Services manager for OS X

MacOSX : Services Manager: Apple's top secret utility for managing OS X services.

More from OS X Hints: Better management of OS X Services - Mac OS X Hints

Toodledo: How you can give me the search I need with your current architecture

I've been a Toodledo web app customer for years. I use their web task management service with Appigo's ToDo.app.

It's an old relationship born of historic necessity. Toodledo and Todo don't approach tasks and projects the same way, there's the usual awkwardness of dueling data structures. These days most people would want to use Toodledo's cloud service with Toodledo's iPhone app or Appigo's Todo.app with their Todo online.

I've lived with the two for a while though. I appreciate Appigo's elegant iOS client, and it rarely fails me. That reliability means a lot. I know what works with Toodledo and what doesn't; I only use what works. On the other hand, I admire Toodledo's wide range of task integration and data liberation policies, especially the ability to mail myself a task. That's huge.

On the other hand, I need Todo's full text search. I've been pestering Toodledo to provide full text search of my tasks for (literally) years. They won't do it. So I have full text search of tasks on my iPhone but not on the web. On the web I can only search within a field (default is the task title).

Frustrating. I'm ready to leave both of them for something better. Still, I'll make one last try to persuade Toodledo that they can give me 80% of what I want without abandoning their current infrastructure.

Toodledo, here's the search I want built using your save search function, where "term" is the string I want to search on.

See, it's not so hard. You can do this with your current infrastructure by

1. Let me save this search with a name.

2. Let me make the named search my default search.

3. Provide a checkbox that means "search all fields with this string". Check it and gray out two of the fields leaving me one to type in (there are more elegant UIs obviously, this one has the fewest changes).

Thanks for considering this!

Update: Even simpler. Just let us save this as the standard search.

Update 9/12/11: This time Toodledo had a different response to my inquiry: "This is on our to-do list, but it is our policy to not comment on our roadmap or delivery dates for future feature improvements or bug fixes.". Joy!

iPhone calendar bug: list view one day off

Odd bug! My iPhone's calendar list view was one day off. The day view was fine.

Fix was to turn off google calendar sync to remove those calendars. Then turn it back on.

New one!

Making the most of Google's alternative "2-step" verification model

It's been almost five months since I implemented what I then called Google's two factor authentication. My original enthusiasmwaned significantly as I better understood what Google had done, and how they'd stalled.

Now I'm in a more or less grumpy but stable relationship with Google's "1.4 factor" security model. I wouldn't call it "enhanced" so much as "alternative". If you're not careful, you may end up less secure than when you started. It is definitely not for everyone -- indeed, it's for hardly anyone who uses anything but Google's web UI to access Google services.

I'll share here how I currently live with what Google calls 2-step verification. First, I need to explain what it really is. Disregard Google's labels and descriptions; they're dangerously misleading.

To begin with, consider two kinds of access to Google Services (mail, calendar, documents, etc):

1. Browser based access to Google's services (Ex: Google Docs, Gmail, Google account, Plus, etc)
2. App based access to Google's services (Ex: IMAP/Mail.app, G+/Google Plus.app, Calendar/Calendar.app)

When you sign up for "2-step" you get two kinds of authentication for browser based access to Google services and one kind of authentication for App based access (including many of Google's iOS apps, such as the brand new blogger.app [1]).

Yeah, it's a mess.

There are two kinds of password/token access to Google's browser based services, including the ultimate service -- your Google account security controls:

1. Combination of a standard user-defined password and a token (app created or SMS messaged)
2. "Break the glass" emergency one-time use verification codes for when a token is lost

For App based access you use your Google Account to create one or more long (high entropy, secure if not captured) passwords. Contrary to Google's descriptions, these are not application specific. They're just alternative passwords for non-web services. You can create one and use it for fifty apps (iOS, OS X, XP, multiple machines, etc, etc) or you can create fifty. You can revoke these, but good luck figuring out which to revoke. In practice, if you think you've been compromised, you have to revoke them all. (It's possible that if Google thinks you've been compromised it would revoke only the password used. I'd still revoke them all.)

These Google-generated passwords are powerful. You can't use them for browser access, and  you especially can't use them to get to Google Accounts, but you can use them for API access to all mail, all calendar, iOS access to Docs, etc. The more you create, the harder it is to keep track of all all of them, and the more vulnerable you are. Most of us, however, need these. Often.

So here is what I now do

1. On my work machine, which is not a trusted machine, I use only web access and I require Google to ask for a token at all times. (There's a bug though. Unpredictably Google will decide to trust the machine for a month. As I mentioned, Google seems to have lost interest in 2-step! Even on a "trusted" machine, however, you need a token to mess with security settings.
2. On trusted machines, including my OS X personal machines and my iOS devices, I use the same Google generated password for all apps. I create it once and store it in my encrypted 1Password database. (In the past, before I realized how this worked, I created many "app-specific" passwords. I'm gradually removing those to improve security and simplify revocation.)

