Related link: https://rollyo.com/index.html

I created a RollYo search log called “Dashboard Dev”. It’s pretty neat and does help a lot in focusing the searches towards dashboard development topics.

RollYo limits you to search entire domains, not individual directories/pages/sections of a domain, so it limits your ability to focus your search in huge multi-topic sites like Apple’s. Of course you can game the engine and include the word “Dashboard” in a search. That will make it will find links on Apple’s pages about Dashboard, but limits the results from the Javascript and HTML help sites that have information that Dashboard developers would be interested in, but don’t specifically reference Dashboard.

Of course Apple’s site (or MacDevCenter’s for that matter) only have a couple of pages on something like Dashboard, so you don’t necessarily have to search those pages, just know the links.

Maybe a mashup of del.icio.us and RollYo would solve the “problem”: del.icio.us for the hard links by tag and RollYo for the links within sites that have more and disperse information.

We have seen public remarks from Apple and the recording industry as talks get underway to determine the immediate future of the iTunes Music Store. Some of the comments have been just wrong, such as the quote misattributed to Warner Music’s Michael Nash recently at the CTIA show. The “Well, now we’ve got another MTV, in Apple. And we have to deal with it,” remark was really made by Kenneth Hertz, partner at Goldring Hertz and Lichtenstein LLP, a law firm representing major recording industry artists.

Like many following the negotiations, I’m a little uneasy about how things may shake out. But for now, I’m going to sit tight and see what Apple can do. If you have any insights about these talks, I’d like to hear them.

Following up on my article last week, Again with the emacs, and prompted by a commenter in that post, I downloaded Aquamacs, an ‘Emacs distribution with customizations and an enhanced Mac user experience’, according to the developer. The 33 MB dmg file gives you a 124 MB app bundle to drag to your hard drive. This already seems excessive for a text editor — but of course, Emacs Is Not Really A Text Editor.

(Author spends a few seconds trying to make something out of the EINRATE acronym.)

Here’s a developer screenshot of Aquamacs Emacs running on Tiger to get you acquainted.

Upon launching the app, it in turn launched Help Viewer to let me know what was new in this release. Coincidentally, Aquamacs 0.9.6 has just been released in the past couple of days. Closing Help, I switched over to the Aquamacs scratch window — like regular Emacs, a starting point.

The first thing I noticed was in the menubar — there are two sets of shortcuts available for frequently used commands, a Mac-friendly version and an Emacs-friendly version. Copy, for example, has Command-C and H-c. Or Close Current Buffer: Command-w and H-w. Not all commands are done this way, but seemingly most of the biggies are.

In the short Aquamacs session I had today, while not earth-shatteringly illuminating (no vi defections here), it made me feel a lot more comfy about the Emacs experience. If, like me, you are a combo Mac and Unix guy, though perhaps starting on the Mac side of things, Aquamacs might well be a good stepping stone into a powerful new editing experience. And there is a ton of power to be had.

However, the point of my trying out Aquamacs wasn’t so much attempting to find comfiness, nor really as a stepping stone. I decided to give it another try because I recalled a technological tenet of mine, that it is better to have many tools at your disposal than only one. Even if you are not highly proficient in all of them, knowing them all at least cursorily makes you a better programmer, administrator, or even user.

Much like the futility of the OS wars begins to grate on you after a while, the Editor Wars — while fun — do every programmer who ignores the other side a disservice.

And by the way, Emacs devotees will be happy to know I wrote everything after the first paragraph of this article in Aquamacs. :)

:wq

Whoops. Old habits die hard.

We had been hearing the rumors for some time that Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 would be Windows only. This week we learned those rumors were true.

I can’t speak for Adobe or anyone else, but my guess is that Apple’s homegrown products, such as iPhoto 5, don’t set very well with Adobe strategists — something like, “too many similar products in an already small market.” That thinking does resonate with the business side of my mind… to a degree.

But I’d like to point out a few things that favor releasing Elements 4 for the Mac. First, there really isn’t a product like it on the platform. iPhoto 5 is not Elements. They do different things. I recommend iPhoto 5 and an image editor. Elements has been a powerful, affordable option to fill that need.

Second, the Mac platform is a haven for digital photographers and visual artists. It’s an easy entry point that allows folks to stretch as far as they want. When you think about getting serious, you think about Photoshop CS2. Having a current version of Elements for the platform provides a natural upgrade path for these types of customers.

Finally, there’s an uneasy feeling in the Mac community that Adobe and Apple aren’t getting along as well as we’d like them too. No Elements 4 certainly doesn’t help with this uncertainty.

On the bright side, there’s a big opportunity here for someone to step in and provide us with a powerful image editor for less than $100. Or maybe it’s already here?

Your thoughts on any of this…

Apple’s decision to come clean with the iPod nano screen problem will be welcomed by a lot of people, not least Matthew Peterson, who started the online campaign highlighting the issue.

It was a nice change to see Phil Schiller publicly declaring that Apple was aware of a problem, and was immediately doing something about it. Did Peterson’s campaign change their hearts? Perhaps.

This is by no means the first time people have complained about Apple products. There’s been plenty of complaints about the iMac G5’s internals getting too hot and occasionally melting, but eventually Apple responded with a repair program. Then there was the battery recall for G4 iBook and Powerbook laptops earlier this year.

None of which will be much comfort for people who have had problems with dead pixels on their flat screen displays. Yes, this is an old one but it still gets my goat every time I think about it. Apple, along with every other computer manufacturer, points out that if they absorbed the cost of replacing every machine with dead pixels, those machines would retail at far higher prices in the first place. As a result, a certain number of dead pixels is considered “acceptable”.

In the UK, though, there’s a law that says that any product sold has to be “fit for purpose”, and that the company that sold you the computer, not the company that manufactured it, has initial responsibility for dealing with your complaint. Ian Betteridge wrote something very informative about this recently which explains the details.

I’d be interested to hear if any UK-based readers have managed to get a dead pixels problem resolved by the retailer under this consumer protection law.

Any more positive experiences?

While we all figure out how we’re going to carry around our nanos, here’s a high quality sleeve that’s affordable. The nano Wrapper is a “super slim, stay-on tube with access to iPod nano hold switch, dock connector and headphone jack, made from Wrappers’ exclusive treated faux suede fabric designed to add scratch protection without adding bulk. Lined in super soft cream, faux suede (the same fabric used to line Italian leather gloves).”

You can get one for £16.99 with free postage (that’s less than $10 for those of us in the States). Mine is ordered.

Wow, what a great turnout for this year’s Mac DevCenter Survey. Last time I looked, we had more than 1,300 respondents (once again the highest turnout among our site surveys).

As of today, I’ve closed the survey so the link to the Zoomerang site is no longer active. On Friday afternoon, I’ll publish the summary of results so you can see how your peers rated this site. I have to tell you, there were a few surprises.

I’ll have plenty more to say about that in the upcoming article. Until then, I want to thank you for taking the time to contribute your opinions.

I noticed what seemed like a minor screen marking the day after I bought my iPod nano. But, now I wonder if it is a screen issue or something else entirely (at least for my particular unit).
You can see the bottom right corner of my screen and part of the shell in the photo attached here.

I read Derrick Story’s
Mystifying nano Screen Issue blog as well as a bunch of articles like AppleInsider’s
Concerns mount over iPod nano LCD durability.
I chatted briefly with Derrick and decided to blog my observations (sample size = 1, so take it with a grain of salt).

I’m pretty careful with gadgets in general.
The iPod nano sits in a re-purposed soft-cover PDA case (I couldn’t find a hard cover one that suited the tiny iPod lying around my home).
My nano is mostly used sitting upright and relatively stable in a coffee cup holder in my car.
This is the same place my larger and heavier Pocket PC sat when it served as my primary MP3 car audio player.
Every now and then the nano gets placed in a shirt pocket or a conference badge holder.

So, I took a long and hard look at my nano and noted that the scratches have not affected the LCD display itself.
Then, I noticed that the surface blemishes actually extend to a good portion of the nano shell.
For my specific nano, I think the problem is not so much the screen but whatever coating covers the screen and shell.
I saw similar problems with a clear protective cover that HP used on its Jornada 420 several years ago.

I’m taking my nano on trip to Seattle this week.
Fingers crossed that it survives what should be an otherwise mild and uneventful set of flights.
It will be sitting in my shirt pocket or conference badge holder for the rest of the week.

More nano screen issue thoughts?

Just like everyone else in the Mac community, I’ve been following the discussion about the nano screen issues. There have been reports of two problems: 1) the screen seems to scratch easier than other iPods, and 2) it will actually crack under normal use.

I’m curious about these reports, especially those who say they’ve seen marred nanos displayed in Apple Stores (wow, talk about bad marketing if this is true!). You can review this discussion for yourself on flawedmusicplayer.com. These reports fly in the face of reviews by other sources such as ars technica that did all sorts of nasty things to their nanos and commented on their robustness — definitely no screen cracking from carrying it in a top shirt pocket.

My 4GB black nano has not suffered any marring or screen cracking either, even though I’ve been testing it constantly for my previous posts. In fact, my only complaint has been that my battery doesn’t last 14 hours.

So, what’s the deal here? I doubt that the unsatisfied nano owners are making up stories. Why would they? And I don’t think that I and other satisfied owners have been that careful handling our devices. It almost sounds like there are two types of nano screens out there… possibly from two different vendors supplying them to Apple?

If you’re a nano owner, I’d like to hear your screen experiences — good or bad. And if you have any insight as to how these things are produced, I’d love to hear from you.

Russell Beattie’s provocative Why I might switch back post has attracted a great deal of attention over the weekend, and it’s hardly surprising.

I think it’s fair to say that in the last few years, Macs running OS X have become widely used among a certain section of the weblogging and tech conference-going digerati; when one of the best known people in that group decided to suddenly stand up and say what they don’t like about the Mac, it was bound to get some people all wound up.

I’m not one of the OS X zealots who instantly assumes that all criticism of the system is wrong or unfair. Several of Beattie’s points hit home, fair and square (such as the sigh-inducing awfulness of the Finder, or general system slowness, or the high cost of .Mac).

That said, I can’t stop myself from answering back on just a handful of Russell’s comments, ones I either don’t understand, or simply can’t agree with.

Anyone who says that Macs are more stable than Windows are smoking dope. I have two brand new Macs and they regularly go wacky and need reboots.

This first comment is the most unexpected of all. Yes, Macs do crash sometimes and yes, sometimes they need to be rebooted. But I’d never say that any of my machines running OS X has needed regular or even frequent reboots. The last time I had a Windows machine, it needed daily reboots.

Like it or not, it’s a Windows world, and interop has to be a priority. If I take a few screen shots, paste them into a PowerPoint For Mac presentation and send them off, and no one can see them because the images have defaulted to some wacky Quicktime tiff? That’s bad.

These days, I’d say interoperability between Windows and OS X is pretty good. It’s rare that I receive a file that I can’t open, or convert to something more convenient. And the example problem is odd; last time I looked, system screenshots were saved as PDF or PNG. Wacky Quicktime tiffs as defaults? I’ve never encountered them.

The widescreen on the Powerbook is completely overrated. Web pages and documents are tall, not wide. Because the wide screen lowers the viewing center of the screen, I end up getting a crik in my neck looking “down” at the wide screen, rather than more straight ahead on PC based laptops.

This one had me scratching my head. How, exactly, are PC laptops easier to look at straight ahead? How does being “wide screen” lower the viewing center? To back up my point, I’ll mention that I recently got myself a Powerbook (widescreen) to replace my old iBook (most certainly not widescreen). I haven’t noticed my neck being cricked any more or less than usual.

What is the friggin’ deal with the .dmg files? The install process is so broken. Unzip .dmg.gz, mount .dmg, copy to Applications, unmount .dmg, delete .dmg, delete dmg.gz. Bleh.

Dragging one icon from one window to another is far easier than using most Windows installers, I’d say. Plus, most of those installers are no more tidy, often leaving behind the installer file itself and an icon for the newly installed app on the desktop.

Does anyone use Sherlock any more?

