The "iTwinge" iPhone keyboard - explained

A few weeks ago a Canadian company claimed to have an iPhone keyboard ready to role ...

A Real Keyboard for the iPhone? - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com

... The keyboard will sell for $30 with $5 shipping to the United States. There are prototypes in beta test now that have rubber keyboards. The final version will be made of hard plastic, said Mr. Nykoluk.

The keyboard is available for pre-order and should become available around November, said Mr. Nykoluk...

I noted it back then in my Google Reader stream. I though it was at best a trick, at worst a scam. There's no iPhone OS support for an external keyboard.

Now, looking back, I realize what they've done. They've put a mechanical prosthesis atop the virtual keyboard. I presume they're using a small battery so it emulates the electrical properties of a fingertip.

Now the Canadian angle makes more sense; you could operate this thing with gloves on!

It's ingenious in a sick sort of way.

SyncWiz for Outlook Review - how not to do trial software

When I was using Outlook 2003, I had a kludgy but reasonable way to get my corporate Outlook contacts to a primarily personal iPhone.

I started out using MobileMe to get PST transported contacts to OS X Address Book.

Once I'd done the bulk of the work I found my workplace Outlook 2003 could export .VCF (vCard) files that OS X address book could import. Contacts don't change too often, so I just sorted by Contacts by date revised and emailed the new ones.

Then I went to Outlook 2007, the poor, broken, abused step-child of the Office 2007 suite. Outlook was ugly but serviceable in 2003, but Microsoft butchered it for the 2007 transition. One of the many broken bits was the semi-documented vCard export. In 2007, the only vCard export option is tied to sending them as email attachments.

I could live with that, but in OS X Address Book these Outlook 2007 vCards have notes full of unreadable XML.

So, in desperation, I closed my eyes, tried to ignore my past experiences with Outlook Add-Ins, and tried this product in trial mode ...

SyncWiz

... With SyncWiz convert selected or all of your items to vCard, iCard, iCalendar (iCal), or vCalendar file format. This file is so portable and compressible, that you can easily send the whole folder to anyone (4000 contacts in a zipped Vcard file is less than 100Kb)...

After installation I tried the VCF export. SyncWiz told me I had more than 5 contacts, so it quit. It didn't export five then stop, it just quit.

I decided that was a strong sign this wasn't a serious product, so I uninstalled it.

I then restarted Outlook 2007 -- and found the Add-In had not been removed and Outlook was revolted by it.

So now Outlook showed the SyncWiz add-in as disabled. Fine, but I'd just as soon delete it forever.

Except, you can't delete an Outlook Plug-In from Outlook 2007. You can only inactivate it, and admire the festering corpse.

I hate Outlook Add-Ins. I ain't well disposed to either Microsoft or Outlook 2007 either ...

MindManager: nasty bug with task roll-up

Mindjet’s MindManager is an exotic organizational/planning mind map app for XP and, to some extent, for OS X. Definitely for corporate use -- it’s expensive, proprietary file format, completely data locked (no data freedom here!) but very pretty.

Pretty matters in the corporate world.

I use it a lot, and today I ran into a nasty bug. I assigned a set of items task/hour info, then used the “roll up” feature to summarize them at a root concept.

The rollup displayed days instead of hours. That’s ok, but MM rounded up the task hours on every item to days – and the act is not reversible.

I lost all my item-specific task data.

I don’t think this always happens – it’s too obvious a bug. I do have a very large and complex map.

Still – be warned. If you’ve found this post because you ran into the bug please leave a comment. If I get a few I’ll rouse myself to file a bug report with MM (though I’m not sure they take bug reports).

Silver Apple of Death: iPhone hangs on startup

My iPhone 3G showed a cheery silver Apple icon this morning.

The same Apple icon it showed last night when I did a routine (hygienic) shutdown and restart. The phone was stuck on startup.

I rebooted and, after rather a long time, it restarted. I then tried running iSystemInfo, which crashed immediately.

A great way to start the day. I didn’t have time to mess around, so I mounted the phone in iTunes. There was 1.85GB free of 16GB, but I deleted a movie anyway to free up even extra space. I then did a shutdown/restart and iSystemInfo ran normally.

I’ve seen similar behavior in the past when OS X desktop runs out of swap file space. I’ve also seen some curious messages lately from Byline, complaining of a lack of memory.

It smells like a software/hardware problem – maybe something wrong with the file system or to the physical storage media.

