Firefox for OS X bug: non-admin user and auto-update

With Firefox 3 a non-admin OS X user cannot uncheck the "update Firefox" advanced option. The checkbox is grayed out.

Only admin users can uncheck "update Firefox".

This is wrong.

Video Chat for elder parents over OS X: Google Video/Gmail, Google Notifier, Firefox and LogMeIn

This is a bit complex to describe fully, but I hope these hints will be of use.

Briefly, I wanted to be able to establish a video chat connection to my elderly parents. Since we both use OS X and both have at least one Intel machine I considered iChat and Google Video Chat. I didn’t consider Skype or Yahoo because that would introduce new account issues and because, as best I can tell, Google has the best technology and no worse reliability than Skype or Yahoo.

I was unimpressed with iChat; it needs to be shot (see also). That left Google Video Chat, but it has a hellacious user interface. In fact, it has the lowest usability of just about any app I routinely use. Not well suited for my 80% blind and very arthritic mother. (I’m sure that will change when Google integrates GVC with Google Voice, but really Google needs all those usability people who’ve recently quite in disgust.)

At the same time I was exploring remote maintenance options and finally settled on LogMeIn Free.

This is the combination of technologies I’ve now cobbled together:

• Gmail/Google Video Chat: My mother’s email is managed via a Google account, even though she reads it using OS X Mail (IMAP). So she had an account.
• Google Notifier: In theory this keeps my mother logged in to Gmail so she doesn’t have to know her username and password. In practice I’m not sure this works; these day’s I might try FF with local caching instead.
• Logitech QuickCam Pro
• Firefox: For better or worse this is what my mother is accustomed to
• LogMeIn Free.
• I created a deskbar shortcut with is simple a Gmail desktop shortcut with the iChat icon pasted into it. So it looks like a Chat app.

Here’s how it works

1. I initiate the call from my Macbook using Firefox
2. I use LogMeIn to take control of my mother’s machine using Safari. Then I “answer” my own call (not hard).
3. I resize the window for my mother then drop the remote control connection.

Best ever subscription page

Kevin Kelly -- KK* Lifestream is too energetic. He's a one person blogging machine, with an exotic seeming blog platform all his own.

I particularly appreciated his subscription page, including feedburner email notifications.

Best I've ever seen. I'll have to give him a try.

Submit your product ideas for Blogger

Google is now soliciting product ideas for Blogger.

Be sure to vote for any BlogThis! suggestion and take a look at all my suggestions.

Update: I'm not impressed with the popular requests, and I'm surprised how many voted against my (flawless) suggestions! In fact none of the suggests I liked are getting much traction.

FreeMyFeed - Getting Twitter feed to Google Reader

I've been using Facebook's Twitter Application so that my "tweets" (hate that word, not that "blog" is a fave either) go to Facebook. That's handy since there are lots of convenient apps on various platform for creating twitter updates -- and it lets me simultaneously communicate with my very few friends who are Twitter-centric.

 I don't want to have monitor Twitter and Facebook for updates however. So I've turned off all the FB email notices and I've added the wall and notification Facebook feeds to Google Reader.

That does a great job for FB -- better than the native app really. Unfortunately Twitter uses authentication rather than unique URLs, and Google Reader doesn't support authentication.

Which is where FreeMyFeed (Free Your Feed From Authentication) comes in. You provide the service with your Twitter credentials, then it encrypts them into a Feed URL that you keep. When requested FreeMyFeed decrypts the URL and logs in. Yes, there are obvious trust issues here.

FreeMyFeed claims they don't store the Twitter credentials, but of course they could cheat. So if you go down this route use a unique pw with Twitter that's not tied to anything important -- that way only your Twitter account is at risk. With this method I can monitor both Twitter and FB from Google Reader.

Oh, and Twitter needs to adopt the same "secret URL" approach everyone else uses. The authentication requirement for Twitter feeds is extremely annoying.

Update: You can also use Yahoo Pipes to make an authenticated feed accessible to Google Reader and FeedBurner. I might try the latter.

Update 2: I switched to the FeedBurner technique because it turns out (who knew) my Gmail authentication also gives me FeedBurner authentication (feedburner.google.com). The way you encode the authentication credentials is a bit gross (see the link) but it works quite well: "you now need to add your twitter username and password into the link as follows http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/nnnnnnn.rss"

Brother MFC machine scan to USB features

I've long wanted a home scanner that would scan to local or network storage without intervention. In the 1990s I thought about ways to add such a facility to an existing scanner, but it didn't make business case. About 3-4 years ago scan PDF to network shares appeared in our office machines and my Brother MFC -7820N, and now our office scanners store PDF scans on an internal drive.

It's a fantastic feature, but the 7820N implementation is quirky. It doesn't work well with multi-user machines and it requires an oddball embedded server run on the recipient machine.

Today I discovered that the Brother MFC-9440CN will scan to a local USB store. Based on the Scan to USB documentation this is now available for 3 networked multi-function machines

DCP-9045CDN
MFC-9440CN
MFC-9840CDW

The MFC-9440CN was first introduced in 2007 (and is probably about to be replaced, so it's on sale now) and I'm writing about this now. Since this is a feature I'm extremely interested in I think there's a bit of a marketing failure here.

Brother's web site has some additional documentation ...

Scan | Brother

1. Scan to USB
   Brother’s Scan to USB enables you to scan documents direct to a USB memory device without the need to start up your PC. This means you can make digitised copies of documents immediately, including handwritten meeting notes, certificates, business cards, and drawings so you can be sure everything has been captured on the USB memory drive for later use.
2. Scan to file
   Save scanned data into a selected folder for easy information sharing.
3. Scan to FTP ...

Both options 1 and 3 are great for us. I could easily setup an FTP server on my OS X machine that would work in a multi-user environment, and of course the USB function is very simple. The Amazon reviews suggests this feature works, though they also point out that the replacement toner cartridges are fantastically expensive and that B&W printing drains the color toner [1]

I'm going to have to look into these capabilities. The fact that they're not marketed more widely does emphasize what a weird bird I am ...

[1] Every vendor I know of is guilty of some form of toner scam. It's an instance of irresistible emergent fraud. In the case of my Brother MFC -7820N the cartridge stops working even when it has ample residual toner. You cover up a transparent port to get a few more months of light duty printing. The scams for these color printers are substantially nastier.

Google Reader share broken? Check your Friends list

Google has been flailing about with their Profile / Social graph strategy.

Recently they refactored Gmail/Google Contacts, and created a new classification of contacts: "Friends", "Family" and "Coworkers". The result broke some of my Google Reader shared feeds.

More details here:

Gordon's Notes: Google's confusing social graph strategy: Google reader friends via Google Chat

... Jacob R is seeing my shares, we have a [Google] chat relationship, but I'm not seeing his shares. I added his share stream as a distinct feed for now. ... turns out when Google switched to their even more befuddled social strategy I wasn't in Jacob's "Friends" group, so his sharing feed went away. He added me in and it reappeared....

...Google has things set up so you do the feed stream share thingie with ONE of (not both of)

• Your chat contacts
• "Friends" as defined by Gmail - "Friends, Family, and Coworkers are groups to help you organize your contacts. You can move contacts in and out of these groups at any time. Various Google products let you share information with people in these groups.
  In addition, you can create a Google profile to help people in these groups keep in touch with you. They will be able to easily find your profile from various Google products."

In both cases of course the Chat contact or Gmail Friend must have as an email address the Gmail address associated with their Google Reader shares....

Just imagine how this hairball plays out when you introduce synchronization of Google Contacts with external contact stores.

It's a Googlicious screw-up.

Now waiting for version 3 ...