Parental controls: Apple and Google joint fail

After an epic struggle, I've given up on Apple's parental controls. They never worked very well, but Google's change to https seems to have broken them completely. I can't enable Google Calendar or Gmail access without also enabling image search. I'm not even sure I can allow allow Google access while blocking YouTube (the rules seem to be changing quickly).

It's a bleedin' mess.

I'm currently evaluating Net Nanny and Safe Eyes, but really I don't want either of them. I need a net appliance I can configure for our entire network. Those devices, however, costs thousands. Or I need to give up on Google.

I'm seriously considering the latter. If MobileMe were to offer Google-class calendaring I could use Bing for family search. I think OS X Parental Controls may still work with Microsoft's offerings.

I have to imagine Windows 7 parental controls are far better than Apple's, otherwise vast numbers of parents must be in full denial ...

Update 6/9/10: xkcd - Now I get it. So this is how things work for those that don't realize quite how bad things are ...

Update 6/14/10: I might be having some limited success with the combination of ...

1. OS X Parental Controls: whitelist only, with the https://74.125.45.100 trick and our Google Apps family domain.
2. Google's lock safe search set to the most severe filtering. It's not obvious, but I think you can log in with a parent's personal iGoogle account, lock safe search, then log out. You must, however, enable always receive cookies which is probably a serious security risk. Clearing cookies will clear this, but Parental Controls makes that harder to do.

Update 6/17/11: A comment suggests iBoss Home, a combination of wireless router and a subscription service.

Buzz - getting closer, still not there

Last February Buzz was ailing. Google's been trying to fix it ever since.

I gave it another try today, and there have been real improvements. You can almost achieve, with significant pain, the equivalent of separating Buzz posts from your public google profile. (Google has not implemented the obvious fix -- an option to exclude all Buzz activity from the public profile.)

The main fix so far is that each of the routes to a Buzz post can be configured so the default post is restricted to a set of contacts with associated email addresses that belong to one or more Gmail (Google) Contact Groups.

This includes Buzz posts from Gmail's Buzz UI, from the iPhone Buzz web app, and from each of the "Connected Sites"you can define in Gmail Settings (Buzz).

Configuring these Buzz posts routes, however, is complex and tedious. Each has its own independent settings. So you have to enter the same sets of Groups in Gmail as in iPhone as in Connected Sites. For Connected Sites you must first click "Add", then click "Edit" then apply the settings.

Of course if you later create a new Contacts Group for limited (Private) Buzz sharing, you'll need to revisit all previous settings.

Yech.

Google still needs to:

1. Have a single Buzz configuration that's shared among all clients.
2. Allow users to separate their user profile from their Buzz stream.
3. Ask the guy they hired away from Palm to fix Google Contacts. Puh-lease.

There's certainly progress, but we're still a long way from where we need to be.

Windows Live Writer - beware the Trojan Horse updater

I received a notice to update my beloved Windows Live Writer* yesterday. I unthinkingly downloaded the installer.

Fool.

It was a Trojan Horse. No, not a "Trojan" as in a carrier for anonymous malware, "Trojan Horse" in the historic sense of a gift containing unwanted vermin.

The installer has plagued my system with a suite of Windows Live products that I don't want and that are almost certain to reduce system stability. Now I have to tediously uninstall:

• Live Call
• Live Messenger
• Photo Gallery
• Live Family Safety
• Mail
• various Outlook add-ins
• heaven knows what else

Now you know. Don't make my mistake.

*The only good, new, Microsoft product in five years. An acquisition of course. Microsoft has since abandoned it; I think the original (Minnesota?) team is gone. Microsoft is doomed to immense wealth and mediocrity.

Google Calendar vs. iPhone: My reminders are gone

It's been a while since I've had a good Synchronization is Hell story. This one is just a small reminder of the nastiness of divergent application and data models.

The reminders on some of my yearly recurring (birthday) Google Calendar events are gone. The Reminder heading shows up, but there are no choices beneath it.

Google Calendar syncs with my iPhone using the CalDAV standard (built on iCalendar data model, so really iCalendar is what I care about) [1]. If I inspect the same event on my iPhone I see reminders set for 2 days and 14 days.