No.

Wait. You *do* use Sherlock?

The Mozilla Minimo browser for Windows CE (Windows Mobile Pocket PC) was released on Sept. 22. I took it for a quick (relatively speaking) test drive keeping in mind that the project is in a very early development stage.

Minimo 0.009 Released

One of the first issues that came up was that the release note clearly states that Minimo does not start on the Dell Axim X50v.
Guess which Pocket PC is the one I prefer to use every day?
I didn’t see the older HP iPAQ 2215 on the compatibility list (see link below) but decided to try Minimo on it (2215) anyway.

Minimo on Windows CE Matrix

The HP iPAQ 2215 was released in 2005 and runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003.
You can find my article about Windows Mobile 2003 running on the iPAQ at:

Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 Software for Pocket PC 2003

Despite its relative age, the iPAQ 2215 is a relative speedy Pocket PC with a 400MHz PXA255 processor with 64MB RAM.
Minimo wanted 12.0902MB RAM for installation and I only had 6MB free system storage RAM.
So, I opted to install it on a SD flash memory card.
The installation went smoothly.
But, as the version number 0.009 indicates, it is very early in the development stage and should not be compared to production quality products.
So, I was not surprised by the spartan user interface.
I was a little surprised by how slowly it started up and ran.
However, it does work and I was able to to search using Google connected over a 802.11b WiFi network connection.

Tried Minomo on a new Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC like the Dell Axim X51v? Let us know if it works on it (or not).

A few weeks ago, we were visiting family for a weekend and my three-year-old son was introduced to the delights of the Paint program on Windows.

It’s almost become something that all modern children have to experience - their first encounter with real software, their first use of a mouse. My son took to it all very easily and was soon creating his own works of electronic scribble art, much to the delight of his grandparents.

Of course I knew what the next step would be. Next time he saw me working on my Mac, he asked me: “Daddy, can I do drawing?” He wanted to play with Paint again, but we don’t have a Windows machine for him to use.

So I quickly trawled around for some simple drawing and painting apps for Mac, and he and I have spent some happy hours since then trying them out.

The first one we tried was Palette, which had my son chewing his lip with concentration and shouting with delight when he’d found something new.

Tux Paint is very appealing, partly because it’s open source and partly because it is so well designed. Every aspect of the interface is visually appealing but easy for a child to comprehend. I particularly like the way drawings are saved and re-opened, using thumbnails. You never need to type a filename.

Another one we downloaded was μPaint, which is a nice drawing app but not suitable for children - well, not young children anyway. Teenagers, or perhaps younger ones with some experience with computers, will be able to dive right in.

What’s your favorite kids app?

I’ve been editing Chris Kohler’s Retro Gaming Hacks, and I’m really bitten by the bug. My GBA collection is overflowing with retrogaming titles, and my Mac and Linux computers are sharing desk space with my Atari 130XE. And now I’ve found another way to play these old-school games.

GameTap is Turner Broadcasting’s subscription-based gaming on demand service. The list of games is pretty impressive, but what really jumps out at me is the platforms represented: Dreamcast, Sega Master System, Intellivision, Genesis, Atari 2600, Arcade games, and more. It looks like they’ll have a decent selection of modern games, but retro games currently dominate the list.

Although it’s not officially launched, they are letting users trickle in. I signed up for early access at gametap.com (on the lower left of the page where they ask for your email address and birthdate) and got access within a day. Currently, the only platform supported is Windows, and the client is a 70MB download. Their sign-up process says “Apple Macintosh computers are not currently supported (but we’re working on it)”.

At first, I thought “iTunes for Retro Games”, but it’s really more like a Napster to Go, since you don’t get to keep the games you’ve downloaded. And from there, it’s all downhill with the music store metaphor, since you can’t download the games to a handheld device… but wouldn’t that be a killer feature for Turner Entertainment to add to GameTap?

Overall, I’m in love with GameTap. There are games in there (such as Zaxxon) that I haven’t seen in any other retro gaming collection. The user experience is great: the interface is intuitive, enticing, and encourages exploration. Video shorts are woven nicely into the experience, and appear shortly after a game begins loading. Yeah, I think it’s excessive that it takes 10 seconds for Adventure to initalize, but I imagine they want to give the video shorts a shot at getting your attention. And it worked: more than once, I kept watching the short even after my game had finished loading. And plus, as a Colecovision fanboy, I am already comfortable with the idea of a 10+ second delay that’s in there for no good reason at all.

When you load a game, you get a screenshot, summary of the game, and links to more information, including box art, game history, and more. The controls are usually some combination of arrow keys, and X, C, and V for action buttons.

I have two gripes. First, even though GameTap keeps games in a local cache, there’s no offline mode that I could find. They could take a cue from Steam and come up with a way to provide an offline mode. Second, as much as I like the user interface, it’s got one huge drawback: it’s full-screen, all the time. I’d much prefer something in the system tray so I can jump into a game quickly and out again when I’m done. When I need a two-minute shmup fix, I don’t want to spend three minutes logging in and loading the whole game system. That said, GameTap is the best-behaved full-screen program I’ve used in a long time. I can Alt-Tab back to Windows and leave it running in the background with no glitches.

Turner has launched a very reasonable ($15/month) legal emulation service. The selection of games is wide enough that I may hang onto it after the trial (1 free month, first 3 months at $10 a month). And while I was waiting for Space Invaders to download, it started up a strange video of a guy in an Atari shirt reading poetry in an arcade. It really doesn’t get any better than that :-)

What’s your high score?

I’m a big fan of the single entry approach to work. That’s why I embrace apps such as Address Book and iCal. For my digital images, iPhoto 5 is my database. Everything goes there first. I annotate the images in the comments field, and apply the working name in the title field.

Thanks to some excellent plug-ins, apps, and services, this is working great for me. I use Automator to prepare and upload pictures to my flickr page, .Mac for my album pages for clients, and BetterHTML Export for building custom album pages and authoring photo CDs.

I have a new favorite plug-in called Photon. This open source software is a plug-in for iPhoto that enables me to post a photo as a weblog entry to a Moveable Type site (also TypePad, Blojsom, and WordPress). It’s a free download.

Once you install Photon, you access it via Share > Export in iPhoto 5, then click on the Weblog tab. You have to configure the plug-in so it uploads the images to the proper location on your MT site. After doing so, you just click the Export button and the image goes straight from iPhoto to your site — resized and including title and caption. Photon also works with iPhoto 4.

Thanks to Photon, and software like it, I’m able to keep all of my photos, and comments about them, in one place (iPhoto), then serve them up just about anywhere I want.

Palm, Microsoft, and Verizon Wireless have a
joint press conference scheduled for Monday, Sept. 26.
I’m guessing they are not announcing an iTunes phone :-). But, what I’d really like to know is whether Palm-focused sites will start to cover and support the 700w or focus purely on the Palm OS side which is now owned by Access.

Earlier this month, I
wrote about Japan’s Access buying PalmSource
(the software half of the original Palm) and, therefore, Palm OS.
Now, Palm (the hardware half of the original Palm) is having a joint press conference with Microsoft and Verizon Wireless to announce the much discuss Windows Mobile based Treo 700w (formerly referred to as the Treo 670).

I’m really curious to learn what the Palm-centric communities thoughts are regarding to their Palm reporting and user support going forward.
Do you plan to cover and support (via discussion boards and how-to articles) the 700w running Windows Mobile or focus on only on devices running Palm OS?

Do you run a Palm-centric web site? Let us know whether you plan to cover/support the Treo 700w community.

Related link: https://bevhoward.com/Rita/

My friend and fellow Mobile Devices MVP Bev Howard put together a low-bandwidth mobile device friendly web site that provides information about Hurricane Rita at:

https://bevhoward.com/Rita/

He describes the site as:
This page was created for use by mobile and other slow connection users to enable them to get critical information on Hurricane Rita without wasting time and bandwidth downloading unrelated information, junk, complexity, advertisements and other junk that seems always be present.

Bev provides a bunch of links to mobile device friendly information from sources such as NOAA and other reliable information sources.

Have other suggestions for mobile device-friendly low-bandwidth severe weather information sources? Let us know here.

I am a text editor window shopper extraordinaire. With as much time as I spend either hacking config files or writing text, having a good editor in my toolbelt is a must. I’ll download pretty much any new one that has any promise, just to give it a shot. Sometimes, against my better judgment.

Yesterday, I downloaded Carbon Emacs to give it a looksee. A 39.1 MB dmg file. I didn’t get around to checking it out until today, when I realized it expands to a 184.9 MB Emacs.app bundle. Got it copied to my Applications folder and started it up.

Once again, like every other time I think to try out Emacs, I hit random keys, perused the help file, realized I didn’t feel like going through the learning curve just to edit text, and gave up. This time, however, I stuck around long enough to play Tetris for a while. Did you know you can play Tetris in your text editor? You can if it’s Emacs. Check under the ‘Tools’ menu, at the bottom — you’ll find like 10 games to play.

So I trashed Emacs.app. Feeling better. What’s the old saying? ‘Emacs is a nice operating system. The only thing it lacks is a good editor.’ The ‘nice’ part is arguable, too. ;) However, this is no commentary on Carbon Emacs itself — it seems a well-enough-done port.

I’m rather astounded by the size of the app bundle, but there is a lot more going on inside than just a text editor. And that’s rather the problem.

So why do I do this to myself?

(By the way, this is strictly a commentary on what works for me — I’m not about to get embroiled in an editor war with somebody else’s heartfelt favoritism.)

Here’s a bit of nostalgia for you, by way of explanation. On my old Apple ][+ back in the day, there were a handful of programs I spent the vast majority of my time in, not counting my BASIC programming: Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, Decathlon, and a word processor — the name of which escapes me at the moment, but imagine a terminal window program, all keyboard-command driven (no mice, of course), with simple formatting tools. All geared toward one goal: writing text, saving it on floppy disks (that were floppy), and printing it on our dot-matrix. I wrote school papers, fiction, all kinds of stuff in that program. Loved it.

Were there challenges? Sure, of course. But here’s what it had that trumped everything else:

Green characters on a black background. And nothing else.

Bliss.

This love of austere simplicity in my editors has followed me over the decades since, and even if I got distracted for a while by Word back in the early 90s (the destructive path of one macro virus took care of that little anomaly), it has never truly disappeared. In fact, when I was first learning unix along with my first Internet exposure back in 1994, I began lusting after the terminal window.

And now, here I am, in the enviable position (particularly from the point of view of myself in the distant past) of running a crazily powerful multimedia-based, unix-like operating system that is virtually constantly on the net, but which also contains (behind all the glitz) those lovely green characters on a black background.

So that, in a round-about way, is why I occasionally start up Emacs, despite remaining true to vi. I guess I want to like the behemoth, because I have a soft spot in my heart for terminal-based editors. Plus I have a text editor addiction. But it is with all my best affection that I give Emacs a miss one more time.

:wq

Related link: https://wired-vig.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,35201,00.html?tw=wn_story_rela…

Although I do enjoy a good history lesson, I’m not usually the one to bring up old news. Just a while ago, however, I stumbled across an old Wired News article from all the way back in 2000 that I thought was just too good not to mention.

It’s a very short article that you can zip through in just a minute or so, but here are some interesting quotes from it when viewed in light of the upcoming Intel move:

Apple has no plans to change its fundamental business model and release MacOS X for Intel machines. “I’ve personally heard Steve say they would never do that…” (Never say never)

“There’s no chance of any of that appearing in x86…There’s just too much work to run on anything but PowerPC.” (Too much work?)

“…all of Apple’s software developers would have to rewrite their applications to run on a MacOS X/Intel machine.” (Really?)

Aside from the few chuckles I had when reading it because of the obvious irony, I have to wonder if perhaps universal binaries weren’t at least a twinkle in Steve’s eye back then.

What do you think — an ironic coincidence or steadfast planning?

Related link: https://maps.google.com

I think that we could all agree that Google Maps is one sweet application. Totally breaking the MapQuest norm, they threw in satellite/hybrid views, latitude/longitude navigation, cool AJAX-enabled scrolling, and an API (well, sort of) among other things. Who would have ever thought cartography could be so much fun?

