First of all: Hell, yeah! iTunes Cloud finally removed the pain and anger brought by Apple’s policy of having an iPod Touch/iPhone only linked with one iTunes Library. For me, it has always been a pain to synchronize my music in a smooth way all over my devices (iMac, MacBook, iPhone), especially when it came to MP3s. The fact that iTunes didn’t consider MP3s when using “transfer purchases” took any chance (except of using “Home Sharing”) to get MP3s synchronized all over. With iTunes content I permanently had to go that way: Buy them on my iPhone, connect the phone to my iMac when I was at home, “transfer purchases”, reconnect the iPhone to my MacBook when I was at work, “transfer purchases”, all done. But with MP3s this didn’t work.

Now thanks to iTunes Match and iTunes Cloud, MP3s are being matched to actual iTunes Store content and, if nothing could be found, the MP3s are being uploaded to the cloud, from where they can be streamed/downloaded to all registered devices. Sounds awesome, huh?

Well, actually, it really is awesome. There are some downsides, for example the *very* slow iTunes Match servers for uploading data. I’m not sure if that’s only because of the instant heavy load that recently hit the servers or if Apple just didn’t spend enough money for the server’s to be the dog’s balls. Anyhow, besides of that everything runs just fine so far. Streaming/downloading works with good speed (no endless seconds of buffering, nor interrupts while playing), artwork yet seems to be a little problem since here it doesn’t seem to get synchronized instantly all over my devices and the iTunes Match recognition works okay (only have/had to upload around 1k songs of nearly 5k).

The only thing that really bothers me is the fact that my iPhone actually gets flooded with music and the only way I found to remove recently “streamed” (or “streamed and automatically downloaded) music is by scrolling through my list with nearly 5k rows and swipe-to-remove each song I’d like not to have on my iPhone anymore, so I can use the 16GB for more than just audio.

It would be really nice if someone could point me a better solution to fix that issue or, if there is none, if Apple could please implement a feature that allows me to “clear the least played songs”.

Oh well.

iTunes Match

I thought, it might be a cool idea to actually proof that something like that should be possible within a few lines of code. No C code, no Objective-C, even more simple: AppleScript (and a little bit of Bash scripting).

However, so I just took about an hour and a half and wrote down this little bad boy:

global used_codes
global code_used

on run
	set used_codes to {}
end run

on idle
	set promocodes to paragraphs of (do shell script "/opt/local/bin/wget --quiet -O - http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/166916511.rss | while read sentence; do for word in $sentence; do echo $word | grep '^[A-Z0-9]\\{12\\}' | sed 's/\\(.\\{12\\}\\).*/\\1/'; done; done | sort | uniq")
	repeat with promocode in promocodes
		set code_used to false
		repeat with used_code in used_codes
			if promocode = used_code then
				set code_used to true
			end if
		end repeat
		if code_used = false then
			tell application "iTunes"
				launch
				activate
				open location "itmss://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/freeProductCodeWizard?code=" & promocode
				copy promocode to the end of used_codes
				set used_codes to used_codes & promocode
			end tell
		end if
	end repeat
	return 30
end idle

Simply hack it into your AppleScript editor and save it as “Application” with the “Stay Open” option clicked. Now after double-clicking the file that has just been created the script starts fetching a Twitter RSS-feed (in this case @verbsapp’s, heh) every 30 seconds, grabs all iTunes promo-codes it can find and automagically redeems them in the iTunes store. If the could is still valid – lucky you. If not, better luck next time! In any case each code will be added to a temporary “black list” so it won’t be redeemed again.

Feel free to customize and use this script! GNU GPL v2 and stuff. Enjoy.

//update: I’ve just adapted the script a bit more to include promo codes with more than 12 characters length. Besides, I’ve applied John’s “patch” to it – thanks for that one John!

global used_codes
global code_used

on run
	set used_codes to {}
end run

on idle
	set promocodes to paragraphs of (do shell script "for word in `/usr/bin/lwp-download 'http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/166916511.rss' -`; do echo $word | grep '^[A-Z0-9]\\{12,16\\}' | sed 's/\\(.\\{12,16\\}\\).*/\\1/'; done | sort | uniq")
	repeat with promocode in promocodes
		set code_used to "false"
		repeat with used_code in used_codes
			if promocode as string is used_code as string then
				set code_used to "true"
			end if
		end repeat
		if code_used is "false" then
			tell application "iTunes"
				display dialog "Found a new code: " & promocode & " - use it now?"
				launch
				activate
				copy promocode to the end of used_codes
				set used_codes to used_codes & promocode
				open location "itmss://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/freeProductCodeWizard?code=" & promocode
			end tell
		end if
	end repeat
	return 30
end idle

It’s a hardware-unlocked model I bought from a shop on the first of February 2010, it’s in best condition (as the pictures show) and I even ship it within its original packing plus the bill (so you even have warranty left on it). I’m actually only intending to ship it within Germany. For more information, just read the description of the eBay auction.

Good luck bidding!

However, since (at least for me) there’s nothing comparable to Things, I’m trying to benefit from using it the best I can. One possibility to do so is the automation of task-creation. Wouldn’t it be cool to have Things automatically pack specific e-mails together as tasks you would only need to get done – without actually having the trouble of importing the information from Mail.app manually into Things first? I solved this problem for myself by using a feature that Things, Mail.app and Mac OS X provide me by default: AppleScript.

