Sohail Ahmed's Lifehacks Blog

New Mac Setup Recommendations

2009-08-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

Ever since I was seven, people have always asked me for computer advice. In the last few years, it's been all about the Mac inward now due for an update.

So here's a quick list of things I believe most new users to the Mac will find useful to incorporate into their workflow:

1. Skype-free; and now it lets you do audio, video and remote control the other person's computer.
2. Evernote-basic version is free and that is fine for most people. Lets you create rich notes on your desktop and also access them with your iPhone application.
3. Splash ID-$20 for desktop application that syncs with my phone; and $10 for the iPhone application from the AppStore.
4. Mojo-free; lets you access your own or friends iTunes libraries for media download and streaming across the Internet.
5. OmniFocus- about $100 for the combination of desktop and iPhone application. Just about the best task/to do organize you can get which follows the GTD system.
6. Omni graffle- about 80 bucks for the basic version. It is a Mac user's Visio for all things graphical shape drawing oriented.
7. Dropbox -- free for a 2 GB account; pay plans for more storage. Great for syncing your files to the cloud and across computers. Useful even if you have just one computer. It provides a backup in the cloud for your most critical files. I recommend setting it up so that your own documents folder is synced to the cloud via dropbox. It'll have to be good with symbolic links to set this up in a clean way. Friends and family: contact me to help walk you through this.
8. SugarSync - $25 for 10 GB a year; bigger plans available. Very much like dropbox, this is what I started out with and it doesn't require a custom dropbox folder; it will sync arbitrary existing folders. If you use one it don't need the other.

More to come in future updates and a broken arm heals!

MobileMe Sync Issues

2008-10-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve been using .Mac for a couple of years and was transitioned into the new MobileMe service when it launched. I purchased an iPhone 3G about a month after it was released, and am on the AT&T network now.

When I originally set it up, it was working really well and I’ve recommended it to friends and colleagues. In early September 2008 though, things went awry, and everything stopped syncing well, the MobileMe website didn’t even work for me in all aspects and it’s been a general mystery on how to solve it all.

So, I’m writing up my experiences here to pass on to MobileMe support so that they’ve got a holistic picture with which to troubleshoot and make recommendations.

My Setup
My computers/devices that participate in the MobileMe sync eco-system are the following. Note that all systems are running with the latest updates/service packs and all the Macs in my system are on the latest Leopard release. All of the machines are Intel based.

1. Mac Pro – my main machine (2.8GHz Octo-Core, 16GB RAM)

2. Macbook Pro – my work laptop (2.4GHz, 4GB RAM)

3. Windows XP Pro – vmware Fusion virtual machine
4. iPhone 3G (AT&T, 16 GB, with unlimited data plan; uses wireless network at home too)

Mobile Me Online Website
I used to be able to access all aspects of the MobileMe website. If I login now, here’s what I experience in each of the key services:

• Login: Works fine. I go straight to Mail.

• Mail: I don’t have more than a dozen messages on my me.com email, so no real problem loading the page there.

• Contacts: I have about 700+ contacts. This page loads okay, but soon after, it becomes utterly useless. The search box is totally unresponsive. If I scroll up and down the contact list, I get a blank column where I’d expect names in alphabetical order. I can scroll slowly and get some names to show up, but Safari is unresponsive when I try to select a particular contact to see their details. Clicking on any of the groups is also pointless. I can however, open up another tab and go to Digg.com for example. And I’m using Safari on an octo-core Mac Pro. The me.com site is now completely unresponsive. So I’ll close out the browser and restart before going to Calendar.

• Calendar: It says it is loading events, and it does show my calendar groupings in the left margin. After about 90 seconds of “Loading events…” with the rotating spoke wheel spinning, it displays a calendar with no events. Last week, I couldn’t even get the calendar to render!

• Photos: This piece I use the least and it works very well (snappy). I have three small albums in here, and this part of the site is very responsive.

• iDisk: I don’t really use this, but flipping through the stock folders it provides seemed snappy.

• Account: The account management screen loads up fine. Selecting the various options, the page is responsive.

So in summary, the problem areas are:

1. Contacts
2. Calendars

And these are the two things I rely on MobileMe for the most!

The screen shot below shows how the middle Contacts pane can easily loose itself to never never land when scrolled. And I’m using Safari on Leopard!

