Project Contacts: iPhone 3.0 means I hack away at Google Contacts, and discover another rough spot

In my last installment of Project Contacts (Launched 2/14/09) I discovered that copying my Corporate (Exchange server/Outlook) contacts to a PST file converted email addresses from EX (x.500) to standard SMTP. I brought the PST to my home Outlook (on XP box) and then used MobileMe Sync to get the work contacts nicely integrated with my iPhone and my iMac.

That took me 70% of the way to getting my Contacts mega-mess sorted out. The cost was a subscription to MobileMe (later canceled within 30 day limit) and some modest manual updating [1].

I figured I’d wait a bit before tackling the last bit of the Contacts mess – my Gmail Contacts. I need to merge them in to my OS X Address Book repository [2]. Google is supposed to migrate to a more sync friendly format (structured names), but it’s going slowly. I figured I’d wait.

Then I got iPhone OS 3. The one good feature so far is that I can sync my Google Contacts to my iPhone via Google’s exchange server support while ALSO synching my OS X Address Book (with work and home) to my iPhone.

I did that and ended up with thousands of duplicates, but this isn’t as bad as it sounds. They were segregated by account. Still, it made phone searching pretty slow.

So I spent an hour slogging away at Gmail cleanup. I removed a large redundant group of about 800 contacts, then hand deleted another 200 or so. The 30-40 minute process reminded me that I’ve lived a fairly long time already; some of those names had pretty old memories with them (they still exist in my main contacts – I was just deleting unwanted redundancies).

The good news is that Google’s Contact Merge feature works quite nicely. The bad news is that every time you delete a contact, the screen redraws and you start over again at the top of the Contacts List. Sigh. More evidence nobody at Google uses the Gmail we use.

So now I’d say I’m 77% of the way to completing Project Contacts. I’m waiting now for Google to compete their structured name transition and for Spanning Sync to be suitably updated. Then I’ll start working on the last step. On my iPhone, at least, I do have every Contact at hand at all times. That’s progress.

[1] Turns out my work Contacts don’t change all that quickly, so for various reasons I won’t go into I don’t actually need MobileMe to manually copy changed Outlook Contacts to my iMac. I am probably going to get MobileMe for other reasons however.

[2] Address Book is the least weak of Apple’s astoundingly unimpressive desktop PIM suite, but it’s still not an ideal repository.

Update: I was so pleased with Google's Contact Merge feature I decided to try the same feature in OS X Address Book. Oops! Address Book's Merge is completely automatic. In Gmail Contacts you can review the merged record and revise it or reject it. In almost every merge I did make some corrections. OS X Address Book just executes the merge, it doesn't even identify the merged records. Damn, but Apple sucks so abysmally at everything Palm was good at.

Update 12/23/10: I've been using Spanning Sync, MobileMe, Address Book OS X, iPhone Contacts and Google Contacts all more or less in sync for about a year.

Converting Eudora email

I have a large archive of email on my XP machine, all of it Eudora 7, an application that was last supported in 2006. You can still download the XP version, but the Mac download appears to be broken.

I need to migrate it to my Mac, but it's a tricky process. I don't like the odd ways OS X Mail.app handles an email database (mostly to support Spotlight search) and I fear crushing Mail.app with the archives.

So I'm researching conversion options, not for the first time. This Thunderbird kb article outlines several options. I'll be doing more research and updating this thread. I'm not particularly concerned about conserving the address book.

Once I get it converted and tested I'll look at dumping the IMAP setup I currently use with Mail.app to get my email from Gmail and possibly regress to a simple POP configuration that's less messed up by Google's peculiar folder emulation.

I'll do my test conversions with a special purpose user account I can delete after I'm done testing.

See also:

• Migrating Outlook Express email using Eudora
• Eudora mailbox cleaner (Probably the top choice)
  

iPhone 3: Bad, yawn and good

Apple really does have some kind of mind lock thing going.