Now, how would this automated task-creation look like. First, a piece of code is needed, which gets the specific information out of an e-mail and tells Things to add those information to its library. The CulturedCode Wiki already provides us such a script and first I’ve tried to use that. Unfortunately, the script seems to be something hacked together with Apple’s Automator and interferes with the UI, what causes the process of task-creation to be visible to the end-user. I didn’t want that – so I just hacked together my own AppleScript using the AppleScript Edior:

on perform_mail_action(info)
	tell application "Mail"
		set selectedMessages to |SelectedMessages| of info
		set theRule to |Rule| of info
		repeat with eachMessage in selectedMessages
			set theSubject to subject of eachMessage
			set theContent to content of eachMessage
			tell application "Things"
				set newToDo to make new to do with properties {name:theSubject, due date:current date, notes:theContent} at beginning of list "Inbox"
			end tell
			set the (read status) of eachMessage to true
		end repeat
	end tell
end perform_mail_action

You can simply copy & paste this code into your AppleScript Editor and save it somewhere in your filesystem as AppleScript.

Next, we need this script to be called as soon as a new mail arrives. Let’s use Mail.app’s “Rules” for doing that!

Mail.app Rule for Mail to Things

As “Run AppleScript” the script you’ve saved before needs to be specified. What rule you use for yourself actually depends on your incoming mails. In this example, I’m checking the mail’s subject to contain the string [ToDo]: for the script to act on that e-mail. Of course, you can also add another action *after* the “Run AppleScript” for Mail.app to delete the mail afterwards. The only thing my script does is to mark the mails that matched as read.

Now try it out on your own. Write yourself an e-mail containing your match-criteria and you’ll see that the script will automatically add a new task within your Things’ Inbox, containing all details from within the mail itself. Of course, this script can be enhanced for example by leaving away the match-criteria from the subject (s/matchpattern//g), by cutting off everything after “– ” (signature) or maybe even delegating the task to a co-worker or an area of responsibility by parsing the mail’s body. Feel free to extend it the way you need it.

PS: You can make the Inbox entries not being due by today by simply removing the “due date:current date” parameter from the script.

//UPDATE:

Because this whole automation topic is so much fun, I’ve just written an AppleScript that automatically adds every conversation-line you receive that starts with the pattern “task: ” to your Things Inbox.

Here’s the AppleScript:

using terms from application "iChat"
	on message received theMessage from theBuddy for textChat
		set theBuddy to full name of theBuddy

		if theMessage starts with "task: " then
			tell application "Things"
				set newToDo to make new to do with properties {name:theBuddy & ": " & my LeetReplacer((get theMessage), "task: ", "")} at beginning of list "Inbox"
			end tell
		end if
	end message received
end using terms from

on LeetReplacer(strng, srch, replc)
	tell (a reference to my text item delimiters)
		set {old, contents} to {contents, srch}
		set {strng, contents} to {strng's text items, replc}
		set {strng, contents} to {strng as Unicode text, old}
	end tell
	return strng
end LeetReplacer

And here’s how you can include it into iChat:

iChat to Things

Enjoy!

Fast forward to today and the Smartphones we’re using in our everyday life – Blackberries, Pres and Pixies, iPhones and N900s. What’s the biggest part in that whole cellular phone market that changed since the mid/end 90s? Of course, it’s the phone’s technology and the features they provide nowadays. But what’s more important, the whole accessories-ecosystem around those phones actually changed. Today, you see people buying additional battery-packs for their Blackberries, since the phones are already that “Smart” that you’d actually need a constant power-source to make them last for more than a couple of hours of heavy usage. When people buy a mobile phone, they also typically throw some on-the-go charger into the bucket. And maybe also some docking-station for the desk, or even equipment for attaching it to their car’s windshields.

Now the whole accessory-ecosystem goes that far, that people even buy overpriced socks or pieces of silicon formed as protection-sleeve for their Smartphones. Especially within the iPhone user-groups you can see such protection-cases being very popular. But let us look from another perspective at especially those accessories.

When someone buys an iPhone, of course, he’s interested in the phone’s features and probably likes the way the phone integrates with the rest of his personal infrastructure, like laptops, computers/Macs, etc. But of course, only a few people really go for the features-pack only. Probably 90% of the iPhone customers look forward to have a phone that’s so exclusive and so beautiful that you’d hardly like to take it out of the showcase. And exactly at that point, all third-party manufacturers of iPhone accessories come in handy. So, people go and get their iPhones, take them out of the packing and lock them right into some ugly silicon, acrylic, plastic or whatever kind of case to protect their beauty against scratches, dirt and other natural enemies of the glossy piano paint. Sure, I mean, they paid and ass full of money for a brick that blinds you by its glint, so why should these people not try the best to protect it the best they can?

Well, sure they can do that – but where’s the point? I think I can talk for everyone that has ever searched for an iPhone case when I say that 99% of them are ugly as hell and not worth the package they’re shipped in. So, why do people then actually buy an iPhone for its cool look, when they “protect” it most of the time with such a case where the phone’s actual look does not matter anymore? For what? So they can slide it out when they’re feeling lucky and show it to everybody for one blink of an eye and then pack it back into its sleeve?

Of course, you can’t blame the people for that. I mean, why can’t accessory-manufacturers produce electro-magnetic protection shields that build an own atmosphere around the iPhone that does not allow anything else to come through than the owner’s washed hands to touch the touchscreen? I mean come on, that’s what people are waiting for! F*ck invisibleSHIELD, f*ck the pseudo translucent plastic shields that doesn’t absorb hits that could cause the iPhone’s screen to break into million small pieces. The people want cases that doesn’t even allow the iPhone to fall down the stairs or into water!