Often times (and as an update to this blog post on Sunday Oct 26, 2008), I'm not even getting my Calendar to load at me.com:

I did contact MobileMe Chat based support and they suggested I “Reset Safari”, which I did. No change in symptoms.

Mac Side
Now let’s turn to how my Macs fared.

Mac Pro Desktop
My various Calendars and Contacts are in tact and working fine on the desktop. I see that MobileMe is syncing every so often, but that seems normal. The sync wheel in the menu bar will turn for a while and then stop. All seems good.

Since I can’t reliably access any Contact or Calendar on the me.com site, I can’t tell if anything is actually syncing.

Macbook Pro Laptop
In mid-September my Mobile Me started going on the fritz. Specifically, it stopped syncing with my iPhone and Mac Pro generated calendar events and contacts (both ways).

I noticed the Mobile Me sync icon in the menu bar was syncing continuously. It never seemed to complete.

I searched the Net for solutions. I finally found an article that suggested I blow away my <home folder>/Library/Application Support/SyncServices folder. I did this, restarted, launch iSync to coax the system to rebuild this folder and now MobileMe seemed to have my laptop communicating with the cloud.

MobileMe asked me what it wanted me to do. I told it to replace everything on the computer with everything available from MobileMe.

Several hours later, I’d get the same sync conflict prompt, to which I’d give it the same preference. This happened for days until I finally decided to log out of MobileMe on my laptop.

Windows Side
For my Windows virtual machine, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to have my contacts in Outlook and bookmarks synced to Safari on Windows?” So I set that up (applying the latest Apple Software Update of course).

Windows XP Pro Virtual Machine
Initially, this worked out really well. But around the same time my Macbook Pro stopped syncing with the cloud, my Windows installation of Mobile Me kept running into problems.

The screen shot below illustrates the “dotmacsyncclient has encountered a problem and needs to close” message that pops up about once every hour when in Windows.

iPhone 3G
Since my iPhone stopped syncing, I blew away my MobileMe account from the phone and recreated it from the phone. It was set to have Contacts, Calendars etc., all pushed to my phone.

When I first got my iPhone, I went through this process successfully.

But now, there’s no over the air sync going on. Nothing is getting pushed to Contacts or Calendar. It’s completely blank.

Not sure what to do next.

Backing up your Outlook email/contacts and Clearing out the Original

2007-12-26T05:30:00.000-08:00

Are you moving off a computer that’s not going to be yours any longer, such as one at the office? Do you have a mixture of personal email and personal address book contacts in Outlook at work that you need to both back up for keeping with you as you move on and removing from the source at work? Here’s how.

First, it’s worth noting that Microsoft Outlook stores all the email, address book, calendar and memo information it has for you, in one file: the outlook.pst file. Generally, it moves older contents (old emails, old tasks, old appointments) automatically to another file, archive.pst. Both of these files are usually found in the same directory.

So, what you should do is:

1. Copy your outlook.pst and archive.pst to you external/portable back drive.
2. Open Outlook on your office computer and through Microsoft Outlook, select all of the emails and contact entries you wish to remove. You may wish to select them all and delete. That’s your call.
3. Delete the archive.pst file on your office computer.
4. Empty your computer’s recycle bin.
5. Close Outlook and restart it to be sure the stuff really does look like it’s gone.

To access the contents of your archive.pst and outlook.pst from Outlook on your home computer, have your home version of Outlook (should be equal or later version than the one at the office) open the PST file from your external hard drive (you may wish to copy it over locally first, your call). The guidance for that is here.

Links related to the material above:

1. How to Back Up or Copy Your Outlook Mail, Contacts and Other Data [About.com]
2. Where is my Outlook “PST” file located? [Ask-Leo.com]
3. Outlook Archiving and the Archive.pst file
4. Open Your Existing Outlook Data Store [Outlook-tips.net]

Secure Email Access at the Office and Elsewhere

2007-12-26T04:50:00.000-08:00

Another tip for something commonly asked by friends, “How do I check and send personal email at work without it being read / intercepted?”

To start, one should know that there are two basic methods of accessing your own email system from anywhere on the Internet (home, office, wherever): web based email (i.e. through a web browser) or via a desktop client program (Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Mail.app, etc.) using POP or IMAP protocols.

