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.

GPS Cameras

This is a great idea and the whole geo tagging concept will help
people better manage their large photo libraries. Apples got some good
event collection approaches in iPhoto now, but with geo tagging we
should soon be able to group photos by location. Imagine a series of
smart location albums that group events that land within some
configurable distance. I.e. all photos within 50 miles of each other
etc. Or better yet use it to tag them to countries, states etc. Its
all about the metadata, and the more metadata you can add without
adding any inconvenience to the users the more you can get and then
the more you can give back to them in functionality.

Now, how do I find a good excuse to convince my wife to let me get a
new GPS enabled camera?

(yes, I know the iPhone 2 has GPS and a Camera, but the iPhone camera
is really crappy as its very sensitive to movement, guess its too much
to ask apple for image stabilization in there?)

DotMacSync doesn't work

Beyond my calendar woes, dotmacsync is doing another crazy thing to
me. I sync my keychains between my 2 macs, when I do that each time it
warns me of updated/changed items >5% for the keychains. I accept the
changes and it carries on and then does it again on the next sync. I
could turn off the warning and just let it ping pong on these changes
but then it would probably decide to wipe my calendar, address book
etc without warning. Its amazing to me that syncing things like
calendars, keychains and addresses as individual line items that could
each be versioned, hashed etc is so broken in this day and age.

I think Apple's move with .Me in moving everything to a central place
is the right one. Its one I attempted with Google only to fail due to
some horrible calendar bug of theirs.

I love the iPhone and Leopard and my nice MacBook Air. But take some
of these geniuses and replace the people on the sync services and fix
it as its making our lives miserable.

Google Calendar

I wrote a while back about using Google Calendar as my main calendar
source and then BusySync to sync it to my home and work Macs. Well
that worked pretty well until I got a strange email one day from an
admin at our office. "I got this calendar reminder from Google and I
think its related to you, can you please stop sending me emails from
outside the company network?"

Strange. I looked into it. It seems Entourage sync'd to iCal. Google
subscribed to that calendar (I didn't want more than a 2 way sync for
this flakey Entourage stuff) and then Google has taken it upon
themselves to send notices to all meeting attendees about upcoming
meetings. It was an option I had no control over at all. I tried
turning off all the settings and thought I had it licked, and then I
got another email from a colleague saying the same thing.

Ok I thought, this is ugly, I deleted the Entourage calendar from
Google, now only my personal calendars were on there.

Another week or two goes by, and then an email (from my boss's admin)
asking me to cease and desist.

Google, your calendar app is sending emails about calendar events in
deleted calendars to my co-workers. This is unacceptable.

My only fallback was to disable Google Calendars for my domain.
Fortunately i'm the only one in my domain using them. It seems that I
will never be able to re-enable the calendar service on this domain as
Google somehow is caching deleted calendars and events and sending
unwanted messages to people.

I only hope that now with the Calendars disabled it no longer sends
the messages, if it does I have to nuke the domain and hope that
works...

Meanwhile i'm back to iSync for my calendars which is marginal at best
and since Entourage doesn't work its now hard to get a consistent view
of all my calendars in one place. Im hoping that the new iPhone and
Snow leopard release fix this disaster.