Yeah, right. Now I can definitely remember those days when I got my first Bosch 509 and protected it with one of the dozen plastic-sleeves against the cruel reality.

Think different, people.

First of all, re-install the MacPorts.dmg. After that, check what packages you’ve got installed and activated:

$ port installed | grep -i active

You can save this list by redirecting it’s output via > to any file. Next, clean up the ports:

$ sudo su -
Password:
# port clean all

Next, uninstall *all* installed (even not activated) ports:

# sudo port -f uninstall installed

And last but not least, look at your list, check what software you still need and re-install it:

# port install

You could try to automate the re-installation by something like:

# port install $(cat ./file_containing_list.txt | awk ‘{ print $1 }’ | while read line; do echo -n “$line “; done)

Although I would not recommend it, since you’d like to install different variants on some ports.

Enjoy.

Hi,

I’m having a bit of a trouble while trying to move my CandyBar’s Library from the regular Application Support directory into my Dropbox directory. I did that move on my iMac and everything worked out pretty good. I’m now having the Library running on my Dropbox, so it’s always being synced up to the cloud.

When I open my MacBook now and change the Library path to the Dropbox directory there (since those two Macs are being kept in sync via Dropbox) I can see all libraries contents, but instead of the actual icons or docks, I only see CandyBar-file-icons in the preview. I can even double-click some item from my list to view it in detail, still, no actual icon-image, only the white paper with CandyBar logo on it.

Could you please help me on this/tell me, what’s left to be done so that my sync works? I’m not expecting both CandyBars to work simultaneously, since it would probably break the Library, but at least when I run one after another (what’s the actual use-case here) I expect everything to be in sync.

Thanks in advance,
Marius.
–
Sent from my iMac.

On Nov 17, 2009, at 3:47 AM, candybar@panic.com wrote:

Hi Marius,

It’s currently not possible with Dropbox because whichever protocol Dropbox uses does not support resource forks, which is the part of the icon file where CandyBar stores icon data.

You’ll have to compress the whole library before putting it on Dropbox to make this work.

–
Les
Panic Inc.

Hm…

Update:

On 11/17/2009 97:22AM, devilx@devilx.net wrote:

Hi,

I’m having trouble in using Dropbox in combination with a popular Mac OS X application named “CandyBar” (http://www.panic.com/candybar/). The application itself provides a way to move its existing Library into a custom location, for example right into Dropbox’s folder, unfortunately the sync over two Macs fails. Please read the appended conversation I’ve already had with one of Panic’s support guys for more information.

I would really appreciate if you could provide a bugfix for this issue, to make Dropbox even more usable than it already is.

Thanks in advance and best regards,
Marius.

On Nov 18, 2009, at 11:51 AM, support@getdropbox.com wrote:

Hi Marius,

Yup, their support person is correct.

You can work around this problem by making an archive ZIP file of the file(s) and putting the archive in the Dropbox folder. Just right-click on the file (or a whole folder of files) and select “Create Archive.” The resulting .zip file is safe to put into the Dropbox folder. You can double click on the .zip file to open it and recreate the file(s).

Are are working on this. Add your voice:

https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/4/mac-resource-fork-support#votebox:0

Best,
Kevin Chu

This means: Vote people! Vote!

Apple Magic Mouse

I’ve been using Apple’s newly designed and named Magic Mouse for around a week now and have to say that I’m actually pretty happy to have bought it and replaced my Mighty Mouse with it.

First of all, the new Magic Mouse has no more scroll-ball, what’s probably the biggest change in the whole redesign. Apple finally found a way to remove the always-broken-due-to-dirt scroll-ball by a multi-touch surface that goes across the Mouse’s whole surface. I haven’t had any problems with scrolling yet, except for my habit that lets me always search for the scroll-ball with my fingers, heh.

Besides the new multi-touch surface, the Mouse became way more flat. It really was a weird feeling to work with it in the first few hours, but I got pretty fast used to it and the only thing I’m still missing are the buttons on the Mouse’s side. I had them configured for application-based Exposé and I know that there are some “Middle-Button-Hacks” for the Magic Mouse available which could be used for such features, but still some real buttons would be more comfortable, in my opinion.

However, I really like the new Mouse, especially since it’s a bit heavier and doesn’t feel like a cheap and shaky plastic-puttogether, as the Mighty Mouse did. Regarding the Bluetooth connectivity, I can’t see any differences yet. I didn’t experience problems neither with the Mighty nor with the new Magic Mouse. As soon as I’ll have some information about the power-consumption of the new Mouse, I’ll update this post – yet, I still run the one-time-batteries Apple provides with their devices and it’s still working pretty fine, at a battery-level of 88%. If the discharge-procedure continues straight-line I’d expect the life of those average batteries to end in around three weeks – at least with my more or less heavy usage. Of course, I’ll replace them by re-chargeable batteries, since I’m not really a fan of the one-time-use.

My conclusion on the Magic Mouse is, that it’s indeed a very high priced mouse but also uses the great multi-touch technology to provide best user-experience at the lowest annoyance possible. I think that, if the actual internal hardware is qualitatively good enough, Apple finally did a good and lasting job on this Mouse. And if you’re not one of those fanboys, that really really really need to always have the latest stuff around, you might be sticking to this Mouse for a long time.

Hope this feedback helps some of you at least a bit on deciding whether to get one for yourself or not. Enjoy!