Let’s tackle the first and simplest case: web based mail.

This is offered by companies like Google, Yahoo!, AOL and so forth. Google’s mail (known as “GMail”) is generally the more popular, so we’ll discuss that.

If you use the gmail service, you are likely pointing your browser to http://www.gmail.com. Since this is using “http” instead of “https”, your browser interactions are not encrypted. The IT staff in your company could conceivably record all network traffic in and out of the office and read all your received and sent messages. So, access the gmail service using the secure http protocol: https.

Google has a few URLs that redirect to how they’ve setup gmail, so the URL I recommend you use (as it works for me) is: https://mail.google.com/mail/. The way to use this is to create a bookmark for exactly this URL in your browser. If you computer’s login (e.g. your Windows login to the machine at work) can be compromised, I recommend that you do not have your email password to gmail remembered by your browser. Yes, it’s more convenient to have it saved/remembered, but it is safer to not set it up this way.

Now, by accessing gmail through https, everything you do on that site is point to point encrypted between your browser and Google’s data center. That means that your IT department only sees a bunch on scrambled nonsensical encrypted data packets flowing back and forth. Your personal email is private.

If you use an ISP’s given email address (say, that given to you by Verizon, Rogers or what have you), I recommend you transition over to something that you can keep regardless of what service provider you have. That is, make gmail your primary, advertised email address. Just because Rogers provides the Internet pipe into your home, that doesn’t mean your personal email address needs to be branded with them.

Next, since this transition is generally exactly that, you’ll be happy to know that you can configure gmail to retrieve your other email (mail from other, existing email accounts), and bring it into your gmail inbox so that you only have one place to check (gmail). In doing this, it also allows you to set the “sent from” address when you compose a new message, as if it came directly from that other email address you used to use. In this way, if you wish, you can completely abstract from others, the fact that you’re using gmail (which is only really of value to those folks with custom/vanity domain names).

My advice though, would be to send out a mailing to your personal contacts indicating you can now be reached at your new gmail address. Of course, if you’re using something like Plaxo, this can be a semi-automatic notification.

Some related links on the material discussed above:

1. Secure Gmail access of Public Networks (Lifehacker)
2. Setting up Mail Fetcher (Google Mail FAQ)

Loading up that shiny new Mac with the good stuff

2007-08-25T05:06:00.001-07:00

This post a work in progress this month...

Just got a new Mac? Congratulations. Here are suggestions on loading it up with stuff that's useful and works. I've spent hundreds of hours in tweaking, evaluating and configuring, so these suggestions have been through real trials!

Software

Free

1. Skype

2. Firefox
        • Google Browser Sync for Firefox. Who needs .Mac when you can sync your bookmarks for Firefox across multiple machines?
        • Del.icio.us Bookmarks for Firefox
        • FireFTP - FTP client for Firefox. Yes, it’s good and its free.

3. Adobe Reader - I know, you already have Preview.app, so why Adobe? For long online reading sessions, this app just has some nicer features and a better search / TOC interface.

4. Adium - A multi-chat protocol IM client, with growl support.

5. Handbrake - lets you rip your own DVDs. Handy for serving them up to yourself of your RAID array in the basement, exporting them to your own iPod for mobile viewing, etc.

6. VLC Media Player - Plays a lot of video that Quicktime won’t.

7. Real Player - Yet another media format you need, for stuff like TheServerSide.com or npr.org.

Donationware

1. Journaler - A powerful journaling tool with smart folders, tagging and just phenomenal idea capture. It’s only weak spot is robust export to external blogs (for that, MacJournal is best).

2. SharePoints - lets you set up file sharing (shared folders) like on Windows, as otherwise, it is actually very complex/locked down on the Mac beyond the "Drop Box".

Nagware

1. Acquisition - $20 for a great P2P client that’s been a stalwart in the Mac community.

Commercial

1. Knox - $29 for locking whole folders with AES128 bit encryption and seamlessly unlocking them to mount as temporary volumes. Why do you need this? You can’t have all your sensitive data in your own login or accessible to Spotlight. We never logout when someone needs to quickly use our computers. That however, doesn’t mean our most sensitive files should be accessible. There should be another encrypted, password protected tier. That’s what Knox gives you.

2. MacJournal - $35 for a great way to publish to external blogs. Even lets you embed sound and images, and it handles the upload of these too.