Given that Google Maps isn’t just your typical mapping experience, I’ve been pondering the possibilities of how it could be used to enhance desktop applications. Two apps that have already been enhanced by Google Maps come to mind right away: Address Book and Dashboard. In my opinion, both of these are great places for lacing in Google Maps, but I have to think that the best is yet to come. After all, when something becomes as pervasive as quickly as Google Maps did, it’s just one of those commodities that people are going to start expecting to see everywhere — not just on the web.

Fortunately for OS X developers, integrating Google Maps into your apps is cake. In fact, I almost decided not to even mention it — but I couldn’t resist because I thought the broader context of it all deserved some discussion.

Using WebKit, you can create a browser by writing only one line of code. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s true. Instead of reinventing the wheel here, however, take a look at the Mac DevCenter BYOB tutorial. When you build your own browser, you could go ahead and load up Google Maps right away, but it won’t be a very friendly user experience. You’ll be told that your browser isn’t supported, and if you load the page anyway, you’ll get slammed with intermittent messages like this one time and time again. Eventually, you’ll risk losing your patience. Let’s not go there.

“But Safari uses WebKit and it works fine on Google Maps. Why doesn’t WebKit work when I try,” you ask. Well, here’s the thing: browsers send in a UserAgent string to each web server they talk to as part of the normal chatter that goes on. If you want to know what this string looks like, you can type this into your browser’s address bar to see for yourself:

javascript:document.writeln(navigator.userAgent)

If you don’t get a response, wrap it up in a simple HTML page and load it in the browser to get something back. It should look like this if you’re using Safari:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412.5

Your homebrewed browser, on the other hand, gives you something like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412.7 (KHTML, like Gecko)

You can see that Safari adds a little bit to the end, and Google Maps doesn’t appreciate our homebrewed browser’s non-compliance. Did you really think that Big Brother was the only one watching?!? Fortunately, we can care of things very easily, but we’ll have to tell a lie to do it. Here goes, (ok, so it’s more of a spoof than a lie.)


//in awakeFromNib:
[webWindow setCustomUserAgent:UserAgentString];

In the method call, webWindow is an outlet to your WebView in Interface Builder, and UserAgentString is an NSString containing a UserAgent value like the one from Safari that Google Maps supports.

From here, you could do a lot of neat things to integrate Google Maps into your application. Remember that your user interface doesn’t have to remotely resemble a web browser at all. Instead, you could load the content in the WebView using an interface of your own choosing or through some other automated process by manipulating the query string. For example, if you wanted to load a map of Springfield, VA, pass the WebView the value “https://maps.google.com/?q=springfield+va”. For more complex examples of URLs with custom query strings, click “Link to this page” in the sidebar of Google Maps.

Now, go give it a try.

What are some examples of how you would like to see Google Maps laced into desktop applications?

Apple is a very image-conscious company. It controls the output of information better than any other in its sector, indeed better than almost any other company of any kind. There are lots of secrets within Apple, and mostly they are kept pretty well.

All of which makes it interesting when the senior management allow the tiniest snippet of information to come out.

In this week’s “Meet the press” event in Paris, Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller talked about a range of subjects. I suspect they had a list of points they wanted to make, whether or not they were asked the right questions by the assembled journalists.

One comment by Steve Jobs caught my attention more than the others.

Jobs promised new technology on Intel Macs that will prevent the installation of OS X on non-Apple hardware. He’s very confident about this. Jobs wanted to remind us of this summer’s widespread reports of OS X installations on x86 machines, because he’s sure he has an answer to prevent that happening on a massive scale once the switch has begun.

Consider: because Apple is so secretive, it never tells us about new technologies in advance. Everything gets unveiled for the first time when Steve is on stage - that “Oh, one more thing” moment that gets the Mac conference goers so excited. But here’s Steve, in front of a bunch of journalists, telling us about something before it’s even available. This is unusual for him. That’s why I think it’s something he’s got a lot of confidence in.

Now we can spend hours discussing precisely what sort of piracy-protection Apple might want to employ (and the folks at Slashdot have been doing exactly that), but my favorite summing-up of the whole thing comes from a Metafilter thread from February this year, in which poster kindall said:

Apple copy-protects their operating system with a hardware dongle. This dongle is called a Macintosh.

Wise words. And yet … even hardware dongles have been cracked and sidestepped in the past. Precisely what Steve Jobs has placed his confidence in will be something for us to ponder and discuss interminably between now and next June, when the first Mactel machines are (still) on schedule to be unveiled.

I bought a “Copy Controlled” audio CD the other day, but it ripped fine on my Mac

This week, I have been mostly getting annoyed by email software. There’s a pattern to it. Mail does something annoying, like taking 20 seconds to delete a message, and in frustration I rush off and download some other client, install it, set it up, try it out, and soon discover it does something else equally, if not more annoying.

Things that annoy me about Mail:

• It takes forever to do stuff
• Some stuff it can’t do at all, like subscribe to folders on my IMAP server
• The activity window: it hogs huge screen space; it doesn’t always show what’s actually going on
• Phantom messages that just disappear
• Search suckage (so, searching “Entire contents” does not include the “From” header, I have to search them both separately. Not really “entire contents” is it?)

(That said, Mail integrates well with everything else in OS X; and Mail Act-On is the most useful plugin for anything in the whole world ever.)

Things that annoy me about Eudora:

• The. Toolbar. Must. Die.
• Anything configurable with x-eudora-settings is, by definition, overcomplicated
• It insists on using its own Out folder instead of the Sent messages folder I want it to use on the IMAP server
• No manner of clicking on links makes them open in the background. Eudora just can’t stop itself from bringing the browser to the front
• Lack of keyboard shortcuts; moving a message from the inbox to one folder on my IMAP server requires too many clicks

(That said, Eudora is faster than anything else around, and the searching is second to none.)

Things that annoy me about Thunderbird:

• Why do message windows have to display the next message when I’ve finished with the last one? When I’ve finished with a message, I just want the window to close
• Can’t get links to open in the background
• Why does it have to be so fiddly to make everything happen in plain text? I know people who prefer plain text email are getting thin on the ground these days, but don’t we at least deserve a simple “Send all mail as plain text” preference widget?

(That said, Thunderbird is faster and better behaved than Mail, and does pretty much everything I need. It’s only niggly details that stop me from using it.)

What software has annoyed you today?

I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Apple’s Backup software and its connection to my .Mac account. So when I read this morning’s news that we now have Backup 3, I had to download it for a spin. If you’re thinking about doing the same thing, I have a few quick tips for you:

• First, log on to your .Mac account and reset your storage settings. (Tiger users can go to the .Mac System Preference Pane and click on the Account Info button under the Account tab). To take advantage of your 1GB of storage, you have to reset the split between email and iDisk. I like the 40MB email / 984MB iDisk combo myself.
• While you’re in Account settings, it’s a good time to check that your credit card and personal info are current.
• While still in the .Mac System Preference Pane, click on the iDisk tab, and you should see that your storage limit has been increased. If not, log out of that .Mac plan, then back in.
• Finally, go to the .Mac homepage and download the new version of Backup.

Install Backup 3 and give it a spin. If you’re an existing Backup user, I recommend that you choose the “Migrated iDisk Plan.” Don’t add anything to it at this point. Chances are your first backup might fail even if you go this conservative route. Mine did because Backup added all Filemaker databases to my migrated iDisk plan, and there wasn’t enough room on my iDisk to accommodate them. (Don’t know why; it just did.) I removed the Filemaker option and tried again. Ah ha, it worked!

Existing Backup users might want to choose the Migrated iDisk Plan the first time they try Backup 3.

You might want to set aside some time for this initial run — maybe bake some cookies or something. The first backup took 27 minutes for 67.5 MBs. But the second one, after a few hours of regular work, only took 6 minutes. Backups have been pretty snappy ever since.

There’s lots more to talk about, because Backup 3 is really interesting software. I like being able to create custom “Plans.” There are even “Plans” to accommodate your iPhoto and iTunes libraries. But I’ll save those goodies and the other tasty tidbits for Friday’s article on Mac DevCenter. Until then, it’s testing, testing, testing. We can carry on the conversation in the Talk Backs below.

Related link: https://www.opera.com/free

Opera never has managed to become what one might consider a “mainstream” browser for OS X, but nonetheless it has its fans. Now that it’s being given away for free, it might attract a few more.

The Opera development team have been pioneers for years, coming up with new ideas in browser design which have subsequently become standard, expected features in other browsers. Tabs? Opera’s idea. Zooming? Opera was there first. Saved sessions? You know it.

Then there were the features that didn’t catch on quite so well. Some of them, like the extensive keyboard shortcuts for doing pretty much everything without a mouse, should have been copied by the rest. Others, like the strange approach to toolbar design and the built-in email client (does anyone actually use that?), were best left alone.

Way back, when I used Windows, I just couldn’t function without Opera. It outshone every other browser on that OS to such a degree that I didn’t even consider switching to something else.

On OS X, Opera has much more in the way of competition. The fiddly preferences panel, the unusual toolbar arrangement, the endless array of non-browser features, all conspire to give Opera a feeling of bloat and complexity. In use as a browser, it doesn’t behave like a bloated thing - it works quickly and smoothly.

Opera has critics (which app doesn’t?) but now one of the most frequently used criticisms can be put aside. Now Opera’s free for the taking, and anyone who spends a lot of time on the web has another potentially useful tool at their disposal. You can never have too many browsers installed.

Personally, I shall keep Opera around for times when I need to do a real quick surf on a particular topic. With image-loading and author-mode CSS toggled off, nothing beats it for speed.

Browser bashing starts here

Looks like Dell is the first one out the gate with a shipping Pocket PC running the new Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 platform.

Dell Axim X51v

After reading through the specifications, I don’t see any hardware changes relative to the previous X50v model.
That said, the X50v had/has great hardware specs including 64MB RAM, 802.11b WiFi, Bluetooth 1.x, 640×480 VGA display, and both CompactFlash (CF) and SD slots.
So, the only real change is the underlying Windows Mobile (formerlly Windows CE) platform (now 5.0).

I sure hope Dell fixed a number of bugs that seemed unique to their X50 models. The problems I found on the older models running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition were:

• Most hardware buttons could not be assigned to Microsoft Windows Media functions to customize audio/video playback control.
  
• Microsoft Pocket Word does not consistently refresh the screen correctly leaving an unreadable mess at the bottom of the screen.
  
• Microsoft Pocket Excel does not refresh the screen properly leaving cell borders with extraneous lines and changing the column widths unexpectedly (these changes are not permanent, btw… Just a refresh issue).
  
• WiFi access with 128-bit WEP is a bit flaky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
  

Thanks to my long time friend (and author of several editions of How to Do Everything With your Pocket PC which I had the privilege of helping out on as Technical Editor)
Frank McPherson for letting me know about the X51v availability.

Got a Dell X51v Pocket PC or some other PPC running Windows Mobile 5.0? Let us know.

Related link: https://www.opera.com/

Now this was out of the blue: Opera Software has decided to release its web browser with no built-in adverts and sans licensing fees. You can download the browser at the Opera website.

Related link: https://www.apple.com/dotmac/

Related link: https://www.apple.com/itunes/

My longest standing annoyance with iTunes is that you have to manually intervene every single time a 30 second sound clip ends. Continuous preview sure would be nice, wouldn’t it? Since iTunes 5 still didn’t offer a preferences option to take care of this, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands.

Below you’ll find a simple AppleScript that takes care of business through some UI scripting. (I’ve always felt that UI scripts are sloppy, but this was about all I could think of — and it was easy.) The only disclaimer that’s due is that if you switch out of iTunes while previewing an album, iTunes will pop back up every time a new song starts. That’s not so helpful if you’re working, but you won’t even notice if you’re just sitting back and taking in the tunes.

Oh, and before I go, let me put in a plug for Coldplay’s new iTunes-exclusive Fix You EP that you can find on the front page of the music store. If for some unfathomable reason you don’t like Coldplay, you can still feel good about paying $3 for it because 100% of the proceeds go to hurricane relief. How cool is that?

