iPhone 3GS Update

It seems that AT&T is reading my blog :)

Anyway, they changed their stance and are now offering special upgrade pricing to early iPhone adopters.

I just checked my status and I got this back:

"A full discount on a standard handset or iPhone upgrade is not available at this time, but you may qualify on 12/12/2009.  We can offer you an iPhone upgrade at a higher price with a 2-yr commitment and an $18 upgrade fee. Please visit a participating iPhone sales location for pricing on this offer."

Since this program is targeting the early adopters:

"All of that said, we've been listening to our customers. And since many of our iPhone 3G customers are early adopters and literally weeks shy of being upgrade eligible due to iPhone 3G S launching 11 months after iPhone 3G, we're extending the window of upgrade eligibility for a limited time."

And I got the iPhone 3G the day it came out I don't understand why I'm blocked until 12/12/09.

Either their systems reports on upgrade ability don't match their press releases or they're flat out lying on the whole early adopter program. AT&T appears to just make things up and see how people react then tune/correct as they go. Not a lot of thought/planning going into what they're doing.

Anyway, even if I was eligible for the early upgrade there's little in the HW that i'd care about:

• Compass - More targeting people walking around in cities. Fortunately I dont do much of that.
• More memory - I fit just fine in the current footprint (16GB)
• Bluetooth audio - i'm not very interested in this and i'd have to buy new a new headset too
• Voice commands - i'm not much of a talker
• Better performance - This is the only one thats really appealing. Some apps are dogs and some of the delays on the phone are annoying. But thank goodness its not a Newton!

What I would like is an upgrade that would stop the phone from dropping calls 3x on a 45 minute ride on the Mass Turnpike. Unfortunately that upgrade is one that requires a new carrier. AT&T remains the weakest part of the iPhone which we all expected from the day Apple announced the first one. Its just a shame considering how much business they've received thanks to the iPhone.

Find my iPhone

A cool feature that came out with iPhone OS 3.0 today. Not sure it will help you find it while its in your house but it will at least track down what store/gas station you left your phone at.

For the house problem it has the ability to vibrate/ring (despite ring settings) for up to 2 mintes:

"Write a message that will appear on your iPhone's screen. You can also play a sound on your iPhone, even if it is in silent mode."

If you choose the sound option when its at somewhere like a gas station they'll get annoyed. Assuming you have security on your phone (a pin, which you should have or your whole life is exposed) then it will beep and vibrate continuously for 2 minutes and they can't stop it without the pin. They could power it off (I confirmed they could do this) if they know how to do that on an iPhone. I fear what they'd do otherwise...

iPhone 3Gs

Ok, I have to post on it. I'm more excited about the new iPhone 3.0
software. But in this generation of the iPhone AT&T and Apple have
made what I think is a mistake. For the first two versions I got the
phones the day the phone came out. The very first because it was new
and exciting etc. The second one before it had some significant
improvements (3G) AND they let me get it for the same price as a new
customer -- i.e. they allowed me to upgrade before my 2 years were up.
Without that I wouldnt have an iPhone 3G. This time around they've
taken an ugly approach of requiring you to pay full price ($500-$700)
AND re-up for 2 years. Thats worse than most on an early renewal. I
could live with re-upping for 2 years IF they gave me a discounted
price. But I can't live with both.

So i'll wait out my contract. Hopefully verizon will get to offer one
around the time my contract expires and i'll be rid of AT&T and get to
a new phone at the same time.

BTW, the side effect of them allowing me to upgrade at the cheaper
price would have been for me to give my 3G to my wife, caused her to
switch from Verizon and then they'd have another AT&T subscriber. AT&T
didn't think this one through especially with oncoming competition on
several fronts.

OSX Server - What works and what Doesnt

So after 2 months of using OSX server, here's the update:

What we're using it for:

1) Central file server - I often have to fix permissions on the shares as someone will copy things into a share and the file will be read only to others in the same group. Since the UI is messed in Leopard (see previous post) you have to fix this through a VNC connection on the server which means you need to be an admin. Apple really needs to fix that.

2) DHCP - this is working, although some of the engineers have complained that the OSX DHCP server seems slow.

3) DNS - no real complaints here

4) Mail - The UI around the mail setup was weak and broken. Has anyone tested that? Some things we had to do:

    /etc/postfix/master.cf -> uncomment submission inet n       -       n       -       -       smtpd
        enables port 587

    /etc/postfix/main.cf -> add tls_random_source = dev:/dev/urandom (gets rid of some error messages)
        "no entropy source specified with parameter tls_random_source" 

    /etc/imapd.conf -> add tls_ca_file: /etc/certificates/wasabi.nasuni.net.crt (gets rid of more error messages)
        "TLS server engine: No CA file specified. Client side certs may not work"
  
        http://www.corpmac.co.uk/2008/09/30/tls-no-ca-file-specified-reason-and-solution/

They also don't let you add aliases other than Groups so you need to:

sudo vi /etc/aliases
sudo newaliases

Also note that when you stop the mail server and restart it through their UI (i.e. after you changed some settings) you often lose the first email that gets sent after restart. Nice.

Generally i'd recommend using someone else's mail server. The experience was not an "apple" one.

5) Open Directory - Apple uses this for all the user/group management and I havent had to touch it.

6) Radius - We use this for Cisco VPN authentication. Note that OSX server didn't really support this in the UI, so you need to follow some instructions.

7) Software update - saves multiple macs downloading to the same spot. Note that the first time you turn this on its really painful as it brings in a lot of updates.

8) Backups - the server time machine's itself and presents itself as a time machine target for any clients to use.

What we're NOT using it for:

1) Wiki - I used the Apple Wiki quite a bit. Its VERY limited. The WYSIWYG is nice, but you don't always get what you see and it can do some odd formatting stuff. If you want to do more advanced stuff you get thrown into HTML and the HTML is cluttered and hard to manage. You can't do a lot of basic stuff and eventually I punted and went with the tried-and-true MediaWiki which i'm very happy with. Its running as its own VM.

2) Web Hosting - I didn't really even try this. I wanted a server that wasn't hosting all the stuff above to be our external web host. So I created a standard Linux VM and am hosting the site via Apache.

3) Firewall - We have a decent Cisco firewall so I didn't try the OSX server firewall.

4) Our source code control/bug tracking etc is off on Linux VMs.

OSX Server bonding issues

We had some crazy issues with our OSX server setup. When we had clients join the server we had odd permission problems, synchronization issues with passwords etc. After much mucking around it turns out it was mostly our fault. Our OSX server is also a target for SSH from the outside (not on the normal port 22 and requiring certificates). To support logging in I had created some local user accounts on the OSX server machine, and for convenience I had given them the same names as the server accounts.

DONT DO THAT

OSX server gets very confused if you have local accounts with the same names as the server accounts. And you don't need the local accounts anyway as you can enable the server accounts to login/get a shell through the admin tools. Deleting all the local user accounts and enabling the ones we needed to login helped a lot of the issues.

The Leopard client still does odd things when you're looking at group/user permissions (and ACLs) on network shares. Seems that Apple messed this up in the UI in Leopard so that if you look at them you see things that just don't make sense as the users/groups are not getting copied over from the server and displayed correctly. Under the covers of the UI the right things seem to be happening but it can be confusing for the users.

OSX Environment and IE

In our vision for an All-Mac office we sort of expected to be able to pull that off without any bumps. I mentioned previously that I ran into early bumps of some office environment management apps that required windows. Later I found out that our bank (Silicon Valley Bank) and our payroll group (ADP) both have web sites that are not friendly to non-Windows/Internet Explorer environments. I proceeded to setup a new VM with Vista Home ($199 for the full install) for our office admin to run just for IE for these sites but otherwise to use the Mac side of things. When you run into mainstream companies that lack support for non-Windows platforms with their websites you really get a sense of the size of the Linux/OSX market on the business side of things.

Another thing i'm amazed at is that Vista Business sells for $300, but I can buy a full Netbook with Vista Home for $300, or a Dell Inspirion 531 with Vista Home for $249. Vista Home sells for $199 for a fresh install which is required for VM use. So the hardware is worth $49. You can setup a VM for $199 or you can have dedicated hardware for $249. While I went the VM approach mostly because I dont want more hardware to deal with (power, cooling, all that) the economics just don't make sense. 