3. BBEdit - $125 for a professional HTML and text editor. Actually, I now like TextMate better. It's only $49 and it's the defacto light weight editor for people doing development with Ruby on Rails on a Mac.

4. OmniOutliner Pro - $70 for a great hierarchical (outlining) tool. Embed URLs, media and other such. Use custom styles.

5. VMWare Fusion - $79. This is far more polished than Parallels. Increasingly, Parallels users are blogging frustration and lack of good customer service/support. I’ve also found VMWare Fusion is more reliable and also quite slick. See this video for a taste of what it can do.

Note that with only 2GB of RAM in your system, set your Windows XP virtual machine to have 512MB of memory. I’ve found that if you give your Mac any less than 1.5GB, you’ll run into a major slowdown on the Mac side too. Half a gig seems to be plenty to fire up Microsoft Word to do some strike precision word processing while not crimping your Mac style. If you have 4GB of RAM, I’d then recommend setting your virtual machine to 1GB, leaving 3GB for your Mac. Remember, set this size right the first time and as few times as possible, lest Windows refuse to re-activate because your “configuration has changed”. 

6. IntelliJ IDEA - $249 for hands down, the most sophisticated Java IDE, for you fellow developers out there.

7. Splash ID - $29 This is a must have for storing sensitive data like credit card numbers, family SSNs, bank accounts, serial numbers, web site passwords etc. The beauty is, that it lets you sync with a device like your Treo or BlackBerry. The desktop version and handheld version are password protected with your master password. Oh, and it’s Blowfish-256 bit encrypted. ‘Nuff said.

8. Missing Sync - $40 For syncing your device (especially Palm based) with your Mac. Why pay for syncing to your Mac? Unfortunately, the device makers generally have shoddy and incomplete conduits in this regard. The Missing Sync is built by Mac users for Mac users and it doesn’t just do the basic address book and calendars, it’ll sync playlists from iTunes, captured photos into and out of iPhoto and so on. It brings under one umbrella, all the conduits you use in syncing and you set up profiles of subsets of conduits you want to sync (which you can fire off with little ceremony).

9. Spanning Sync - $65 lifetime one-time fee. Lets you sync iCal with Google Calendar. Why? Because .Mac, even if you have it, has no web based view of your calendar! It only syncs iCal between actual Macs. On the go, without a Mac, you’re screwed! Plus, Google Calendar rocks and complimented by iCal and Spanning Sync to go between them, it’s a rock solid calendar syncing solution.

10. Flickr Export iPhoto Plug-in. - $25. A slick iPhoto plug in that’s much more intuitive than the free alternative, which is Flickr Uploader for the Mac.

11. Flip4Mac -$29. A collection of QuickTime components that allow you to play, import, and export Windows Media video and audio files on your Mac using your favorite QuickTime-based applications

12. iWork 08 - $79. The Word compatibility isn't perfect, but it's decent for basic documents. I'm just waiting for Office 2008 for the Mac next year. Switching to a virtual machine for word processing ties up system resources, so this is the best Mac option at present, unless you already have Office 2004 (but that runs slowly with Rosetta). If you don’t need to do precision fine tuning, this will work well for Word documents. For the real surgical word processing, you’ll have to wait for Office 2008 or use VMWare’s Fusion. I believe Office 2004 is so slow, it’s best to use a virtualization option! I like Numbers too, from what little I’ve used of it, and Keynote has already proven itself.

13. ChronoSync - $30. Very cheap for what you get. A powerful backup program that can store multiple old versions as archives, schedule backups, auto-login to mounted volumes etc.

Suggestions
1. Use the Apple provided applications. By using Mail, Address Book and iCal, you get the best integration with various other tools and syncing services. For example, I use Mail instead of Thunderbird, because I store all my mail on an IMAP server. Having Apple Mail’s smart folders just rocks. Thunderbird can’t touch it.

Services

Plaxo for Mac - Not Ready for Prime Time
Stay away from this. Plaxo works phenomenally well on Windows with Outlook 2003 on various machines and online. However, if in that same mix, you add a Mac, and say, sync with your Palm based device too, the insertion of Plaxo for Mac in that scenario screws it up. You’ll have major data headaches. And, it’s just contacts. No Calendar, no Notes, no Tasks. Plaxo just doesn’t have the development resources to make this work robustly. I was able to recreate problems on demand consistently, and so decided to give up when their support said, “we don’t see the problem”. I was going to send them a screencast, but they just can’t pay me enough to put all that time into debugging their product. And I was a Plaxo VIP customer that year. Go figure.