Without further adieu, here’s the goods.

Feel free to modify and post it back up as you please.

Anyone else have any good UI hacks lying around?

If you’ve had the chance to use the tail command in the Mac OS X Terminal, you’ll know that it will display for you a certain number of lines (by default, 10) at the end of whatever text input you give it — usually a filename. So, for example,

tail /var/log/system.log

will show you the last 10 lines of the system’s master log file. (Contrast with the head command, which gives you the first 10 lines by default.) Add the -n flag to the command, like this:

tail -n 3 /var/log/system.log

and you’ll get the last 3 lines of the file. Another really useful flag is -f:

tail -f /var/log/crashreporter.log

This sets tail to wait for more input after its initial display, turning the Terminal window into a log monitor. The next time a crash happens that gets recorded in the crashreporter.log, you’ll see the message in your window. Use Control-C to exit tail.

(In fact, the Console utility that comes with OS X uses windows that mimic the output of tail -f foo commands, in any number of windows. It’s under /Applications/Utilities in case you weren’t aware of it.)

Like any good unix command, tail can be used with pipes. And a cool use of this is in conjunction with the all-powerful grep command, which allows you to find stuff in text files. For example, let’s say you need to find any instances in the last 50 lines of your crashreporter.log of the words ‘crashdump started’. Here’s a easy way to do it:

tail -n 50 /var/log/crashreporter.log | grep "crashdump started"

If your log is like mine, a dozen or so lines will scroll by containing that phrase. Used along with regular expressions, this combo can get pretty dang powerful.

Putting all these ideas together allows us to do something really geeky like this:

tail -f /var/log/system.log | grep AirPort

If you issue that command right now, you will almost certainly see nothing happening — except that tail seems to be waiting, which it is. Here’s what we asked for: With any new input in the system.log, display any lines that contain the word AirPort. So if you were troubleshooting your wireless connection, or wanted to know when your AirPort goes off and on, this would be one way to display that info.

Here’s another scenario. Let’s say you’ve bought some advertising for your website on the ever-popular ‘example.com’ site earlier today and would like to see if anybody is getting sent over to you.

tail -f /var/log/httpd/access_log | grep example.com

Now when the Apache access log gets written to, and it contains the text ‘example.com’, that line will be displayed in your Terminal window for your obsessive monitoring needs.

One thing to remember about the text you want to search for — it is by default case-sensitive (so example.com is different than Example.com), and standard command-line rules apply for escaping special characters in your search string (like the space in "crashdump started").

Check out the man page for tail to get a few other options that are handy in various situations, and read up on grep for more amazing command-line tricks.

tail -f comments.log

Related link: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SysServices/Concepts/m…

I’m constantly telling myself that I need to start taking advantage of the Services menu — but I never do because there’s something that I just don’t like about it being up in the corner of the screen. I feel like this location is rather inconvenient to get at compared to a simple “right-click,” so for the longest time I didn’t even remember that it was there. Then when I did start trying to use it, I proceeded to repeatedly forget that it’s under the application’s main menu and not under the system (Apple) menu. But it only took me about 100 times to finally get it right. Maybe it’s just me, but maybe there’s a more natural place for it. Anyway, I find these issues to form an interesting situation, because they collectively make the Services menu more of a disservice than a service — at least to me.

If the services menu were easily customizable and available from a “right-click” contextual menu, however, I have to think that there are lots of other people besides myself who would find this to be a welcome convenience. I’m well aware of all the Carbon/Cocoa implementation issues involved with the Services and contextual menus in OS X, but let’s throw those to the side for a moment and pretend that they doesn’t exist. Let’s assume that developers could choose one just as easily as the other.

If that were the case, what are the top two or three Services menu items that you’d like to slap into a contextual menu? If there’s one you’d like to see that doesn’t exist, what would it be?

What have been your experiences with the Services menu?

I’ve managed to go a few days without writing about the nano… but that’s over now. Why? Well, I’ve been trying to figure out what the real world battery life is with this device.

The Apple tech specs list nano battery life as 14 hours when fully charged. I consider these specs in the same light as I do “miles per gallon” on car stickers… with a big grain of salt. So I figured my nano should get around 10 hours per full charge.

But my feeling was that the 4GB iPod was getting much less than 10 hours. Seemed like every few days I’d notice the red battery icon. I don’t listen to that much music. Before jumping to conclusions, I decided to do a little formal testing. I had a road trip this weekend to shoot a wedding. The drive was four hours each way — perfect nano testing conditions.

As a side note, I have to say that I think the nano is the best sounding iPod I have. After listening to it shuffle though a variety of songs, I was impressed that many of my favorites sounded new again on this device.

Anyway, under controlled conditions that let the nano play song after song, I’m happy to report the battery performed better that I thought it would. I discovered what I think was a key factor to my previous misconception: I wasn’t putting the nano to sleep in between listening sessions. It seems that it continues to draw substantial juice when not playing. I knew this in theory from my other iPods, but the effect wasn’t as noticeable on them, especially my shuffle (which seems to play forever on a charge).

I’m not sure that putting the nano to sleep was the key to better battery life. Maybe I was just losing track of time. I’m still testing in real world conditions. If you’re not already using the sleep function on the nano, you might want to give it a try. See if you notice an improvement in battery performance.

Related link: https://www.caminobrowser.org

Mac-owning, alternative browser-using webheads, rejoice! Camino has reached 1.0 alpha and we should all celebrate.

Now I might have made one or two raving asides about my ability to switch from one browser to another at a moment’s notice in the past, but that’s all behind me now. Here’s why.

Every time I’ve wanted to switch to a different browser, it’s been because the current one has, for one reason or another, annoyed me. Maybe it’s crashed unexpectedly, maybe it’s taken too long to do something for me, most often it’s because it’s suddenly stopped working with one of my favorite webapps. Either way, it’s usually been something breaking that’s forced me into the welcoming arms of another browser.

But since I went back to Camino with version 0.8.4, nothing of the sort has happened. This wonderful little Cocoa browser has performed like a good app should, always working with whatever sites I want it to work, remaining rock-solid even when I have far too many windows or tabs open, and generally making me a happy web user.

The new alpha comes with the usual warnings about alphas, but I’ve been using it for around 24 hours now with no problems at all. That said, I love the way the coding team have designed 1.0 in such a way that reverting to a previous version is easy. Camino 1.0 keeps prefs files in a different location; when you install it, all your existing prefs are copied to the new place, leaving the old ones untouched if you decide to trash 1.0 and return to 0.8 or 0.9.

Features-wise, Camino 1.0 comes with a lot of good stuff. For me, one of the most welcome additions is the ability to trust a new Certificate Authority. A little thing, I know, but one that will come in useful.

There’s only thing missing from Camino, only one feature that sometimes makes me look with pained eyes at other browsers, and that’s the ability to auto-save the current session. Not that Camino ever crashes on me, losing a bunch of open pages in the process; no, it’s usually because some item on Software Update insists on restarting my machine after installing itself, and I’ve left a bunch of tabs open for later perusal.

But as all Camino fans know, lead developer Mike Pinkerton has taken a job at Google and promised to use his “20% time” working to improve the browser. If there’s ever a chance for features like this to appear, this is it. I can’t wait.

Feel that Camino love, people

Related link: https://www.python.org/

I’m sure that at some point, we’ve all run across a heated discussion debating whether or not one programming language is better than another, and I’m not trying to get into that here. For the moment, let’s just acknowledge that all programming languages are tools that enable us to get work done, and the “right” tool for any particular job depends on some combination of the programmer’s experience, the task at hand, and how much effort someone is willing to exert to get the job done.

With that said, I think it’s helpful to take an inventory of what’s in your toolbox every once in a while and to think about how the tools you’re using complement (or don’t complement) one another. Out of necessity, most of my coding for the last good while has revolved around Objective-C, Java, and Perl, but after thinking about it, I’ve decided to try out something new: stop drinking so much Java and instead start wrestling with Python.

One thing I really appreciate about Java is the huge code base that’s out there, so one of my first concerns was whether or not I’d be continually faced with source code and library shortages. After about ten seconds of searching, I determined that there’s certainly no kind of shortage, so I’m feeling pretty optimistic about finding stuff when I need it.

Two things I won’t be finding in Python, however, are Java’s verbosity and overloading madness — things that simply result in excess code that I have to develop, maintain, and debug. Python elegantly takes care of both of these issues and seems to be pretty darn concise overall. I’m also excited about the functional programming features that Python brings to the table; you have to love being able to do things like write a Quick Sort in just a few lines of code.

One final thing I’m looking forward to trying out is PyObjC — the Cocoa-Python bridge that makes it very easy to leverage Cocoa frameworks from Python. Since I spend a lot of time in the wonderful world of Cocoa, I’m interested to see how much productivity I’ll be able to gain by developing with PyObjC. I’ve been trying to be more agile with my development practices lately, so I’m hoping that PyObjC will be as helpful as it looks like it will be.

Again, I don’t say any of these things to spark up a Python vs Java debate. I really just wanted to share some of my recent reflections and to try and encourage you to take a step back and do some reflection of your own. If you’re long overdue, slot off some time this week to take an inventory of what’s out there and think about how the tools you use complement or don’t complement one another.

If you’re wasting time, you’re probably losing money.

What tools are you using to get work done? Have you found any particular combinations to produce crazy amounts of synergy?

Related link: https://www.apple.com/isight/

Although I do have some EE and CompE up in the cranium, I’ve typically gravitated toward computer science and software engineering. With that said, I must admit I’ve started dabbling around with hardware quite a bit lately; sometimes, it’s just down right painful.

You see, in my world of software bliss, I can just assume the world away. I don’t have to deal with real world forces like friction, slippage, changes in voltages as batteries drain power, or even the noise that’s in images taken from a webcam. Hardware, however, interacts with “real” stuff. Other than that amorphous cloud called the internet, this isn’t the nice clean abstraction of reality that I’ve grown so used to during development.

A lot of my recent hardware hacking has dealt with the iSight. Fortunately, the QuickTime SequenceGrabber takes care of most of the broad strokes, but there’s still the inherent real world pains of interfacing to a webcam that must be dealt with. Classic annoyances I’ve encountered include just not getting a response from the camera at all and/or getting back bogus images that are all black or distorted. But those issues are easy to deal with.

Earlier today, however, I dealt with something that was quite a bit more subtle.

The code I’m working on depends on a fresh image from the camera about every two seconds. Any sooner than that just messes things up. That’s simple enough, but for some reason my code was running unpredictably bizarre. After a long frenzy of troubleshooting on multiple levels, I finally determined that my iSight (or something between it and my code) was buffering a couple of extra images — stale ones.

Apparently my desired frame rate was way too slow for a state-of-the-art webcam that touts 30 frames per second. Who would’ve known? While that synopsis might sound simple, it took a lot of debugging to figure out, and my software tools weren’t much help since the “problem” wasn’t in my code.

Anyway, the fix was easy: instead of snapping a single image whenever I want it, I snap about five and use the last one. That gives me a fresh pic and there’s no real performance penalty either. I say all of that just to say that working with hardware is…well, hard.

What’s the most subtle hardware/software time sink you’ve ever encountered during a development cycle? How long did it take to figure out?

Back in early August I wrote about The Shrinking Mac Conference Landscape where I discussed the difficulties many Mac events were having, and the irony of this situation in light of Apple’s success.

One of the shows I mentioned, Macworld Boston, was just listed as another fatality by MacCentral. With the previous closing of ADHOC, this leaves most of the surviving Mac conference activity on the West Coast.

We’re left with WWDC, Macworld San Francisco, the Geek Cruises, a handful of developer gatherings, and a few big user group events — yet no major Mac show (to my knowledge) on the East Coast.

I’m sad to see Macworld East (Boston or NYC) close its doors. With Apple Stores flourishing and online Mac sites popping up by the dozens, maybe we don’t need conferences. But I have to say, the experiences I have had at these shows are different than those in Apple Stores or in front of my computer. Something about this just doesn’t sit right with me.

