it feels like the action is in mashup services that deliver interconnection. One of these is "twitter feed", it connects any valid feed to a publishing service and it supports OpenID and OAuth -- so I don't need to give them my personal credentials. I'm going to look at what I can do with this.


Update 4/26/10: I did an update on this topic using the twitterfeed service alternative.

Ecto 3 - still breaking my heart

I'm a huge fan of Windows Live Writer.

There's only one problem with WLW. The first W.

So I've long hoped someone would clone WLW for OS X. It doesn't have to be as good as the original, a reasonable clone would be a joy.

Unfortunately, the closest thing to WLW for OS X is ecto, and I'm saddened to find it hasn't changed since October of 2007.

It still has one fatal flaw for use with Blogger. It requires that Blogger blogs have "convert line feeds" disabled.

If that feature is enabled (default behavior) then Ecto posts have extra line feeds. If it's disabled existing posts lose their paragraph formatting.

There are other issues with Ecto, such as the way it retrieves Labels (it just looks at Labels on recent posts), but this one is a killer.

Won't anyone please try to clone Windows Live Writer? I mean, I know there's no market out there but ...

Oh, right. No market.

Phone unlocking – Nokia phone from AT&T to T-Mobile Pay as You Go

For safety reasons I wanted my 10 yo to carry our unused Nokia 6555b GSM mobile phone on select occasions, but I didn’t want to pay $10 a month to add him to our family plan.

I looked at Pay as You Go plans instead. I could have gone with AT&T's Pay-Go plans, but, I don't trust 'em; I particularly disliked AT&T’s minute expiration policy. T-Mobile’s plan looked clean so I sent for a $10 SIM kit that includes some talk time as well. (Oops, see Update. They're as crooked as the rest of 'em.)

The kit came fairly quickly, and that’s where my education began.

In brief

1. The phone needs to be unlocked; switching the SIM Card was not enough. AT&T/Nokia will do this if you’ve been more than 3 months on a contract. In my case I’m 9 months into the contract and I’d switched to an iPhone, but I don’t think the switch mattered. The key is the 3 months. It’s not clear if this is an AT&T rule or a Nokia rule.
2. The unlocking procedure required extensive help from a saintly AT&T service rep who spent over 25 minutes on the phone talking to Nokia. At one point the AT&T rep had to read my email address over the phone and the Nokia rep had to transcribe it correctly. I’m amazed it worked.
3. After the phone you should do a full phone reset, which restores it to a factory state. (Maybe you could do this first). You might want to reformat the memory card while you’re at it.
4. The T-Mobile activation procedures is very painful.
5. When you’re all done you’re still stuck with lots of AT&T crapware, but it was no less annoying when the phone was an AT&T phone. Actually, since it’s now all inactive, it’s a bit improved.

I’ll provide select details below.

Unlocking the Nokia 6555b (legally)

The AT&T rep recommended leaving the AT&T SIM card in place during this procedure. The directions say it will work without a SIM card. I did have the AT&T card in place.

About 1-2 days after my AT&T rep went through the long phone call I received my unlock directions (obviously I’ve changed the numbers below). They were pretty scary looking for a fumble-fingered geek, but miraculously I got it in one …

This email contains the device unlock code you requested for your Nokia imei 111111111111111.

The unlock code is 111111111111111. You have 5 tries to unlock the equipment. Device unlock codes are specific for the imei number. Please verify the imei number on the equipment by entering *#06# on the keypad of the equipment before entering the device unlock code in the equipment. If this process is unsuccessful five times in a row, the phone will be permanently locked to the AT&T network.

The following process can be completed with or without the AT&T/Cingular Wireless SIM card in the phone

1. Press the # key once
2. Press the * key three times (will display a "P")
3. Press the * key four times (will display a "W")
4. Press the * key two times (will display a "+" sign)
5. Enter the unlock code 111111111111111
6. Press the * key two times (will display a "+" sign)
7. Press the 1 key
8. Press the # key one time

Well, that was impressively ugly.

Activating the T-Mobile account

Once you’ve done that you complete all the numbers on your “10 minute” activation card and enter voice recognition hell.

Yes, the T-Mobile bot insists on trying to recognize voices. It hated mine of course, all the bots do. The children’s advice didn’t help the bot. For numeric data entry I could mute the microphone and use the keypad. That’s the reason I’m still sane – it’s hard enough to enter 15 digits perfectly by pushing buttons.