CandyBar makes OS X appear even more lickable than it already is. It allows to simply change each application’s icon and provides a cool management of all the available icon-sets. Besides, also the Dock appearance can be tweaked and managed. It would be really nice, if CandyBar would provide a way to sync the collection from one Mac to another, since now, I need to keep my collections on my iMac and my MacBook manually in sync, what’s pretty meh. However,  although it’s pretty pricy, it’s worth to have it.

Colloquy is the most advanced, free IRC client I’ve found yet. Its feature-list is pretty good and there’s a similar iPhone client available, too. I used this client already in 2006, when I still had my PowerBook and have to say, that it’s pretty bloated and slow on older hardware. But on the current generation of MacBooks, iMacs and MacPros it should be running like a charm.

Width Dropbox you can easily keep your files in sync over two or more different devices, regardless if it’s a PC, a Mac, a Linux or even an iPhone – all your data is always up-to-date. Besides, you can share files with friends and receive shared folder invitations yourself. 2GB of space is being provided for free, more is affordable for some cash. Though, I’d never put sensitive data “into the cloud”.

Echofon is probably the best Twitter-suite available on the Mac and the iPhone. Thanks to their Sync- and Push-Notification-Service it’s a pleasure to use Twitter, even with multiple accounts and on multiple devices. Thanks to the intelligent Sync-Service, Echofon notices when you’re not on your desktop anymore, and starts pushing notifications to your iPhone client when you get mentioned by someone else – very cool! Yet, the notifications will be pushed only every 15 minutes, but from what I’ve heard, the Echofon guys are already working on shrinking this interval. If you haven’t tried out yet – be sure to do soon!

Is there much to say about iPhoto? I think you can call it the image-management application on OS X. Since ’09 it also supports Faces & Places, what makes everything even more sexy. In combination with the photos shot on a GPS-able camera (like the iPhone) it even detects automatically, what place you’ve taken the photo. Although, yet the face-recognition doesn’t work as I would expect it to. You need high quality pictures with much contrast to get iPhoto recognize the people.

I used to be registered on Last.fm since I was using Linux with its Media-Players with Audioscrobbler plugin, so I’ve just continued using this pretty cool service. It let’s me tag the music I listen and discover new tracks I might like. I never tried out Pandora or similar services, so I can’t say whether Last.fm is better or not – I’m just used to it.

After discovering and trying out LaunchBar there was no way around it anymore – not even by using QuickSilver, what I did quite some time. LaunchBar is extremely fast, supports a ton of different Applications and even provides an easy way to write and include your own plugins. I wouldn’t want to miss it again in my daily work.

LittleSnapper in combination with its web-service (former QuickSnapper, now Ember) is a very nice enhancement to the OS X desktop, since it provides a very quick and easy way to share screenshots with others, without having to use “Grab” and manually upload the images to some service like ImageShack. In addition to the Desktop client, I also use the iPhone app to share camera-snapshots with others.

With Money managing finances became as easy as a finger-snip. I bought my license on a MacUpdate Promo for 20% less and have to say that it’s worth every penny, especially when there’s such a friendly and helpful company like Jumsoft behind. Money supports backing up the whole database to MobileMe and by that even synchronization of two Macs with each other. The iPhone client yet only supports sync over WiFi from what I’ve seen, but hopefully there will be MobileMe support in future, too.

Let me just call it “Poor man’s Photoshop” – in an excellent way! Pixelmator is, what GIMP is to the GNOME Desktop. It let’s me create/edit images in an easy and smooth way, without much knowledge of the actual application itself. Pixelmator provides me a light and intuitive application with a feature-list that fits my needs perfectly without being over-bloated.

As the name already says, Quiet Read provides you a way to temporary bookmark for example web-pages and read it later, when there’s more time for it. It’s actually the similar concept Instapaper follows, although it doesn’t really extract your site’s content for any mobile platform, nor does it have any web-service in the background to which you can sync multiple installations. MobileMe support would be a great feature, maybe Bamboo Apps will implement it some day.

Shovebox is a great companion for Things and Quiet Read which also provides a pretty cool iPhone client that’s for free. I got the App itself from within a MacHeist Bundle, where I didn’t need to pay anything for it – and maybe that’s the reason I’m actually using it. Yet, I would not really pay money on this App, since its yet pretty “small” (regarding its features) and I have most things already managed by Things and Quiet Read/Instapaper (free).

Yes, it’s Telephone! And yes! It’s OpenSource! This application allows you to use your VoIP account provided by your ISP directly on your Mac. At the moment, several ISP are supported and the list gets longer and longer. Telephone makes it easy to dial and receive calls on a VoIP account without much hassle.

TextMate – THE Editor. I think, there’s nothing better for writing any kind of code under OS X. This editor is light, fast and provides hell of a feature-set you’ll probably never finish to explore. MacroMates did an excellent job with this application and I know of many tries (especially on Linux) to re-create something similar, but yet no other (GUI-)editor reached TextMate.

Things is probably one of the most amazing task management applications for OS X available today. It provides all you need for successfully managing all your ToDos and even syncs them up to your iPhone client. Two big cons of Things are the yet still not available MobileMe sync (today, it does sync only over WiFi, without even using an encrypted connection) and the pricing on both, the desktop and the iPhone app. Still, the App is just lo-ve-ly and a must of everyone who’s really into task management.

A very nice newsfeed reader with excellent graphical user interface. Times provides you all basic-features you would expect form an RSS-reader plus the possibility to read the whole articles within the application itself. Very nice idea, and pretty cool implementation, though I’d wish it to be faster and not that bloated.

Versions – and you’ll never need to look up svn –help again. Since the last version of Version (ough, what a sentence) it even supports the latest SVN 1.6.x and provides you to work with several different SVN repositories at a time without much practice. Although, with $39 it this application is very pricy.