EveryTrail

Just got back from a bike ride with the kid. Got to use my new iPhone attachment for the bike and EveryTrail iPhone app. Thats a nice combination and lets you keep track of rides.

Ride with Lydia

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

Netflix, Flexplay, and RedBox

I'm currently a Netflix subscriber (cheap plan, 1 out at a month unlimited with Blu-Ray = $10.99/month). I average about 3 movies a month. This means each movie costs me about $3.65 to watch. Whenever possible I watch them in BluRay format. 

The other day I noticed how many RedBox outlets there are around where I travel. Gas stations, grocery stores etc. With RedBox you pay $1/night and you can reserve movies. They have pretty current movies, but no BluRay options. There's no subscription fees and you only pay for what you use. This could possibly drop my monthly cost, but i'd have to know in advance that i'd be able to watch a movie in a given night or i'd end up paying for an extra night (and feel the pressure to watch soon). The fact that the price can stack up if you don't watch it once you take it out puts me off. The lack of BluRay is disappointing too. 

Shortly after running into RedBox I noticed a 48-hour self destructing DVD option at Staples called FlexPlay. It chemically self destructs its playability (in a way that doesn't break your DVD player) 48 hours after you open it. Staples generally sells the disks for $1. The outlets aren't as convenient (in this case tied to Staples store hours) and the movies aren't usually as new as Netflix and RedBox (or updated as frequently). On the positive side your expense is capped at $1/movie and you can "queue" them up by buying several and having them handy and watch whatever suits your mood. If you rent via their web site they "rent" the movies at $4.99, they're not going to win the war with that kind of pricing. At $1 and with more outlets I can see how they could be competitive with RedBox. With the limited availability, older movies, and poor pricing direct they're out.

Ok, you're probably wondering why I dont just do video-on-demand and pay just for what I watch. A couple reasons, my bankruptcy-declaring cable company charges $5.99 per rental (HD). Thats more than my average cost via NetFlix. In addition, their movie selection is worse than Netflix and RedBox. And finally about 50% of the time there are issues with the video on demand playback.

Currently NetFlix appears to be the best option as it gives me the most flexibility when I play the movies and the quality/availability of what I want. Its largest downside is the fact that I have to wait 3-4 days after watching one to watch another. I could pay more to have more flexibility but given how few I watch it doesnt seem worth it. If someone could deliver HD video on demand at an equivalent cost to NetFlix then i'd switch but given where I live and the monopoly of the local TV provider, i'm stuck for a while.

iTunes Music Video Playing Problems

If you happen to be having problems playing music videos in iTunes I
found an odd behavior: If you use multiple speakers normally for
playing music, then Videos won't play when you have multiple speakers
selected. You have to choose just the speakers of your mac and then
the videos will play. Seems like a bug to me -- there should at least
be a warning.

Side track - The Mace

A side track from my ramblings on IT setup. Why is this blog called "The Mace's Musings"? What/Who is "The Mace"?

This goes back to high school in the days where the internet barely existed and computer bulletin board systems (BBS) were the gathering spots of the geeks like me. Basically they were computers with modems attached to phone lines that one person at a time could call from their computer to that BBS and post their comments/download stuff and log off for the next person. Some more advanced ones had multiple lines but that was pretty rare in the early days. Back then they were places to chat with people, but more often than not they were used to distribute "Warez" or software. For the most part, in those days, there wasnt much freeware/shareware and the bulk of software getting downloaded was commercial/stolen. Those were the days of 300 baud apple cat modems (with a later huge upgrade to 1200 baud) and software applications that fit on a floppy. Still downloads took forever and new file transfer protocols like xmodem and zmodem were being pushed to help speed things up and recover from broken connections etc. There was a huge culture around all of this and it was mostly an Apple II/Apple Cat world.

Anyway, I started with my Apple II and a modem and started dialing into the BBS's. Back then everyone used a handle so nobody knew who really was downloading the software etc. The handle was your bulletin board identity and people and groups like the Legion of Doom had them and became well known in the community. 

I was in my basement one day with a good friend and we both were getting started in the community and figured we needed handles. He was into comic books, especially "Thor" and picked Odin, a Nordic god associated with war. We both liked the war and fantasy games like Wizardry. My choice was a weapon, a mace, personified to The Mace. The choice was both due to the weapon(ness) of it as well as an indirect reference to my last name.

From there I used this new handle and visited many BBS's across the country and eventually ran my own, starting with a single one and eventually franchising out to multiple states and I became fairly well known for a while. I dropped off the grid when I turned 17 and decided to follow a more legal path in life. I heavily modified some base BBS software to give my own stuff its own unique feel and draw and this was the beginning of any real programming with a purpose for me.

So thats where The Mace came from. 

As an amusing aside, about 20 years after I picked "The Mace", I was chatting with someone who worked for me at work many states away from where I grew up and we were talking about the early days in computers. We eventually got around to BBS's and he found out I was "The Mace". He had frequented my system and knew who "The Mace" was. Small world.

Those formative years in remote connections, tunneling through AT&T's computers, hacking/crack systems, distributed work, and programming have shown their influence on me for the last 20 years. While i'm not proud of some of it, I wouldn't be who I am without it.

OSX Server Day 1

Now that we were limping along from an IT perspective it was time to get a real server created. I took my OSX Server, 10 Client edition, popped it in my new MacPro (Nehalem) turned it on and got a white screen. Nothing. Odd. I booted off the pre-installed Leopard and it was fine. So from there I decided to just install it from the CD versus booting the CD. It installed fine and I rebooted and had OSX server. Then I was presented with a LOT of system management options and terminology and concepts I didn't know. I thought OSX server was supposed to be easy? Turns out there are 3 modes to OSX server - Standard (simple), Workgroup, and Advanced. When you install the way I had to it treats it as a server upgrade and forces advanced mode. 

Why couldn't I boot the CD? Turns out the OSX server I bought (several months ago) was older than the hardware I had just bought and was missing drivers etc and I could not swap the disk for a newer one without paying $500 to apple again. This was nuts, I got on the phone and after speaking to 5 Apple people (just to get to the correct department), I got told that since my OSX server was purchased a while back, and even though it wasn't used, they shouldn't be supporting me. Nice, so much for planning ahead. But then they said, if you do the install by booting Leopard and then running only a piece of the OSX server install package it may let me avoid advanced mode. I got one blurb from them on how to do this:

"Install OS X client onto unit, creating an admin user with the name & password that you want on the server. 

Update all SW and then insert OS X Server install disc into unit. 

Go to Finder>Go>Volumes.

The name of the metapackage file to be run is "MacOSXServerInstall.mpkg", which is located in /Volumes/Mac OS X Server Install Disc/System/Installation/Packages.

Run this metapackage file to install OS X Server on unit. "

Nevermind the fact that this information was limited and flawed, it gave me just enough to find the package I needed. The best way I found was to do this through the terminal and then "open" the referenced package. After doing this I got OSX server setup in the way it was meant to be. 

It took a great deal of time because each attempt required OSX updates (over my crazy aircard setup) as well as OSX server updates. A few times as they were setting up the rest of my network I had wrong IP addresses/configurations which were difficult to change in OSX server so I had the pleasure of doing this several times.

In the end I think the steps are something like this (none of which I could find with google searches):

1) Boot Leopard install CD (even if your new MacPro has Leopard pre-installed)

2) Go into disk utility and set up your disks the way you want (OSX server install would have had this step but you can't boot that). Your options may be more limited than OSX server but I had 4 1TB drives and created 2 mirrored 1TB volumes. One I called "OS" and one I called "Data". I'm so creative.

3) Now install Leopard and do all the updates. If you're doing this with an Aircard bring a good book.

4) Now, while logged into leopard after all the updates/reboots are done, put in the OSX server CD and run the package above. You'll walk through OSX server install. Oddly it doesnt force a reboot. 

5) Next, don't do any updates (if you do, start over at #1 - found that the hard way), eject CD and reboot.

6) Now you get the OSX server install screen asking you about standard (stand alone) vs workgroup vs advanced. I originally chose standard but later found out I should have chosen workgroup so I started over again.

7) Now once it comes up you can do the OSX server update (another 200MB+ over the aircard). Note that if you plan on making mistakes like I did its helpful to download these update packages and squirrel them away (I put them on the data drive that I wasn't wiping on each attempt).

