iTunes Library divided between iTunesMusic and iTunes Music

Somehow, in the long and twisted history of my iTunes Library, which has moved from Mac to PC and back again, I ended up with my Library divided between a folder labeled ‘iTunesMusic’ and another labeled ‘iTunes Music’, both within “iTunes Library”.

It’s doubtless been this way for some time, but I only noticed it today. It seems to work fine. Even so I used the iTunes 9 File:Library tool to both consolidate and rationalize to the newish library hierarchy.

It seems to be copying everything over, when it’s done I’ll copy ‘iTunesMusic’ to an external drive and save it – just in case something was missed.

It would be nice if this was somehow related to iTunes not updating last played data on some of my podcasts …

Update 10/8/09: The iTunes Consolidate feature worked well. I deleted my iTunesMusic folder and didn't have any problems (I had backed up of course). This didn't solve the problem with the iPhone "not updating last played" bug -- this is a frustrating and longstanding bug that Apple has to fix.

iTunes 9 missing the rearrange iPhone app option?

Everything seemed pretty fine with Emily's brand new 3GS -- until I tried rearranging her app screens in iTunes 9.

The sync list was there, but not the rearrange screen.

What the ?!

I restarted the phone, speculated it was somehow related to disabling app store access, restarted iTunes, quit and connected a few times ...

Nothing. I was stuck.

Thanks Google ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - iTunes9 / iPhone Rearrange Apps Home ...

... Never occurred to me that it would be 3.01. I have a 3.1 phone so I was confounded when the screen for rearranging apps was missing...

Yep. The phone still had 3.01. I upgraded to 3.1 two weeks ago, I just assumed it was a 3.1 phone. Since her phone syncs on her user account there was no 3.1 update on the system.

It's a bit of a pain, by the way, to now have two downloaded copies of 3.1 on the same machine. There's now one in her user account and one in mine.

AT&T A List feature

When we made a bunch of contract changes today our AT&T store rep (did a great job btw) reminded me of AT&T's "A List" feature. It was activated about a week ago; it's not clear if it's automatically added to every account or if it's being rolled out and, for now, only available on request.

There's no charge and, I'm told, no contract change.

The A List is a set of numbers that can be dialed without a "per minute" charge. I think they're only available on higher end plans. On our family plan we get 10 numbers.

Since in-network mobile calls are already free you don't want to add those. We added our home number (Qwest), my office phone, and several Google Voice numbers (let's see if AT&T allows those!). If this works I won't even spend minutes when I use GV to call Canada.

Numbers must be within the US, there are a few exclusions but I don't recall them all and I can't retrieve the list. Google Voice wasn't mentioned.

Numbers currently take a day or so to be activated.

Update 9/28: All of my numbers were accepted, including our Google Voice numbers. I think people eligible for this feature also have free calls to AT&T mobile phone subscribers; it this is correct you would want to avoid using up an A List slot this way. I think the system will allow you to add an AT&T mobile phone number to the "A List".

Update 9/28b: See comments. " ... you need to be on a 1400+min/mo family plan or a 900+min/mo individual plan for this to be offered." In other words, this makes for good marketing, but no impact on AT&T's revenues. Admirably diabolic.

It might help with 3-4 phone families, though nowadays young-uns don't talk much anyway -- and AT&T isn't reducing their texting fee!

We are really moving to a flat rate for unlimited voice, and a crazy AT&T revenue stream from texting- a cost structure completely disconnected from bandwidth and infrastructure load. It's a weird wired world these days.

Configure AT&T BlackBerry Pearl for T-Mobile PayGo

In a recent flurry of phone switches our old (unlocked) Nokia 6555 went back to AT&T for my son’s family account (so no contract for him)*, Emily got the iPhone 3GS, and her (unlocked) BlackBerry Pearl went to our T-Mobile PayGo account.

 

Here’s a quick list of the setup needed for this transition ..

1. Options:Security options: General Settings:context menu -> wipe handheld
2. Options-Advanced:Applications: delete apps that are no longer useful (no data plan)
3. Insert T-Mobile SIM, restart when replace battery.
4. Options:mobile network: data services off

Actually I didn’t do things precisely in this order, which might be why the phone didn’t “know” its own number (though it did ring when dialed).

The fix was:

1. Options-Advanced:SIM Card:context menu –> Edit SIM Phone Number. Type in T-Mobile number.

After this set of changes it seems to work. I’ve disabled voice mail on this service, so I didn’t try to configure a forwarding number.

 

* AT&T’s software doesn’t handle this very well. The conventional workaround is to add a user with a 1 year contract that’s retroactively dated a year in the past. This marks them as eligible for a phone/contract deal.

Configuring Google Voice as mobile phone voice mail

Google Voice is a versatile service. I save about $80 a month, for example, by using my GV to call Canada from my US based mobile phone.

GV is also commonly used as a primary phone number router. Anyone calling that number is redirected to one or more phones you specify. You can program how the routing works.

Lastly, GV can be used as an alternate voice mail service. That's how I use it on my son's phone. I configured his phone to forward unanswered calls to Google Voice instead of phone voice mail. If he doesn't pick up the call is forwarded to GV, which answers after one ring (it doesn't, for example, create a loop by forwarding back to the mobile). [SEE UPDATE]

I added this GV number to our AT&T Family "A List", so (assuming AT&T actually allows a GV number!) there are no minutes associated with forwarding to this number (though forwarding will use up minutes on the plan, so it is charged like standard voice mail).

There are many ways to play with a GV setup, I'm sure I'll tweak this configuration further.

Update: There's always a catch. It occurred to me that, as far as GV "knows", the call is coming from a validated mobile phone that GV forwards too. The default GV behavior is that validated phones, when calling in, go direct to the voice mail menu! So all callers would go directly to voice mail control. I had to use the Google Voice advanced options to turn off the 'go to voice mail' feature and instead require an asterisk and PIN to get to the admin menu. When using GV in this mode it's probably safer and simpler to remove forwarding/routing phones.

Tasks from Palm to iPhone via Toodledo

I don't think this was available when I moved my PalmOS tasks to my iPhone.

Toodledo will import PalmOS Task archives: Toodledo : Palm PDA Import/Export.

So you can import your tasks to Toodledo, then sync them to your iPhone using either the Toodledo iPhone app or Appigo's Todo.app.

I've used Toodledo and Appigo Todo.app for over a year. Neither is perfect, but they're both a solid B+. I really don't know a better solution.

PS. How could they be better? Well, if Appigo doesn't make any more bone-headed changes to the Todo.app (they've mercifully reversed some past mistakes), and if Toodledo stopped deleting tasks > 1 yo and changed quick search to scan all task fields, then they'd be a solid A.

Update: Incidentally, I'm experimenting with the RSS feed view of my tasks in Google Reader. I think I'll figure out a good use for this feature.

iPhone bug: not updating last played or playlist count for podcasts

When you listen to a podcast on an iPhone (OS 3.1) the Play Count and Last Played values are not being updated.

I think these fields are being updated for non-podcast material. (Some users report unpredictable updating.)

This bug is messing up my Smart playlists.

Unfortunately it's not new. I can find reports on it in iPhone OS 2.

Update 9/11/2010: The bug persists into iOS 4.1 and iTunes 10.