CocoaTech's Path Finder - Versatile Encoding Helper

CocoaTech's Path Finder tool is a versatile Finder replacement. One problem that you might have if you do any work with data, is importing CSV files that are in the UTF-8 format, and which contain multi-byte characters such as Japanese, into Excel.

To import a UTF-8 CSV into Excel, you need to re-save into a format that Excel will accept, because it ironically does not accept the quite-universal UTF-8. I tried opening my UTF-8 CSV with TextMate and Text Edit to do the re-save into a different encoding, but neither of those allow me to save to Shift JIS, which renders Japanese characters so Excel can import them properly.

I saw that Path Finder has a native Text Editor, and thought I would try it. Sure enough, it allows you to re-save a file in Shift JIS and with a TXT extension, which can then easily be imported into Excel, unmunged.

Thanks CocoaTech!

Greylisting in Snow Leopard Server, or not

Apple's OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6 implements Greylisting, an anti-spam technique based on forcing sending SMTP servers to "slow down" before they can deliver. This is great for reducing spam, but it also has the perhaps undesired effect of causing delivery delays. Sometimes really, really loooong delivery delays.

In SLS, when you enable anti-spam in your Mail server (which is postfix), greylisting is automatically enabled. Because there are no readily available manuals on how to use this feature, from Apple, you may want to turn it off. Note that I'm skittish about changing config files like in a normal Unix server in an Apple server, because Apple is known to simply change vast portions of their server products without much notice. It's possible that you'd spend time implementing, and they change the way it has to be done so you have to redo it. Anyway, here's how to disable:

How to Disable Greylisting in Snow Leopard Server

Of course, as implied above, you can stop Greylisting by turning off spam filtering altogether. However, to be more specific and just disable Greylisting, do the following:

1. From Terminal on the server (ssh'ed in or direct), do "sudo bash" to login as root. Then use nano to edit /etc/postfix/main.cf
2. Remove the "check_policy_service unix:private/policy" string from the line that starts with "smtpd_recipient_restrictions" near the bottom of the file. Save, and exit nano.
3. Issue a "postfix reload" to reload the configuration.
4. Use the "exit" command to quit the sudo bash root shell.

I'm a little miffed that Apple would enable this by default and not implement any easy way to edit the greylists or whitelists. At any rate, you can read a couple articles on greylisting, or just wait for Apple. Time however, waits for no man. :-)

Textmate Regular Expression Search and Replace

I use and love the text editor Textmate, which has some powerful functions. One thing that it can help with is quickly editing text files, and for example today I used it for searching lines in a mail system's "aliases" file. I wanted to remove 50-odd lines with the word owner in them, so I used the Find command with Regular Expression checked.

The search string is:

^.*owner.*$

If you enter that string which means to find the lines with owner in them, check "Regular Expression," and leave a blank in the Replace box, Textmate will blank out the lines for you. Convenient!

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• blog:Cogley - Recovery of Corrupt Apple Leopard Server Open Directory

  Corrupt Apple Leopard Server Open Directory Services Thu, Oct 15 2009 22:24 | LDAP, Open Directory, tips, software, Troubleshooting, apple | Permalink I had a Leopard Server crash and burn so that nothing was responding, and when I forced the server to reboot (as well as rebooting a bunch of other ancillary servers and services just in case), I found an ominous sign in Server Admin, along with no user accounts in Workgroup Manager. Eek! Server Admin's Open Directory showed:

  tags: open, directory, apple, leopard, server, recover, crash

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Corrupt Apple Leopard Server Open Directory Services

I had a Leopard Server crash and burn so that nothing was responding, and when I forced the server to reboot (as well as rebooting a bunch of other ancillary servers and services just in case), I found an ominous sign in Server Admin, along with no user accounts in Workgroup Manager. Eek! Server Admin's Open Directory showed:

LDAP Server is: stopped

Password Server is: running

Kerberos is: stopped

Not good. Never fear, though.

How to Fix a Corrupted Open Directory

First, don't panic. Apple's forums show you can use "

slapd -Tt

" to check the configuration.

myhost:~ administrator$ sudo bash

Password: ********

bash-3.2# /usr/libexec/slapd -Tt

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

bdb(dc=myhost,dc=mydomain,dc=com): PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery

bdb_db_open: Database cannot be opened, err -30978. Restore from backup!

bdb(dc=myhost,dc=mydomain,dc=com): DB_ENV->lock_id_free interface requires /

an environment configured for the locking subsystem

backend_startup_one: bi_db_open failed! (-30978)

slap_startup failed (test would succeed using the -u switch)

The "run recovery" here means to run the

db_recover

command (a.k.a.

slapd_db_recover

on other *nix LDAPs). Use the -v switch to make the result verbose.

bash-3.2# db_recover-v -h /var/db/openldap/openldap-

openldap-data/ openldap-slurp/

bash-3.2# db_recover -v -h /var/db/openldap/openldap-data/

db_recover: Finding last valid log LSN: file: 6 offset 4190936

db_recover: Recovery starting from [6][4190795]

db_recover: Recovery complete at Thu Oct 15 21:57:41 2009

db_recover: Maximum transaction ID 80000225 Recovery checkpoint [6][4190936]

Ah, that looked nice. Then run

slapd -Tt

again to test, and if all is well, exit out of the sudo'ed bash shell.

bash-3.2# /usr/libexec/slapd -Tt

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

overlay_config(): warning, overlay "dynid" already in list

config file testing succeeded

bash-3.2# exit

myhost:~ administrator$

After a few minutes

launchd

should kickstart the Open Directory services again so that you see:

LDAP Server is: running

Password Server is: running

Kerberos is: running

A couple of tests shows I once again have Wiki Server, iCal Server, Jabber Chat etc, all the Open Directory and Kerberos-based services back on line. Breathe a sigh of relief if this helped you and let me know in the comments!

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• blog:Cogley - Linking File Types and Apps in OS X

  How to Re-associate File Types with Applications in OS X - If you are an OS X user, and you find files of a certain type, say PDFs, are opening in one applications but you want them to open in a different one, you can easily change the association using Finder.

  tags: os, x, apps, association, file, type, tiger, leopard, snow

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Linking File Types and Apps in OS X

If you are an OS X user, and you find files of a certain type, say PDFs, are opening in one applications but you want them to open in a different one, you can easily change the association using Finder.

How to Re-associate File Types with Applications in OS X

Here's how:

1. Select a file in Finder and ctrl-click it.
2. Select "get info" from the context menu.
3. Find the "open with" section in the "get info" menu that appears.
4. Select your desired application from the drop down list.
5. Click "change all" to set the association between that file type and the application you selected.

This has worked in OS X Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard. You can use this method to, say, open all PDFs in the native OS X "Preview", Adobe's Acrobat, or Skim, for instance. Please leave a comment if this helped you. Enjoy!

Safari Makes it Trivial to Download All Images on a Page

Of course it should not be used for nefarious purposes, but Apple's Safari browser makes it trivial to download all the images or files on a web page you are visiting. I had The Logo Factory create a special logo for my company eSolia's 10th anniversary, and they prepared a page with the deliverables on it. I did not want to download each one individually, and I remembered that the Safari Activities window allows you to access the objects on a page directly, such as various file attachments on a page.

O' Sensei of Safari, How Do We Achieve this Magic?

You can use Safari's Activity and Downloads windows, both available in the Window menu in Safari, in this way:

1. Browse the page you want to download from, then open Activity from the Window menu.
2. Find the page among the other pages if you have multiple tabs open. Use the disclosure triangle to open the outline of the objects on the page.
3. Find and select your download targets. Press Cmd-C to copy to clipboard.
4. Display the Downloads dialog, also available in the Window menu, then paste into it. Cmd-v.

You should see the images or files start to download in the Downloads window. I hope this is helpful to someone.