I didn’t find much searching on “iPhone hangs startup”, but I eventually found the key search phrase “Silver Apple of Death” (SAD) or Apple Logo of Death (ALoDs) or White Apple Logo of Death (WALD) [1]

For example (I’ve rewritten the original post) [3]:

You must restore your iPhone with iTunes ….

Reset it by holding home button until your phone is shut off.

Hold the Home button while you connect your iPhone to a computer running iTunes. Wait until your phone shows the connect USB to computer screen, then release the home button.

Choose restore as a new phone.

Search for restore mode for more details, this is a well know problem and have already been complained thousands times…

I’ve come across several explanations, including problems with “Springboard” on complex iPhones. I suspect there are multiple causes, and the Springboard bug may have been fixed in 3.0. In my case I’m hoping it’s a file system corruption problem or the solid state equivalent of “bad sectors”.

My phone is working for now, but I’ll put some time on my calendar to do a restore [2].

[1] We need some acronym consensus! Note these are of a family: BSOD – Blue Screen of Death (Windows), SPOD – Spinning Pizza of Death (OS X) and SBOD (Spinning Beachball of Death) (OS X – alt). Tradition favors a four letter acronym, all upper case. I’d say WALD or SALD.

[2] If the restore doesn’t work I might try a “wipe” – forcing the OS to write to all sectors and perhaps mark some as unusable.

[3] This is from Apple discussions. There are fewer of these than one would expect. That’s what you see when Apple is deleting posts. Just saying …

Update: If you search on the words in the various names of this syndrome one finds better posts, such as this one and this one. Most do very well with the restore mode, but in some cases the problem recurs and the phone has to be replaced. Looks like a combination of hardware and software. I’ve read recently that RAM and other memory defects are much more common than once thought, I suspect that in older phones this may be due to emerging memory hardware issues. Even then a restore might help, especially if the issue is bad storage that the OS can work around.

Update b: When got home I synced the phone. I ended up doing a wipe first (from iPhone:Settings:Reset). That took about 90 minutes. I then plugged it into iTunes and I was invited to restore from my last backup. After the initial restore you get to restore Applications and Music. With past restores I've had quite a bit of cleanup and credentials re-entry, but this one worked perfectly. Nice improvement, even though a complete restore takes hours.

Web filters - return to OpenDNS

We're having to deal with the so-fun task of managing child net access.

I'm obliged to confess that I once, long ago, thought this would be pretty straightforward. Just whitelist a few accepted sites and go with it. That was pre-Google and before web sites became so enmeshed.

Later I figured we could restrict access to watched machines. Yeah, if we weren't so distracted that might work. The logs, though, tell me that ain't doin' it.

Multiple computers with multiple accounts on each computer doesn't help. Neither does running OS X, there's not much of a market for OS X access management (see: Children Online: Web Filters); they are sold but I can't find any reviews from anyone I trust [1]. There might be a market except Apple bundled Parental Control into the OS.

Oh, wait, why not use Apple's Parental Control features? Because they're $#!$#!$ broken and they've been $&*^%^% broken for years. Maybe they're fixed in 10.6, but I lost my trust in Apple years ago. This is one of the things they can't do.

Our new Time Capsule (AirPort Extreme) doesn't support any kind of domain blocking, but our Qwest 2Wire DSL modem does. It's pretty crude though, and it turns off services for everyone.

So I'm back to ad-supported OpenDNS, which I got away from in my post-gerserker simplicity quest.

In the past I'd configured my router to use the OpenDNS Nameservers (just enter the IP addresses in the DNS settings), but this time I figured I'd change it for the one machine that's hardest for us to track.

I was hoping OS X would allow each account on the iMac to have its own Location Setting, but, unsurprisingly, this is a machine setting. I had to create a new Location I titled "OpenDNS" and change the DNS settings for that location only. You can stay with DHCP configuration, any IP addresses entered here over-ride the DHCP provided configuration.

That's now the default for every account on the iMac. Parents can change it of course, but the trick will be remembering to change it back! (If the kids figure out how to change Location Settings I'll have to either lock it down or make the changes on the router.)

My old OpenDNS account still worked, so I adjusted my custom filters to fit our current needs. I also discovered my external (Qwest) IP address had changed since I last used OpenDNS, so I'll have to monitor that. (OpenDNS uses the IP address to apply custom settings.)

We'll see how this goes ...