That being said, there’s a new Plaxo 3.0 available for private beta that is claiming Address Book, Calendar and Mail syncing. I believe the latter is just mail signatures. A great review of Plaxo Pro 3.0 on a Mac includes a contrast with SpanningSync.

My Take on .Mac
I actually have this, because I wanted sync from one vendor. The Internet and my Mac(s), I thought. Perfect. I’ll forego syncing with Outlook at a client’s office. No problem. However, the Address Book (web version) on .Mac doesn’t even show me contact notes! It misses, routinely, fields like email addresses. Apple...this is not voodooo science! Apple needs to improve .Mac. Right now, there’s no online calendar, so SpanningSync to sync to Google Calendar is the only reliable option.

Yes, .Mac is getting better. IMAP support on the Mail client for the web is slick. If they just let me do a “send as” to make my mail appear from my own domain instead of my @mac.com address, I’d be set. I’d gladly pay for more storage about put all 12GB of IMAP mail up on their servers. I’ve already sent them feedback to apply this feature. Let’s see what happens. So many lifehackers out there are looking for the holy grail of slick online web interface to email representing IMAP folders they also sync with on desktop clients. Yahoo! Email online is beautiful, but the folders are not IMAP analogs - email is just organized on Yahoo! itself. Same with GMail. Those folders and labels mean nothing re: IMAP. So, Apple is close.

What Apple needs to do, is stop cranking out more premium iCard templates and photo galleries for stupid stuff, and roll up their sleeves to:

1. Give me personalized outbound email on the web client.
2. More storage for less money.
3. Full Address Book syncing that is robust, custom fields and all.
4. A web calendar so I didn’t have to pay for spanning sync (or partner with them and pull in Google Calendar in some way to the experience).
5. A notes syncing facility.

Will I get .Mac next year? Not sure. Syncing stuff between Macs is so useful and seamless. The webmail that’s all IMAP is near nirvana. iDisk for backups of key files is slick. Let’s see what revs .Mac gets this year.

Hardware

MacBook Pro
If you just got a new MacBook Pro (the ones release in Summer 2007 or later), you can pop in a total of 4GB of RAM. As a $750 upgrade from Apple, I don’t recommend you do this. As a $269 upgrade (third-party), I do recommend you do that. If you are going to run any kind of virtualization software, you will chew through RAM. So stock up.

Garmin Streetpilot 2820 GPS: 30 days in

2006-10-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was asked by a friend for my one-month in appraisal of my Garmin Streetpilot 2820 GPS car navigation device. His friend has an X5 and needs to retrofit something, and wanted some of my initial impressions. So here it is:

I've used my Garmin 2820 a total of perhaps five times now, as living in the GTA usually doesn't require it.

The sound is clear and it even has an audio out jack for my auxiliary input jack of my stereo. So, if I'm *really* paranoid about missing audio cues when I'm driving, I don't miss them now. Alternatively, if you pair it with a bluetooth headset, you should be able to get the same in ear (of course you could also use the audio out for regular headphones while driving, say one earbud in, if you wanted).

The interface is very logical and anticipates what you want reasonably well. The navigation at a couple of weird spots in Toronto was a bit disappointing. Don't know whether to attribute to less attention to the Canadian map data or just a sampling anomaly. For example, I punched in a Wynford drive address (cultural centre) and after it took me off the DVP, it didn't tell me to turn onto a crucial cross street (was highly unintuitive at night) to actually get to the entrance of the destination. I'm used to these things generally routing you right to the front door.

Conversely, going to a friends new condo in Downsview, everything was perfect and I got right to the front entrance.

The thing with the 2820 is that like with most of these portable units, I don't leave it on the dash ready to use, b/c it's of course, more of a theft target, alarm notwithstanding. So I wrap it up in a little sports bag and whip it out when I need nav help. It's too big for the glove box (unless you have a really big glove box with nothing else in it). Often, I'll leave the GPS in the trunk so there's less for wandering eyes to wonder about. I really wish I had a unit built into the vehicle I didn't have to fold away, unplug etc.