Directory Utility MIA in Snow Leopard?

Is Directory Utility, which has been available in /Applications/Utilities, missing in action in Snow Leopard? No, it's just been moved to Core Services. Access it this way:

1. Open Apple Menu, System Preferences.
2. Enter Accounts, clicking the lock to authenticate as needed.
3. Click Login Options at the bottom of the accounts list.
4. Click Edit, to the right of "Network Account Server."
5. Click Open Directory Utility.

You use Directory Utility to connect to Active Directory, Open Directory, or other LDAP servers.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• blog:Cogley - Changing a Bike Inner-tube

  I got a flat the last hill of my 100 km bike trip last Sunday. Thank heavens it did not happen at km 50 or something. I went to a bike shop in Shinjuku today to get a replacement tube, and they were kind enough to tutor me on how to replace it. How to Change that Tube Here's the process I learned at the bike shop: Purchase a tube, tire levers (they come in sets of three, usually) and rim tape of the appropriate size. My rims are 26 inch with 1.5 Schwalbe Marathons on them now, and you just have to be sure what you buy is the right size. If you can give them the rim size, that's better too. The tubes come with various valves, and I have "French" valves now so that is what I got. All told, the cost to buy the parts was about JPY 1300 (USD 13).

  tags: bike, cycling, inner-tube, change, rim, tape, spoke

• blog:Cogley - Fixing EMobile USB Dialup on Snow Leopard

  I just installed Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 with no problems after getting a replacement for a bad Family Pack install disk (the Shibuya Apple Store said that many people reported the same), and found that my EMobile Huawei D02HW USB Wireless Dialup card, which was fine in Leopard, died when Snow Leopard was installed. Reinstalling the EMobile Huawei D02HW on Snow Leopard Here's how I fixed it:...

  tags: emobile, d02hw, apple, snow, leopard, huawei

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Changing a Bike Tire Inner-tube

I got a flat the last hill of my 100 km bike trip last Sunday. Thank heavens it did not happen at km 50 or something. I went to a bike shop in Shinjuku today to get a replacement tube, and they were kind enough to tutor me on how to replace it.

How to Change that Tube

Here's the process I learned at the bike shop:

1. Purchase a tube, tire levers (they come in sets of three, usually) and rim tape of the appropriate size. My rims are 26 inch with 1.5 Schwalbe Marathons on them now, and you just have to be sure what you buy is the right size. If you can give them the rim size, that's better too. The tubes come with various valves, and I have "French" valves now so that is what I got. All told, the cost to buy the parts was about JPY 1300 (USD 13).
2. Remove the wheel with the flat from the bike. I have Shimano Deore XT rim brakes, and there's a place you hook the brake wire's flange in, which if released, gives you the leeway to get the tire off.
3. If you have French valves, completely remove the bolt that keeps the valve in place in the rim.
4. On the opposite side of the wheel from the valve, insert a tire lever between the rim and the tire, and use it to lever the tire out, in that area. Take care not to pinch the tube while you do it, just in case you want to fix and reuse it. You'll notice there's a kind of hook on the one end of the lever - this goes onto a spoke to keep the lever in place, holding the tire edge out and away from the rim.
5. A couple of spokes away, do the same thing again with the second lever, to get more of the tire out.
6. Now you should be able to slide the third lever under the edge of the tire, and rotate it along the rim and tire edge to get the tire out. You can keep the one edge of the tire in the rim.
7. Slide the flatted inner tube out, taking care not to damage it if you want to repair it.
8. Inspect the tire inside and out for damage. There could be something sharp embedded in the tire. Remove any sharp objects puncturing the tire. In my case there were two pieces of a broken spoke embedded in the tire and in the rim tape. I could only find the one embedded in the tire by running my hand along the inside. The rim tape problem was quite obvious!
9. If you either remove the tire completely or just push it to one side, you should be able to see the rim tape, which prevents the inflated tube from working its way into the nipple bolts for the spokes. Rim tape prevents flats, but, in time it gets worn out too. If it has been mashed into the nipple bolts too much, and there are sharp edges, replace it. Rim tape is basically like a big rubber band with a hole for the valve. You can use a flat blade driver or an awl to work old rim tape out, and to lever new rim tape on. In my case, the yellow rim tape was two years old and starting to get dry, and, it had been punctured by the old spoke bit, so I replaced it.
10. Put a little air into your new tube, because it is easier to work with the tube if it is slightly inflated.
11. Insert the valve through the rim tape and rim, and put the valve bolt on to secure it.
12. To put the tire back, this time start on the valve side (removal starts opposite the valve). You can use the tire levers to get started putting the tire back into the rim, but be careful not to pinch the new tube. Having the tube slightly inflated will make things a little easier to maneuver. Once you get the tire in a little, use your hands to kind of "knead" the tire back in, working around it. Schwalbe Marathons are a little tough, as they have Kevlar inside and are consequently a bit harder rubber.
13. Check that the valve is 90 degrees to the rim. If it is angled, work the tire and rim until you can rotate it so it is perpendicular to the rim.
14. Inflate the tube to the correct psi pressure. Confirm that it's holding air and that you have not damaged the tube.
15. Deflate the tube once, then re-inflate. The bike shop said this last step really helps to prevent flats.
16. Go ride!

Hope this procedure helps someone with their tube troubles. Happy riding!

Fixing EMobile USB Dialup on Snow Leopard

I just installed Snow Leopard OS X 10.6 with no problems after getting a replacement for a bad Family Pack install disk (the Shibuya Apple Store said that many people reported the same), and found that my EMobile Huawei D02HW USB Wireless Dialup card, which was fine in Leopard, died when Snow Leopard was installed.

Reinstalling the EMobile Huawei D02HW on Snow Leopard

Here's how I fixed it:

1. Deleted /Applications/EMobile D02HW Utility.app.
2. Deleted /System/Library/Extensions/HuaweiDataCardDriver.kext
3. Deleted Huawei folders and files in /System/Library/Modem Scripts and in /Library/Modem Scripts
4. Emptied the Finder trash.
5. Rebooted the system.
6. On plugging in the USB Modem, the system mounts it in Finder as a USB memory. Ran the installer EMobile D02HW Utility.app and got an error regarding AutoOpen. Bypassed this by opening the installer package via "Show Package Contents" in Finder, and ran the Contents/Resources/EMOBILE_D02HW_Drv_App.pkg, which is the actual installer. Now it runs with no errors. AutoOpen be damned.
7. After the install, rebooted again.
8. After the reboot, I can add the Huawei Mobile modem in Network Preferences. Phone number for these devices is "*99***1#", user name em, password em.

I read a report that you can simply change tone to pulse dialing in the existing Huawei Mobile settings (from Leopard, for instance), so maybe the failure just has something to do with a plist not working somewhere and changing that setting refreshes it, but removing and reinstalling works fine too.

Give it a try if you have trouble, and I hope this short tip is helpful for someone.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• Snap!Japan - Japan Rail is becoming more Gaijin

  I noticed something interesting. The JR East Japan announcements about the next station are done in a female voice, and she used to say the station names with proper Japanese pronunciation. The next station is, SHIMbashi. They've re-recorded some of the announcements though, seemingly with the same "voice talent", and there's a subtle difference. She now says the station names with a "gaijin" accent. The next station is, shimBOSSshi. What's up with that? Were people not getting the names right? Did some consultant trying to justify their existence tell JR that they needed to say it more like "gaijin" say it? I'd say that would be gaijin of the American English speaking variety, though. How curious. I noticed it the other day, and today it was the original way, so I am not sure what the pattern is yet. Maybe different lines have different patterns. Japanese are pretty obsessed with regional language differences, though. There's a comedy duo called "Yuji Koji" who hysterically make fun of the difference between the regions and Tokyo. Even my car Navi has a setting to make it talk with an Osaka accent. 300m saki, hidari yade.

  tags: japan, rail, pronunciation, announcement

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• blog:Cogley - Hot Brass, Percussion and Visual - BLAST!