Here's the antidote -- what's bad, yawn and good about iPhone 3.0. I'll update it over the next week or so. The functional updates are actually very limited, so we'll have to see what third parties do.

Bad

• The maximal interval for a meeting reminder or alert is still two days. Every other calendar app on every other platform in history has better functionality.
• Byline, one of my favorite apps, is completely unstable if you view by source. I'm sure we'll find other problems. In some cases the updated apps may have more problems than the older, non-updated apps.
• Some UI glitches even in newly updated 3rd party apps. These should get fixed soon. Evernote is particularly troubled and even slower than before. I've kind of given up on it.
• Extremely dumb change to the screen lock while on phone behavior.
• Battery life reduced on iPhone 3G - especially if subscribe to push notifications.
• Problems with iPhone 1 may be pretty significant. First generation iPhone users probably should not upgrade.
• More issues with Wifi connectivity.
• Worsening AT&T service, but that may be due to the 1 million plus new iPhone 3GS models crushing AT&T's cruelly burdened network.
  

Yawn

• Spotlight is good for finding contacts, appointments and finding apps in the crummy iPhone "Finder". It's not clear, but I suspect 3rd parties can't use it.
• The Voice memo is nice enough, but they should have used all that space for a giant record button (for car use). My old VoiceRecord.app is better, so I'll stick with that one.

Good

• Thanks no doubt to the Palm Pre, I can now sync my iPhone with both my Mac Contacts and my Google Contacts (via Google's Exchange service) and keep the two sources distinct. This is a very large benefit for me. I do hope to get a single source for my Contacts but this feature is worth the update all by itself.
• A bug fix in OS 2 means Google's ActiveSync service can now sync up to 25 separate Google Account calendars to your iPhone.
• It doesn't use up any of your precious storage space. The OS is stored separately, so even if it's bigger your usable memory is unchanged.
• When you install new apps, instead of messing up all your screens it creates a new screen between the first and 2nd (unless you hit the maximal number of screens).
• iPhone is now a better podcast player
• I updated sooner than expected because the new versions of my apps required the update. I haven't yet had the kind of disastrous problems I expect with major Apple product updates.
• Moving the App icons between screens is much easier. No more bumping repeatedly trying to force the iPhone to jump screens.

I've yet to test all the old bugs, like the bizarre behavior of Calendar and Contacts Notes fields with large notes (like airplane itineraries).

Byline – the better version of Google Reader Mobile

Once upon a time there were several excellent Windows feed readers. They’re all dead. We’ve got some good ones left for the OS X desktop, but there I’m very happy with Google Reader.

On the iPhone I’ve been using Google Reader Mobile. It’s pretty good, but it has some obvious and subtle flaws.

The subtle flaws have to do with the read/share/note/star workflow and the back and forth between the reader web app and web views of blogs.

The obvious flaw is that it’s dependent on my network connection and Safari performance. It’s useless on a plane and it can be slow even on my WiFi network.

I stuck with Google Reader for many months, but about two months ago I went to Phantom Fish’s Byline, an iPhone extension to Google Reader …

…. Simply use your free Google Reader account to subscribe to websites you’d like to keep track of. Byline will automatically bring you new content, putting thousands of RSS and Atom feeds at your fingertips.

When you read an item, it stays read. The same goes for the items you star: Byline will let Google Reader know the next time you have an internet connection….

… Even when you have no internet connection, Byline’s offline browsing feature gives you instant access to complete web pages.

Perfect for flights, subway journeys, and (if you’re an iPod Touch owner) those long dry spells between Wi-Fi zones…

It works beautifully. In addition to the marketing blurb above, I really appreciate the way Byline uses WebKit to display external web page views within the Byline context.

This is a superb piece of software. It’s fast, reliable, elegant, efficient, and it even manages the promised sync trick (a rare achievement). I move seamlessly between Google’s desktop web app and Byline.

I think I paid $5 to $10 for Byline but it’s worth more. It’s my most heavily used iPhone app. The one improvement I’d like is a a “read all” link at the top as well as the bottom of the scrolling list – but that’s a minor quibble.

