iPhone black hole – A story of missing voicemail

A few months back, and before the 3.1.2 update, I came across a hack that allowed me to use my iPhone tethered to provide an internet connection for a laptop. This was a godsend, it allowed me to grab a connection whenever and wherever I was (provided I could get a cell signal).

I found out that this hack wouldn’t work when updating, but being the good little apple user I was, I ran the update anyway and just assumed that functionality was gone. Having MMS had to be cool, and would make it worthwhile.

To be perfectly honest, I have sent a total of one MMS message, and that’s it. It wasn’t quite the useful feature addition I thought it would be, and I miss the tethered capabilities.

Ok, so that being said, the upgrade to 3.1.2 left a config file on my phone, an “Unsigned” config file. As you likely know, with the 3.1.2 update, unsigned profiles don’t do good things. The least of which for em was to break visual voicemail. (Here’s where I admit how little attention I actually pay to things around me). This broke visual voice mail to a point that I no longer got any notices of voicemail, nor did I get a list of voicemail to listen to.

Long story short, it was this way for a little over two months. Ninety-three messages. I found them thanks to a client that was nice enough (and persistent enough) to send me an email after leaving the voice mail, asking me “what’s up”. So I headed back into the voice mail manually and found everything that had been building up for the last two plus months.

The fix for this is a relatively easy one, delete the unsigned profile, and reset the network settings. This is all found in the settings section.

I hope things are leveled out now, and I hope that no one ends up missing voicemail for as long as I have..

Software reccomendation – Araxis Software

If you’re anything like me, and I’d imagine more than a few other computer users, you end up with multiple versions of the same file. One that you have worked on, another backup, and yet a third that ends up being the most recent and completed version. In the process of this, and moving files back and forth to external hard drives and flash drives, you end up with multiple copies of the same file scattered about. This isn’t really an issue, until you have to go through and find the most recent, accurate file.

Araxis Software makse a piece of software for OSx that really helps with the organization process. Find Duplicate Files, for Mac scans selected folders, and shows all occurrences of files that match based on various criteria. I can go so far as to find matches of files that are filed with different names. It checks against name, size, contents, and checksum. Upon completion, it shows you the results in an easy to read, color coded report, allowing you to act on duplicate files as you see fit.

It’s a free download, and will operate in full mode for 30 days. Upon completion of the trial period, it’s a $15.00 activation. Well worth it.

Logitech Revolution with 10.6?

Like many others, I upgraded to Snow Leopard and was headed all ahead full. Sadly, one of the apps that I couldn’t get installed was the Logitech control center for my MX Revolution mouse. The mouse worked., but mapping of buttons and custom features was not available. USB Overdrive kind of helped, but wasn’t quite as convenient as the native software. (I had to disable it to use the Wacom tablet.) Over at OSxHints, there is a solution, you drill into the install package and install via the Center.pkg file. This one works, and works well. Head on over to the article (here) and happy mousing.

Finally, Snow Leopard allows you to open different apps for different cameras

Running down my weekly reading, and found over at lifehacker an article that mentions the ability to open a different app for each camera you connect to your mac. I thought “How convenient” and “It’s about damn time”. So off to test I went. It works, eac camera I own will now open a different app (if I choose to). This will make life easier for those of us that own an iPhone, and a couple of different digital cameras.

Link to the article at LIfehacker is here

MS Outlook for Mac

According to a press release from MS (and stories everywhere) MS is going to release Outlook for the Mac with it’s Office 2010. This is potentially good news for this Mac switcher, as I have spent the last year looking for something to replace the functionality of my Outlook based PC that I was getting away from when I ran to the mac platform.

I came up with mail.app first, and it was good. Next was Thunderbird, and it was better, and now I am using a combination of iCal, Postbox, and Things. My current incarnation works pretty well, but it still has its shortcomings, and I still wonder some days “why can’t I do all this in one app”?  Maybe I had jsut been brainwashed long enough by using Outlook on the PC side to think that all those things should be combined.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this implimentation works, and how much of the functionality it retains from what I was used to on the PC side. I hope that they do it justice, and I hope that they tie it into the native mac apps / data structure well enough to allow it to “talk” and “play nice” with the native apps. I guess time will tell.

The MS press release can be read here.

Stories of Apple, Google, and AT&T – Google Voice

It seems that an app that I would have used alot, (and I mean for EVERYTHING) has been cut out of the itunes app store. I read about it’s cut before I got a chance to find it and grab it, though I’m not too sure that it ever made it to a point that i could have.
I’m talking about an app to integrate Google’s voice services with the iPhone. Google has aquired what was once known as Grand central. One phone number that you can control and forward to multiple numbers, voicemail, sms, and cut rate long distance services are all part of the package. It’s an amazing set of features for a free package (the outbound calls are not free, but the charges are minimal)

So, to get on with the story, apparently there was an app ready, that for one reason or another was not approved / removed from the app store. Apple says it was due to “feature overlap” and some of the tech pundits have speculated it was due to pressure from AT&T. Who really knows, but it has wound up with the FCC investigating.