  Blast! was born from the Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps, which exited the DCI circuit to form Blast!, a kind of indoor, theatre-based "Brass Theatre" troupe taking the high skills of the best drum corps performers, and performing a kind of greatest hits of drum corps, to thrill audiences everywhere. (Not to mention winning Tony and Emmy awards as well.) The Japan Blast! tour features snare drummer Naoki Ishikawa, who was a champion "individuals" competitive snare player when he marched in DCI, and who is now a featured performer in the Japan Blast! show. He's got incredible chops, and they feature him well during the Battery Battle portion of the show. The video is the percussionists performing during the break between sets, on kitchen stools and a garbage pail. Humorous. :-) The Blast! performers did all the hot drum corps favorites like "Everybody Loves the Blues", "Appalachian Spring", "Medea", and "Malaguena" as well as a number of great numbers that were new to me. Overall, the show was about 2 hours of exciting music and visual performance, which had the audience on their feet by the end.

  tags: blast!, ishikawa, naoki, star of indiana, tokyo

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Hot Brass, Percussion and Visual - Blast!

My daughter and I went to see what's said to be the final Japan tour of Blast!. The brass, percussion and visual performers are young, but are among the best in the world on their instruments. The music and visual performance skills were out in force this afternoon.

If you're not familiar with Drum and Bugle Corps, it's mostly a summer activity governed by the non-profit organization "Drum Corps International", with corps members moving in around May to begin hard 12-hour "all days" rehearsals, and competing throughout the summer across the USA, until finals in August. Each corps has 150 members, which consist of brass, percussion and "color guard" members who do equipment work with rifles and flags while dancing. There are 12 corps competing for the top spot at finals, but many more corps at various skill levels competing all summer. These shows are performed on football fields in stadiums, but the similarity to college marching band ends there, since they exist to compete and perform like it too!

Blast! was born from the Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps, which exited the DCI circuit to form Blast!, a kind of indoor, theatre-based "Brass Theatre" troupe taking the high skills of the best drum corps performers, and performing a kind of greatest hits of drum corps, to thrill audiences everywhere. (Not to mention winning Tony and Emmy awards as well.)

The Japan Blast! tour features snare drummer Naoki Ishikawa, who was a champion "individuals" competitive snare player when he marched in DCI, and who is now a featured performer in the Japan Blast! show. He's got incredible chops, and they feature him well during the Battery Battle portion of the show. The video is the percussionists performing during the break between sets, on kitchen stools and a garbage pail. Humorous. :-)

The Blast! performers did all the hot drum corps favorites like "Everybody Loves the Blues", "Appalachian Spring", "Medea", and "Malaguena" as well as a number of great numbers that were new to me. Overall, the show was about 2 hours of exciting music and visual performance, which had the audience on their feet by the end.

Kudos to Blast! for a great show!

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• blog:Cogley - OS X Fonts, Managed by Linotype

  If you pay any attention at all to typography, layout, type faces, fonts, leading, kerning, tracking and the like, and have ended up amassing a collection of type faces from the famous designers and font foundries, you'll end up needing some method of organization. The type face or font organizers that come with operating systems are basic, so vendors have channeled some Gutenberg and come up with replacements.

  tags: linotype, fontexplorer, x, pro, fonts, type, typeface, manage

• blog:Cogley - Buh-bye Plaxo, hello DavMail.

  Despite its once-poor reputation, I have been using Plaxo to keep my iCal and Exchange calendar sync'ed as well as a way to keep in touch with business contacts. I've been syncing using the Plaxo Outlook client on an old clunker of a Windows box at work, to go Outlook to Plaxo, and also using the Plaxo iCal client on Mac OS X, to go iCal to Plaxo. It also works to sync Address Book entries. My goal in using it was to be able to use the Mail and iCal software in OS X, and not MS Entourage. I dislike Entourage because it puts your mail, calendar and address items in a single large monolithic database. Hard to back that up, and, it gets really, really large after a while.

  tags: plaxo, davmail, fee, sync

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

OS X Fonts, Managed by Linotype

If you pay any attention at all to typography, layout, type faces, fonts, leading, kerning, tracking and the like, and have ended up amassing a collection of type faces from the famous designers and font foundries, you'll end up needing some method of organization. The type face or font organizers that come with operating systems are basic, so vendors have channeled some Gutenberg and come up with replacements.

Linotype's FontExplorer X Pro 2.0 for Apple's OS X is one such program. I started out using their free, unsupported FontExplorer X and have recently trialled and purchased the pro, commercial version, called LinoType FontExplorer X Pro 2.0 available here for EUR 79 (as of 3 Aug 2009). As far as I'm concerned, it's worth every penny.

You can get details from this PDF brochure or from the website, but let me start by quoting from the manual:

FontExplorer X Pro is a powerful professional font management tool providing you with a clear overview and complete control over the fonts on your computer. FontExplorer X Pro helps you to organize your fonts according to your personal preferences, you can activate and deactivate fonts as you please, while functions such as font detection in documents make it easy for you to identify the fonts required for your projects. A recurring problem is that documents are frequently displayed incorrectly when the necessary fonts are not available on a computer. With FontExplorer X Pro you can now easily buy the fonts you need for a job via the FontExplorer X Pro Store.

FontExplorer X Pro ("FEX Pro" for short) gives you a complete type face or font management solution on OS X, and you can even have it manage a consolidated font library in a specific folder, a la the iTunes or iPhoto libraries. There are plenty of built-in fields that you can sort on and some built-in sets, but you can also tag, label or comment your fonts and create "smart sets" which are like iTunes smart playlists. You could create a set per project, for example, to indicate what fonts were used for a client job, or, you might create sets of pleasing combinations of fonts.

Aside from the customizable main-screen preview you can see in the screenshot at the top of this post, FEX Pro can show you all the details about a font file including version and format (OpenType or TrueType etc.), the complete character set and even missing characters as well as Unicode or HTML character codes, sample text in "running text" or "waterfall" formats, the legal information such as embedding rights, and kerning pairs.

Sounds Great, but What's the Point

But what's the point? Why manage your fonts? Every font file you load on your system requires resources to deploy. If you have 1000s of fonts, that's going to require a large amount of memory to load every time, and will certainly slow down application loading and system performance.

A major benefit of a font manager like FEX Pro, is that it lets you activate fonts when you need them, freeing system resources for other purposes. FEX Pro even lets you auto-activate fonts, deciding which apps can or cannot request fonts, and even associate a font set with a specific application so that that set gets loaded when, say, Photoshop loads.

Minor Issues

The gripes I have with FEX Pro are minor. I really love the application. However:

• It should give advice on what combinations of fonts "work together" especially for non-designer types like me.
• The consolidation method is opaque, and it should be easy.
• Backup of font metadata you add, like labels, should be automatic.

What I had to do to consolidate my library into ~/Documents/Fonts was the following:

1. Set the library to my desired folder and tell FEX Pro to move the fonts there. This is done in Preferences, Advanced.
2. Backup all font files manually.
3. Run Tools menu, "Clean System Fonts Folders..." which moves any non-system font files from three system font folder locations to a backup folder on your desktop.
4. Re-import the backup folder on the desktop, letting FEX Pro organize into its folder.
5. Check for duplicates and prune.

That's too many steps when it could be a single step that does things in a non-invasive way, to get you ready to use a single folder, if you're a user wanting a simple solution.

Get It

My recommendation is, if you're on OS X and care about type aesthetics, buy FontExplorer X Pro. It's worth it and is a welcome addition to any OS X user's toolkit.