8) Now you have an installed OSX server. Time to figure out what it can and cant do. Thats for another episode.

The alternative is to buy/get an OSX server CD that works with your hardware. My first experience with OSX server has not been pleasant.

IT early pains

With our new office we rented space and I hired a group (Rockport Technology Group) to come in and do the wiring, phones and basic network setup. They're a great bunch of guys that i've used before and they always do a first class job. What I was left with was a CISCO ASA5505 firewall, 2 Cisco 521 WAPs, a 48 port GigE switch, a Nortel BCM 50 phone system and a Keyscan card reader system for physical security. 

With that gear I have a wired and wireless network as well as phones and card access for my office which can sit about 40 people. Note that I haven't mentioned an internet connection. Thats because we don't have one yet (!). I ordered dual T1 lines from Verizon, but T1s take time (4-6 weeks). The fallback was Comcast since they were supposedly in the building already and had a 2-3 day install time. Even though they pre-certified the site/install when the guys turned up they found no Comcast in the building. They said they need to run cable to the building and they need to wait for the ground to thaw first (yes, though its April our ground is frozen after you get down a few inches -- welcome to New England). So I cancelled that order. I had had 5 phone lines installed by Verizon for the normal phone system so we asked them to convert one to DSL. You'd think that would be fast, but it takes Verizon 7-10 days to do that too. The DSL should be live next Tuesday. The T1's follow 3-4 weeks later.

So I have an office full of people that need internet access, what do I do? My crazy fallback idea from the beginning was to use my Verizon Aircard. I bought it a while back and used it to be on the net at all times, in the car, in airports, etc. Its a decent card and fast. So in the beginning I had it in my MacBookPro and was just doing internet sharing from it to the Airport. Apple makes this dead easy and it works well. The problem is the office space is 7K+ sq ft so there's no hope of covering much range that way. I could try to extend it with other network gear like Apple's airport express but i'd be buying them to use them for a week or two. I could try to bridge it to our new Cisco wifi but that was still coming online and having its own challenges. The other issue was that I needed to use my MacBookPro for stuff and so the network connection would come and go based on what I was doing which didn't help the others.

What I didn't have were any servers set up yet. I had bought 2 of the new Nehalem MacPros to be used for "IT stuff" and decided to use one of them to bridge to the net. I used one with the base Leopard install, installed the aircard and Verizon software and turned on internet sharing bridging the aircard to the wired ethernet port. Since the Cisco WAPs (wireless points) were also connected to the same network, all of a sudden everyone had internet access whether they were on Wifi or wired. The Verizon software (VZ Access Manager) just pain stinks. I have a conspiracy theory on these cell companies and the aircards -- its that when you use too much bandwidth they drop the connection just to see if they can stop the traffic, if nothing else its a brutal throttle. VZAccess doesn't automatically reconnect. But if you look in your network settings when connected with VZaccess, they have a new network location setup with the Verizon modem. In that new location I added in the ethernet port I wanted to share. I also set that location to be my location whether I was connected or not. I then when into the advanced settings of the modem through the OSX network preferences pane and set it up to auto-reconnect, never disconnect etc. With that done the network drops at times but reconnects without my involvement and we've had a productive few days downloading tools, updates, email etc. Its no speed daemon but its something you can live with.

I used that same MacPro to create the VMWare environment for the management apps for the Nortel and Keyscan pieces that I spoke about in my previous post. I also created a basic file shares so we could move things around internally.

Now I needed a real server with permissions for the different elements of the business, that was stable, could be backed up etc. More on that to come.

OSX Office Environment

I've had the fortunate experience (kidding) to become a part time IT guy for my new company. The plan is Mac's all around to limit the IT noise and then virtual machines for those that have some need of Linux/Windows. The basic setup is OSX + MS Office for the Mac + VMWare. Note that despite recent benchmarks of Parallels vs VMWare Fusion I went with VMWare, I did this because like MS Office, they're the leading VM environment and I can download more pre-configured machines etc for that environment than any other. 

The developers need Linux to do their thing and I expected that. What I didn't expect was that some basic applications like the ones to run the Keyscan card key access to the office doors and the Nortel phone system are windows only apps. For those I spent the whopping $300 on Vista Business, installed it in a Windows VM and then installed the apps in there. Generally these infrastructure apps don't need to be running all the time so that makes it even easier. Still, not having web based management or cross-platform apps in this age just shows you how far Apple has to go.

Over the next few posts i'll be talking about my experience in setting up an OSX based office environment and in the process you'll see how little I know about basic IT concepts :)

Cloud Reliability

Building stable cloud services is a difficult thing. Even google is

struggling:

iPhone 3.0

I wont re-state all the iPhone 3.0 features they announced today as others have done that well. But there are a few that to me were key that may not be highlighted by others:

MMS - I left everyone behind on Verizon when I broke my contract and joined AT&T just to get the iPhone. I imagine there are tons of others in that camp. They all send me MMS pictures which are too painful to try to access so I miss all those family pics. 

Voice Memos - An obvious oversight. I wonder though about them putting so many 3rd party guys (iTalk for example) out of business. Why?

Search - Across apps is nice but not needed to me, but within an app like Mail and Calendar its required.

And finally one that not too many are pointing out, I can finally send stuff from my address book on the iPhone to someone else. That was a major one for me.

Note that I didn't point out other things like Copy & Paste, Tethering and some others. They'll be nice but not as basic/fundamental.

Its great to have a phone thats so flexible that they can roll out serious updates like this and do it for free. While the iPhone is still not the best phone on the planet with dropped calls etc, it sure is my favorite electronic device.

Sirius XM almost folded

I 'm on a roll. First I wrote about Apple and the DRM challenges forcing me to buy from Amazon MP3, a short while later Apple went DRM free. Then I wrote about XM radio and its flaws for me, and then they narrowly avoided bankruptcy. Perhaps if the Sirius fools han't done a $500M deal with Howard Stern and other questionable business practices they wouldn't have come so close to losing it all.

As with so many other things, companies need to study and learn their about their customers preferences, likes and dislikes etc and then work with a total focus on meeting the needs of those customers. I'm just one voice with my own set of preferences, but there are common things to learn and do if you study analyze and get to know your customers. Apple, Sirius and others, take note or perish.

Is the mac a gaming platform?

Apple has come a long way with hardware and software and has made significant inroads in its ability to be a desktop system in business. I've been using Macs for work in small and large companies for the last 6 years and its been pretty rare that that's caused me grief (the major point being Exchange/Outlook support which I hope will be fixed in Snow Leopard)

I wish I could say Apple has made a lot of progress on the video game front, but the reality is that it hasn't. Despite having some leading edge Video cards like the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT that  I have in this MacPro and essentially the same Intel-based hardware, there are few games for the Mac. Why is that?

Part, I would say is that Apple has continually ignored the video game industry while MicroSoft with its "Games for Windows" drive and others has encouraged the PC as a gaming platform. So the company is not supportive. Thats a major point.

Next is that the hardware support for games is not complete. I recently spent a lot of time looking for a way to get 5.1 sound on my Mac for gaming. The issue is that you can't get that. Sure it can output 5.1 sound optically from DVDs etc, but generated sound from games cannot be piped over the optical output and you can't buy a card, USB device etc that does it in the current MacPro generations. Griffin Technology did make a FireWave product that outputs sound over FireWire to a device that gives you 5.1 sound output, but both FireWire and the FireWave have been discontinued. So there is no 5.1 sound support for games on the Mac. 

Along similar lines, if you really want the best bleeding edge video cards as they come out from vendors like Nvidia that offer "upgrade" programs so you can continually upgrade your card you're out of luck. The mac hardware lacks the specific power connectors that the current generation video cards require so Mac video cards end up being custom made for Apple. If you could make the power problem work your next issue would be the total lack of video diver support for the platform.

Ok you say, I can use my Mac HW and then run windows games in VMWare or Parallels. Well, no, you can't really, while some DirectX support has been added to the virtualization platforms, the performance and compatibility limit you to games that have fairly modest requirements.

Fine, then just play games under BootCamp and let Windows own the Mac hardware. Well, thats what I do, but you still wont have 5.1 sound or the latest video card. It does well and you can play Far Cry 2, Crysis, etc in this mode, but you wont have as good as an experience you get on a PC. And you're not running OSX and you've paid a premium for Mac HW to get less out of it.