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: RIP Password - Google's two factor authentication
• Gordon's Tech: Implementing Google's two factor authentication
• Gordon's Tech: The massive security hole in Google two factor authentication
• Gordon's Tech: Google's two factor: Three weeks later
• Gordon's Notes: Google's two factor authentication and why you need four OpenID accounts
• Gordon's Notes: Life with Google Two Step Verification - Sign-in Failed with Places.app
• Gordon's Notes: The New York Times' bad password advice - and what you should do instead
• Gordon's Tech: Google Chrome sync does not work with 2-step verification
• Gordon's Tech: Google's 2-step verification is the spawn of Satan - iPhone upgrade edition

-- fn --

[1] Wrong! It actually follows a newer practice. It uses a web UI for login. When you try a generated password it requests the browser password then redirects to a (crude) web UI for token entry.

Converting Email from Eudora OS X to a modern format - the TidBITS review

My Eudora archive is in PC format. So converting to OS X is even more of a pain.

A pain I'll have to face sometime. As Eudora fades away conversion options narrow. So sometime soon ...

Today Adam Engst published the comprehensive conversion guide based on his experience with a million message archive. It's not pretty (emphases mine) ...

TidBITS Networking: Converting Email from Eudora: Why I No Longer Live at the P.O.

... Before you get started converting your Eudora mail, there are two cleanup tasks I recommend taking first (and another that I discuss in the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner section below). ... Before you convert your mail, you should compress your mailboxes, to make sure that any deleted messages that haven’t yet been removed from the actual mailbox file are not exported with the rest...

Second, if your Eudora Folder is anywhere near as old as mine, it dates to the classic Mac OS, where the / character was perfectly legitimate in filenames. If, like me, you used / in some mailbox names, you’re going to want to rename those mailboxes before converting them, since some utilities will see the / and create a new mail folder, thinking it’s a Unix directory...

... Apple Mail features a built-in Eudora importer that provides the most obvious approach for importing your Eudora archive. If it were the only option, it might be acceptable, but in my testing, it missed converting at least some very old mailboxes. In those it did import, it failed to bring in attachments, messages status, and labels. Worse, in many mailboxes, it appeared to duplicate messages...

... Apple Mail can also import Unix mailbox files, so the question becomes, how do you convert Eudora mailbox files into Unix mailbox files (the two formats are similar, but not identical)? There are a number of options here, including the standalone program Emailchemy and a utility called EudoraExport that’s embedded in Eudora OSE. I had good luck with Unix mailbox files created by EudoraExport...

... now that I have my entire Eudora archive in Apple Mail, I think I’m going to leave it there as well, in case I ever want to move it somewhere else. I’ll stick with either the version of my Eudora archive created by Eudora Mailbox Cleaner (which maintained some message status, along with attachments) or Eudora OSE’s EudoraExport (which didn’t maintain message status, but did bring in attachments and which seemingly found about 120,000 more messages). I’m not a fan of Apple Mail, but its future is guaranteed and I don’t need to use it for anything but access to this email archive...

I'm surprised Apple Mail can handle an archive this large, though Adam tells us search is very slow.

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Migrating mail from Outlook Express to OS X Mail.app: Using Eudora
• Gordon's Tech: Converting Eudora email: 6/2009. Obsolete now, Adam covers same topics

Usenet 2: StackExchange and apple.stackexchange.com

A few years back two geek gods, Atwood and Spolsky, put Stack Overflow together. They were responding to the sploggish network of tooth grinding programming support sites of the day.

From that grew StackExchange. For geeks of a certain age, the current 61 sites feel like the 2nd coming of Usenet. (Once Usenet was great. Yes, I know that's hard to imagine, especially since you don't know what usenet is/was).

Among the 61 is the best Apple Q&A site on the web. It's where I look to learn and contribute. It's turbocharged my Google Custom Search engine for OS X search.

Here are a few others that personally interest me ...

• OnStartups - Stack Exchange
• SharePoint (Yech. But, for me, useful.)
• Photography
• Home Improvement
• Bicycles
• Travel

Sure sounds like usenet. For example: Science Fiction and Fantasy.

I wish I knew how Jeff & Joel were going to get rich from all of this, but I suspect they have ideas.

My MacBook Air case is a Ziploc baggie

I bought the 11" Air instead of the 13" because I wanted portability above all. It's a tough call, but Lion's 'full screen' integration with Mission Control makes that small display usable. For real work, of course, I add an external display.

So I didn't want to sacrifice portability by adding on a $30+ neoprene sleeve. The Air itself feels pretty study. It is, however, not waterproof. So I've been looking for a tight fitting 'case' that would provide water protection with a bit of surface protection.

Something like a .... baggie (I know what you were thinking).

For the moment I'm using the Ziploc 2 gallon Heavy Duty freezer bag: 13" x 15.6". The horizontal (13") dimension is a good fit, but it's far too long. I would prefer a 13" x 8" baggie. So I'm still looking, but for the moment the current bags are fine. Those I don't use up on the Air I use in the kitchen. The price is certainly right.