Plaxo Outlook Sync Now Fee-based, going DavMail

Despite its once-poor reputation, I have been using Plaxo to keep my iCal and Exchange calendar sync'ed as well as a way to keep in touch with business contacts. I've been syncing using the Plaxo Outlook client on an old clunker of a Windows box at work, to go Outlook to Plaxo, and also using the Plaxo iCal client on Mac OS X, to go iCal to Plaxo. It also works to sync Address Book entries. My goal in using it was to be able to use the Mail and iCal software in OS X, and not MS Entourage. I dislike Entourage because it puts your mail, calendar and address items in a single large monolithic database. Hard to back that up, and, it gets really, really large after a while.

At any rate, that setup working around Plaxo has worked well for me, but last week as of 30 July 2009, Plaxo changed tacks and will start charging for the Outlook sync services. This is part of the announcement email they sent me:

Act now: keep your Outlook Contacts in sync

Outlook sync will become part of Plaxo Premium effective July 30, 2009. This change will allow us to continue to invest in the development and support of this valuable (but high-cost) feature. In order to continue syncing your Outlook address book and calendar via Plaxo, you'll need to upgrade to Plaxo Premium.

If you act before July 30, you can lock in a 20% lifetime discount on Plaxo Premium. You'll get Plaxo Premium for $47.95/year, a $12.00/year savings off the regular $59.95 annual subscription price. In addition, you can try Premium, risk-free, for 30 days.

Of course, I appreciate that Plaxo might quite reasonably want to charge for sync, since it's got to be one of the most difficult things to do, programmatically. Lots of variables and expensive to maintain. Not being interested in yet another subscription service however, I decided to re-visit the topic and see if I could find a way to sync for less coin than that. I assume that since iPhone OS 3.0 supports connectivity to Exchange, that native Exchange connectivity for OS X iCal cannot be far behind.

Meanwhile, however, to have this iCal:Exchange sync while we wait for Snow Leopard, one can make use of the excellent open source project "DavMail." This is a simple app you start at login and keep running, that brokers connections between IMAP, CalDav and LDAP clients, and an Exchange server. You set it up for your platform, which in my case was Mac OS X, and then set up your Calendar, Mail and Directory so they access ports on localhost, your local machine.

DavMail sits there listening for the connections you set up, and it then talks to your Exchange server as though it were an Outlook Web Access server. Pretty slick, and it uses only about 70MB of memory and hardly any CPU on my system.

If it crashes and burns, I'll let you know in an update. Enjoy!

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• Snap!Japan - Japan Marine Day's Imperial Roots

  The third Monday in July is "Marine Day" here in Japan, called "Umi no Hi" (海の日) in Japanese. It was established in 1996, a few years into my life in Japan. It's common knowledge that the day marks the return of the Emperor Meiji from a boat trip. More specifically, it's the day of his return to Yokohama port in Meiji 9 (1876), from a royal light-house inspection tour to the northernmost prefectures, on a Scottish-built schooner called the "Meiji Maru".

  tags: umi, no, hi, marine, day, japan

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• blog:Cogley - Twitter Meishi Generator from @faa

  Twitter user @faa has created a "Twitter Meishi Generator", or, "TMG", which you can use to create a Twitter business card with your last tweet or bio, a QR code of your URL, in an assortment of delightful colors. Click the image to see an annotated version of this Twitter Tool.

  tags: @faa, rick, cogley, twitter, meishi, generator, business, card

• Snap!Japan - Kenkoshindan Health Check

  My wife and I did our yearly "kenkoshindan" health check via our insurance provider the other day. If you are on the national insurance plan or one of the big alternative providers, you're supposed to get this kenkoshindan once a year. My wife and my secretary at work badgered me into submission, so I finally took the plunge and got the big one-day "ningen dock" (人間ドック, and kind of like "human dry-dock" in its meaning). So What's this Ningen Dock? Glad you asked. Being over 40 (ok, ok, I'm 43), this time I signed up for the standard ningen dock set, instead of the wimpy blood and urine test only. Once you get to the center, after NOT eating breakfast, they give you a nice top/bottom to change into, so you to to a locker room, strip to your skivvies and put that on. It's not a paper gown like you might see at an ER, but a proper outfit much like pajamas. The arms were short and the bottoms were held up by a drawstring. They include socks too, in case you wear the ones with the holes (like me!) on the big day.

  tags: kenkoshindan, health, check, japan

• blog:Cogley - Shared iTunes Music Storage

  My family has a shared iMac G5 running Leopard OS X 10.5.7 and iTunes 8.2 (both the latest as of 13 July 2009), and recently I noticed we were running low on disk space, so I did some digging via du at the command line. I found that we were eating space by ingesting CDs into iTunes, which would get copied to our respective local user folders. After a little research, I found the Apple KB article that describes how to have a single storage location for music, so I set that up and made some other discoveries in the process. I thought I'd share how I did it.

  tags: productivity, itunes, shared, library, music

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twitter Meishi Generator from @faa

Twitter user @faa has created a "Twitter Meishi Generator", or, "TMG", which you can use to create a Twitter business card with your last tweet or bio, a QR code of your URL, in an assortment of delightful colors. Click the image to see an annotated version of this Twitter Tool.

So, How Does One Actually Create a Meishi from the TMG?

Never fear. Here's how to use the Twitter Meishi Generator:

1. Visit the Twitter Meishi Generator.
2. Enter your Twitter user name.
3. Choose what to put in the meishi's callout - your last tweet, your bio, or none.
4. Click the radio button next to the color you desire.
5. Click the "meishi wo tsukuru" button.
6. Behold your sparkly-new meishi.
7. Click the "Download Large PNG" button. (Don't worry, it's not so large).
8. Forward this post to your friends!

Faa used the free M+1P+IPAG font to generate the meishi's font, and is generating the QR codes via the Google Chart API. Thanks, Faa, very cool!

Shared iTunes Music Storage

My family has a shared iMac G5 running Leopard OS X 10.5.7 and iTunes 8.2 (both the latest as of 13 July 2009), and recently I noticed we were running low on disk space, so I did some digging via du at the command line. I found that we were eating space by ingesting CDs into iTunes, which would get copied to our respective local user folders.

After a little research, I found the Apple KB article that describes how to have a single storage location for music, so I set that up and made some other discoveries in the process. I thought I'd share how I did it.

• To determine what folder is using what space, you can use the "du" command in the Terminal. After you do a "sudo bash" to set the Terminal to root access, you can do a "cd /Users" and then a "du -hsc *" to check sizes of all the user folders under /Users.
• To find a location where your family's music can be shared, you need either a folder on an external drive or somewhere on the default internal drive. For now, we chose /Users/Shared/Music.
• Confirm where files are located by selecting a song, and pressing cmd-I. In Summary, you'll see the path of the song in the "Where" section.
• Create the Music folder in /Users/Shared and set its permissions so all users can see it. If it is not set already you can do this via the cmd-I "information" interface for the folder, or, using chmod from the Terminal.
• In the first user, change the "iTunes Music Folder Location" in iTunes Preferences, Advanced. Also in Preferences, make sure "Keep iTunes Folder Organized" and "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to Library" are checked. OK out of Preferences.
• Next do File, Library, Consolidate Library, which copies any files outside the shared library into the library's location, which is now /Users/Shared/Music. This takes a while for large libraries, and will move not only the files from your original iTunes library location, but also any files that you had dragged in from Downloads or the Desktop, for example.
• After consolidation completes, confirm where your song files are located by selecting a song, and pressing cmd-I. In Summary, you'll see the path of the song in the "Where" section. It should now be /Users/Shared/Music or wherever you specified in Preferences.
• Now, you are ready to share with other users, but before you do that, go to iTunes Preferences, Advanced, and turn off "Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to Library", remembering to turn that back on if and when you consolidate again.
• Prove that CDs will add to the right location by importing a CD, and confirming where the song files are located (cmd-I on the song file).
• Log into another user, start iTunes, and repeat the location set, library consolidation process. Import a second CD into this second user's library, and confirm it is saved in /Users/Shared/Music.
• Return to your original user, and to add that CD the second user added to your library, do "File, Add to Library" and choose /Users/Shared/Music. By choosing the root of your library, iTunes will check what has not been added, and add it. Your original user should now be able to find the second user's CD in his or her library.