The acid test? I showed it to someone who’s never used a true Feed Reader of any sort and it made her despise her BlackBerry Pearl more than ever.

Obviously, recommended.

Now, the extra credit question. Why does the iPhone have a superb “desktop” feed reader and Windows has none? I’ll hazard my answer in a future Gordon’s Notes opinion posting. Hint: Sometimes DRM is your friend.

Update 6/20/09: New version has been completely unstable for me on OS 3. Avoid updating if possible until a fix is out.

Update 7/24/09: They've tried to fix the bug I found over 3 releases, and they're only about 80% there. Byline only crashes if you group by feed, so I no longer do that. I wonder if the company lost the author of the app, and is now struggling to fix it. It's hard to reconcile their slow progress with the original quality of this app.

Picasa web albums uploader for OS X now downloads entire albums and more

Google's Data Liberation Front marches on. I didn't even know of the Dec update ...

Official Google Mac Blog: Upload Your Photos, Download Your Albums

... In December, the Picasa Web Albums Uploader added support for downloading a photo album to your Mac. We've recently updated the Uploader to include the ability to download all photos from all albums in your account. To start the download, sign in to your account with the Picasa Web Albums Uploader application and select the Existing Album tab. Holding down the Mac's Option key will change the title of the Download Album button to Download All. Then one click will bring all of your albums home.

This update also improves reliability of the uploader's iPhoto export plug-in. The uploader typically keeps itself up-to-date, but you can also get the latest version, 1.3.1, from the download page...

This is why I like Picasa Web Albums.

Very nice. Viva La Data Liberation!

iPhone 3.0: Apple fixes tune scrolling

I was briefly tempted to install iPhone 3.0, but I checked Macintouch. Lots of issue reports, so I'll wait at least a few more days. I'm trying to be strong.

Meanwhile, I read that Apple fixed something I'd found very annoying. The iPhone is now a better iPod, especially for podcasts ...

iPhone 3.0 Update: 10 Hidden Features - PC World

... Previously, while listening to a song, you had a simple dot on the song bar to rewind or fast forward. But now in the 3.0 update, you can scroll through songs at various speeds. Put your finger on the scrolling point and it will start glowing. Now, if you drag your finger left or right, you will scroll through the song at 'high speed,' and if you do this movement while dragging your finger down the screen, the speed decreases to 'half speed,' 'quarter speed,' or 'fine scrubbing'...

Navigating a podcast is pretty annoying on iPhone 2.0. I often miss my iPod scroll wheel. I really appreciate this particular fix.

Windows Search 4: Cannot select drive or folders (grayed out)

I recently reinstalled Windows Search on a freshly imaged corporate XP laptop.

I was dismayed to discover that the only thing showing in my “Indexing Options” / “Included Locations” list was an unused Outlook Express account. When I clicked ‘Modify’ to get to “indexed Locations” and “Change selected locations” (notice some labeling inconsistencies here?) Outlook didn’t show at all and all but one uninteresting folder on my C drive were mysteriously grayed (greyed) out.

The Outlook problem went away with a restart and a review with Outlook running. I’m having complex and intractable issues with Outlook/Exchange authentication, so I can’t make too much of this one.

The mysteriously unselectable grayed out C drive folders persisted however, and the Windows Search 4.0 Troubleshooting Guide was of no use. My clue came when I clicked down into the tree display. Turns out the UI is misleading; even when a folder is gray it may contain searchable subfolders.

Once I saw that, luck played a role. By chance my mouse rested on folder, and a yellow contextual popup appeared. The message told me the folder was not marked for indexing.

Aha! The original disk image was flawed. Somehow the default “allow indexing service to index this disk” had been altered. I opened the context menu for the C drive and checked the appropriate box.

Windows Search 4 now worked.

Update: Incidentally, the machine transition revealed that I'm utterly dependent on Windows Search. I can no longer work without robust full text search and a powerful collection of search operators. A new dependency ....