Related link: https://fedex.kinkos.com/fpfk/index.php

I’m an all or nothing kind of guy — bipolar almost — when it comes to what I like and dislike. I usually either love it or hate it, and if you know me at all, you know that OS X is something that I absolutely love. But Windows has one very creative feature going for it that precipitates jealousy within my soul. I’m talking about “File, Print FedEx Kinko’s”. And it’s not even a Windows feature, per se.

“What, are you for real?” you might be thinking. Well, let me explain: I read — a lot — and it takes a ton of paper to feed my insatiable hunger for Cocoa and OS X developer docs. Whether it’s because I’m just old school or because I’m an active reader, I still prefer to print the old fashioned way. If I can’t scribble, highlight, write notes in the margins, and then clutter up my desk with the resulting mess that accumulates, I don’t feel like I’m learning anything.

So every week or two I head down to FedEx Kinko’s and get some stuff printed and bound. Being used to paying $50+ for good books back during the days that shall not be named, I feel like this is quite the bargain. For less than $20, I can now tailor an extensive compilation to exactly what I need at the time and get it nicely bound — a timeless treasure for any bookshelf.

I really think Apple and Kinko’s should get on this. It could present a win-win for both of them. And before you ask, here’s fodder for the commercial:

Someone is in a hurry, and they’re rushing down to Kinko’s with some work they need done there. Meanwhile, somebody else is back in their office clicking “File, Print FedEx Kinko’s” from the comfort of their own PowerBook or G5 workstation. Ultimately, the “File, Print FedEx Kinko’s” person wins because the other person gets stuck in traffic along the way. (Opening scene from Office Space anyone?)

The commercial ends with a catchy phrase that makes Apple and FedEx Kinko’s both look good, they give away an iPod to every 1,000th person that uses the service for some period of time, and the world is once again a better place because of good business.

FedEx Kinkos says that they want feedback, so let’s give it to them. Even if the feature won’t help you right now, it’ll help us (and might help you later.)

How much longer must I make two trips to print and get my documents bound? Are we still not “mainstream” enough or what?

Walt Mossberg (Walt Street Journal) tried out the Motorola ROKR (iTunes phone), the Sony Ericsson W800 Walkman phone, and the LG VX8100.
His bottom line?
If you’re desperate to have some songs on your cellphone, be our guest. But a smarter plan would be to wait for a better combo device. These aren’t the phones that will replace your iPod.

I used to be a fan of function convergence.
But, over the last couple of years, I turned the other way in favor of best-of-breed individual devices.
My reasons?

• It is easier to get the best-of-breed for specific features (digital camera, PIM, photo viewing, music/podcast listening, etc.) when buying individual devices.
  
• I don’t have a single point of failure for my digital media and PIM functions.
  
• If I tie everything to a phone device, I am left to wait for US FCC approval (which takes forever) and may not be able to get the phone I want if my carrier does not carry the device (and I’m not willing to pay extra $$$ for an unlocked device).
  

What do you think of MP3 playing phones? Hot or not?

Related link: https://speirs.org

Hello, dear O’Reilly readers. This post marks a new chapter in my blogging history, which extends backwards to before we called them blogs. I’ll start this particular blog with a little about my background and intent.

My background is that I’ve been a Mac user since I graduated from a Sinclair Spectrum to more powerful computers. I was a Hypercard and Applescript hacker from the early days and eventually moved on to more powerful things.

I wear altogether too many hats, but my most comfortable hat is that of Cocoa Developer. You may have heard of FlickrExport, my iPhoto export plugin for Flickr.com, or Xjournal, which is a blog client for LiveJournal.com. I’m also the person behind the newly-formed company Connected Flow, which is now the company behind these applications.

My interest and practice in Cocoa development mostly lies in writing client tools for what is popularly known as “Web 2.0″ applications. I have a pet hypothesis that Web 2.0 is even more significant for desktop application developers than for web application developers, but I’ll expound on that in a future post.

I have a few interests beyond software development but far too little time to pursue them to the level I would like. Most of my spare spare time goes on photography (you can check out my Flickr photostream) and playing bass. I’m married to Carolyn, we have a one-year-old daughter, April, and we live in Greenock, Scotland.

So that’s a little about me. I look forward to writing for you all and hearing what you have to teach me.

I’ve told you a little about me. If you’ve got a further question or just want to say hello, fire away in Talkback.

The
nanoSpot iPod nano community wiki looks like a good repository of nano information.

If you haven’t seen Phillip Torrone’s blog over on the Make Magazine site, head there right now to see his
nano mini review which features a photo gallery of his attempt to check which legacy iPod accessory works with the nano.

More nano sites and info? Post them here.

Related link: https://caminobrowser.org

Can’t find an iPod nano case that suits you yet? Need something to use while you look?
Don’t mind looking like a geek (or can’t help it in my case :-).
Then grab one of those old conference badge holders you have hanging in a cluster somewhere and use it as an iPod nano holder until something you really like comes along.
And, yes, I chose this particular badge holder as an attempt at humor.
Who says a person can’t like a Pocket PC or Windows Mobile Smartphone and an Apple iPod nano at the same time? :-)

Got nano?

One of the spiffier parts of Mac OS X that I latched onto quickly (back in the heady days after the Public Beta) was the built-in Apache webserver with its one-click activation. My favorite part was being able to edit a file or web app on my local computer — usually a laptop, so I could edit anywhere — and then testing it there in a ‘live’ server environment, before uploading it to the real webserver and breaking things. Combined with the included php and MySQL, not to mention the other big guys like perl and Python, having a portable development box is a pretty cool thing.

Of course, when you turn on Apache via the Web Sharing option in System Preferences, you are basically turning your computer into a webserver to whoever happens to have access to you over the network, whether LAN or the greater Internet. Most of the time, this is not that much of a concern. But it’s useful, not to mention more secure, to make your development directory inaccessible to anyone else.

Assuming you are using your user account’s Sites folder, here’s a super-quick method to make it unreachable to anyone except users on your computer. You will need to have admin access on the computer in question. You should also know your way around the Terminal and command-line.

Get started by turning off Web Sharing under your System Preferences. Then bring up the Terminal program and cd into /etc/httpd/users

Now, there’s only one file we need to edit in this folder: foobar.conf, where foobar is your short username, the same as the name of your Home folder (e.g. /Users/foobar).

First, make a backup of the file by copying it like this:

sudo cp foobar.conf foobar.conf.bak

You’ll need to enter your admin password. Next, open the foobar.conf file in your favorite text editor, which, if it’s the same editor as mine, will mean using this command:

sudo vi foobar.conf

Once the file is open, you’ll find this:

<Directory "/Users/foobar/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Edit the text so it looks like this:

<Directory "/Users/foobar/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
#   Order allow,deny
#   Allow from all
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>

What we’ve done here is to comment out a couple of lines using the # sign, so they’ll be ignored (technically you could delete them, but leave them there for reference). And we’ve told Apache to apply the following two rules in the order of denying access, then allowing access. The last two additions deny access to everybody, then allow access to your local computer.

Save the file and close your editor. Restart Apache by turning on Web Sharing again. You’re done! Now you can do whatever development you like inside your Sites folder and not worry about anyone else accessing it.

We’ve just scratched the surface of what you can accomplish in that .conf file, or for that matter in the httpd.conf file one directory up. Just make sure to backup your files before editing, make sure to only make one edit at a time so you can easily undo any damage, and do your homework before poking around in there. Hey, a good place to start would be the O’Reilly Apache book. ;D But you can also read up on the popular webserver at the apache.org site.

Got any favorite Apache tweaks on Mac OS X? Share ‘em!

Sometimes you just want your computer to behave the way you want it to. After all, you’re the boss. The machine just needs reminding of that every now and then.

Take some of the processes that Just Work in OS X Tiger, even if perhaps you might not want them to. I’m thinking of things like Spotlight and Dashboard.

Dashboard widgets are sub-processes of the Dock, and as such are relatively simple to switch off or permanently disable.

Spotlight is pretty closely tied in to the innermost parts of Tiger, but even that doesn’t stop you switching it off, it you want to.

Why would you want to? If you’re using Tiger on a relatively old machine, Spotlight might be slowing things down to an unacceptable degree. And if you’re wanting to keep your concentration fixed on your work, and resist the urge to invoke Dashboard to check out the latest foobar on doodad.blah, disabling it might be a good idea too.

Fear not, oh productivity-depleted ones. There are ways of doing these things.

To switch off Spotlight, first drag your hard disk volume into the Privacy pane of the Spotline preferences panel, then in Terminal, type:

sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/volume_name

This will break searching in Mail and in the Finder. But you knew that, didn’t you? I expect that only people who have no use for Mail will be attempting this sort of hackery anyway. There are far more detailed instructions and notes about managing Spotlight’s activity at The X Lab.

There’s another way of killing Spotlight outlined at MacOSXHints, but it looks risky to say the least, and is not for the faint of heart.

Switching off Dashboard is easier. In Terminal, type:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

And follow it up with:

killall dock

That’s it. Dashboard is toast. If you should ever want to restart it, just type:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

followed by the same killall dock command. Dashboard springs back to life.

If you’re someone who has arrived at this page after some Googling and you’re a little worried about typing obscure weirdness into the Terminal - indeed, if you have no idea what the Terminal is - then don’t worry, there are options for you, too. There are utilities floating around that do these tasks in a familiar click-buttons environment. My favorite at the moment is Tweak Freak, a friendly little tool that does all sorts of helpful things for you, including killing the Dashboard.

Spotless is a utility for managing Spotlight indexing for different volumes, and switching it off mid-index if you choose. It’s shareware; I haven’t tried it, so I can’t tell you much more about it.

Now you’re gonna tell me there’s an even better way

My iPod nano is the first iPod I’ve owned/used. If you’re an iPod newbie too, you might find a few useful tips among the things I’ve learned/discovered about my iPod nano in the past few days.

• Putting a headphone mini-plug jack into the nano’s plug automatically turns on the nano.
  
• Pulling a headphone mini-plug jack out of the nano plug automatically pauses whatever is playing. I find this real useful because I often transition listening to a podcast or music going into and out of my car.
  
• If you want to re-listen to part of a podcast (or any other audio file for that matter), press and hold the center button until the scrubber bar appears on the screen. You can use the thumbwheel to move to any point of the audio file at that point.
  
• Don’t rotate photos before copying them to the the nano. You’ll get black bars on the side and have a smaller image to look at (on a very tiny screen). It is easy enough to turn the nano temporarily to view a larger image in its original orientation.
  
• For now, at least, Apple has free shipping for the optional A/C adapter. Mine should arrive sometime today :-)
  

Have other iPod nano tips for newbies like me? Share them here.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been testing the Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser mic. It’s a solid, professional looking device that plugs directly into your USB port. No Mbox required. You can use the Sound Preference Pane to control the audio, or better yet, use the free applet software written exclusively for Mac OS X (there’s a Windows version coming soon.) And considering that you can find this mic online for about $80, I’m thinking it’s in contention to be crowned “the ultimate podcasting microphone” for the portable studio.

The Samson C01U mic looks as good as it sounds.

The microphone also comes with a holder that attaches to a stand or boom. I’ve had good success with repurposing one of my light stand booms for the C01U. Samson recommends that you position the
microphone as close as possible to the source, up to about three or four inches away. This helps reduce any unwanted background noise. Having said that, be sure you’re comfortable with where the mic is set. You need to live with it for the 20 minutes or so that your show runs.

A profession tip that’s been used for years (and passed along to me from Samson engineer Mike Ketchell) is to position the microphone at a 10-40 degree angle from the sound source. This works really well, since the worst p-popping occurs from wind blasts that hit the microphone capsule straight on. Try it!

Software-wise, I like using the applet available on the samsontech site. You can adjust its level sliders to control the gain of the C01U’s internal mic preamplifier. You can also change your settings with the Sound Preference Pane, as I mentioned earlier. The last controller you use — preference pane or applet — is what controls the mic. So you can switch between them if you want.