With this method, each user maintains their own ratings and playlists, but there's a slight delay each time someone adds a CD or downloads from the iTunes Store, because you have to "refresh" the library in File, Add to Library.

I hope this helps someone understand what they have to do to share music amongst family members and avoid eating up disk space. Enjoy!

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• TweakHeadz Lab Electronic Musician's Hangout.

  The site motto says it best: "The #1 Site for Learning about Home and Project Studios."

  tags: tweakheads, studio, electronic, music, sequencer

• blog:Cogley - Japan DVD-HDD Video Recorder Incompatibility

  The other day I was asked by a friend to see a Ken Watanabe TV show we had recorded, because the friend had missed it. A long saga ensued of us trying to give our friend a DVD of the recording we took with our Sharp Aquos DVD / HDD Recorder. You'd think that you would just be able to play such a DVD in any DVD player. Well, you can't. Long story short, in the end we could not provide our friend a DVD with this show on it. At first, when we gave our friend the DVD, she returned it saying it was broken, and that she tried it on her normal DVD player and on her Windows PC. I tried it on a Mac and on a Windows PC, and indeed, it would not play back. I accessed the created DVD as a data disk, and was able to retrieve a 4 GB file with a VRO extension. I found out that VRO is an MPEG-2 format, so I purchased the MPEG-2 playback plugin for QuickTime. After the installation, QuickTime would open the file, but nothing appeared in the QuickTime viewer screen.

  tags: Japan, DVD, HDD, VRO, Recorder, Incompatibility

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Japan DVD-HDD Video Recorder Incompatibility

The other day I was asked by a friend to see a Ken Watanabe TV show we had recorded, because the friend had missed it. A long saga ensued of us trying to give our friend a DVD of the recording we took with our Sharp Aquos DVD / HDD Recorder. You'd think that you would just be able to play such a DVD in any DVD player. Well, you can't. Long story short, in the end we could not provide our friend a DVD with this show on it.

At first, when we gave our friend the DVD, she returned it saying it was broken, and that she tried it on her normal DVD player and on her Windows PC. I tried it on a Mac and on a Windows PC, and indeed, it would not play back.

I accessed the created DVD as a data disk, and was able to retrieve a 4 GB file with a VRO extension. I found out that VRO is an MPEG-2 format, so I purchased the MPEG-2 playback plugin for QuickTime. After the installation, QuickTime would open the file, but nothing appeared in the QuickTime viewer screen.

I tried also the following:

• Renaming the file's extension to VOB or MPG. No difference trying to play it back in DVD Player.
• Viewing the files (.vro, .vob, .mpg) in VLC. Nada.
• Viewing the files in MPEG Streamclip. Nope.
• Viewing the files in MPlayer. Uh uh.
• Burning the file to another DVD via Toast. Sorry, it would not even render.

Well, after lots of tries and googling, in the end I read that Japanese makers protect their VRO files, and while there appear to be ways of modifying the file using a hex editor, I did not want to go there.

There's apparently no easy way to play back a DVD you create on a Sharp Aquos DVD / HDD Recorder on a PC or Mac.

Too bad, and what a waste of an evening.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• Snap!Japan - Japan and Its People are Unique

  At least that is what they tell me! I like Japan and have had some interesting, enjoyable and indeed unique experiences here, otherwise I would not have stayed in this country since 1987. But over the years, I've had an earful of people telling me directly or indirectly how unique Japan and its people are, and I've had to burst more than one person's bubble. Sometimes incorrectly.

  tags: rick cogley, nihonjinron, culture, japan, intestines, snow, pregnancy

• Snap!Japan - "Gyaru-go" Girl Japanese

  Mezamashi TV had a segment on the lastest gyaru language. If you're not familiar, gyaru are the sort of schoolgirls who hang out in Shibuya or Harajuku, dress in the latest fashion and speak in a sort of code. Here's the three I remember: * ムカTK mukaTK - mukatsuku, to be pissed off. The original's just as easy, ladies. * モレる moreru - um, to be dressed up, with your hair in a bun with cute accessories. Comes from "moritsukeru" to decorate. * シカメ shikame - from shikato and meeru, ignore mail. To have blown off answering someone's text message. I hear that a large percentage of schoolkids get really stressed about "shikame", in all seriousness. At any rate, remembering these is one thing, but using them is another, so remember this: if an "oyaji" (middle-aged guy) like me uses gyaru-go, he's ostracized by his daughters and subjected to the "uzai" label for all time. :-)

  tags: gyaru, Rick Cogley, harajuku, shibuya

• blog:Cogley - iPhone 3GS Unfairly Expensive in Japan

  I went to a Softbank shop in Shibuya, Tokyo and asked how much it would cost to upgrade an iPhone 3G to an iPhone 3GS. The clerk told me that for the 16GB model it would be an additional JPY 780 per month for 24 months, totaling JPY 18,720, assuming the continuation of my current contract. That sounded about right to me, given the US prices. I wanted to see if I could just buy one outright, and slipped into another general electronics store that was selling iPhones from Softbank and other phones. Unfortunately, the clerk in the second store told me that the "discount" you get with a new contract is not valid for the upgrade, so you end up paying a total of about JPY 70,000. Additionally, you cannot just buy a phone in the US and have it activated for use here. Yep. That's a whopping USD 700.00 for an iPhone 3GS from Softbank Japan, and the "after discount" pricing is only for new contracts, not for upgraders. Wow, I'm stunned (while at the same time I'm hoping I'm wrong) at being penalized for wanting to upgrade. What a way to engender loyalty, Softbank. I guess the only thing to do is to wait until Softbank change the pricing, which they eventually did for the 3G, after some time had passed. I feel like a lifeless husk that's been trampled on and ground into dust. :-/ Rick Cogley

  tags: iphone, 3GS, gadgets, softbank, expensive, unfair, upgrade, japan

• Snap!Japan - "One Coin" Services All The Rage in Japan

  Japan morning TV reported that "One Coin" (ワンコイン) services are all the rage these days in Japan, due to the down economy. What this phrase means is that you can buy a good or service with a single 500 yen coin, or about USD 5.00. Indeed, you can see them here and there: * "Makudonarudo" McDonald's has a 500 yen value set. * "One Coin" lunches at salary-man lunch joints. * Short foot massages for 500 yen. * "Test Esthe" at Miss Paris Esthetic Salon for "one coin". * Yoshinoya and Matsuya meat bowls for 500 yen. Next time you're out and about in Tokyo, keep an eye out for "one coin" ワンコイン services. Rick Cogley

  tags: trends, Engrish, 500, ワンコイン, economy, inexpensive

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

iPhone 3GS Unfairly Expensive in Japan for Upgraders

I went to a Softbank shop in Shibuya, Tokyo and asked how much it would cost to upgrade an iPhone 3G to an iPhone 3GS. The clerk told me that for the 16GB model it would be an additional JPY 780 per month for 24 months, totaling JPY 18,720, assuming the continuation of my current contract. That sounded about right to me, given the US prices.

I wanted to see if I could just buy one outright, and slipped into another general electronics store that was selling iPhones from Softbank and other phones. Unfortunately, the clerk in the second store told me that the "discount" you get with a new contract is not valid for the upgrade, so you end up paying a total of about JPY 70,000. Additionally, you cannot just buy a phone in the US and have it activated for use here.