If you're a serious gamer, don't buy a Mac. That's what Apple is telling us. My love of the OS (and dislike of the alternatives) is stronger than my need for the best video gaming experience but I long for the day when Apple either gets "with it" or legalizes the hackintosh.

My good friend recently sold me his MacPro (at a great price!) and went back to the PC. He's a serious gamer. He loves the Mac and hates Windows, but the gamer side of him won. 

Wii Fit

My daughter got a Wii fit for Christmas and i've been amazed with the device. While it looks like a simple slightly raised step platform they've dramatically changed the video game experience with the introduction of this wireless board. When you step on it it knows your weight, and where the weight is placed on the board. From there you can snow board, ski, do push ups, jog etc. While I don't think its a good substitute for a gym (and some are quite upset about it) I do think forcing some more movement into video gaming beyond just the fingers is a great idea. The fit, along with the Wii itself has innovated on the video game front and despite its very dated graphics capabilities it has continued to have a serious impact on the video gaming industry. If you have Wii and dont have a Wii fit, I'd suggest you get one. Not to get in shape, but to experience one more incremental step of progress in the video gaming industry.

iPhoto and Face and Place Recognition

With the latest iPhoto update Apple added two key new features: faces and places. In faces, iPhoto does a decent job of recognizing faces in pictures and then tries to match the patterns to find the people. You give it a few hints and it tries to find more of the same person. For years i've used keywords to identify key people so I can find pictures, say, with myself, my daughter and my wife in them. With faces in theory this is made more automatic. 

My experience though has been a little different. It did force me to tag more pictures and put some structure around the naming of pictures. The actual face similarity piece is about 50/50 in my experience. An odd side benefit I found is that I enjoyed the process and we actually had fun with the program guessing a completely wrong person for a given face. How could my friends face match my sister? Combine that with an OCD tendency and you can entertain yourself for hours matching faces and names. But in the long haul, given the lack of accuracy I don't think the addition added much value and you can't rely on it.

With Places, Apple goes through a lot of trouble to point out GPS camera support and that certainly works with the poor pictures that the iPhone takes. But if you go and stroll through Best Buy, the now defunct Circuit City, or Wal-Mart, how many GPS enabled cameras do you find on the shelves? Zero. None. So is this feature solely aimed at the poor pictures taken on camera phones? If so i'd argue that Apple and iPhoto isn't the place to store them but something more online, more accessible since these cheap shots have limited use and quality.

You can, after import, add location information to your pictures, and again thats another time sink for OCD people and it provides little long term photo management value.

Would I buy the update again knowing what I know now? Probably, I love iPhoto and want to have the latest updates. But if you're buying it for new features, think again.

Voicemail

I'm amazed that in this digital age there are still very few options for managing voice mail for the services I use. My home internet is through Charter Communications which does not provide for emailing voicemail messages or even sending you alerts that you have new messages via txt or email.

On the iPhone there is no software way to export a voice mail despite the much touted visual voicemail feature. You can't export from the phone, or from desktop software, or even through AT&T's web site. This is an oversight that many web sites are complaining about.

Anyway, the quick and dirty solution is as follows:

1) Find a simple 3.5MM male/mail audio cable plugged into the iPhone (easier with a 3G) and into the Line In on your mac. 

2) Make sure "Line In" is selected in the Input tab of your Sound preferences. 

3) Run Garageband, create a new basic track, picking something like "Male Basic" for type

4) Press record at the bottom of the screen and then hit play on the iPhone visual voicemail to record. 

5) When the voicemail play is complete (watch the iPhone screen). press record again in Garageband to stop recording

6) In the menu choose share, export song to disk, choose MP3 and "Good Quality" and give it a name

You can do something equivalent on the PC. I used Garageband because it was there, there are free programs out there for all platforms that can do the garage band steps for you. 

Sounds complex, but this whole process took me 2 mins including finding the cable in the basement and running Garageband for the first time ever (i'm not musically inclined (which is why I like country :) ))

Circuit City

Must be my week for silly things in the mail. I got a Circuit City Advantage (their extended warranty) renewal form in the mail with choices of 1, 2 or 3 years. I always question the value of extended warranties, but in the case where a company has filed for bankruptcy you'd have to be just plan nuts to sign up for this.

With the loss of CompUSA and now Circuit City I wonder if we're heading to an age where there will be no instant gratification for electronics and you'll be relegated to the internet and the good, but not quite as instant, services of NewEgg and Amazon

XM Radio

The concept, advertising free radio you can receive anywhere with high quality, was good. The execution has not been. In multiple cars by multiple providers i've seen poor XM radio reception. And when digital radio doesnt come in it goes out completely, not just fuzzy, but gone. This is on main roads (route 495) in Massachusetts so this isn't an edge case. Its not under a bridge, in a tunnel, its on open highway. 

Then look at stations like XM station 11 (Sirius 61), its full of advertising. Why am I paying to be delivered ads? Oh because SOME of the stations don't do ads. I see.

And now the ultimate insult, they're raising their prices. 

Don't get me wrong, XM has entertained me for my 2+ hour commute for the last few years, but when the 1 year subscription I paid for runs out in May i'm not renewing. While Pandora Radio finally caved in to ads at least its a free service. 

I'm thinking iPhone 3G with a audio out cable and Pandora and i've got my replacement for XM better tuned to what I want to hear. If I want ad-free I buy songs online at $1 each and play the playlist. At the rate I buy songs its cheaper than XM.

Another broken business model. 

Off topic - Disney

I don't usually write about non-technical things on this blog but
having just gotten off the phone with Disney Dining Reservations I
can't resist. The reservation agent was extremely helpful and the
process was as efficient as a human could have been. But my point was
I had to speak to someone. Now all the guide books etc recommend
booking dining spots for your stay in disney and doing that as far in
advance as disney allows so you can get into the places you want. We
like to eat and i'm a planner so we mapped it all out where/when then
I needed to book the 12 reservations. They have NO ONLINE SYSTEM.
Thats NUTS. Can you imagine the volume of calls, duration of calls and
human mistakes they're experiencing with a manual dining booking
system? This should not be a complex technical problem and they have
piles of "Imagineers" on staff. What are they thinking?

And yes, we're off to Disney in April. We promised the kid when she
was 5 we'd take her back when she was 10 (5 year decompression cycle).
With that booking experience complete all we have to do is turn up.

GPS Updates

Today I got an ad in the mail for a GPS update for my Lexus. The GPS update is $265. Sure the Lexus is a luxury car and you should expect to pay more when its involved. But $265 for a $0.50 DVD that they're mass producing? And one thats out of date the day its produced? Thats getting a bit crazy. You can't even plug in addresses while you're moving, it has no traffic updates etc.

Lets see for $247, I can buy a high end Garmin Nuvi 760 or dozens of other types for that or much less and most include more advanced features than the Lexus GPS. You can get a decent portable GPS for $129 these days.

So I could have a GPS that moves with me from car to car and I could buy the latest version every year or I can pay for a DVD from Lexus.

What are they thinking?

Along the same lines, those portable GPS's sell updates for $80. So you buy a GPS for $129 and the software update is $80. 

Folks its time to figure out the model and drop the price and get more people to do the upgrade. 

I, for one, am not paying for GPS updates when they don't make sense.

(p.s. its my wife's car anyway!)

Quicken Online & Mint

Quicken Online's recent failing for me led me to go off looking for other solutions. I started looking for a desktop app to replace the ancient Quicken 2005 I have installed. After some searching and trials I found a lot of pretty poor apps that were either free or shareware. 

Eventually I found iBank which is trying to be the replacement for Quicken on the Mac. Its not free and one thing that really bugs me in app trials is where they limit you based on content versus time, especially when the content has no online effect. For example, I can see Evernote limiting you on content as they're paying for the space online to cover your free capacity. But with iBank all the data is local, there's no reason to limit the number of transactions. Just limit my trial period so I can really try the product. With the demo version they limit you to 75 transactions in a single account. I suppose for many that will be a sufficient trial, but my test was to load in 3 months worth of real data for all my accounts and see how it does. I hit the limit and couldnt do the test. Sure I could pay and then use the 30 day money back guarantee but thats a pain. Anyway, thats no way to do demos, give them the full product and then limit by time or online (i.e. stuff that costs the developer money) capacity ONLY. 