Really, these units are best for travelers. In one's main car, I'd recommend going to the mobile audio/nav specialty shop and installing something.

While my 2820 has a bigger display than the Garmin ones with the "c" prefix (the smaller square shaped ones), I noticed that the extra screen space is mostly used for extra stats like distance to destination, ETA, current speed etc. In hindsight, the smaller "c" models that you can shove in your glovebox with effectively the same map display area, are probably better. That is - if it's going to be portable than make it fit in your glove box - otherwise - go with a properly installed permanent device.

Having used the device, I realized my concerns about a slightly larger screen size than the "c" models provide, was unfounded. Perhaps there's a mode I can set mine to to take up the full screen, sans the stats. It would be of negligible impact however. The audio cues and a quick glance over seem to really be all that one needs - even with a smaller model.

My 2820 is definitely a solid piece of technology and it does the job. It'll always get me in the area, if not to the doorstep of where I need to go. I've not used the "places of interest" and other such look ups, but my brother in law and cousin have the smaller Garmin units that do this as well, and they've been happy with those functions.

With respect to your friend's X5, if he can get one mounted and retrofit into his existing audio setup, that's the best bet. I'm guessing it's too late for that without redoing a lot. So, the next option is the 2820, if one is willing to leave it out on the dash all the time (perhaps windows sufficiently tinted or the alarm sufficiently ominous). If it's going to get pulled out only when needed, I think the "c" units that can go in the glove box are both workable and most practical.

Google/Firefox Browser Bookmark Synchronization

2006-08-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

The holy grail of bookmarks synchronization has arrived! I googled for "bookmarks sync" hoping there'd be an update to this old Firefox extension for such.

To my delight, Google has put out a marvelous one. Check out the Google Browser Sync tool. I did it between WinXP and my Mac and it worked flawlessly!

Ethernet over home power lines to extend your LAN

2006-03-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, laying ethernet cable everywhere you need to in the home isn't very practical or easy. Sure, you'll get the 100 Mbps or even 1 Gbps (depending on the equipment you have), but some physical structures and distances make it prohibitive.

Enter WiFi, right? Well, sort of. Sometimes. The signal can be choppy in homes and it's hit and miss. Some computers, after losing a WiFi (802.11 a/b/g) signal never gracefully reconnect themselves. This is a pain.

Enter Ethernet networking over powerlines. Yes, that's right. Over your electrical wiring in the home. While hydro (power) companies are finalizing technology to be your broadband provider the way cable companies already are, devices are already on the market that allow you to use your home or apartment's own electrical wiring to extend your home network.

Have an electrical socket in a room? Then you have Ethernet.

I just bought the Netgear XE104 device (you need at least two). Mine cost me just over $100 CDN. See http://www.netgear.com/products/details/XE104.php.

While advertised at up to 85 Mbps, depending on the quality of your internal wiring, distance etc., many people have commented that they don't get even 25% of that speed. However, I've tested in a 20 year old condo, and am getting a steady 58 Mbps. I am impressed. I am pleased.

I would highly recommend this product to anyone who needs a moderately fast local network extension in their home that won't flake on and off like 802.11x.

Pandora.com: personalized Internet Radio

2006-02-11T14:50:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty impressed with Pandora.com. It's an Internet radio player that plays in your browser and fine tunes what it serves up based on your training it with a thumbs up or thumbs down. You can set up several "radio stations" reflecting different styles.

See CNET.com / NYTimes.com article by David Pogue discussing the Squeezebox 3 from Slim Devices.

Tres cool.

Treo 650 Tips

2006-02-11T14:32:00.000-08:00

A good website on things Treo (news, reviews, accessories etc.) is www.treocentral.com

For hardware, I'd skip a desk cradle, unless you want it powered on and propped up for constant display (not sure if it even has that mode). I use a tiny travel USB sync 'n charge (around $30).

For memory, I got a 1GB SD card a while back. Handy for doing data transfers on the fly, storing photos etc. Some apps are still picky and want to go in main memory.

There's a car charger I have that also doubles as a wall charger. The USB cord detaches to connect to either the wall piece or the car piece.