Yep. That's a whopping USD 700.00 for upgrading to an iPhone 3GS from Softbank Japan, and the "after discount" pricing is only for new contracts, not for upgraders. Wow, I'm stunned (while at the same time I'm hoping I'm wrong) at being penalized for wanting to upgrade. What a way to engender loyalty, Softbank.

I guess the only thing to do is to wait until Softbank change the pricing, which they eventually did for the 3G, after some time had passed.

I feel like a lifeless husk that's been trampled on and ground into dust. :-/

Update

24 June 2009 - I've heard conflicting reports on this situation, stating that you can upgrade and that you cannot upgrade in Japan, and that you can or cannot buy iPhones from the US or China and bring them here to use. However, from the Japan Times newspaper this AM, it appears that you will be able to buy an iPhone 3GS with no contract. I assume this is from Apple. The question is, can I just pop my existing SIM in there.

As for the cost, the 16 gigabyte model is priced at ¥11,520, and the 32 GB is ¥23,040, on a special campaign offer, while it retails at ¥23,040 (16 GB) and ¥34,560 (32GB) for those wanting the phone out of contract. —Japan Times 24 June 2009

26 June 2009 - I went to Apple, who told me that, no, despite the statement in the Japan Times you must have a contract. They concurred with Softbank's statement that you'd lose the discount on your 3G, and that you'd end up paying the approx JPY 70,000 yen over two years. What I did learn was that you could do a "kishu henkou" (model change) after you've completed paying off the original 3G. Wow, what a blow.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• Snap!Japan - Tokyo Metro Manners Posters

  Artist Bunpei Yorifuji (寄藤文平) is creating a series of manner posters for the Tokyo metro, around the theme of "Do It At Home". Yorifuji was born in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, in 1973, and founded Bunpei Ginza in 2000 to specialize in mainly Art Direction, Illustration and Book Design. Yorifuji's manners posters address the most common complaints heard by the Metro, such as people who apply makeup, party, sit on the floor, take up too much room, jump through the closing doors at the last minute, wear Everest-assault-sized backbacks and so on. I have to chuckle at the rather awkward and sometimes double-entendre Engrish, but that's what gives them charm, I suppose. I even found a spoof poster. See the thumbs below for the spoof poster and the official website.

  tags: Bunpei Yorifuji, Rick Cogley, manners, posters, Tokyo Metro

• ISM Adamo Saddles

  Sounds good, if it will eliminate the numbness. —Rick Cogley || From the site: What is an ISM saddle? - The original ISM saddle was designed to create a seat that would eliminate, or at least reduce, the discomfort most riders experience on a traditional bike saddle. The concept was patented by 1999. In 2008 alone, ISM has seen success with 11 Ironman wins, 2 Olympic silver medals, 1 World Duathlon Championship, 1 Lifetime Fitness Series overall win, and countless age group victories. Pros and amateurs alike are finding riding and competing comfortable again. Why is an ISM saddle so comfortable? Our patented saddles are unisex and remove pressure off the pudendal nerve and arteries in both male and female riders for un-paralleled comfort. Click here for more information: FAQ ISM.doc Click here for set up instructions: adamo_setup.pdf Ready to order a saddle? Email us at : info@t1bicycles.comshapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1shapeimage_2_link_2 Race Saddle JPY 19,000 Peloton Saddle JPY 14,000 Medical Information: On an annual basis, bicycle riding involves several hundred million people worldwide. Studies have linked perineal pressure caused by straddling traditional bicycle seats to numbness, urinary tract and yeast infections, prostate inflammation and impotence. For male riders, in addition to the discomfort and numbness associated with a traditional saddle, there is an increased susceptibility to restricted blood flow, which can lead to arterial occlusion and permanent erectile dysfunction. For women, the restricted blood flow and hardening of the genital arteries can lead to an inability to reach orgasm. It has been found that as little as 11% of a person’s body weight can compress the genital artery! IN 2004, Dr. Frank Sommer at the University of Cologne tested the ISM saddle. Dr. Sommer is a noted expert in the area of arterial occlusion resulting from bicycle saddles.

  tags: ISM, Adamo, Saddles, t1bicycles, roppongi, perineal, pressure

• Snap!Japan - Ray-Out's iPhone "Jacket" Case Review and DIY Fix

  I purchased Ray-Out's reasonably-priced leather "Jacket" case, model RT-P1LC4/B, perhaps three months ago from Yodobashi Camera. I was looking for a case that had a "strap loop" so that I could hang the iPhone around my neck for going to meetings or lunch, as I don't trust myself to put the iPhone in my pocket and have it survive even one day! The Ray-Out leather jacket was one option, and the other was so bling-bling it wasn't even a choice for me. DIY Fix for the RT-P1LC4/B Loop Problem Unfortunately, the D-ring that came attached to the case by a leather loop came off, sending the iPhone plummeting to the ground. At least the case's leather hit the ground instead of the actual phone, so my iPhone still works. Ray-Out should re-design that little loop for the D-Ring, because after even a couple month's of use, it became weak and ripped.

  tags: RT-P1LC4_B, Ray-Out, Leather, Case, iPhone, Rick Cogley, DIY

• Nikon D90 | How To Use D-MOVIE

  A tutorial video from Nikon on the D90's video capability. —Rick Cogley || From the site: A new idea for D-SLRs, the D90 offers a movie function, allowing you to shoot movies in three different motion JPEG formats: 320 x 216 pixels, 640 x 424 pixels and 1,280 x 720 pixels. Now you can capture life’s moving moments with added drama by using many of Nikon’s NIKKOR lenses, including the AF DX Fisheye 10.5mm f/2.8G ED and the Micro-NIKKOR lenses. The shallow depth of field can give your movies a more creative and emotional impact. An additional benefit is the D90 image sensor, which is much larger than a typical camcorder for higher image quality and exceptional high ISO performance during low-light shooting.

  tags: Nikon, Photography, D90, D-Movie, Video

• Snap!Japan - Drop - Toilet Paper Horror

  "Drop" is a horror story novella written by Koji Suzuki, the writer of best-selling horror stories such as "Ring" and "Rasen" (Spiral). Suzuki san was born in 1957 in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, and his books have sold more than 8 million copies. —Rick Cogley

  tags: drop, koji suzuki, novella, horror

• So you think you know Apple? Test your mettle.

  Test your mettle against the Network World Quiz-o-Matic. —Rick Cogley || From the site: Whether you love Apple or could live without it, the company holds an iconic place in IT history. Most people think they know that history pretty well. But here are 10 trivia questions with answers that might surprise you. After you take the quiz, head over to Yoni Heisler's iOnApple blog and share your score.

  tags: network, world, quiz, mythology, apple

• blog:Cogley - iPhone OS 3.0 Tips on Parade

  Apple released yesterday an updated iPhone operating system, iPhone OS 3.0, with a number of useful improvements. For me, the update itself was seamless, and took about 15 minutes after clicking the update button in iTunes. I upgraded first thing in the morning, but colleagues who tried later in the day had some delays. I guess it's to be expected when so many people try to download at the same time. Some Tips for iPhone OS 3.0 I took some screenshots of the obvious and not-so-obvious (by pressing the home and power buttons simultaneously in case you aren't aware how), so I'll introduce those to you now.

  tags: iPhone, OS, 3.0, Tips, Rick Cogley

• About artist Miwa YANAGI

  From the site: http://www.yanagimiwa.net/e/profile/index.html Born in Kobe City Education : Kyoto City University of Arts Lives in Kyoto In 1993 , held solo exhibition in Kyoto Since 1996, participated exhibitions in Europe and U.S.A. Create The "My Grandmothers" series which visualize the self-perceived notions of several young women when asked to imagine what type of woman they themselves might become fifty years later. In 2004 , held solo exhibition in Deutsche Guggenheim and Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2005 , show "Fairy tale" series which are tales about girl and elderly woman in Hara Museum and Ohara Museum of Art. In 2007 , held solo exhibition in Chelsea Art Museum (New York). In 2008 , held solo exhibition in The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston).

  tags: yanagi, miwa, profile, bio

• Miwa YANAGI, a provocative artist who uses makeup and props to tell her stories. —Rick Cogley |

  Miwa Yanagi is showing at the Japanese Pavilion, at the The 53rd Venice Biennale 2009. The installation is called "Windswept Women：The Old Girls' Troupe".

  tags: miwa yanagi, venice, biennale, 2009, windswept women

• Chuck Dillon's blog 30 x 30: Which Student are You?