So now you're probably wondering, ok so its a lousy demo but how was the product otherwise? Its a decent desktop money management application. But in using it I came to a couple realizations:

1) Whether its online or offline you still have to categorize your downloaded transactions and fix payee names. None of the solutions out there get this right for you. And even though you can remember a classification to automatically rename VendorX or categorize it on import that generally doesnt work with real and electronic check payments as they all come in as "Check" and "Uncategorized". This means you have to do some data entry (even if its just drop downs). This means all services collect some data from you that has some value for you. Mint, Quicken Online and the offline apps. That means its harder to use more than one and it means its harder to jump between them.

2) With local financial management apps you have to find a place to save your data thats secure, back it up, etc. With the online apps you either trust them or not.

 

3) With the local apps you're limited in how fast they update the application and roll it out whereas the online ones evolve much more quickly. 

The above led me to back to the online side, I tried Mint.com again and found they had fixed my Citizens bank support. This means I really got to try Mint for the first time. 

Mint has some nice features like the automatic alerts, and even the "ways to save" area I found interesting and potentially useful (although their data was skewed). The interface was nice and clean. The had a nice investment section which Quicken Online doesnt have. They seemed to have some issues connecting to some of my financial institutions and I got intermittent results there.

Along the way having used Quicken Online for a few months and now using Mint I noticed one glaring difference. Quicken Online lets you enter transactions yourself, Mint doesnt. This means if you're trying to use one of these services as an electronic checkbook to know what your balance is etc, only Quicken Online meets that need (assuming it doesnt lose your transactions). 

I went back to Quicken Online and found they had, at least for now, fixed the lost transaction bug and my balances were correct once more so i'm back to using Quicken Online.

I think the local financial management apps are doomed and the competition by Mint and Quicken Online and others (I did look at Wesabe but wasnt interested in its approach) will be interesting. There are a few core use cases and features that must be there and be reliable for the service to win. Neither Mint nor Quicken Online has the perfect set yet. Quicken needs more reliability and investments (eating into their desktop products which is probably why it isnt there). Mint needs more reliability and the ability to enter your own transactions. 

Wow DRM free

Here I was just catching up on a blog backlog and I complained about Apples DRM versus Amazons DRM free approach only to have Apple drop DRM a few days later. Perhaps they're listening :)

As Mel Gibson would say "FREEDOM"!

Addendum:

I went to buy a song today (i'll spare you my taste) and sure enough the song I was looking for was in iTunes Plus format (DRM free, 256 bit AAC). Thats nice, its DRM free, but AAC is not a very portable format. When I burn MP3 CDs for my Car they have to be MP3 not AAC, so I still have a conversion problem. I found a tool called Advantageous MP3 that helps you jump to the Amazon MP3 store from the iTunes App. Its not perfect (has to be an artist or album not just a song) but it reduces the time to purchase while using the better interface of iTunes.

I ended up buying off iTunes to see how bad the conversion process was, and iTunes has a "Create MP3 Version" option that worked fine (and kept the rating). Its one more step in the buying process but keeps me within the iTunes App and the pricing was the same. All my smart playlists filter based on Mp3 only so I dont get dups.

Will Apple eventually let us choose our download format or cave to the one everyone else uses?

iPhone App addendum

One other thing I should have mentioned with the iPhone apps: Several others could be on the list (and hopefully will be some day) if Apple supported background notifications. Its supposedly on its way. Once that happens perhaps some chat/Instant Messaging app(s) may make the list etc. Until then they have little value to me when they have to run in the foreground.

iTunes & Music

I'm no saint and have a questionable past, but I continue to try to be
a better person. Several years ago I decided that all my software,
music and movies should be legally paid for and went on a buying/
purging spree to get to that state. When you pay for everything you
really know the value before you buy and you don't end up with a hard
drive full of useless apps, music you don't listen to, etc.

Anyway, a few things I found out along the way:

1) Software application licenses often don't make sense. The software
vendors need to think about the multiple machine users (I use 3
regularly) and the multi-user households (I have 3 in my family). Some
do offer family licenses, but several require a license per copy.
Sometimes licensing schemes can be so broken that you can't buy more
than one copy at a single email address forcing you to violate the
license or create a fake/new email just to buy it. Anyway, if you
really try hard to pay for everything you have in terms of software
(perhaps most people do that but I didn't always), you'll find a lot
of inconsistencies and annoyances along the way.

2) DRM for music is painful for people who try to follow the law. It
feels like I'm getting penalized for the crimes of others. So for a
while when I bought music off iTunes, i'd create a playlist, burn it
to CD, and then immediately rip it back as MP3. That keeps the
metadata and gets it in an unprotected form. Not so I can share it or
do anything illegal, but so I can use it where I want to use it
without worrying about odd formats and protection. About 6 months ago
I switched to buying all my music off Amazon MP3. The music comes DRM
free and is cheaper or the same price as iTunes. Its not many more
clicks to get it and it saves me wasting a CD and the other clicks to
get rid of the DRM. I think Apple has to go the DRM-free route.
There's no added value to me from buying it off iTunes and their
"Genius" approach isn't going to make me buy more music from them.

So, the thing that bothers me is that if you went into someone's house
and tried to audit their household for compliance with the music and
software licensing laws who would pass? How would you prove that the
2,635 songs in my music library were all bought and/or ripped from
CD's I owned? They are, but i'd hate to try to go through such an
audit. What if I lost a CD after I ripped it? Was I even allowed to
rip it in the first place? Where are the receipts for the music I
bought off iTunes, Amazon etc?

What it comes down to is you doing your best to adhere to the intent
of these broken licenses and concepts and paying (at least once) for
every piece of music and software that isn't free that you have in
your house (yes, even if you have music you don't listen to - if you
have it you should have paid for it or you should delete it).

People that know my past will find this post funny. A long time ago I
ran a multi-state computer piracy bulletin board that was quite
popular in its time. That was back in the days of speedy 300 baud
modems (you're likely accessing this at 15,000x or more faster speeds
now). I've either evolved or gained a lot more respect for Bubba.

iPhone & iPhone 3G

Being the gadget/Apple fanatic I had to get the newer iPhone 3G the
day it came out. What did I do with my old iPhone? Unlike many that
sold them on eBay etc, I gave mine to my daughter. Its not enabled as
a cell phone so its basically and iPod touch. She loves it and does
all sorts of things on it - email, pictures, games, videos, music. And
I can honestly say that after watching her (she's 10) abuse it for the
last 6+ months that the original iPhone is a TOUGH device. Like my
Lexus RX300 that I gave to my wife when I got a new car (Acura MDX), I
feel sorry for it. It was kept in such good shape and now its abused,
but both are tough and can take it. Then again, my girls are tough too.

iPhone Apps

Seems that its the thing to do at the end of the year to rate top iPhone apps you use. To date i've purchased ONE (1) App. And that one was a whopping $20. Which one? 

OmniFocus. A friend turned me on to a series of Apps by the Omni group. The apps are generally overpriced but work well on the mac. I was looking for a better to-do list manager and he swore by the product so I broke down and bought OmniFocus for the mac. It's been helpful in consolidating all my "to do" lists and get things more organized. The natural extension was to buy the iPhone version too (they sync with each other). The insult was that the iPhone App was $20. Its not worth the money. It has a horribly slow launch time (which evidently is better than it used to be) and takes forever to sync with MobileMe. The interface and capabilities are decent but if you want to quickly add a to-do item you'll forget it before the thing launches. I do use the app but mostly for To-do cleanup when on the road/waiting somewhere.

Ok, out of 7 screens of Apps (see full pile below), what is worth mentioning?

Rob's Top 10 iPhone Apps (free unless otherwise noted):

1) NetNewsWire - RSS reader, syncs with my other locations. Wonderful way to keep up on news etc. Great way to kill time waiting in lines, airport etc.

2) Shazam - For finding out what song is playing and remembering it so I can buy it later

3) WeightTrack - because I need to lose we

ight. I wish there was a better free one (its odd when its tied to the OKC stuff) but this one works and is fast & easy

4) GalCon Lite - only game i've liked enough to play more than once on the iPhone

5) 1Password - Password tracker syncs with the mac. In case I need my login info on the road (dont really use it for the iphone browser)

6) Flixster - for finding movie times quickly (Showtim

es has promise but has consistently been unstable for me)

7) Google - I had little use for the early versions which just launched a web browser page, but the voice activated search in it now is the bomb.