I’ve used the device with GarageBand and Soundtrack Pro, but have had the must fun plugging it into Audio Hijack Pro. With the trio of my PowerBook, Audio Hijack Pro, and the C01U mic, I’ve captured some great sounding audio.

If you haven’t found the perfect mic for your audio-to-Mac recording, and don’t feel like spending the bucks for a Mbox setup, take a look at the Samson C01U. I think you’ll like what you hear.

I started working with O’Reilly Network in the Summer of 2000. We had just sold Web Review to Miller Freeman, and for a few moments there, I was out of a job. Fortunately, O’Reilly offered me the managing editor position for the fledgling O’Reilly Network, and I’ve been here ever since.

A lot has changed at O’Reilly Media over those years. Remember when it was O’Reilly & Associates? (Who were those associates anyway?) My first OSCON was in Monterey. It’s still my favorite location for our flagship conference.

One of the things that hasn’t changed much during this time is the O’Reilly Network home page. We’ve been thinking about how to refresh www.oreillynet.com for more than a year. I won’t go into all the hemmin’ and hawin’, but the upshot is that we now have a beta page to show you:

www.oreillynet.com/beta/

Our first goal was to give you a compelling overview of the best stuff happening throughout the Network on any given day. That’s what you’ll find in the center column labeled “Today’s Features.” There you can scan current O’Reilly Radar posts, MAKE hacks, book excerpts, weblog entries, articles, and tutorials. You can even subscribe to this content via an RSS feed.

Down the right column we list the “In case you missed it…” articles and posts. Here are some of the gems from recent history that are just too good to let slip away. So we’re going to keep a handful on display. Also, to double our odds that you never miss any of these jewels, you can subscribe to them via RSS. We’ve even added an archive link in the upper right corner. We’re going to make it hard for you to miss the good stuff.

The folks behind this effort — Daniel Steinberg and Sarah Kim — are the same tandem who created the successful java.net site. They’re interested in reading what you have to say about the beta page for the Network. So, give it a spin and post your comments in the Talk Backs below. Daniel will be managing the beta page, so he’ll take all of the feedback into consideration as he works with Sarah on the refinements. And, of course, we’ll keep you posted along the way.

Oh, and one other thing… thanks so much for supporting O’Reilly!

Post your comments about the beta home page for O’Reilly Network here.

If you read my previous post, you know that I’m pretty impressed with the iPod nano. Yet, I’ve read comments by others citing various nits about Apple’s diminutive music player. I thought I’d pull those gripes together here and list them in the top ten format (starting with #1 instead of #10 because I don’t know how to use the ol tag in reverse).

1. I no longer have a place to store my change in my jeans. This is troublesome. I used to keep my nickels and dimes in that little pocket on the right side. But now that area has been “Steved.” Yes, the nano fits perfectly there. And my change… well, I’m using the back pocket these days. Who cares if I sit on a bunch of pennies.
2. The nano doesn’t come with a charger. Yup, no charger. When I don’t have it plugged into my PowerBook, I’m using the USB port on the AirPort Express to charge the nano. I also like the Griffin PowerJolt in the car. Some people have commented you can use any USB charger. But I’d be a little cautious. I hate the smell of smoking circuits.
3. Ack, USB only! I want FireWire too. I know… we like FireWire because it’s the hometown favorite, and because we don’t have USB 2 on our older computers. But you can use the nano with USB 1.1. Not as fast. Not as cool. But definitely serviceable.
4. White earbuds with a black nano. I feel so mismatched. But the black nano is usually in my pocket… Besides, black earbuds are so, well, Sony.
5. I can’t register my nano. As of 9-12-05 at 10pm, neither can I.
6. It’s too small! Well it is called the nano. And even though its small, it’s tough. Check out this great review over at ars technica. They even ran over it with a car. (Do you think Steve cringed even though he was miles away?)
7. The camera connector doesn’t work with the nano. Ah, well, actually this is my carp. And even though the nano holds less than 4 GBs, I’d love to be able to back up my 1 GB card in a pinch. Can we fix this with a firmware update?
8. The screen is too small for photos. A 1.5″ screen isn’t that much smaller than what we used to have on digital cameras. Granted, it’s not so hot for displaying distant landscapes, but not too bad for tightly cropped portraits. Personally, I like having the photo option on this device. But what I like even more is the beautiful color LCD.
9. I don’t know what to do with the dock adaptor that came with it. Neither do I. But apparently Apple does. Hang on to it for now. You’ll probably need it some day.
10. Why is the earbud jack on the bottom? Look at it this way, when you hang it around your neck with the lanyard headphones, you have a much cleaner look that if the jack was on top. In other words, I don’t really know why it’s there either.

I promise, this will be my last nano post for a while. That is, unless I figure out how to register it, upload pictures directly, find a use for the dock adaptor, or solve the fashion dilemma created by the white earbuds…

Related link: https://www.nanowrimo.org/

Once a year, a few thousand people, inspired by something they read on the Internet, get together and go insane for an entire month. No, it’s not Burning Man, although it does get about as surreal by the end.

It’s NaNoWriMo — and if you are not in the know, that stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you sign up at nanowrimo.org, then spend the month of November writing a 50,000-word novel or 50,000 words of a novel, depending on whether you’re leaning toward the letter or spirit of the event. The task, though overwhelming to contemplate, is relatively simple: type a lot of words as quickly as you can in some semblance of an ongoing narrative. To reduce it even further: type a bunch of words until you reach 50,000 of them. Keeping a running wordcount is very important, not least as motivation, but also to make sure you’re going fast enough.

When I participated (and finished!) in 2004, I was beginning to move toward using plain text editors for my writing and away from Word Processing Suites ™, for numerous reasons too complicated to go into in this entry. Suffice to say I didn’t want a few dozen toolbars, popups, and whistling paperclips distracting me from getting words on the page.

I spent a lot of time in Mac OS X’s TextEdit, as well as other editors. This year I may be leaning toward the well-executed Smultron, which I expect would handle the multiple necessary text files quite well.

Wordcounts can be done in various ways, but I usually wind up in the Terminal using the built-in wc command. If you’re into instant feedback and don’t mind using TextEdit, check out NanoCount which will give you a live picture of how slow fast you’re going.

I kept up on three other related electronic documents through the month as well. First, a journal of the novel, using MacJournal — since it is now commercial and my software budget is limited, I may try going with Journler this time around. Second and third, an outline and a timeline in OmniOutliner; although any outliner would probably do, it’s hard to argue with OmniGroup’s great interface.

Browsing through the event’s forums reveals a different set of programs for every participant — everybody has their own unique setup tailored to their comfort and needs, not to mention operating system. If you decide to jump off the NaNoWriMo cliff, be sure your tools do the best job possible helping you out of the hallucinatory abyss that is writing a novel in a month.

(You can read more about the event, including my potential 2005 participation, here.)

Update: I discovered tonight in Smultron that the status bar can be set to display a running wordcount, amongst other things. You can turn this on in Preferences, under the General tab. That might just seal the deal for me. :)

If you’re thinking about NaNoWriMo, or even just tried it out, what are some of your favorite tools?

If you’ve been wondering about that special bag people (like Derrick Story in iPod nano First Impressions) are talking about, wonder no more.
You can see what it looks like in the photo here.

I bought my iPod nano at my local Apple Store.
It was a good thing I wanted a white 4GB model because that was all they had by the time I got there just before noon on Saturday (Sept. 10).
The battery was fully charged when I tried my nano, so I was able to try my first iPod right away.
Couple of comments about this first iPod experience.

• As usual, the package the nano comes in is as attractive and compelling as the product itself.
  
• As a Linux/Windows geek who only recently wandered over to play with a Mac, the USB-only connection (no Firewire) didn’t bother me.
  
• The lack of a A/C recharger and no user replaceable battery did though :-) (But, I’ve read all the grumbling about this before buying the unit).
  
• The online registration process was awful. The system never accepted my serial number (checked it three times on both the packaging and the unit). When it finally gave me an alternate registration process, it seemed to go OK. However, the confirmation email thanked me for buying an iBook. Hmm.
  
• The photo display is nice and crisp though awfully small (but that doesn’t bother me). I wish it had a zoom feature though.
  
• Moving files from my Mac mini to the iPod nano was extremely fast. I had become used to the snails pace USB transfer from my Windows PC to my Pocket PC and was surprised how fast a real USB 2.0 file transfer can be.
  
• I wish MP3 players, in general (not just the iPod), would add an easy bookmarking feature for Podcasts. Or I am missing something here?
  

Overall, I’m very happy with this first iPod of mine.

How is your iPod nano experience going?

I drove over to my local Apple Store this morning to buy an iPod nano. I was happy to see that there was a full supply of all models — a nice change from the shuffle shortage I experienced last time. Not only were the nanos in stock, Apple has special nano bags to tote my new purchase. They are quite attractive and very good advertising as I strolled back through the mall to the car.

I bought the 4GB black model. It’s absolutely beautiful. But like all shiny black devices, it does show finger prints. So if you’re bothered by smudges, consider the white model.

The 1.5″ color screen is easy to read and very attractive. As with the other color iPods, the display shows the album cover art aside song title, artist, and album. The Apple click wheel is one of the best navigation devices I’ve ever used. The headphone jack is on the bottom of the nano, beside the dock connector. The hold switch is located on the top left of the device. Despite its diminutive size, the nano is a pleasure to hold and easy to read. I really like the design of this player.

The sound output is excellent. There’s good range from bass to treble, and plenty of volume. I rarely moved the volume beyond the 50 percent mark.

I can use my Griffin PowerJolt with the nano so I have full battery charging while on the go. But I was disappointed to discover that the camera connector does not work with the nano. So if you want to display photos on it, you have to do it the old fashioned way through iTunes. Pity, because the 4GB capacity could serve as a handy backup while on the go. I’m hoping that we get a firmware update that will enable the camera connector.

As for the new features, I think the Screen Lock is terrific. The combination dial reminds me of my old school locker, and if I do forget the four digits I set, all I have to do is plug the nano into my host computer to unlock it. I’ve wanted a lock for a long time so I could store calendar and contact information with a little peace of mind. Now I have it. I also like the multiple world clocks. They’re really quite handy. I have four set up right now. I even like the stopwatch with its nice looking display.

Some folks have commented that they think the nano might be too small. I don’t feel that way at all. It feels good in my hand, fits nicely in my pocket, looks beautiful, sounds terrific, and is priced to sell. 4GBs of flash memory for $249… that’s a good deal.

So, the iPod nano can’t use FireWire… at least it has the decency to say so rather than just failing. Still, considering that FireWire was the original iPod’s only interface when it debuted in 2001, this is quite a fall from grace.

It’s harder on Mac users than Windows users, who’ve had USB 2.0 for longer. Consider the Macs that can’t connect at high-speed to an iPod nano:

• All G3 PowerMacs
• All G3 iMacs
• All G3 PowerBooks
• All G3 iBooks
• All G4 PowerMacs
• G4 Cube
• Most G4 (pivot flat-screen) iMacs
• G4 PowerBooks made before mid-2003 (TiBooks, early 12″ and 17″ AlBooks)
• G4 XServes (not that you would…)
• Pre-2004 eMacs

Note: Dates and specs from apple-history.com

I should be surprised, but I’m not. USB 2.0 has been out for long enough that FireWire is presumably expendable, from Apple’s POV. But, you might wonder, isn’t FireWire required by the Tiger tech specs? Doesn’t that say that it’s important?

Here’s my take: it’s not about FireWire. It’s about planned obsolescence. If you look, you can see a pattern that Apple considers consumer machines more than about three years old and pro machines more than about four years to not be worth supporting anymore. Or, perhaps phrased more nicely, candidates for upgrades. The FireWire requirement on Tiger simply pushes out the first few generations of iMacs and iBooks, and the first G3 pro machines (actually, the non-USB G3 machines weren’t supported by earlier OS X releases either, if memory serves). So adding in the FireWire requirement for Tiger basically obsoletes a number of 1999-2001 consumer machines. Maybe Leopard will push the CPU requirement into the GHz range, to obsolete 2002-3 machines.