  Chuck Dillon posts some prescient and hysterical drawings of the 16 breeds of art student. —Rick Cogley || From the site: I know 10 years is not a long time, but by this time in my teaching career I think I have had just about every type of student. Earlier this year to relieve my stress I started categorizing and sketching out each student type (Comic artist Daniel Clowes already touched on this categorization in his great comic, Art School Confidential). What I wound up with are these 16 types. Over time, I may discover that there are more types or new names for them (ie: goth is now something called emo). Originally I had excluded the average/good students because average/good is not very funny but with much pleading and begging I added it in.

  tags: chuck dillon, blog30x30, art students

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

iPhone OS 3.0 Tips on Parade

Apple released yesterday an updated iPhone operating system, iPhone OS 3.0, with a number of useful improvements. For me, the update itself was seamless, and took about 15 minutes after clicking the update button in iTunes. I upgraded first thing in the morning, but colleagues who tried later in the day had some delays. I guess it's to be expected when so many people try to download at the same time.

Some Tips for iPhone OS 3.0

I took some screenshots of the obvious and not-so-obvious (by pressing the home and power buttons simultaneously in case you aren't aware how), so I'll introduce those to you now.

If you have MobileMe you can enable Find My iPhone and track where the phone is if it is stolen, via GPS. You can also remote-wipe and send messages and sounds to your iPhone. Maybe you won't get the iPhone back, but you can at least antagonize the thief! The sounds and messages will play even if it's locked, so this will help if the iPhone is in "manner" mode.

I suspect it will be useful for when it's in manner mode but lost somewhere in the nether regions of your sofa.

iPhone OS 3.0 now finally has select, copy and paste, and it works in and across various applications. Even the new TweetDeck for iPhone that was just released supports it already. Press and hold to get the selection "handles" and various commands.

Once something is on the clipboard you can paste. You can see I copied from TweetDeck to Mail. The new clipboard also honors rich text, which means you can copy something like formatted text from a webpage in Safari, to a Mail Message, and it will paste it in just as you saw it on the web. Slick!

You can also select in mail to "quote" part of a message before replying. It works more like Leopard OS X.

iPhone OS 3.0 now has Spotlight. You can swipe the left-most home screen right to get spotlight search, and you'll see that the page icon (the dots at the bottom) is actually a magnifying glass. Spotlight search works across apps, and like big sister OS Leopard OS X, also works to find apps so you can launch them. Check your settings as well - you can link "home button double-press" to Spotlight search if you like.

Lastly, you'll find that many apps with lists, like Address Book and Mail have a search box at the top. This is Spotlight, but as you scroll down through the entries, you can double-tap the very top of the screen (near the clock) to jump back to the top. Try it!

In Address Book you can now send an Address Card as a vCard entry via Email or MMS (which Softbank Japan supports). Scroll down to the bottom of a contact to find the share buttons.

Here's what a shared vCard in .vcf format via Email looks like. Note also another new feature: the Landscape keyboard is available in more apps, negating the need for apps like EasyWriter.

While we're on Mail, you can move messages instead of just deleting them in the Edit screen. Convenient for stuff like spam.

Neat stuff on the podcast front, too. In iPod, you can control podcast playback better, with the "jump back 30 seconds" and the speed changer buttons. There's also a button for emailing the actual link to the podcast so you can share it with friends.

When you click the email icon from the podcast, you get a pre-formatted email with a link to the podcast.

There are plenty of tiny new tweaks, including this almost incomprehensible one, showing you a very small thumbnail of the last photo you snapped. Maybe it's fuzzy because I merely have a 3G and not a shiny new 3GS.

A couple more things:

• MS Exchange integration is much better, but note that the interface in Address books allows you to "view all", so it might look like you have duplicates if you keep your MobileMe and Exchange address books synced.
• iTunes now lets you buy & download whatever's in the iTunes store.
• iPod lets you "shake to shuffle".
• There's a new basic Voice Recorder app that lets you record and share voice memos. Nice.
• They've improved the keyboard "secret" hold-to-see shortcuts. Check it out by going to the numbers and symbols keyboard, then holding down various keys.
• While browsing in Safari, you can press and hold a link to get a popup that lets you open the link in another tab.
• You can shake to undo in the main applications like Mail or Messaging.

If you own an iPhone, you can upgrade for free, and there's a small fee to upgrade if you have an iPod Touch. Try it, I'm sure you'll like it. It really makes the iPhone an even more attractive platform. Enjoy!

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• Exclusive: The Future of Facebook Usernames - Anil Dash - Annotated

  It's so funny it speaks for itself. Check out Anil Dash's predictive expose of how the Facebook username debacle might go down. FU! —Rick Cogley || From the site: Exclusive: The Future of Facebook Usernames 10 Jun 2009 The whole world A small number of super-geeky obsessives is abuzz over the upcoming launch of Facebook Usernames, an exciting new feature that will let you put some parts of your name into a web address.

  tags: facebook, usernames, username, anil, prediction, dash

• TOSBack | The Terms-Of-Service Tracker

  TOSBack is an useful service that monitors changes in various web services' Terms of Service. Click "Subscribe to RSS" on the site to monitor it in your RSS reader (such as NetNewsWire or Google Reader). —Rick Cogley From the site: TOSBack keeps an eye on ... website policies. Every time one of them changes, you'll see an update here.

  tags: privacy, TOS, legal, security, tosback, google, terms, changes, rss, terms of service

• Daring Fireball: WWDC 2009 Predictions

  John Gruber's Daring Fireball WWDC 2009 predictions. —Rick Cogley || From the site: WWDC 2009 Predictions - Sunday, 7 June 2009 What I know, don’t know, and know I don’t know about tomorrow’s WWDC announcements. As usual, please, no wagering. iPhone 3GS Everything I wrote about last month in “The Next iPhone” still stands. I expect Apple to announce updated iPhones with significantly faster processors, twice the RAM, and twice the storage. I expected prices to remain the same as the current lineup: $199/299 for 16/32 GB, respectively. The video camera is going to be a major selling point. One additional tidbit I’ve heard is the new hardware’s code name: iPhone 3GS. I’m not certain that’s what it’ll be officially named, but my hunch is yes. I have no idea what the S stands for.1 The other new tidbit is battery life: 15-20 percent longer than the iPhone 3G.

  tags: daringfireball, john gruber, wwdc, 2009, predictions

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Rick's Picks (weekly)

• Mike Reed's "Flame Warriors" Home

  This is Mike Reed's humorous look at the various personalities you'll encounter on the Internet. Very funny! —Rick Cogley || From the site: Some years ago a minor spat ignited a searing flame ware that threatened to consume a once-placid discussion forum. While the forum burned I amused myself by caricaturiing the chief antagonists. Confounded at seeing themselves thus revealed, the combatants fled the field in disarray. ...

  tags: humor, warriors, flame, humour, blogging, forum, cartoon, culture

• Snap!Japan - Street Jazz Trio with Kano, Saito and Kawamoto

  I've seen this good, energetic "Street Jazz" trio at JR Shinjuku before, but today I waited for a good moment and got some materials from them. The musicians were George Kano on drums, Chikara Saito on Alto Sax, and (probably) Sousuke Kawamoto on upright bass. The flyers I got were pretty clear on who the sax and drum players were, but I'm not so sure about the bass player. Either way, they are all really good musicians. —Rick Cogley

  tags: snapjapan, cogley, chikara saito, george kano, sousuke kawamoto, street, jazz