8) Dialer - A free working voice activated dialer for the iPhone that works

9) PhoneFlix - Look my Netflix queue

10) OmniFocus - Task manager that syncs wit the Mac. $20.

Apps i'm looking at that have promise:

1) Urbanspoon - a cool way to find restaurants (but not how I pick where to go)

2) Mobile News - AP news reader. Seems more conci

se than RSS etc. 

Apple apps that have little value to me:

1) YouTube - im not a big YouTube fan. I mostly use MobileMe to share videos with family

2) Contacts - its also accessible in the "Phone" app and before they made another app I got used to getting them there

3) iTunes - I dont buy music on the road (or update RSS feeds)

The rest of the Apple apps I use all the time.

Quicken Again (and Happy New Year)

Hi folks, Happy New Year.

Now onto my rant:

A while back I mentioned that Quicken would finally be the last product to update for the Intel macs and the target date was the fall of 2008. Now it seems they've pushed that out to the Summer of 2009. This just adds fuel to the fire. Not only are they the last to update, but they can't hit their own dates. They've proven not to care about the Mac market. I think its time for the mac market to speak back by not buying the product when (IF) it comes out.

I also mentioned that I moved to Quicken online and so far so good. Well it turns out that along with some annoying security issues related to my bank and some unsupported banks, they also miss account transactions which falsely makes you think you're about to go into overdraft. This is what they have to say on the matter:

"Some Quicken Online customers may find that some Account Activity transactions are missing. We have identified the issue and are working on a release to resolve this soon"

I ask you, what good is an online financial tracking service that misses random transactions? None at all, its useless. In this case 99% isn't good enough. I hope the Quicken people are paying attention. 

Perhaps Intuit should stick to Quickbooks and drop its personal finance stuff altogether. They seem to have their act more together there (yes, I use quickbooks 2009 on the mac for a business).

Rob

iCal sync broken again

Yesterday I was running around and noticed that my calendar wasn't up to date on my iPhone so I went through the following debug process. 

I have 3 macs and the iPhone all using the MobileMe calendars. First, since I was on the road, I deleted/re-added my MobileMe account to the iPhone. That was a long shot and did nothing but until I got to a machine it was about all I could do. When I got to a reasonable browser I checked my calendar directly on MobileMe. It wasn't up to date there, so data was not getting pushed up there from the machine i'd made changes on. I went to that machine and forced a "replace all data on MobileMe with data from this computer". It did the job, didn't complain but nothing was updated (nice, Apple). I looked in the console logs and saw ugliness:

12/3/08 6:53:44 AM com.apple.syncservices.SyncServer[96229] 2008-12-03 06:53:44.779 iCalExternalSync[96232:10b] [ICalExternalSync ]Encountered CoreData could not fulfill a fault for '0x1ad70f0 <x-coredata://F854A380-7F11-44BA-A73C-C652C92C9F8C/Event/p4386>' with userInfo {  ... etc

I did a sync services reset using iSync, that did nothing.

I backed up iCal, blew away my ~/Library/Calendars folder, ran iCal and tried to restore, that failed with many of these: 

12/3/08 9:31:20 AM /Applications/iCal.app/Contents/MacOS/iCal[97404] setting security information: /var/folders/Xl/Xl6GakpqEEyCqKA-KgN23++++TI/-Tmp-/3B645785-A5C3-4AB1-AF16-947275E7716F.calendarstore/Calendars/FF3D9B60-07CC-4018-81FC-75E582A279F4.calendar/Events/4705E730-A642-402A-AF47-E5AB6F200169.ics: Operation not permitted 

So then I pulled back my ~/Library/Calendars folder, exported each individual calendar as a .ics and saved all my subscriptions off (to notepad). Then blew away the folder, launched iCal, imported each calendar and subscription and then did a "Replace all data on MobileMe with data from this computer". That worked.

My guess is this mess came from my experimentation with the Google Calendar CalDAV support for iCal through their Collaboration tool. It was about the time I added that calendar that the sync stopped working. 

It turns out the even with CalDAV support (and assuming it didn't break iCal), Google Calendar still isn't as good for the Mac User as Exchange or native iCal as there is no ability to see the google Calendars on the iPhone short of using something like BusySync. 

Google Searchwiki

I must be out of touch, I was wondering what these extra buttons were in my search results and then I find out its this new google searchwiki stuff. While the concept is cool I just don't see any value for me and I like less on my screen. I think its a mistake not to let people shut it off. And no, I don't want to log out of my account just to turn it off.

Home phones and cell phones

Yet another underground wire failure on the phone line to the barn
made me look into a better solution for a phone line out there. My
barn is 600+ feet away from the house and there are lots of walls in
between. When we moved in there was a phone line buried going to the
barn which worked for a while. After a few years it shorted out. They
used basic inside phone cord to run it through some pipes in the
ground. When we split the electric service I had some real phone line
buried and that worked for 5 years but now its shorting out again. I
can go try to chase it down but its buried and i'm not digging up my
property again.

I researched the latest DECT 6.0 cordless phones but they still dont
have super range of the nature i'm looking for. Ultimately I decided
to add another cell phone to my wife's cell plan. I got a contractor
type phone (water/weather proof) for free and increased the bill by
$10/month and now we have a barn phone that works everywhere we could
need it and no range issues.

So now that I have 3 cell phones (myself, wife and barn) and a kid
soon to have her own, what am I paying $45/month for a home phone for?
I looked into that, and here are a few reasons:

1) 911 service - cell phone 911 calls don't pinpoint you or get quite
the same response time that home phones do.
2) Everyone knows our home number which is also considered our
business phone number. Its also easy to remember (yes we could port it
somewhere else)
3) If we take our cells away from the house and something happens are
we going to trust that the people left have a cell phone? There's now
one in the barn but perhaps not the house
4) Who knows how much that kid will talk on the phone once she
discovers it?

For now i'm keeping it although it seems kind of silly.

Google/SaaS

Recently I had the opportunity for some business related reasons as well as for some personal related reasons to try to collaborate on some word processing and spreadsheet documents. I figured this was a good opportunity to try the whole Software as a Service (SaaS) model and started using the Google Docs. 

I found the word processor easy to use but with Safari it had some odd behaviors at times in rendering the page and some basic copy/paste operations. Generally it worked and I liked the auto-save and accessible anywhere model. As you'd expect the word processor is severely stripped down from a MS Word or Apple Pages but for basic documents its ok. 

For the spreadsheet I was surprised at how well it worked given the more advanced problems you run into with rows and columns, formula and spreadsheet tabs. To do things like graphing you need to get plug-ins and I didn't have a good experience with that. I was was just looking to do a basic line graph over time and it was a real pain. But again for basic spreadsheet functions it worked well and again I could get at  it anywhere.

Along the way I also found a nice hack in that if you import a protected Excel spreadsheet into Google Docs it essentially unprotects it for you and you can re-export as Excel. I think Microsoft should rename that "Protect from idiots" since there are so many ways to remove spreadsheet protection.

 

After I had some content I tried to collaborate with others and thats where SaaS failed for me. I ran into a number of issues:

1) Just accessing the document as I sent the share invite seemed to be a problem for ALL of the people I tried to share with. The interface is simple, pick a document, choose share and then enter an email address or addresses. People get an invite with a link etc. Clinking the link lets them see the document (in the case of spreadsheets at least not all of the document) but they can't edit. 

2) To edit/collaborate they need a google account. Despite what Google thinks, not everyone has (or wants) a google account. I can understand why they needed to link the docs in somewhere but this is asking people to create a new identity etc and adds a barrier to them using it.

3) For those that got past the two above there were problems with the interface oddities, understanding the new applications and as we tried to collaborate we found the tools weak in the areas of comments, suggested changes, side by side versions etc. Ultimately we gave up. 

So to me the current SaaS offering from google with Google Docs is appropriate for single user document editing when you need access anywhere and assuming you have a google ID and are willing to learn new tools. If you need to collaborate i'd look elsewhere. 

With the personal need I fell back to the tried and true method of email Excel spreadsheets around. For the business related need i'm currently using DropBox. More to come on that experience.