Viscosity is yet the best user interface for OpenVPN available on OS X, in my opinion. It lets you import your OpenVPN config-files and edit them within a very nice preference-window. Also, it shows you statistics about your running connections and makes OpenVPN easier than it already is – and with $9 it’s quite a fair deal.

Storing passwords, credit-card information and other sensitive data. Wallet allows me to manage all my logins and other passwords in a very nice and fast way, it provides me an add-on for Safari and Firefox and it allows me to sync my Wallet-database via MobileMe and even browse it on my iPhone with its iPhone app – although it took years until the iPhone pendant was available here in germany.

I think, that’s it so far. Besides those application, of course I use the regular tools like Mail.app, iCal, the Address Book, iTunes, the Terminal and all the other not-worth-mentioning programs that come with OS X.

So, what’s new in 0.3? Well, just about everything. I’ve renamed the bundle (at least its metadata), since webOS is not just limited to the Pre and I’ve modified the shortcuts of existing features to fit TextMate’s styling guidelines a bit better. I’ve also created some snippets which can be used for faster code-writing now and in addition to that, I’ve implemented a very own language for the bundle, which can’t be found in the document type picker named as “Mojo”. “Yeah baby!”, as Austin would say now. Actually, yet it’s just a copy & paste of the JavaScript-language implementation in TextMate, but I’m planning to extend it to fit the Mojo-framework even better.

The TextMate bundle is now also available on GitHub, for everyone who can’t wait for me packaging the releases and releasing them here. If you have any ideas for improvement, feel free to contact me by mail or just leave some lines here on my blog.

Enjoy!

Download: Palm_webOS-Bundle-0.3

Download: Palm_webOS-Bundle-0.3

On the one hand, VMware seems to me, especially when running Windows as Guest OS way slower than Parallels. At least from what I’ve tested it seems to be having way more disk I/O and by that produce a heavier load to the Mac. Parallels on the other hand seems to be better performing, but yet it still looks like it’s mostly just “hacked together”. It doesn’t integrate that smooth with my Mac and permanently keeps my Firewall asking me whether to allow its daemons to receive connections. VMware’s look-and-feel is just way better than Parallels’.

On the other hand again, VMware’s Fusion doesn’t provide an iPhone App, what’s definitely a Plus for Parallels. But VMware then again provides me with kind of a virtual appliance store, where I can find pre-installed VMs – many even for free.

Update: So, I’ve just installed Windows 7 on both virtualization-solutions now. The average time for installation was approximately the same and even the performance is not such a big difference. What I’ve noticed: VMware is slower in rendering the Aero-effects while Parallels is slower in disk I/O-related things. I can’t really proof this, it’s just a feeling I get when using the VMs.

Huh, I don’t know. Any comments? I would like to see some in-detail 1:1-comparizon between Fusion 3 and Parallels Desktop 5 Mac, although I don’t think I’ll find something like that…

Update #2: Now, I’ve also installed the latest openSuSE 11.2 on both and was astonished by Parallels’ speed for copying, unpacking and installing 2.8GB of RPMs within around 11 Minutes. I guess the I/O argument isn’t valid any longer now. Hm…

Update #3: Parallels somehow still totally disrupts my workflow. I’ve just booted a Windows Vista VM (pure pain, yes) and Parallels Desktop 5 Mac immediately started to ask me to install its tools. I clicked later and right after the dialog disappeared a new one popped up, that told me something about the VM/Mac profile-synchronization. I clicked on the red X, since I just wanted to test something quick within Vista. Regardless of my intend to dismiss the procedure, Parallels logged me out of my Windows Vista session, so I had to log in again. Again, the profile-sync dialog appeared – I didn’t touch it anymore. Some seconds later a new dialog appeared, that was telling me that Parallels placed some Windows folder right within my Dock – and I was like “WTF?!”. Ouff…

Palm Pre Development Bundle 0.2

Yes, after not even four hours I’ve already finished building the 0.2-release of my Palm Pre Development Bundle for TextMate. In case you’re wondering what weird stuff I’m talking about, please read my previous post first.

However, this second release includes a lot more features than it had before, plus I’ve made use of the CocoaDialog now. Let me describe the new features from the top to the bottom of the screenshot on the left site.

First of all, there’s “Generate New Project”. This lets you execute a palm-generate with all important attributes and opens the created project afterwards using the “mate” terminal-command, which needs to be available for this to work. All you have to do then is simply to save the TextMate project right into your generated project-directory.

Next, we still have “Generate New Scene”. I’ve enhanced the feature now, so that you’ll get a cocoa dialog asking for the scene’s name. Beware: The generation usually works as it should, the only problem is the TextMate project-drawer, which doesn’t seem to refresh by itself. A workaround: Cmd+H to hide TextMate and then click on its Dock-icon to make it appear again. Then all newly generated files should be visible in its drawer.

The next three features work just as before, no enhancements at all. On the fourth, the “Launch Project in Debugging-Mode” feature, I’ve implemented a palm-launch with debugging options, that can be run on an existing, packaged and installed project.

Next, there are ways to close and remove installed Projects. “Close running project” of course only works, when the App is actually running and “Remove installed Project” removes the App from the device. As device for all those commands the first device found by the Palm toolset will be taken – so if you would like to use the Emulator, better disconnect your real device and vice versa.