The 2 day reminder is a valid choice on the iPhone. The 14 day reminder is not [2] - it is supported only on Google Calendar. If I edit the event on iPhone I lose the 14 day reminder (probably doesn't work anyway).

No big deal. I'm sure my relatives understand why I don't get their 80th birthday cards to them on time.

Not.

Sigh. One more reminder that synchronization really is hellish.

[1] The Wikipedia page on CalDAV is ancient. At this time ActiveSync works better with Google/iPhone than CalDAV/iCalendar , but with OS 3 there's only one ActiveSync source per phone. That one is taken by work/Exchange Server.

[2] I do so miss the power of 13 yo Palm Calendaring with DateBk.

See also:

• Synchronization is Hell
• What the iPhone needs is Gorilla Haven’s DateBk6
• Gordon's Notes: The descent of the PDA: Newton, Palm, Blackberry and iPhone

--My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Appigo ToDo.app has lost RTM sync services

Appigo has a very fine task management application called "ToDo.app". I've used it for about two years. It allowed me to synchronize tasks to one of two cloud services: Toodledo and Remember the Milk.

About a year ago Toodledo introduced their own task management application, but Appigo's sync still worked on both RTM and Toodledo. Appigo also added a desktop sync app, though it's remained in 'beta'.

More recently RTM introduced their own iPhone app. On May 12th they turned off sync support for all their customers who used Appigo ToDo.app.

Appigo Todo and RTM

... Late Tuesday night, May 11, 2010, we (Appigo) were contacted by the folks at Remember The Milk via email in which they informed us they had disabled sync access for both Todo for iPad and Todo for iPhone. This service has been available in two of our apps previously (Todo and Todo Lite for iPhone). Todo for iPad was a natural extension and no sync code was changed to support Todo for iPad. We don't agree with their assessment, but including this service in Todo for iPad violated their developer agreement, which was only valid for Todo for iPhone...

A recent ToDo.app update disables RTM support -- since it's no longer available.

There's nothing about this on the RTM web site. For that matter, it's very hard to find anything about this on Appigo's web site either! The release history page, for example, says nothing about this update.

I doubt RTM will be in business in six months.

As for Appigo, they're not handling this very well. They need a lot more material on their main web site pages about what's going on.

Toodledo, where I'm a paying customer, is the only party that's coming out of this looking good. I like their "data freedom" approach to managing customer information.

Buzz update: still floundering

The default Buzz behavior is to make all posts public and viewable by your Google Profile (here's mine). Google Profiles are trivially discoverable by design, this is one heck of a problem.

Google has been stubbornly obtuse about this. It's the corporate Asperger's syndrome.

Even though I haven't heard of a fix, it's been long enough to be worth a restest. As of today I found:

1. Within Gmail, if you set the scope of a Buzz update to a contacts group, that will be the default for you next post. Only members of the authorized groups will see Buzz posts on your Google profile. There is, however, no way to scope profile visibility to one's "followers".
2. If you use the email feature to send a Buzz to buzz@gmail.com it will be public and it will appear in your Google profile for any visitor. Your last used scope setting is ignored. There does not appear to be a "group" equivalent to "everyone who I have allowed to follow me on Google Reader".
3. There doesn't appear to be a Google (official) share in Buzz bookmarklet so I couldn't test that behavior.
4. There's still no Google Reader/Buzz integration story.

In other words, very little has changed, Buzz is still not a plausible Facebook alternative. Google deserves whatever FTC hassles it might get.

See also:

• The Buzz profile problem: I am Legion
• Google's latest inadequate Buzz patch - Profile deletion
• Good-bye Buzz – for now.
• Reimagining realtime focalcast communication – Buzz and Twitter 2.0

--My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Kateva.org home page offline

I don't visit the modest Kateva.org - home page very often -- but I do reference it from some of my blogger pages.

I guess I should visit more often, because today I learned it was offline. It's probably been offline for months. It looks like it was a forgotten casualty of Google's botched retirement of Page Creator. During the transition the domain was reset to block public pages and the layout was garbled.

I've made the page public again and given it a new, simple, layout.