There are a lot of buttons to push prompts to suffer through. It felt like it took hours. At the end the account activates. It’s supposed to take up to 24 hours, but I think it mostly activates in a few minutes to a couple of hours.

I’ll update this post in a while with my T-Mobile experiences. I believe I can switch back to AT&T by putting my iPhone SIM in the phone – such as when my iPhone battery is being replaced.

Update: A few more observations

• Communication is 32 cents/minute, rounding up to nearest minute (of course).
• A text message counts as a minute (32 cents).
• I thought minutes lasted a year, but turns out that's only true if you buy $100 at a time. Here's the fine print: "... Partial minutes rounded up for billing. Service is available for 90 days (one year for $100 refill cards) following activation. Void if not activated within 90 days from purchase. If you don't refill within 90 days after your last refill expiration date, you will lose your account. If you transfer your number to another carrier, you will lose your balance."
• I registered with my.t-mobile.com. You need to enter your phone number and then you get a text message with a password (see below). The same method is used if you ask for a password reset, so if you lose your phone anyone can get at anything in this t-mobile account. Better treat it as public. It doesn't seem to store the credit card number.
  
• The account balance takes a while to change after you add minutes. (Credit card security measure?)
• Probably because this was an AT&T phone the text messaging didn't work at first. It didn't get the password I requested. I poked around and decided to see if I could SEND a text message from the phone. I sent it to my Google Voice number so it wouldn't cost me anything to receive it. Once I sent a message it sort of worked, I got a ring/alert and the messages were buried away in an insanely obscure location on my Nokia 6555. I had to go to Messaging/Message Settings/Options then find "Smart Chip messages" then I could move the message to the Saved Items folder. After this, however, two more text messages simply appeared in my inbox. So maybe it will work now.

At this point I'm wishing I'd signed up with AT&T's Pay as you go plan as T-mobile doesn't seem to have any REAL advantages. I'll give it a bit more time, I think changing back won't be hard.

Once Google Voice is open again everyone in the family will get a Google Voice number, so phone swaps will be simple.

Update 6/21/09: Incidentally, T-Mobile has one of the least competent web sites I've ever seen. It hung on me once, and it's very persnickety about number formatting. I couldn't get my payment to submit because I entered my full 5+4 zip code. I don't think T-Mobile has a future.

Update 9/17/09: I was late to figure this out, but voice mail on a pay-per-use phone just burns costly minutes.

Not coincidentally, you can't disable voice mail from the web site, you have to find the secret number (877-778-2106), phone when they're open, say "representative, representative, representative ..."to fight through the voice menu demons, and ask to have it removed. You need to know the "PIN" you set on the phone.

This phone doesn't need VM.

Lessons from a stolen Mac

David Blatner has some good advice to help manage computer theft.

Some of these recommendations also apply to fire, which may claim more home computers than theft.

For my part I keep all laptop items with privacy concerns on an encrypted disk image, and I don't store the password in my keychain.

Loss of my desktop is more of a security problem, and it's time I began using an encrypted disk image there as well.

IE Menu bars gone? Can't add them back? Gray text? Maybe you did an IE reset

I went to use IE 7 and found that Windows Live Writer's Blog This tool was missing.

Not only that, but the Omea and Windows Live toolbars were gone, and they couldn't be added back in. The text for these menu bars was gray (or grey) and couldn't be selected.

I reinstalled Windows Live Writer, but nothing changed.

A bug? Virus? Corporate security error?

No, IE was working as designed. I'd foolishly used IE's (Internet Options) "Reset Internet Explorer settings" button when I was debugging another problem.

I really should have read the fine print about "disabled browser add-ons".

Here's how to reactivate your add-ons, menu bars and so on ..

How to reset Internet Explorer settings

The Reset Internet Explorer Settings feature disables all toolbars, browser extensions, and customizations that you install. To use any of these disabled customizations, you must selectively enable each customization through the Manage Add-ons dialog box.
Note Some toolbars may require that two or more controls are enabled to work correctly. These toolbars have controls for the corresponding Browser Helper Object and toolbar extensions. You can easily use the Manage Add-ons dialog box to enable any disabled controls that are from a trusted publisher.

"Manage Add-ons" can be found under IE 7's "Programs" tab. You don't need to click OK after each change. Sort by status and set all disabled to enabled, then click OK.

There is a genuine bug here by the way. It's "fine" to disable add-ons per the fine print, but the reinstall should have worked. The disabled add-ons apparently blocked the reinstall.