I’ve also built-in two features that let you simulate test calls and SMS on your Emulator, if you changed from password authentication to SSH public key authentication. You can do this either manually or try to use the feature at the menu’s bottom named “Auto-install SSH-Pubkey on Emulator”. Depending on your SSH-key-setup it works out or… not.

The other seven features allow you to simulate GPS drives on the Emulator – again only if you’ve set-up SSH-Pubkey authentication.

I hope you enjoy this release of the Palm Pre Development Bundle for TextMate!

Download: Palm-Pre-Bundle-0.2

UPDATE: There’s a newer version available! Get it here. Or use GitHub.

The scene generation works like this: You implement your this.controller.pushScene(“Main”);-statement, select the scene’s name (Main, without the quotes!) and select the scene-generation command from the bundle’s menu. The command will immediately generate you a new scene named just the way you chose to name it.

The other three commands can be ran by pressing the keys Fn+Ctrl+F5/F6/F7. Attention: The bundle only works with TextMate Projects! Generate your Palm Pre project like you always do, by using the following command:

palm-generate -p “{ title:’ProjectName’, id:com.my.ProjectName, version:’1.0.0′ }” ProjectName

Then, create a new TextMate Project and drag&drop the folder palm-generate created for you (“ProjectName”) into the Project’s drawer. Save the project within your Project-directory (“ProjectName”) and then run the commands.

This is the very first version of this bundle and I’ll keep constantly improving it with other features that help me and hopefully others on the development of Palm Pre Web-Apps.

Enjoy!

Download: PalmPre-Bundle-0.1

UPDATE: There’s a newer version available now! Get it here.

However, after I bought Money, I exported my whole transaction info from my ING-DiBa account as CSV (since they do not provide me anything else) and tried to import it into Money – and it failed. I was using the latest version (3.4.4 v1938) and had quite a few problems with the CSV import. First of all, the columns haven’t been recognized automatically. Also, I didn’t really knew how to import the transaction-value, since I only had one column containing a positive (income) or a negative (outgoing) number, where Money expected “Withdrawal” and “Deposit”. Also, Money seemed to have problems with the punctuation of the numbers, what cause 1000€ to become 100€. And in general, the software didn’t work well with the CSV my bank provided me. I had to manually cut out the first few lines (which were just some additional information but not party of the transactions) and stuff line that. I was wondering, why this is so, since Squirrel automatically recognized the CSV and imported it just perfectly into my virtual account.

I wrote an e-mail to Jumsoft and explained the problems I have with my freshly purchased Money and of course asked for help. After some more mailing, I got a patched version of Money one day later. I tried it out and: Bam! It worked! The CSV imports work just as they should now, even if there’s still no automatic column recognition. Still, I’m very happy that Jumsoft helped my out that fast and in such an uncomplicated way – I’m not used to this from Apple-related companies anymore.

After I had all my data imported into Money and got everything categorized, synced the info up to my iPhone, what also worked out as smooth as I’d expect it.

The one thing I did not check yet are the possibilities to sync Money over two different Macs. I’m sure it’s possible by using the Dropbox-way, although I would not like to upload such sensitive information to my Dropbox. Maybe it’s possible to sync via W-LAN, dunno.

It seems to be possible to sync different Macs via MobileMe! Hurray! I’ll test it out and give some feedback as soon as possible.

I’ve been working on a web-site that used the jQuery framework to render content on the client side and get information from its back-end, via XmlHttpRequests. The whole built-up worked just fine of every modern, popular browser available in the market – like the Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari (on the Mac platform). Now, I had to test the site and make it workable on the iPhone-plattform as well. The site itself uses OAuth as authentication method and provides the information within a HTTP-header named “Authorization”. The theory is pretty plain: The back-end receives a request, checks for this header and responses accordingly.

However, iPhone’s Safari didn’t behave like the other browsers did. For whatever reason, the XHR was sent to the back-end, including every header that was set on the JavaScript side – except the “Authorization”-header. First, I though that Safari maybe could not handle the parameters of this header, but when I just renamed the setRequestHeader-argument to “Auth”, it worked. It simply just worked.

This happening made me search for other users experiencing this problem, unfortunately there doesn’t really seem to be many users testing JavaScript-sites on their iPhone – to be more precise, I did not find one result on Google that describes the problem I’m experiencing. I though, “Oh well, why not call Apple’s Technical Support?” – bad mistake. I got connected to a very annoyed and stroppy telephone-support which tried to convince me, that the iPhone’s Safari yet does not support Java. When I repeated myself by saying “It’s about JavaScript“, he didn’t really make the impression to understand the difference. I told him what the actual scenario was and all I got as answer was “Fill out the Feedback form on Apple’s site”. This made me a bit angry, because I more and more got the feeling of him trying to simply get rid of me. I asked for someone who is more technically involved into the whole iPhone stuff and he answered with “You’re already calling the most-advanced technical support – there’s no way to go further!”. At this point total disappointment overcame me and the only thing I thought of saying before I would hang-up the phone was “FAIL!” – luckily I was behaving more polite than the support-guy himself. Eh.

The end of the story is, that I (once again) wrote a report via Apple’s Feedback form (which from my impression is saving the submitted content to /dev/null) and implemented a workaround for myself by renaming the “Authorization”-header to “Auth”. Yet again a scenario in which I’m feeling like talking to a wall of bricks and have no possibility to get any information regarding my problem or maybe even correct this sort of bug. I think, this is the other side of closed-source software.

Well, what else can we do then? Oh wait, haven’t we just set-up our Dropbox account recently? So why not use it for poor-man’s-sync?