My apps and their recommendations:

1. SplashID from SplashData. A must have for 256-bit blowfish encrypted storage of all things private on both the home pc/mac and synced with your Treo. See my previous blog entry for more info.

2. I also like "Beyond Contacts". What this does, is go beyond the basic Outlook synchronization and it makes sure you get *everything* from a Contact card. Very handy where you have 8 phone numbers or detailed notes that get dropped off somewhat with the basic conduit. See http://www.dataviz.com/products/beyondcontacts/index.html

3. Bonsai hierarchical note pad. This thing lets you store hierarchical notes and come up with your own icons and categorization schemes. Very handy for lists of lists, where each bullet point can belong to a different category, have its own detailed notes section etc. Has both a PC interface and full view and edit on the Treo as well. See http://www.natara.com/Bonsai/index.cfm

Google SMS - Handy text pages to your phone on the go

2006-02-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

Instead of dialing 411 or even having to print out directions, check out the Google SMS service. I was recently looking for a restaurant in the area and my friend said, "just text Google for the name of the restaurant followed by a nearby zipcode and it'll give you the phone number and address back".

So I tried it. I texted Google at GOOGL (there's no 'E'). This corresponds to the number 46645. I entered:

Cafe India 98101

Though I had the zipcode wrong (it was in the same city though, so we just picked my friend's home zip code) - this listing came up. He was right. Address, phone number - it was all there. Bingo.

Very cool.

David Allen's "GTD" - Getting Things Done

2005-04-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" and have recently been asked about its effectiveness. Before I discuss that, let me step back and summarize my view on the genre of task/project/goal/life planning tools, books and systems:

No one system is going to suit everyone. Each individual will have some areas of valid resistance in adopting 100% of the suggestions of any system. That being said, some systems are generally more effective than others. Ultimately, those whom you see around you as very effective, organized, on-the-ball, etc., have created their own systems by fusing best practices from one or more good systems, coupled with their own intuition about what works.

Often, the best systems are those that we look at and think, "This is all common sense!". I believe that having common sense codified, streamlined and packaged as a system has lots of value. It forces you to consistently align thinking, behaviours and action with a belief that you are following a system that actually works. When you believe in something, it often comes to fruition.

Now, as far as David Allen's "Getting Things Done" is concerned, the book is an easy read and recommended. One of the most valuable principles here is that you must, must get things out of your head and on paper (or a computer or an organizer or...you get the idea). Just getting them out of your head frees your subconscious from having to act as an intermittent alarm clock about things you need to do and places you need to be. This releases a tremendous amount of energy and mental clarity.

Now of course, this only works if your brain trusts that where you've recorded stuff is really a safe and reliable system - otherwise your subconscious will again attempt to be that record keeping system - having lost faith in a feeble attempt to relieve it of this duty.

Most of GTD is geared toward building a reliable set of trustworthy and effective systems for dealing with the inflow of tasks, commitments, projects, etc.

David Allen has a website and you can find his book on Amazon. If you're interested, you should check out his website which has a five minute video on it introducing the man, some industry endorsements and so forth. You'll also get a sense of his style.

A lot of what David Allen has to say is about building reliable, effective systems for capturing incoming events (calls, mail, to-do's, appointments etc.) as well as re-organizing what you already have as baggage into this new system.

Another key concept of GTD is the "next action". This simply put, is you identifying in your hierarchical list of projects and tasks, what the next action is for each little project that you have. You can also organize things by how much energy they take (for example, calls you need to make). If you have your list with you - say you're waiting in line somewhere, you can pull out your calls list and start making some calls on your cell phone. By having things organized and at your finger tips, you can take advantage of different types of time windows that become available to you.

If you're looking to get organized or to compliment your current system, I highly recommend the book. I believe that for most people about 80%+ of it will be relevant and at least 30% of it will be things you hadn't thought of, but which you'll find yourself immediately agreeing with.

Understanding VOIP and lowering your phone bill with Vonage and Skype

2005-02-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

I've written earlier about configuring Skype on your computer and how to get the best sound quality. To save money, there's actually a multi-pronged approach I recommend.

First, in both of these cases you'll need a high speed Internet connection. I'm not talking about DSL though. That's generally not fast enough. You need a good cable modem connection in the home to typically get the performance (speed) that Voice Over Internal Protocol (VOIP) requires.