The iPod nano’s exclusion of FireWire is similar, just more aggressive. The newest machine incapable of using a nano at high-speed would appear to be an early-2003 iBook model. So maybe there are some 18 month old machines getting left in the cold. Ouch. Then again, Tiger’s CoreGraphics and CoreVideo weren’t supported by the iBooks that were available when Tiger shipped. Double ouch.

Then again, is it realistic to expect support for five-year-old computers? Mac partisans used to take pride in the fact that System 7 only obsoleted the original 128K and 512K “Fat” Mac, and could run on the third Mac model, the Mac Plus. But that said, System 7 came out in 1991, and the Plus appeared in 1986, so even then, the standard was to maintain compatibility only with machines five years old or newer.

I don’t know how this is going to fly if Apple fancies itself a consumer electronics company. When Sony launches the PlayStation 3, it is expected to be backwards-compatible with software from PlayStations 1 and 2. Consumers expect their stuff to last, and don’t appreciate arbitrary limitations meant to make them buy new products.

Don’t think it’ll be a problem? Come back and drop a comment if you see the following footnote sometime around 2007:

Note: Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store prior to iTunes 7 cannot be played in iTunes 8 or iPod atto.

Or should I be happy to give Apple my money on their schedule, not mine?

Reuters and other news sources reports that Japan’s Access Co. is buying the U.S. based PalmSource (responsible for the Palm OS).

Japan’s Access to buy out PalmSource of U.S.

Access Co. is best known (to me anyway :-) as the maker of the NetFront alternative web browser for the Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC platform.
With rumors of an Windows Mobile based Treo 670 coming from Palm (the hardware company), I wonder what this means for Palm OS itself?

Have some insight into the purchase of PalmSource by Access Co.? Please share it with us here.

I’ve used Google Talk with iChat since the day Google Talk was announced, but since yesterday several attempts to connect to the Google Talk server with iChat failed with the error message, “An unexpected SSL error occured. [-9843].” I got the same result on three computers, with at least two different Google Talk accounts. Moreover, the Jabber-enabled clients Adium and Coccinella still work with Google Talk, and iChat still works with other Jabber servers (for example, jabber.org.uk).

It may be coincidental, but iChat stopped working with Google Talk on my Macs just after I installed the Quicktime 7.02, QuickTime SDK 7.0.2, and iTunes 5.0 updates as well as the iTunes Phone Driver 1.0. I don’t know what, if anything, changed in Google’s IM service.

Anyone else out there have this trouble with iChat and Google Talk?

Related link: https://apple.com/ipodnano/

How do you feel about iPod security?

Related link: https://www.apple.com/itunes/mobile/

A post I came across over on Slashdot said that the name of the new Motorola/Apple/Cingular phone was ‘dumb’ — why didn’t they call it the iPhone, which is what everybody has been calling this theoretical device for the past five years?

Dumb like a fox — I think it is mighty clever of them. Here’s why.

Of course, the ROKR name is in line with the other hot Motorola phone, the RAZR, which is also a Cingular Wireless exclusive. But check out how they refer to the phone on the Apple site: ‘Introducing iTunes for your mobile phone. With iTunes on your Motorola ROKR E1, you can listen to music on your mobile phone, wherever, whenever you want.’

It’s not an iPhone, it’s a phone with iTunes on it.

Why is that important? Well, what happens if this phone tanks faster than New Coke? As far as Apple’s reputation is concerned, there’s a big difference between a Motorola ROKR (with iTunes) going down the drain and an Apple iPhone going down the drain. In the former’s case, Apple can distance itself fairly easily; in the latter, the naysaying sharks would be circling.

And if the ROKR actually rocks, Apple gets the credit. It’s a win-win. It also leaves the possibility open for iTunes bundled on other phones and mobile devices some day.

As for me, I’m more excited about playlist folders and a cleaned-up iTunes 5 interface than either of the other big Apple announcements. ;)

What’s your take — is no iPhone ‘dumb’ or clever?

One of my favorite uses of the LifeDrive is to store driving directions. I always have my route handy, I don’t have to worry about printing out on paper, and I can retrieve the directions again if I revisit the location in the future.

My process is usually something like this:

• I look up the driving directions on my laptop using Mapquest or Yahoo Maps.
• Then I capture a screenshot of the directions.
• The .jpg file is sent to the LifeDrive using Bluetooth.
• The screenshot is displayed in my Media app for easy viewing.

At this point you’re probably asking yourself, “Why doesn’t he just send a text file to his LifeDrive?” Good question. I used to do that. But I’ve found that the text files are much harder to read than the Mapquest directions. Plus, the LifeDrive wants to use the Documents to Go application for reading even simple text files, and that’s a much less friendly program to manage than the Media app.

Mapquest directions are easy to read on my LifeDrive screen.

If I want to include a snapshot of the map itself, that’s easy too. I’ve found that this technique is also great for bus, train, and ferry schedules. Again, the nice html formatting is more pleasing to the eye than plain text.

It’s funny, a while back I started taking pictures of signs and posters instead of writing notes while shooting on location. Now I take screenshots of maps and driving directions. The big LifeDrive screen and fast Bluetooth connectivity makes this process easy.

One final tip: Don’t forget that you can rotate your images on the LifeDrive screen by pressing the middle button on its left side. This often provides better proportions for viewing directions and maps.

The LifeDrive Chronicles
Ch 1 - Internet Radio
Ch 2 - Gmail Instead of POP
Ch 3 - A Versatile Photog’s Assistant
Ch 4 - The Perfect BT Phone Companion
Ch 5 - Audio Shuttle and Player

Related link: https://fjzone.org/soup

Reader T.S. wants to know how to get data from a database on a Pocket PC to MySQL.
He writes:

how can I load pocket pc database records to mysql server through cradle?

Can you advice me how to do it? As my project is
to load pocket pc database records to mysql
through. thank you very much!

Unfortunately, T.S. doesn’t say which database application he is using. And, the Microsoft Windows Mobile based Pocket PC does not include a native database application (Pocket Access was only available on the now defunct Handheld PC platform).
Here are a couple of thoughts.

• If your Pocket PC database application directly supports ODBC, MySQL provides an ODBC connector for a number of desktop/server platforms that you can use: MySQL Connector/ODBC 3.51 (MySQL ODBC Documentation).
  
• If the PPC app does not directly support ODBC, you can always get the data to the desktop first and then use ODBC to get it to MySQL. Check for gotchas like single vs. double quotes for text fields. HanDBase, for example, requires the single quotes option to be chosen for a successful ODBC data transfer.
  
• If you haven’t selected a database application yet, check out Syware’s Visual CE and mEnable.
  

Have other Windows Mobile Pocket PC to MySQL database data connection suggestions? Let us know.

I had a few moments to review my pictures as I rode the ferry across the Golden Gate. While doing so, it dawned on me that a lot happened today in the span of an hour. For an intimate event, Apple’s announcements at Moscone West on Sept. 7, 2005 stacked up to be a fair amount of news.

You’ve heard about the ROKR, the iTunes music phone from Motorola, Apple, and Cingular. In terms of function, it’s quite compelling. Holds 100 songs, Internet connectivity, stereo speakers, headphones, and USB connectivity with Macs and PCs.

It doesn’t have that great Apple form factor. Kind of wish Apple had designed it and not Moto. Also no mention of price per song downloaded directly from the phone. But you can transfer your existing music via iTunes on your Mac. Cingular is offering it for $250 with a 2-year commitment.

The iPod nano is for all of you who like the size of a shuffle, but hate its lack of screen. nano is pretty slick. Full color LCD in 2GB or 4 GB models at $199 and $249 respectively. You can also upload your photos and other data. I don’t think any picture can accurately convey how small this player is. Quite a feat!

There was also iTunes 5, Madonna catalog now on iTunes (with a humorous live iChat with Madonna from London), Harry Potter digital AudioBooks (exclusive to iTunes), an entertaining appearance by Ralph de la Vega of Cingular, a strong performance by Kanye West, and lots of odds and ends.

So now that you know who all of the players are, here’s a collection of photos from the ballroom in Moscone West.

Steve Jobs

Elvis may have left the building… a Cingular ad for the new phone.

Ralph de la Vega

Steve Jobs demos the iPod nano

iPod nano in hand…

Kanye West live on stage.

Yes, he did say a few swear words…

The nano in my hand.

The Moto ROKR in the foreground compared to the RAZR.

All photos by Derrick Story, O’Reilly Media.

When iTunes first appeared (January 9th, 2001, fact fans), it pioneered the brushed metal effect that has delighted and annoyed Mac users ever since. In interface design terms, it was a trend setter. Brushed metal slowly infected other apps, even the OS itself.

Now Mail has taken the trend setter crown, because iTunes 5, released today, sports a blue-tinted side bar that looks very familiar. Just like the mailboxes sidebar in Mail, in fact. You can bet that more of these flatter, simpler sidebars are just round the corner; I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Finder’s own Sidebar and iPhoto’s Sources sidebar adopt this look in the near future.

And it looks like iTunes is the biggest deal as far as Apple is concerned. Look at a screenshot from the apple.com/itunes page today: iTunes promotion is huge. The iPod nano gets a decent size spot. But you really have to look around before you see the tiny little graphic telling you about the ROKR phone.

Among other things, iTunes 5 can sync contacts with Outlook, or contacts and calendars with Outlook Express. Apple is going out of its way to make users of iTunes for Windows happy.

Apple wants to push iTunes down our throats because that’s where it makes the money. As a gateway to the Music Store, and as a hugely successful cross-platform application, iTunes brings in cash like no other piece of iSoftware. Nothing like the money Apple makes from hardware, but still a very nice additional income stream. And the long-term potential for selling music - and one day, we all suspect, TV shows and movies too - makes it more valuable still.

But what does Apple get from ROKR phones? Motorola manufactures them; Cingular (and in the UK, O2) sells them. Everyone has to take a cut along the way. I reckon the ROKR is a much bigger deal to Motorola than it is to Apple.

What I like most about today’s announcements are the possible future directions they offer.

I like the lessening of the brushed metal and the flattening of the interface widgets in iTunes. Perhaps we might see this simpler approach elsewhere in OS X.

I like (in fact, I doubt there are many who don’t like) the incredible slinkyness of the iPod nano. In a few years, even the “big” iPods will look like this, and include an order of magnitude’s more storage space.

And in some ways, I even like the ROKR. It is, as the cellphone retailers will be delighted to remind you, the “first phone with iTunes,” but I don’t think it will be the last. I have no doubt that eventually, iPods and cellphones will merge into one tiny device (perhaps one that looks a bit like the nano); we just have to go through some early iterations, and this is the first of them.

The queue for drooling over the nano starts here

Here’s what you need to know for now:

ROKR is real. The phone is available from Cingular in the US. It has a dedicated ‘music’ button, iconography courtesy of iTunes, and can store up to 100 - yep, just 100 - songs.

The iPod nano is incredibly small, not much larger than an iPod shuffle. It stores up to 1,000 songs in Flash memory, works with Mac OS X and Windows XP, and claims a 14 hour battery life.

The iPod mini is history. The new nano is, depending on your viewpoint, a tiny little normal iPod, or a larger iPod shuffle with a screen. Without a doubt, it has teh wow.

Version 5.0 of iTunes is available for download. The toolbar is changed, sporting a new search box and a cleaner look.

My instant opinions: ROKR’s song limit will turn people away. They will much prefer to spend their money on one of those gorgeous-looking iPod nanos.

The invite to today’s press event said: “1000 songs in your pocket changed the world. Here we go again.” Frankly, I don’t think the ROKR is as big an announcement as the original iPod. It’s certainly nice to have a phone that talks to iTunes Music Store, but with a 100 song limit people are still going to be carrying around an iPod with them - which kinda defeats the object of trying to merge the two devices in the first place.

Mmmmmmm nano

Apple and Motorola announced the ROKR E1 iTunes phone today. I don’t have Cingular service so I can’t buy and test one. So, if you have one, let us know how it is!

