Microsoft Bing – is this some kind of trick?

My IE 8 update somehow injected Bing into my life. I don’t use IE 8 all that much, so I left it there and I’ve been playing with it over the past 10 days or so.

Wow.

Bing really stinks. Their algorithms are tightly bound to large marketing-heavy commercial sites that are potential advertisers. Bing feels like a “pay-to-play” strategy. For my purposes these sites are rarely useful. Bing works pretty well for searching Microsoft’s material, but not significantly better than Google.

So is Bing the best Microsoft can manage, or is there some kind of deeper ploy at work?

I can’t figure out what the heck they’re trying to do here. Maybe Microsoft has Google stock options and they’re trying to boost Google’s share price?

PS. To change search providers click on the IE 8 drop down next to the magnifying glass link (top right) then choose “Find More Providers …” then scroll down a ways to find Google Search suggestions (if they could move it lower on the page they would …). I do give full credit to Microsoft for one thing. With a few clicks you can completely remove Bing from the IE Add-ons Search Providers list and you can make Google the default including search suggestion handling.

Waiting for an iPhone external keyboard

One of my big hopes for OS 3 is that it would support an external keyboard, like the one I had for my Palm III.

Didn't happen. Apple has yet to provide an API to support any kind of external kb.

Frustrating, but nothing to do. While we're waiting, however, we can appreciate a comment on the topic from a historic expert (from the new gdgt site, no less) ....

Apple iPhone 3GS: Connect APPLE iPhone 3GS to APPLE wireless keyboard! - gdgt

.... I co-founded the company that developed the folding keyboard for Palm, the Stowaway. The iPhone could certainly benefit from one, but it requires getting into territory that Apple hasn't opened up and likely won't. They need to decide to incorporate the software at a low enough level that will work with all apps...

The "won't" comment is a bit grim. I have to say though, that I share the fear that Apple will keep this door closed. My only hope is that the Pre uses some future external kb coolness to beat Apple over the head ...

Weird iPhone 3 omission: still can't delete all images

I thought it was odd last October that OS X iPhone users didn't have an obvious way to delete all images from the phone "roll".

It's no trick on XP -- just mount the phone and delete. On OS X you have to know the Image Capture trick (you can delete without importing).

Even with OS 3 there's no phone UI for deleting all images.

I can't recall seeing any image capture device, phone or camera, that didn't support this.

Bizarre.

A review of web based task managers

The best Web-based task managers. - By Chip Brantley is pretty good. He justly dings Toodledo for their awful aesthetics, but completely misses their data freedom features and iPhone integration. He ends up liking Gmail's new task manager; I'd like that one better if there were an API and the ability to sync to my iPhone.

Offline Browsers (web robot) – options to review

I’ve been working a way to create a local copy of a Sharepoint wiki. I haven’t solved the problem yet!

I’m working through a series of offline browsers, apps that we once called web robots. They claim to retrieve web pages and store them locally. I pulled this list from CNET view: Offline Browser by download, Vista support; I don’t use Vista but I wanted apps that were being actively supported (Vista is a good marker for that). Here’s the list:

• WebCopier (has iSaveWeb for iPhone, Mac, Windows versions, $30)
• SuperBot Offline Browser
• Offline Explorer Pro
• Website Extractor
• Website Ripper Copier
• QuadSucker/Web
• Teleport Pro (I’ve used this one for years – but I already know it won’t authenticate against an SP server)

I currently use SiteSucker on my Mac, but that doesn’t help with this problem.

So far I’ve been able to set WebCopier to authenticate against SP server (NTLM style authentication) but my first attempts to retrieve the wiki web pages and store them locally didn’t work very well.

I’ll update this list if I come up with anything that works. I think it’s useful as a list of offline browsers to consider for any purpose.

Looking for your Google Calendar Sync Log files?

This morning I discovered all information about the log files for Google Calendar Sync had been deleted from the net.

No, seriously. It’s all gone.

Weird.

But, if you’re reading this, you know that. You’ll only have gotten to this post if all your other searches have failed.

Anyway, if you’re having problems with Google Calendar Sync you’ll usually need to check the logs. They’re here on XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\[your account name]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Calendar Sync\logs

In my case GCS has actually been behaving fairly well lately. The current bug is only a nuisance; if Outlook isn’t running GCS throws up an error message "could not obtain microsoft outlook version". It’s annoying, but harmless.

Note I only do one way sync – from Outlook/Exchange to Google Calendar. I consider two way sync to be an unreachable dream; Microsoft and Google calendaring are much too different. I sync from Outlook to gCal, and from gCal to my iPhone using Google’s exchange calendar services.

Retrospect 8 for PPC

I've been waiting for this. I'd like to move backup off my old XP box to my not-quite-so-old G5 iMac ...

MacInTouch

.... As promised in March, EMC released Retrospect 8.1.148, which brings PowerPC support to the latest version of the venerable Mac backup software. The release also offers increased performance, interface enhancements, and important bug fixes....

I'll give it a month or two to settle down.