Google's summary of their OpenID and federated authentication approach

This is what enables me to auto-authenticate with Facebook when I'm logged into Gmail. I've linked the accounts from Facebook using this Google API:

Google Code Blog: Google OpenID API - taking the next steps 

... the user is not just signing in using her Google Account, but is also sharing specific information from her Google Account with the Relying Party website. This information may be either static fields (using Attribute Extension) such as the user's email, first and last name, preferred language and country, or allowing access to any available Google Data API such as the user's Contacts List, Web Albums, or Calendar (using OAuth)...

I am concerned about authentication bugs causing me to be locked out of my Google account, so I'm proceeding with some care.

Fixed: Post 10.5.7 WiFi problems and XP IP address conflict bug

File this one under requiem for a geek and complexity crash.

Sometime around I updated our MacBook to 10.5.7 it developed a WiFi connection stutter. It would connect to the family network, pause, disconnect, and reconnect. On the second reconnect it would ask for the network password even as it took the correct password from the keychain and displayed it inline (so if one hit return it would connect).

Before the update, about 3-4 months ago I experienced some odd XP networking issues, sometimes including messages that there was an IP address conflict 10.0.1.5 - yet that address did not seem to be in use. I was seeing other problems at the same time, so I set hat aside.

Today, when walking new our Airport Express, I noticed our iPhone-converted-to-iTouch was only showing 2 bars in its network display. It clearly wasn't connecting via the closest WDS station.

With that last clue I decided to inspect our older-device 802.11 b/g Airport WiFi WDS network.

After installing the latest Airport Utility update I discovered that while our Airport Express light was green it was not, in fact, authenticated on the network. It was in a twilight state. At some level it was connected, but at another level it was not.

That could explain the MacBook stutter, since the MacBook is often moves between the Extreme and Express domains and could connect to either one.

Power cycling the Express alone didn't fix it, so I moved it next to the Airport Extreme. This time it did show up. I tweaked some settings, including auto-setting the clock to time.apple.com (I thought this used to be set, but was turned off on both my devices when I inspected them. Is it new?)

That's when I saw the Express was assigned 10.0.1.5, which may explain the odd XP address conflict message and networking issues.

Now the MacBook WiFi network address stutter appears to be gone.

Simplify is one of my post complexity-crash themes. There's too much emergence in the modern computational world, and too many ill-defined membranes.

10.5.7 update: don't let your screen lock

I'm thinking 10.5.7 is one of those OS X point updates from hell. It smells like a bridge to 10.6, meaning it breaks quite a few things but will be supported until 10.5 expires.

I think it's broken the Airport Extreme base station to Airport Express peripheral network bridging as well as some printing and faxing peripherals.

The latest update bug I've found is related to screen locking that occurs during the update process from 10.5.6 on a PPC iMac. If a screen saver locks during the update, you may get a view of the screen cursor but you don't get an unlock dialog.

The iMac appears to be unable to awake from a sleep state.

If this happens to you I recommend letting the machine sit for at least 30 minutes. If you don't hear any disk activity then power cycle it. I did that and the update appeared to complete normally.

I also recommend all peripheral drives be detached during the 10.5.7 update. That's always a good recommendation, but it's easy to forget.

Apple's software quality has passed through the toilet stage and is reaching for the sewer stage!

See also: Requiem for a gerserker (geek berserker)

Pre syncs To Do lists with Google?

Pogue claims the Pre can sync "to-do lists with Google".

I hadn't heard of any app synchronizing with Google's To Do lists. Interesting if true.

Internet Explorer 8 - still a lousy feed reader

Try searching on "IE 8 feed reader". Right. Nothing much there.

That's because Internet Explorer 8's feed reader capabilities are no better than IE 7's. In other words, absolutely lousy.

Of course Firefox is little better and there are really no good Windows desktop feed readers left, so IE's not alone. Still, if you're hoping for reader improvements over IE 7 look elsewhere.

Thunderbird is said to have a decent feed reader, but of course it can't manage Active Directory authenticated feeds (on the other hand, maybe that's a feature). Outlook 2007, incidentally, is not only a bad feed reader, it's a bloody dangerous feed reader.

Opera has a mail integrated reader, which is unfortunate since feeds are structurally different from email. Safari 4beta for OS X has a feed reader, but the link to subscribe via bookmark doesn't work (the first thing I've found in Safari 4 that doesn't work). It looks like it's setup for subscription in Mail.app anyway.

Gee, do you think someone's trying to tell me something?

You can't run an iPhone on USB power

Yes, of course you can charge an iPhone with a USB power source, but you can't run an iPhone on USB power. If you use your iPhone the battery level will fall even if it's charging. I haven't tried this yet, but maybe you could just squeak by used if you turned off 3G and WiFi.

This isn't just a curiosity; it means that if your iPhone is in the "dead zone" of low battery level, you can't use it again until it charges out of the critical low level.

Presumably the iPhone needs more power to operate than USB 2 can provide. Alas, if it could still work with firewire that would be enough, and I suppose USB 3 could work.

I wonder if the Pre, which is said to be more efficient, can both charge and operate off of USB power.

Update 6/24/09: I read recently (Dan's Data) that newer laptops can provide significantly greater current and voltage than the standard USB spec. They do that to support power hungry devices. I think my iPhone charges more quickly from my new corporate Dell laptop than it does from my (non-Apple) USB charger. The next time I'm running low, I'm going to try charging it from the Dell laptop during use, and see I can stay out of the dead zone.

Cannot remove (delete) a SharePoint List reference from Outlook 2007 - a fix

One of the less wise things I’ve done in the past year was to migrate to Office 2007, and, in particular, to try using any of the new features of Outlook 2007.

I’ve seen some awful software in my day, but Outlook 2007 is in a class of of its own.

For example, I once tried subscribing to a SharePoint list from Outlook, so Outlook would, in theory, give me a synchronized offline view of the list.

I no longer recall the immediate problems it caused me, but I do remember I couldn’t remove it. At best I could partly disable the synchronization. The list reference lived on in my Account Settings.

I left it there, hoping the long promised SP2 would help. I thought I could live with it.

Then my sojourn into the 9th circle of IT Hell began. After week 3 of network lockouts I began methodically removing anything that could trigger an Active Directory authentication process, including any reference to anything hosted on Sharepoint. That included any referenced calendars, feeds, etc. Including my old Sharepoint List reference that could be seen in File:Data File Management:Account Settings:SharePoint Lists.

After some searching I found a good TechNet posting that referenced another relevant article.

There were two different fixes for this problem, but one was to remove a dangling reference in the send/receive settings. I remembered trying this last year, but since I’d just applied Office SP 2 I gave it a go and unchecked these items:

This time removing Sharepoint from the send/receive group worked. I was able to go to the Data File account settings and remove the Sharepoint Lists item and the corresponding Data File – and they didn’t return!

Naturally it wasn’t totally smooth. After I submitted my changes to the send/receive group an old friend returned … the IPM.Note.Microsoft.Conversation.Region set of dialogs ...

I think these are back because, as a part of my attempt to reduce Active Directory authentication, I’d recently removed Office Communicator 2007. When you do that you find the uninstall leaves some registry keys behind, and you get these error messages until you reinstall Communicator or manually remove the registry keys ...