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 And one thats out of date the day its produced?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!