• Josh George Art Blog: Pat Metheny "Tokyo Day Trip" EP

  Josh George did the paintings for the album art for Pat Metheny's Day Trip and Tokyo Day Trip EP. —Rick Cogley || From the site: Earlier this year I did the CD cover and interior art for Pat Metheny's newest release "Day Trip". It was great fun having almost complete creative freedom. During the bands world tour they did a live recording of their gig in Tokyo and decided to release it as an EP. Again they contacted me to do a variation on the cover but set in Japan. I don't do to many illustration jobs but working with a respected musician like Pat was very rewarding. Didn't have to do a sketch first! So here is the cover for "Tokyo Day Trip". You can find it in your local non-chain music store. I buy all my music at "Music Matters" in Brooklyn.

  tags: josh george, pat metheny, day trip, tokyo day trip, painter, metheny

• Lifehacker - Save time with text substitution - Keyboard Shortcuts

  Text substitution tools. Personally, I use Text Expander which is quite excellent on the Mac, but LifeHacker recommends ActiveText for Windows. —Rick Cogley || From the site: These days, most of us end up having to type at the computer on a daily basis. Some of us are fast and some are slow - but regardless of your typing proficiency, text substitutions can save us all an unbelievable amount of time. The basic idea is to replace a small bit of text with a larger bit of text. So maybe you set 'name' to 'your full name'. Admittedly, this is probably overkill, but it gets the idea across. Apply a small amount of effort and simple text substitution becomes a tool more powerful and dynamic than you might have imagined. Let's see just how much we can streamline your time at the keyboard.

  tags: lifehacker, substitution, text, activetext, textexpander, smileonmymac, productivity

• Snap!Japan - Oshogatsu Reunion (New Year) Sad

  Every year, we have a family reunion during the New Year holiday "oshogatsu". The photo in this post is of the 2009 edition. This is A Big Deal for the family here, and they do it without fail. Missing it is also A Big Deal, so I think we've missed it once in the past 15 years. I gather it's an Asian thing to have these big family gatherings, but I always feel like the odd man out, when the conversation turns to whatever it is that 60-ish-year-old Japanese folks like to talk about. Though I enjoy the company and drink and food, great food, these also make me long for home, to see my Mom and Dad, Sister and Brother and everyone's families and friends. Ah, if only Star Trek teleportation was possible! Oshogatsu omedeto!

  tags: resident, snapjapan, reunion, oshogatsu, cogley

• Squarespace - Simple, On-line, Website Publishing

  Squarespace offers a turnkey way to build and publish a site and blog online from 8 USD / month, with some really good-looking results. Seems like it would be perfect for people who do not want to use software and upload via FTP. —Rick Cogley || From the site - In 2003, after being unable to find a way to elegantly publish his personal website, Anthony Casalena began work on the software that is now the Squarespace Platform. Since its inception, Squarespace has blossomed into a product that powers tens of thousands of sophisticated websites for businesses, bloggers, and professionals worldwide and currently serves hundreds of millions of hits per month. Squarespace has been mentioned in both the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, as well as on countless other blogs and news sites. Our small team consists of solely bio-worthy names, and due to our entirely organic revenue growth, we operate free from the restrictions and obligations of organizations controlled by outside investors.

  tags: squarespace, anthony casalena, web, publish, blog, online

• Lawrence Lessig: The Solipsist and the Internet (a Review of Helprin's Digital Barbarism)

  Creative Commons founding member Lawrence Lessig's long retort to the ill-informed attack by Mark Helprin on Creative Commons. —Rick Cogley || From the site: This is an insanely long review of Mark Helprin's book, Digital Barbarism (HarperCollins 2009) (Note: if you buy from that link, Creative Commons gets the referral fee). You can download a PDF of the review here. Exactly two years ago today, the New York Times published an op-ed about copyright by a novelist. The piece caused something of a digital riot. As we learn now from his book, Digital Barbarism (HarperCollins 2009), Mark Helprin was at the time completely ignorant about the hornets nest he was about to kick. For him, the op-ed was a professional rapprochement with the New York Times, a chance to make things right once again (though why they were then wrong is a story left mysteriously (and thankfully) out of the book).

  tags: helprin, lessig, solipsist, digital, barbarism, creative commons, cc

• Why "Everything Buckets" make sense: Mark Bernstein (Tinderbox designer)

  Mark Bernstein, creator of TinderBox, writes in defense of "everything buckets" that Alex Payne rails against in a blog post. —Rick Cogley || From the site: What Payne misses — what nearly everyone has missed in thinking about the question — is the process of finding and creating structure. Yes: you want to keep things organized. Yes: you want specialized tools for special tasks. But things don’t arrive with structure (and, when they do, they have the wrong structure!) and the kinds of structure you want are always changing.

  tags: bernstein, tinderbox, payne, everything buckets

• Alex Payne — The Case Against Everything Buckets

  Alex Payne makes a case for using the file system on computers, and against "everything buckets" like Journler, Yojimbo, DEVONthink, Together, Evernote. —Rick Cogley || From the site: Why Everything Buckets Are Not A Good Idea - Computers work best with structured data. Everything Buckets discourage the use of structured data by providing a convenient place to commingle “structureless” data like RTF and PDF documents. Rather than forcing the user to figure out the rhyme and reason of their data (for example, by putting receipts in a financial management application and addresses in an address book), Everything Buckets cry: “throw it all in here! Search it! Maybe I’ll corrupt my proprietary database, but maybe I won’t and you’ll have the joy of sifting through a mire of RTF documents. Doesn’t that sound great?” This proposition should not sound great. If you think you’re going to save time in the long run by throwing your data into a big bucket now, then sifting through it later, you are mistaken. There are better ways.

  tags: payne, buckets, everything buckets, journler, yojimbo, devonthink, together, evernote

• Dating DEVONThink (after being jilted by Journler) - dougist.com

  On the unfortunate loss of focus at Journler, and Doug's consequent "dating" of DEVONthink. —Rick Cogley || From the site: Journler was the answer, but as I’ve just learned, unfunded solo developers are very risky. Who else to turn to? Together concerns me because it gags on data sets over a few thousand items. Evernote’s business model is committed to datalocking you into the application, which is intolerable. Yohimbo is a starter tool not a long haul application for a serous user. Lastly the Lit / Citation managers, like Papers, Zotero, Endnote and Sente are indexers, not writer’s base pads. So yea, DEVONThink. She’s good right now, but I’m lookin’

  tags: dougist.com, dougist, devonthink, journler

• This Land - A Town Fights to Save an Oasis of Baguettes - Series - NYTimes.com

  A wonderful story of a visa denied, and a community's response. Long live the small shops! -- Rick Cogley From the site: A French couple came to town several years ago in search of something. Here, amid the swelling mountains and struggling businesses, the Red Sox hagiography and Yankee taciturnity, they were looking for just the right place to sell madeleines. And croissants. And tarts. And long, thin loaves of French bread that all but dare you to tear at their heel before you’re out the door.

  tags: baguettes, colebrook, ounis, visa, denial, reconsideration

• Snap!Japan - OTC Drugs at your Local 7-11

  The Pharmaceutical Affairs Law "PAL" was revised to allow convenience stores like 7-11, Lawson, Family Mart or others to sell most over-the-counter drugs, so long as they have a clerk who has registered and qualified with the local government. The fact that they no longer need a pharmacist is a big cost-saving difference from before, that also allows a big new income stream for the conbinis. -- Rick Cogley

  tags: resident, snapjapan, snap!japan, rick cogley, otc, pal, mhlw

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