First of all, move the subfolder of ~/Library/Application Support/Cultured Code/ named “Things” into your Dropbox folder and let it sync up to the cloud. After that, start Things for Mac while pressing the Option (Alt) key and select “Choose Library…” – and choose the Things directory from within your Dropbox-folder.

Then, install Dropbox on your other Mac and again navigate to the Cultured Code directory named above. Now, you just delete the Things subfolder and yet again you start Things while keeping the Option key pressed – and select “Choose Library…“. Then, you select the Things directory from within your Dropbox-folder and you’re done!

CAUTION: This solution allows you the synchronization of Things between two (or more) Macs, but not the simultaneous running! Your Things database might break if you try to run it on both Macs at the same time!

This is a pretty good solution until Cultured Code implements something better.

First of all, the App Store is great. From its theory to its practice, everything is implemented just the way it has to be. Sure, sometimes it’s a little slow and not that responsible as one would expect, but altogether the browsing experience is really great. Why? Because it has to be. Nobody likes to spend money somewhere he doesn’t enjoy browsing for things – regardless whether we’re talking about the #real-life or in virtual. It’s just fun to look through the Apps, find new ones, share them with your friends and of course buy them. And it’s so easy as well. One click, that’s all! Isn’t that just great?

Oh well, yeah, it would be – if. If Apple would have kept the essential concept of their App Store the way they actually planned and intended it to. I mean, let’s think back, to the time before the Apple App Store was launched (what’s only little over a year ago) – what was the general appearance of existing application stores (of e.g. Nokia or for the Windows Mobile Platform)? Exactly. Ugly, slow, confusing, a lot of useless tra…ehrrr… stuff. And then came Apple – BAM! Brand new App Store for mobile applications. Everything was clean, everything was very well working and simple for the end-user to access. Then ago, the App Store provided a few essential and yet well known applications by third-parties. Great apps, with great functionality that even looked amazingly cool.

But then, after a while, it seems like the whole BAM just BAM-MED even more. And more. And more. Of course, Apple was lucky about this fact – more Apps for sale, more cut-offs for themselves. Why not? And do you know what’s the best? Big numbers. What? Yeah! Just as I said it. Big numbers. From the moment on, from which Apple started literally raping the potential of the App store within every Keynote they presented people could see all those big numbers. Thousands of of Apps. Millions of downloads. Et cetera.

But did this really improve the Store? I’m looking around at this very same moment within the App Store and have to say: No. It didn’t. All it improved was Apple’s pockets and the big numbers on their Keynote presentations. I stumble through the App Store and see hundreds and hundreds of Apps, one more useless than the other – Bikini Babes, Gym Babes, Simple To-Do and of course a huge amount of games. Yeah, games. I’m not saying, that games are “useless” in that way. Sometimes, when waiting for the Bus or for your Girl getting changed you appreciate those little time-consumptions. But come on? I mean, spending more than $2 for a game that won’t last any longer than one hour to be played, thanks to Apple’s gorgeous batteries? Who should play those games? Shall I constantly keep my iPhone attached to the power-cord, so I can play two hours of Need For Speed? Isn’t the whole game stuff, that Apple’s trying to sell as “PSP/NintendoDS Killer” just plain dumb and totally impracticable? I’m not saying, that games on mobile phones are no fun in general, but are you re-charging your iPhone every three hours, just to be able to play some games? I mean, I still don’t understand what market Apple really tries to reach with that. My impression is, that people indeed spend money on games like NFS or Sims 3, but only to be able to show-off at parties or other occasions. I don’t believe anybody really playing (and by playing I mean the very same behavior you hear from 15-years old, Norwegian guys with a World of Warcraft account!) the games on the iPhone. At least not till their end. Also I believe, that 70% of the people buying games use in iPod Touch instead, in addition to their iPhone.

Eh, however. Back to the topic. So, the Apple App Store started providing more and more sh… apps, over the past year. Some, useless ones and also some totally useless ones. Of course, in between of all those crap, you’ll sometimes find a pearl, like for example Shazam, Daylite Touch, Things, LittleSnapper, Colloquy, eBay, Ego, Wallet, Squirrel, Shopper, Deliveries, Weightbot, iStat, Beats, Last.fm, RadAlert and many many more. Apps that really have a use and pay-back for the price you spent on them. Unfortunately, those apps aren’t the majority anymore – and it seems to become worse by each day passing by. So what to do?

Of course Apple could stop selling all those other crappy apps. Just reject when developers submit them – and instead include apps that would be worth including. *cough*GoogleVoice*cough* But to be honest, by that, Apple would shoot into their own feet. Why stop selling crappy apps, when there are enough users to buy them? Why rejecting the cut-off, even if it’s just some pennies per app?

So let’s see, what could be Plan B? Uh yeah. Plan B. Sounds always good. How about.. err.. an “Exclusive App Store”? An App Store exclusively for high-rated and (therefor) pricy apps. Yeah, that sounds good, doesn’t it? But wait… who decides what’s “exclusive”? The developers? The users? Or maybe the price? I don’t know how you think, but I’d probably go with the third option. As long as the price is high enough, I don’t believe Apple caring about the actual application’s quality – not esthetically nor functionally. So, what sense would an exclusive App Store have then? Well, I guess no more than just gather more and more money.

I’m really happy that at least there are Blogs and Sites on the web, which take the enormous job of searching through the App Store, filtering the whole crap away and bringing you the best and most beautiful applications available for your iPhone. Without them, I guess I’d have a hard time to fine *anything* that would fit my needs within the actual App Store – and maybe just switch to Android.

So far.