[1] I assume this software digs into OS innards, so I ain't letting it near my machine unless it's been blessed by geeks I trust.

Update 12/15/09: OpenDNS works well for us. I use OS X Location to switch to Google DNS if I want to bypass OpenDNS filters. So far the kids haven't found that technique. I would like it if OpenDNS offered me a password option to open up traffic.

I found that my IP address was changing, which breaks OpenDNS filtering. I had to install the small OpenDNS updater app. It seems modest and well behaved. I start it with each login and it checks for DNS changes. If one is found it updates my OpenDNS settings.

My standard iPhone configuration

I've recently configured 3 iPhones - one for Emily, two for friends. So the configuration routine is fresh in my mind and ready to share.

I'll hopefully update this with some reference links, but here's the quick summary. The phones are configured around Google Services, except for Contacts which are a festering sore in Google-Land.

Basic setup

1. Check version (lately has been 3.1)
2. Turn off auto-ask WiFi
3. Picture of business card as wallpaper (so phone can be returned if found)
4. Google-phone configuration
5. Auto-lock to 2 minutes, show passcode lock
6. Mail: Show To/CC label, Signature, Default account (if needed),
7. Contacts: Sort and display order, Default account (if needed)
8. Calendars: Time Zone support Off, Default Calendar (if needed)
9. Demonstrate use of the Search screen

Google-phone configuration (calendar sharing)

1. Mail: Default iPhone Gmail setup (IMAP)
2. Google Calendar Configuration including Calendar subscription and sharing
3. Calendar and Google Contacts: Exchange Server ActiveSync then Google Sync so phone can display multiple Google Calendars selected from the primary Google Calendar collection (m.google.com and tap on "Sync") [1][2]. Warning: This setup tries HARD to get you to wipe out all other iPhone accounts. Be careful not to do so. In the setups I do people sometimes need to sync with an Outlook desktop calendar, and they almost always need to sync to a desktop Contacts collection. [2]
4. Desktop Contact synchronization (this is controlled by iTunes) [2]

Third party apps (install and configure)

1. Google Mobile (m.google.com)
2. Facebook
3. Optional: Appigo Tasks.app sync to Toodledo

Problems

1. No Google task sync solution
2. Google Contacts smell of squashed skunk
3. Only one Exchange Server account per phone (CalDAV?)

See also: My iPhone Home Screen

Footnotes

[1] For Google Apps setup see a recent Google Sync post of mine.

[2] The one substantial advantage of MobileMe for Mac users is the Contacts integration. If the Calendar sharing were not so pathetic and the data lock not stronger than Sauron's Ring it would be interesting.

Palm to Google calendar migration: Dba2CSV

I received a comment on on of my many Palm to iPhone migration posts plugging a calendar migration tool:

... To move from Palm Desktop to gCal/iPhone etc you can also try Dba2Csv or Palm2Google to move your calendars. No sync here - this is just accurate conversion from .dba to .csv (for Palm Desktop 4 files) or direct export from Palm to Google Calendars (for Palm Desktop 6 files) ... Unlike some other solutions to this problem, I am an independent freelance developer, and I provide unlimited online help (chat/email) AND a 100% quibble-free money-back guarantee :-)

The author's web site advises ...

... The best method for Palm Desktop 4 users is usually to upgrade to Palm Desktop 6 & use the Palm2Google tool within Dba2Csv. This process should only take 5-10 minutes, if you read the instructions under "Palm2Google" in the main menu on the left first. Once Palm2Google has moved your data to Google you can easily sync Google Calendars with nearly any software or mobile device, or export as an iCal file to import to most calendar software ; once your data is where you need it, you can stop using Google Calendars altogether if you wish, use Google Calendars to keep syncing with your new device, or just keep the data there as an online backup...

With Emily and I sync our iPhone Calendar.apps with Google's Calendar using Google's Exchange server ActiveSync (Google Sync). It's worked very well for us and I'd vouch for it, though the semi-secret UI for multi-calendar support on the iPhone is obviously not for general consumption.

So how did we get to Google Calendar?

Emily had given up on Palm many years ago, but in my case I just gave up on my Palm calendar and started a new one. See a prior post with several options for Palm calendar migration.Now that Google has an Outlook Sync product that's an easy option for any Palm user with Outlook available.

If you're on Palm Desktop though, there may not be a lot of options. So this might be worth looking at.

Incidentally, this post inspired me to update my old Palm to iPhone migration table.