Quicken

I've mentioned in the past how Intuit has been pathetically slow to update Quicken for the Mac. Intuit still has yet to introduce an Intel native version of the Quicken for the Mac. The last time I bought Quicken was the 2005 version because I refused to buy an application that didn't run natively on the machines I bought after that.

Anyway, recently Quicken Online went the free route along the lines of Mint.com and a few others. I've been interested in the Software as a Service (SaaS) model for a while and decided to give it a try. Generally I don't need to reconcile all my accounts but want to know whats going on and be able to see where my money is going. I want to do that in one place. Some of my banks offer the "one stop to see all your finances" but their products are inferior to Quicken Online and Mint. 

I've been using Quicken Online for a few weeks now and have moved away from the desktop version. While the desktop version has more flexible reporting and has the ability to reconcile I find I can still keep on top of my finances without that. One drawback to these online services is if your data can't be downloaded from the source you can't see it. That means you can't do Net Worth type stuff including your house, cars etc as there's no way to enter it.

This brings me to Mint.com. By all i've heard its supposed to be better than Quicken Online which you'd expect from an up-and-coming Web 2.0 type company with a new business model. I attempted to use it by creating an account and linking in my checking account. I bank with RBS Citizens bank, a bank with a large US East Coast presence, and found  out that Mint doesn't support them. Unlike other product models, for these kinds of services they either support your banks, credit cards etc, or they don't. When they don't its not a matter of whether you link them or not, you just can't use their service. Black and white. Mint could have the best management tools out there but since they don't support my bank there's no chance I can use them until they do.

Evernote

A friend introduced me to Evernote a while back and while I think its a cool app, I just can't get into yet another program that wants to own my data. The one cool feature it has is the ability to recognize (OCR) text within images and it can do this with some pretty lousy images. Its not enough value to me to move away from a tried and true files approach. The synchronization ability can be done for files (dropbox etc). 

Now if it was just a content management application referencing my files then i'd have the best of both worlds. But then it still would have little value to me and I wouldn't pay. Perhaps they need to find a different approach to bringing their OCR technology to market?

iCal reminders

Apple really hasn't thought out the iCal reminder system. They
encourage you to use MobileMe to sync your macs but when you do the
alarms get sync'd too. Thats fine if they just pop up a reminder. But
if you have them send out emails or txt messages it means you get
duplicate reminders from all the systems that are sync'd. You also get
late/out of sync ones if, for example, one of your sync'd macs is a
notebook thats been asleep through the event and just woke up and
found out it was overdue to remind you.

Seems like they need to move the notification mechanism to the
MobileMe cloud and do it from a central location.

Back to my Mac & SSH

I've mentioned in the past that I only have 1 port open to the outside
world for remote access to my home computer. Its for SSH traffic and
isn't over the standard SSH port and requires a SSL certificate. Given
that, how do I do the "Back to my Mac thing"?

From the client you're accessing the machine from:

1) You need the SSL cert
2) Create a SSH tunnel for the "back to my mac" remote desktop:
sudo ssh -p <some port> <dns name of host machine> -l <host user
name> -L 8888:127.0.0.1:5900
3) Now in Safari open up this URL:
vnc://127.0.0.1:8888

Sure its not as simple as "Back to my mac" but then again i'm not
asking for the world of Unix and Mac hackers to attack port 5900
looking for VNC like security flaws.

Free AT&T Wifi Access for iPhone

Its great they're finally doing this but the to say "accessing AT&T Wifi hotspots is easy" is a joke:

Activate Wi-Fi from the settings icon on your iPhone.

Select "attwifi" from the list of available networks.

Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap "continue."

You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. You will not be charged for the text message.

Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot.

They have to come up with an easier way for me to roam around AT&T Wifi spots or its just not worth the bother. Same goes for Panera, its too much work, i'll just use Edge/3G before I go through all the click throughs etc. Those may be fine on a laptop but on a phone its a real pain.

Labels

For those faithful 5 followers of my blog out there, i've labelled my
previous entries to make finding things easier. Blogger really should
show an index of the labels so you can jump to them quickly.

1Password & Syncing

I've mentioned before that I love 1Password for password management on my Macs and iPhone. Until they added iPhone support I had a reliable password manager that kept all my macs up to date and my passwords were everywhere. When they added iPhone support they ran into a nasty bug with permissions which caused a lot of pain. Their solution was to move away from Apples sync services and keychain approach to their own file format. In the process they lost the real ability to do synchronization of passwords between machines. Their recommended solution is to move your new 1Password keychain to a network drive shared between the machines, either a real network drive (same network) or a virtual one like iDisk, DropBox, etc. This "solution" leaves a lot to be desired. The shared storage approach either requires money (iDisk) (plus its notoriously crappy) or is a freebie with caveats that it could disappear at any moment (DropBox). While nobody really has sync working well, Apples sync services are generally workable. 

So the solution for me? There are a few options:

1) Give up on iPhone sync - no passwords on the road and I cant remember generated stuff, not an option

2) Give up on multiple computer sync - I have a computer I use for work and one for home, not an option

3) Use one of their sync methods - iDisk stinks. Dropbox could work but it can come and go, its another application, I dont need to store my stuff online, the space is limited etc.

4) Sync some other way.

So, i've mentioned before that I use rsync/ssh to keep things up to date on the files side and now that apps like 1Password are recommending a similar approach, off we go again, here's whats working for me with no new apps:

in my crontab file (crontab -e) I have (among other things :p):

#

# 1Password Sync

#

30      12      *       *       1,2,3,4,5       export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`echo /tmp/launch*/Listen*`;rsync -avS -e "ssh -p <a port> -i /Users/Rob/.ssh/ssh_key " /Users/Rob/Library/Application\ Support/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/ Rob@example.com:"/Users/Rob/Library/Application Support/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/" 2>&1 | mail -s "Backup: Sync 1Password from MacBookAir to Home Desktop" rob+cron@example.com

40      12      *       *       1,2,3,4,5       export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`echo /tmp/launch*/Listen*`;rsync -avS -e "ssh -p <a port> -i /Users/Rob/.ssh/ssh_key Rob@example.com:"/Users/Rob/Library/Application\ Support/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/" /Users/Rob/Library/Application\ Support/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/ 2>&1 | mail -s "Backup: Sync 1Password from Home Desktop to MacBookAir" rob+cron@example.com

This syncs first from my mobile machine, then back from my desktop. 

A few comments:

1) I dont use --delete which may be an issue if I ever want to delete Passwords but thats not something I do often in this case. The shared drive approach solves this problem but has the other issues mentioned above.

2) The whole export/SOCK thing is so it can use my saved ssh password for "/Users/Rob/.ssh/ssh_key" from my OSX keychain when it ssh's into the remote machine as a cron job. As mentioned before I use a not-well-known ssh port, and then no username/password just a ssh key.

Killer iPhone App

I don't recommend many iPhone Apps but this one is a killer and its free (for now)

http://www.avatron.com/

Goodbye memory sticks.

Anyway, other ones I use all the time (all are free which is no accident):

* 1Password- Password manager. A great compliment to the Mac desktop version, they do have a permissions sync issue they're working on though.

* NetNewsWire - RSS Reader. Another great Mac complimenting app. Great way to keep on top of interesting stuff at airports, in traffic, Dunkin Donuts lines :) etc.

* Shazam - Figures out what song is playing and tells you the name/artist. Works great and keeps a list.

* Movies (or Showtimes) - Both are decent for looking up local (based on GPS) movie times etc.

* WeightTrack - Odd that its linked to OKC etc but its a way to keep a log of my weight (non)loss. 

Thats it. I have 5 screens of apps installed but none make the cut of normal use. 

One killer built in tool I use is go to google maps, type in a search term (like Dunkin Donuts) and watch all the pins appear on your map. Touch one and say "Directions to here" and load up on the Caffeine!

Google cross platform?

Is the web giant really OS neutral? Take for example long term app Picasa. To this day its still windows only. And now the new browser, Chrome. A windows only launch initially. Is this because there is such a large Windows market/user base? Or because they have no good cheap/free solutions? Perhaps both. With iPhoto and Safari on the mac do we really need or care what Google has to offer for the mac? So google slowly edges out Windows but tries to compete with better made, long established apps for the Mac. Should be an interesting battle. 