Apple ROKR page

Motorola ROKR E1 Press Release

Got a ROKR E1? Tell us about it!

After editing href="https://www.oreilly.com/catalog/astronomyhks/">Astronomy Hacks,
I knew I had to get a telescope. I got off to a very false start with
the 4.5
inch Orion Short Tube, a model that href="https://ttgnet.com/">Bob warned me about. But it was cheap, and it was in stock locally.

Bob warned me about its poor mount and weak optics. I probably could have lived
with the optics, but the mount was very bad. It was jerky and shaky. And
a peek at the Orion catalog showed me that the mount it came
with was their rock-bottom mount.

At Bob’s urging, I returned the scope. The folks at href="https://www.birdersnatureview.com/">Birdwatcher’s Nature View
were fantastic, giving me 30 days to try the scope out before making up
my mind. I ended up getting the $359 href="https://www.telescope.com/shopping/product/detailmain.jsp?itemID=366&itemType;=PRODUCT&iMainCat;=4&iSubCat;=9&iProductID;=366">Orion SkyQuest XT8. Unfortunately, the optical tube assembly was damaged in transit. The replacement came about a week ago. A wonderful thing about
buying locally was that the
folks at Birdwatcher’s Nature View took care of shipping the return and getting the new one in.

In the first session with the new scope, I didn’t have high expectations; the first
time out with my original scope, I’d been unable to find anything without the help of my
friend Daten, and the second time out, I found nothing. But I’ve
been training. In particular, href="https://stellarium.sourceforge.net/">Stellarium has helped me
get better oriented. I’ve also been using href="https://www.stargazing.net/astropc/">Cartes du Ciel for star
charts, so when I got home, I woke up my computer, fired up Cartes du
Ciel, and printed the default chart that appeared. Because of the tree cover, there is only a
sliver of sky visible from where I live, but that sliver coincided with the
chart, and turned out to give a perfect view of Cygnus, Lyra, and
Draco’s head.

This scope is fantastic, although I do need to add a
Telrad finder, since the default finder is a little annoying. But
(pun intended), the two scopes are like night and day. The XT8 is
really easy to use. In an hour of observing, and with a copy of href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1552093026">Nightwatch to complement the printed chart, my wife and I found:

• The Ring Nebula
• The Dumbbell
  Nebula
• Beta
  Cygni, a lovely optical double
• Nu
  2 Draconis, a spooky binocular double

My boss, Tim O’Reilly said an interesting thing today. “A while back, our company paid a lot of bills by writing about the X Window System. But today, that subject is a small percentage of our income. Things are different now. And to survive, we have to be different with them.”

Tim wasn’t talking about Apple, digital music, or the announcements on Sept. 7 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Yet it all applies.

Regardless of what Steve Jobs announces, we’ll hear comments that Apple is relying too much on the digital music phenomenon. It is courting eventual disaster. When the whole house of downloads collapses, so will Apple. The implication being that unless Cupertino bolsters its computer market share and “gets back to basics,” the party is doomed.

Personally, I disagree. I think things are different now. And the news revealed on Sept. 7 is another indicator that Apple isn’t just thinking different, it’s being different. And what that really is… is being smart.

Related link: https://www.mac.com/1/learningcenter/index-sub.html?go=dotmac+dm

Let me start by saying that I don’t think it’s a perfect implementation just yet, but that it’s a good start and an important trend. What I’m talking about, of course, is the new Address Book Sharing feature that is part of .Mac in Tiger. Instead of just being able to sync your multiple machines together, plus your handheld devices (iPods, phones, Palms), you’re able to invite other .Mac members to share your address book.

It’s set up as part of a two-part authentication scheme, where you add a person that’s permitted to view your Address Book in the Sharing Pane of the Address Book application, and then they subscribe to your Address Book under the File Menu in Address Book. I realize that sounds cumbersome, but it’s probably about five clicks, all told. Once you have designated someone to share your addresses, and once they subscribe to your Address Book feed through .Mac, your address book is synced to their address book.

Now, it would be great if I could choose a subset of my large Address Book (say, 500 entries) and make, say, 100 of them share-able, just to share my client list with my business partner, or just to share my personal contacts with my girlfriend so we could handle party invites, but that’s not part of the deal right now, at least not natively. You might be able to get away with that sort of thing if there was a library switcher for Address Book along the lines of the one for iPhoto.

Alas, they must leave something for the next update, but this is something I’d like to see sooner, rather than later.

What do you make of Address Book syncing?

Google has released a Mac OS X version of their Gmail Notifier. This handy little app puts an envelope icon at the top of your monitor on the system bar that turns blue when you receive mail. It also lets you know how many unread messages you have waiting. (This is a preference setting you can turn off if you don’t like it.)

If you click on the envelope, you get a drop down menu that shows you who sent the message and its subject line. You can jump right over to the new mail (that opens in your default browser) or wait till later.

To start using Gmail Notifier, download the app, drag it to your Applications folder, double-click it, enter your Gmail info, then restart (or log out and back in). The envelope will now appear at the top of your monitor.

And it works great. Nice to see a Mac version of this helpful tool…

Related link: https://lifekino.com/trailer

I was just thinking about Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen’s comments on c|net.com where he was quoted, “Steve (Jobs) likes to trivialize the process and make it seem easy, but moving the apps over is not that easy…”. Although Chizen remarked that “in the long run it’s going to be great,” his overall tone was not exactly optimistic.

A week earlier, I had read a compelling argument by Rich Siegel, CEO and founder of Bare Bones Software. In his piece, Siegel said, “…it’s much easier to adapt your code for a new CPU architecture because the OS really protects you from all that. I think if they had tried to switch from PPC to Intel back in the [Mac OS] 8 or 9 days, it would have been a much bigger challenge for a lot of people.”

When I was being interviewed by Gene Steinberg on The Tech Night Owl, he asked me, “which is it — easy or not?”

This is the beginning of what will be a long discussion. But the short answer is: “That depends on your code now.” Developers who were able to merge on to Apple’s Cocoa/Xcode roadmap will probably make the transition with a minimum of hair loss. So, much of the recent software for Mac OS X should be ready for the first MacTel machines. Other legacy apps, such as Photoshop, face a much steeper hill. And Chizen’s points should be viewed in the light that Photoshop was a Mac app long before Xcode was a twinkle in Apple’s eye.

It’s something to keep in mind as you read the back and forth discussions about the transition to the Intel processor.

Reader T.D. wrote:

I am trying to find a way to open Word / Excel files on my 1GB-equipped Windows Smartphone [Audiovox SMT5600] that came out not too long ago.

Anyway to do so? I don’t see pocket Word or pocket Excel like is on my PDA.

I think a great source of confusion comes from Microsoft’s use of the Windows Mobile brand for both their Pocket PC Phone Edition (PPCPE) and Smartphone products. Most people assume that the Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition (which is a full PDA with phone capability) and the Windows Mobile Smartphone (which is phone-centric with some PDA functions) have the same applicactions set.
They don’t.
Two notable applications available on the PPCPE that are not on the Windows Mobile Smartphone are Pocket Word and Pocket Excel.
The Audiovox SMT5600 is a Smartphone.
So, it lacks the applications T.D. is searching for.
Fortunately, there are alternatives.
The first thing to do is look through the description of the applications in the SMT5600’s firmware and the applications disc that accompanied it (the one with Outlook on it).
The Motorola MPx220, that I use for example, comes with a 3rd party file viewer that can not only display Word and Excel but also PowerPoint and Acrobat PDF files.

On the Go with the Motorola MPx220 Camera Phone

If such an application is not bundled with the SMT5600, there are at least two products I know of that may provide the functionality T.D. is looking for.

• Westtek ClearVue for the Windows Mobile Smartphone
  
• Repligo
  

These kinds of 3rd party solutions are also available for PDA and Smartphones based on the Palm OS and Symbian (and probably Linux based phones too).

Let us know about your recommended smartphone document reader.

I’ve been working a lot lately with recording voice and other audio on the Mac in my studio. After the session was over, the challenge was, I wanted to take those files with me for review at home or on the go. At first I considered the iPod as my shuttle. But if I wanted to listen to the files, as well as transport them, I had to work through the iTunes application. That seemed a bit cumbersome.

Then it dawned on me that I had a better device right there in my briefcase — the LifeDrive. All I had to do was connect the Palm LD via the USB2 cable, drag the audio file to the Music folder on the LifeDrive, then disconnect.

With this scenario, I could listen to the audio on the LifeDrive — either with its built-in speaker or plugged-in ear buds to the stereo mini-jack — or upload the file to another computer via the USB 2 cable. Since the LifeDrive is a Mass Storage device, I can connect it into any modern Mac or Windows PC and transfer data. No additional applications are required for this process.

Another handy benefit is the Files app on the LifeDrive. It displays all of the MP3s I transferred in a easy to navigate file manager. Once I locate the particular audio file that I want to listen to, all I have to do is tap on it, and the LifeDrive presents me with an audio controller right there in file view. I can listen to the recording without having to use additional software.

The 4GB hard drive seems roomy enough to manage my current projects. Once they’re completed, I offload the files to my computer and external archive drives so I can then free up that space on the Palm for new endeavors. The entire workflow is has been easy to manage. I don’t have any compatibility issues with any of my production computers, and no proprietary software to get in my way.

If I somehow forget the USB 2 cable… I can send the file via Bluetooth to the computer. A 24MB MP3 took 22 minutes to transfer to my Apple PowerBook using wireless transfer. Not the fastest method of upload available, but a nice option to have in a pinch. (In a future installment I’ll show you how to use 802.11 for file transfer that’s quite fast!)

The bottom line is, the LifeDrive makes an excellent shuttle because of its versatility. I can even open a text app while listening to the audio file and make notes for reference later.

The LifeDrive Chronicles
Ch 1 - Internet Radio
Ch 2 - Gmail Instead of POP
Ch 3 - A Versatile Photog’s Assistant
Ch 4 - The Perfect BT Phone Companion
Ch 5 - Audio Shuttle and Player

Related link: https://ecs.wal-mart.com/CrisisComm/

With everything going downhill in New Orleans and the surrounding areas, many of us techies have looked on in distraught humility, wishing there was something, anything, we could do to help. The techies at Wal-Mart decided that their logistics system could be used as a message board for those who are missing people, and as a centralized way to check people in after the disaster.

It’s all very simple, but the messages are helping families get closer in this major catastrophe. Of course, with no electricity and sparse phone service, not to mention we’re well past the useful length of any batteries, it’s not clear who will be able to check in…

What do you make of all this?

This week’s retracted Mac mini test drive offer brings to mind a few things I’ve been wondering about Apple’s affordable computer. My hunch is that the mini might be a tad too spartan for everyone.

You see, the thing I like about Macs is that I order one, it arrives, I turn it on, it works. I’m a huge PowerBook fan for that very reason. I have everything I need in that single stylish box. It’s like dining at a four star restaurant where attention is paid to every detail.

The mini is experience is more like a church potluck. You can join the party, but you have to bring your own keyboard and monitor. And let’s face it, you’re not bringing sirloin steaks.

The mini misses on the very thing that Apple is good at — the total satisfying experience. Who wants to plug a crappy VGA monitor in to a brand new mini work of art? I don’t. Instead, I want a mini kit.

My mini kit would include one of those cool Apple displays, but a 17″ version that was mini friendly. I’d want a mini keyboard that’s real thin and stylish, and of course a mini mouse. The whole kit would be packed up in one of those outstanding Apple boxes and sell for as little as $799 working upward to $999 depending on the configuration.

Now you have the true Apple experience, but at a competitive price. There’s nothing wrong with the mini. It’s a tasteful entree, and for some people, that’s all they want. But others, such as myself, would also like a fresh salad, glass of wine, and a little dessert.

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One final note totally unrelated to computing, this weblog, or anything in my normal working life… My heart goes out to those on the gulf coast suffering from Katrina’s devastation. I’ve sent a donation through the Red Cross. It’s a small thing, but our collective contributions will help people who need it. Please consider giving through the organization of your choice.

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