However, I’ve decided to take a quick look at the current iWebKit version and patch the framework to have the sliding-animations working again, even on the latest version. Now, that it seems to be working here and also it seems to be working for Christian, maybe others can also benefit from this.

If you would like to use the sliding-animations (no warranty! :-)) on your iWebKit-based design, just download the Framework package attached to this post and apply it to your iWebKit installation. It should be working pretty much out of the box.

Feel free to report bugs if you should find any regarding the sliding. Enjoy!

Download iWebKit_4.6.2_Framework-likability-patch

And yet another, brand-new Bluebird Theme: Plain.

It’s simple.

It’s light.

It’s Plain!

Download plain.bbtheme

UPDATE: Plain v2!
… just as requested.

Plain v2

Download: plain-v2.bbtheme

Indie Bluebird Theme

Indie-Compact Bluebird Theme

Indie-Mini Bluebird Theme

Three brand-new Themes for Bluebird: Indie, Indie-Compact & Indie-Mini.

Themes were inspired by the Indie Labs.

Download the Indie-Collection!

Simplifique

Yay! Yet another excitingly fresh Theme for the best, free Twitter-Client available for Mac OS X: Bluebird.

“Simplifique” is a very aquaish theme that makes use of WebKit’s features to draw CSS gradients and reflections. Also, Simplifique includes the JavaScript-library written by Na Wong, to convert TwitPic and YouTube URLs to thumbnails.

I hope you like this brand-new theme for Bluebird!

Enjoy.

Download simplifique.bbtheme.zip

The last time I check out the project, there was no such daemon for Unix(-like) platforms but Mac OS X itself. I decided to take a quick look at the independend istatd Project on Google Code and give it a shot. I fetched the sources, built them on a Debian Lenny and ran the daemon with a slighly modified configuration – and it worked!

I found it pretty cool. Actually, I found it so cool that it was the reason for me to buy the actual iPhone App. I have no Mac OS X Servers I’d like to monitor, but I could think of plenty of Linux machines which I’d like to keep an eye on – not as an replacement for Nagios, just as a solution for quick-live-monitoring.

However, I decided to build a Debian package, to make it easier to deploy the istatd on a couple of machines. I attached the Debian package to this post, so you can just download and install it on your Lenny machines. Warning: It’s not a clean and tidy built, lintian conform packge! I just hacked it together to have something that “just works”. And that’s what it actually should. Besides, be warned that the daemon takes quite long to shut-down, due to the fact that I’ve just used the regular /etc/init.d/skeleton to create an own /etc/init.d/istatd script, without going into deep workflow-checks. Here, the script takes something around half a minute to kill the istatd.

Anyway, now I’m going to take a look at the sources and see, if I could probably commit some enhancements to the projects. The last time I was doing C++ is *quite* a time ago, but it shouldn’t be too hard from what I’ve seen so far. On the project’s site it says that there’s no support for fans and temperature measuring, yet. I will check whether it’s possible to use lmsensors for getting those information and maybe hack it in – or even rewrite the daemon in C, what would be the best to do anyway.

Oh well, however. Enjoy the package.

Download: istatd_0.5.4-1_i386.deb

invisibleSHIELD

Four days ago, I ordered the invisibleSHIELD at the invisibleSHIELD Germany GmbH, which arrived today – though the website told me something about 1 – 2 work-days.

After I got it, I unpacked it and read the sparse held documentation within the packaging about how to put it on my iPhone. I was not sure, whether I understood the few pictures right, so I searched on YouTube for a documentation video and found a couple. I looked at two or three and saw that everyone did it the same: Wash hands, turn iPhone off, clean it, spray hands with the solution shipped with the invisibleSHIELD, spray the foil with the solution, “just put it on the iPhone”, press out the solution from the center to the edges and wait until it dries.

And so I did. The first thing I’ve seen was: It’s a total crap to handle the foil. When it’s wet, you can’t really position it, but if you don’t, it will look odd when it dries. If you finally positioned it the right way and start pulling out the liquid using a credit-card or something else, it repositions again. Oh great. You take it of for several times and put it on again and then you finally have it! The middle dried out, it’s nearly “glued”, it’s good positioned and you can start “glueing” the sides. But now really just says “Hello!” again and you remember, that in real life, there is not room without tiny whiny dust-particles. You look at the already glued center of your foil and see that only half of the dust you see there can be removed – the other half lies beneath. Oh great!

invisibleSHIELD

Since it would totally over-stretch and destroy the foil, if you would take it off again, you just say to yourself “it’s not thaaaaaaat baaaaad” and just keep on going. You try to glue the edges, what seems to be pretty much impossible, since the cuts aren’t physically right done to make the foil bend the way it would need to. So you try and try and try and …. still it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. However, it already pissed myself, and I thought of taking it off again and sending it back, but I though.. “ghnar, I don’t want an iPhone case!”. So I took a hair-dryer and warmed the edges to make them less restive. After I finally finished the whole thing, Mr. Reality walked by again and said “Hello!” – again, in real life, there’s no room without dust. Because of this, the sticky foil-edges started to look more and more flooded by little particles of dust – even more than usual, since I had to use a dryer to get the foil into the form it needed to have. Ouff.

Altogether, I’m very, very, very disappointed of the result and I’m lucky I’ve searched and found videos showing how to remove the foil again before starting the whole thing. I can’t believe I really paid €19,16 + €3,64 shipment for something like this.

My advice to everyone who would like to protect his iPhone against scratches: Just be careful. Try not to let it fall down or let other things fall onto it. You won’t become happy with such a foil.