Fly Clear

Recently one of the enrollment laptops was stolen from the Clear guys (essentially a fast pass for airport security lines). They got it back and now have the genuis idea to encrypt data on these laptops as "an extra security measure." How could such a group NOT have encryption in the first place? Its dead easy on Windows and OSX and for any situation with physical access to the machine by others you should be encrypting your data. Its amazing how naive companies still are in security matters.

Online Photo sites

I have a lot of digital pictures (17,297 as of today). I like to share a lot of them with family but there's no clear winner in free photo sharing sites. I was a huge fan of Tabblo but after it got bought by HP i'm not sure how things will work out long term and it seems most development has stopped over there (and Safari crashes at times now during their file upload piece). Flickr has serious limits on the free version. They claim no space limits but since they limit photostreams to the most recent 200 pictures they may as well have a very low storage limit on the free version. Picasa Web albums gives you up to 1GB of storage but has a lot less functionality. Kodak Gallery has some nice features and no limits but has a very dated interface and dog slow Ofoto Express software to upload pictures. Apple's Web Galleries are not as diverse in sharing, have a decent space limit of 20GB that comes with all the other semi-functional MobileMe stuff, but the lack of sharing options/permissions makes them near useless.

Like I said, no clear choice.

Cayman

Finally got around to putting my Cayman pictures online from earlier this year

TripIt info into iPhone 2.0

My solution for this problem was to subscribe to the feed in the Mac's iCal app, then export it as a .ics file, then import it as a new calendar. That converts the dynamic feed into a static calendar. You'll have to do that every time you update your TripIt trips but at least you now have your trips on the road with you and have all the nice 2.0 push stuff going on.

iPhone 3G woes

Some issues that bothered me recently with my new iPhone 3G:

1) Doesnt fit in the old iPhone dock. I have a couple, one that I had before the bluetooth earbud and one I got for the earbud. Some time with a knife shaving some plastic after some online inspiration solved that problem. I'm now using my old docks with no additional cost. I'm no handy man but a sharp knife and some repetitive motion and you're in business. Be careful!

2) My iPhone 3G will not charge on my Acura Music Link. This is yet another blow to a poor solution. It never let me really choose what was playing or see any status on my huge NAV screen, but if I selected a book tape and paused it then plugged it in it would play and charge and do nice things like pause when I shut off the car or got a call etc. Now I lost one more feature, charging. Seems that others on the net have experienced the same. After some reading it appears many of these connections used in the car used the Firewire charging pins in the doc connector and that was dropped in iPhone 3G thus breaking many accessories. Seems like there are some possible solutions for the charging issue that allow doc connector pass through to the radio while adding charging capabilities. If the car people would just add aux inputs on the dash or in the console this wouldnt be so big a problem.

In researching #2 above I found I could actually get screen control back on the iPhone by adding a female dock connector to 3.5mm plug adapter. That fixed some of the brokenness of music link. I'm still looking for a good charging solution. 

Lost & Recovered iPhone notes

Somewhere along the way I lost the Notes on my iPhone when I moved from my old iPhone to my new one. After some research I found iTunes saves your iPhone backups at:

/Users/<user>/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup 

In that location I had 3 backups, I found one before I got the new iPhone 3G and made a copy of the directory to work on.

Then I found a tool on the net that converts these binary plist files into the normal file format. The tool crashed on me and the fix was just commenting out the "sys.exit(2)" around line 33. After that was complete I had a series of normal .plist files and some .sqlite files. 

Running the tool created a new directory, "MobileSyncExport"

Under there you will see Library/Notes/notes.db

Using a sqllite browser you can browse that database file. Go to the "note_bodies" table and there are all your full notes from the iPhone backed up.

I then copied these into Notes in Apple mail which sync to MobileMe and appear in the MobileMe Notes IMAP folder. Not exactly the same place they were on the other iPhone but at least they're restored and back in my pocket.

Apple, when will you be sync'ing iPhone notes? Allowing me to create a note from an email body? Doing anything useful with them?

As a side note, if you want to make an app that saves call history, sms history or other things you could easily watch/extract all that from these databases. Combine that with TimeMachine and you have a not-so-secret paper trail of SMS messages, call logs etc... 

Winmail.dat

Anyone who's had a mac for a while will probably have received a "winmail.dat" attachment in their email. While there are free tools like TNEF's enough its a bit painful to use. There are commerical plug ins for Apple mail but they cost money. Another interesting point is neither of these apps worked under Leopard for me. Since all my mail goes through google, I went to the gmail interface and found a mail item with a winmail.dat attachment and sure enough gmail handles these the correct way and shows me the attachments. If Google's gmail can do it why can't Apple fix this in mail?

Anyway the free and easy fix if you pipe your mail through gmail and get a winmail.dat attachment is go to the gmail interface and get the attachments that way.

iPhone 2.0/Calendar update

A friend at work showed me that you can indeed have both both Exchange and MobileMe enabled for push at the same time and the phone will do the right thing. The thing you can't do is have push Exchange calendar but do a manual sync of your other calendars. Its all push or nothing for each type. That helped with me avoiding double entries for the Exchange calendar, but since you can't push subscriptions i've lost my TripIt calendar feed :(

Anyone with any bright ideas how to fix that one?

MobileMe

Probably one of the best examples of how not to roll out a new service.

Other than the horrible stability/connection issues, there are some big gaps in usage. To me the largest which is well documented on the net is that you can't do the push updates of subscribed calendars. I have a few subscribed calendars, some I can live without like US Holidays but the one I can't live without is my TripIt calendar feed that tells me where I am and when. I love TripIt to manage my travel and they've cut me off.

The fix? For now go back to normal wired sync of calendars.

Oh, and another atrocity? I can't sync Exchange (Work) calendars at the same time as Personal ones.

I hope someone is listening.

Old Phone

There were some temporary heartaches in updating the old iPhones to the newer firmware. It seems that after it loaded/verified the new flash it needed to re-activate before restoring all your settings. The servers were overloaded so several people like me spent an hour or two without a phone. Not that big a deal, I kept trying and it eventually took and did the right thing.

Oh, and apple, it would be nice if you came out with the accessories when you came out with the device. Lack of a dock at launch just isn't cool (especially when my investment in my old one is now wasted). 

iPhone 3G

Yup, I had to get one. There were 3 motivating factors for me, if any one of the 3 was missing i'd have probably waited:

1) Memory - I know before the 3G there was a 16GB model but not when I bought mine. The extra memory was needed especially with the new apps

2) 3G - I do a lot on the road, the extra speed (when i'm in a reasonable location) helps a lot. 

3) GPS - i'm hoping at some point the GPS is useful. Right now I still need my Garmin Nuvi 250. I'm hoping the rumors that TomTom is making a real GPS app are true.

Did I wait forever in line? No, I went out at lunch time and the line was 4 hours so I ate lunch and went back to work. Then after dinner I went back and the line was still at least 2 hours at 9:30pm so I went to a movie. After the movie at 11:15pm I was the last customer to walk in and there was no wait. They rang me up and I was on the road.

The only slight hitch was my AT&T plan had the corporate discount (of $0 !) applied and they had to have it removed. Fortunately some nice person in CA was still working at AT&T and did the quick work. Apple and AT&T really should have warned people about the $0 discount virus that could be on their account (or have had plans to ignore it).

As to the software update and apps. Wonderful. The best thing for me though is Active Sync. Don't believe the garbage about having to pay for the enterprise pricing, it works fine on the normal plan.

One UGLY issue that i've seen is that you can't have your work contacts/calendar pushed to the phone at the same time as your home ones:

"Our biggest gripe with Exchange isn't small, though: the system is unable to let enterprise contacts and calendars coexist on the same device with personal contacts and calendars. (Personal and corp email get along just fine, though.) When you turn on Exchange-synced contacts and calendars, you're notified that it's a one or the other kind of a situation, and your personal data will be removed from the phone. Though that data isn't purged from your host machine, of course, you do immediately lose the ability to change contact or calendar sync settings. This effectively means that your device can only serve as an enterprise device OR a personal device, but not both at once."

Seems like my calendar pain will continue.

Feeds of interest

Added a link off on the right of my blog page tracking things I find interesting in my intermittent polling of various RSS feeds I subscribe to. If you want to see what catches my eye or use me as a RSS filter subscribe to or look at the feed.