This doesn’t sound good for either Apple or AT&T, as it can’t be a positive thing to have them digging around into why you do what you do.

I don’t really wish any ill will on Apple or AT&T (well not Apple anyway) as they have always taken pretty good care of me. I would love to see an openess to new apps, and let the public determine what succeeds / fails.

More on the FCC inquiry here

Tasks – From PC and Palm to Newer Technology

After years of using Outlook, and getting used to all the little idiosyncrasies it contains, the change over to OSx was a little disheartening. Back in the PC days, I had outlook and a palm device. Nothing like the new phones and the like, I’m talking about a Palm IV (modem and all). It synced with outlook, and all contacts and tasks were there in perpetuity. It made it easy to keep track of things and until the Palm died, it was GTD nirvana (at least for the early 90s). I made the change over to Mac, and then recently to the iPhone and I still hadn’t found anything to take the place of the task list in Outlook. Something integrated with email would be nice (or at least close to what I was used to). I have struggled along with text edit, and a very simple process of adding and deleting tasks. Even better would be something that tied into the iPhone, and allowed me to kind of replace the process I once used with the Palm.

I fumbled through a few free apps for the iPhone, and some were nice, but none really connected with the desktop the way I was looking to. This last week I found “Things” made by Cultured Code. It isn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it has caused me to re evaluate what it was I was looking for. There is a desktop app available for $49.95 that nicely handles your task lists, and allows you to integrate them with your calendar (iCal, and you can sync with google calendar). Short of being integrated with e-mail, this is what I was after. I have also found that being able to change e-mail clients without changing my task workflow is a nice feature.

To top it all off, there is an iPhone app available that syncs with the desktop version. So, it appears that I have come full circle, and ended up with a good way to track tasks. It’s not quite the days of the PC and palm, but then I might not want to be exactly where I was back then. The frills of OSx and the iPhone make this well worth a shot if you are looking to get away from old tech, and still keep track of your task lists.

Ever wanted to bring a shared google calendar into iCal?

I’ve seen many ways to sync claedars, and though there are many that work pretty well, they all seem to have their limitations. I’ve kind of ended up working around this one by setting up a google calendar and pointing my iCal accounts to that one. This allows me to make changes, and update on any machine at home, or the iPhone, and have things make their way to a central location. So far it has worked pretty well.

The setup is pretty straightforward. The link to the Google calendar is shown on the lower section of the information tab for the google calendar. It’s the address listed in the calendar address section , and it is parentesis. It can be a gmail username (if its the primary calendar, or a long address including @group.calendar.google.com if it’s an additional calendar for that gmail user)

Adding it to iCal is pretty simple. Go to the preferences of iCal, and the accounts tab. Add an account, call it what you’d like. Enter the userame and password (these must have access to the google calendar that you are trying to access)

Then go to the server properties tab, and enter the address for the calendar in this format:   https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/***********/user

(Replace the ****** with the address you found earlier in the google calendar setup.

That’s basically all there is to it, the calendar will show up in your ical menu, and you can now add / remove appointments and events easily.

This also works as a push over to the iPhone if you have your phone set up that way.

Let me know if you have any other ways of accomplishing this one. I’m interested.

iPhone, iTunes, iPhoto limitations

With iPhone in hand, and the learning curve starting to even out a bit, I’ve decided to put photos on it. Seemed like a good idea, after all this device is made for that sort of thing. Being able to share images with friends, and show them to people seems like a great feature.

There are some drawbacks to this, most likely related to how I use my mac for photo storage. If I were to use iPhoto, or Aperture, I’d be fine. They both allow you to organize your images by collection, and send those collections to you phone. Being able to use collections helps keep everything straight but keeping your photos grouped as you have them grouped in the software.

Like I said, if I used that software I’d be all set. I, however, do not use either. I am a Lightroom user, and have so many images in LR that it just didn’t make sense to switch over, or to keep 2 libraries.

Lightroom doesn’t directly support the iPhone, though you can size and export images to a folder, then import that folder via iTunes. This works nicely, but does not allow for multiple folders, or changing the order that the images are displayed. (They are ordered by filename)

So, though there are some other software packages out there for the PC / Windows side of things, I have been unable to find an equivalent for the OSx world. I have been relegated to exporting them as jpegs, bringing them into iPhoto, and then sending them to the iPhone via iTunes.

If anyone happens to have a better workflow that includes LR, please let me know.

Moving video to your other devices – ipod – iphone – apple tv

If you’re anything like me, you want to control your content, and be able to transfer it to any of your devices so you can take it with you. I’m betting you have been frustrated in the number of steps necessary, and the cost associated with accomplishing this. Well, in looking around, I came accross a nice one window solution for getting your video to your portable device (or apple tv). It’s called video monkey, and is up on sourceforge. It’s an evolution of iSquint which was dropped by the developers. Thankfully, they decided to release the source so the guys of video monkey could continue to fight the good fight. Take a look, and give it a shot, I think you’ll be glad you did.