Already have a high speed Internet connection? Great. Here are your options (generally, both make sense):

1. Make computer-to-computer calls anywhere in the world with Skype

In this setup, Skype is like an IM client. Think Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger, except Skype does and specializes in high quality audio and an interface that just works.

Both parties in the "call" must have Skype setup and with a high speed Internet connection. This gives you calls that are completely free, though you're generally tethered to your computer.

2. Use a commercial VOIP provider for your telephone service

In this scenario, you get to use your familiar telephone equipment and call people in the traditional manner - by dialing their phone number. Services like Vonage (my favourite) give you a little device that plugs into your home network. Into this little device, you plug in your regular phone (there's traditional phone jack on the back of these devices). Now calls to your phone number get routed over the Internet, into your home, onto your home network, into your little telephone adapter box and then they cause your phone to ring. You pick up the phone and it's a normal telephone call to you.

In this space, there are quite a few companies. The front runner is Vonage and they do this service well. You get voicemail, name and number caller ID, call waiting and all the other typical features you normally pay extra for, all for a fraction of the regular cost. My phone bill went from $70/US a month to $35/US a month.

The only downside, is that if your cable modem connection goes out, you have no phone service at home during the outage. However, calls still go to voicemail and everyone has cell phones - so you've really not lost anything.

In my Vonage plan for example, I get to call anywhere in North America (yes, that includes Canada) for free - any time. And, places like the UK, Pakistan and India are really, really cheap to call. I also got a "virtual" Toronto number. It's a local call for folks in Toronto and it routes to my phone in the US. The conveniences are great.

If you want to save money, have cell phones in the household and already have a broadband connection, you should take a look at Vonage. They're available in the US, Canada, the UK and I believe a couple of other places as well.

Enjoy the savings!

Splash ID is a hit! Secure sensitive data on your desktop and handheld / smartphone

2005-02-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

I posted earlier about Splash ID - a product I was going to test out to secure my sensitive data on the desktop and sync it with my smartphone so it was available to me on the go, also in an encrypted, password protected manner.

Well, I've tried Splash ID and I loved it so much I bought the $30 US utility. I get a desktop application that lets me enter in sensitive data, using categories (e.g. "Personal", "Business") into types (e.g. "Credit Card", "Bank Account", "Web Login", etc.). In both cases, you can define your own types and categories. Each type is a template of the kind of information you store in that type. For example, "Credit Card" types have a field call "card number", "expiry date" and so on. You get to customize these too.

Additionally, you can set fields to be "masked". This means that even though you type in a password on your handheld to access this information, the sensitive info shows up as little circles until and unless you toggle the "mask/unmask" button. This protects you from eyes peering over your shoulder.

The amount of usability and thought that went into this tool is impressive. By entering everything in on your desktop, you get to easily sync it with your handheld or smartphone. It's great to use on the desktop too, especially if you do a lot of Internet commerce.

Even if you just need to store passwords for work, home, the bank and more traditional items like these, Splash ID is a great place to put it all.

I highly, highly recommend it.

Norton Ghost Disappoints - Dantz Retrospect takes the lead

2005-02-13T07:59:00.000-08:00

I've posted earlier of how using a tool like Norton Ghost 2003 and a Maxtor external hard drive creates a great backup solution for a drive-image style backup that retains all your settings.

Well, Norton Ghost 2003 used to work well. I got it as part of a bundle in Norton SystemWorks 2004 Professional. I also use Norton Internet Security 2004. Norton has a Live Update facility that is always patching your software. It sounds great in theory. Many tools in their offerings share common facilities / code components. They don't seem to do this well however.

Recently, my Norton Ghost 2003 gleefully made system image backups that when I later went to check on, could not be opened (even though it did an "integrity" check on the original backup). Symantec support on this problem has been very slow and not very helpful. They recommended obvious things like "run live update until there are no more updates" which I had already done and stated to them in my original tech support request.

Ultimately, Symantec told me that if my hard drive was too fragmented, that this could be the cause. So I went out and purchased the best hard drive defragmenter (Diskeeper 9.0) and completely defragmented my hard drive, only to have the same problem.

What to do?

I had used a free version of Dantz Retrospect (Retrospect Express) that came bundled with my Maxtor hard drive and was impressed with it. So I downloaded their professional version (trial) which included a facility to do drive image backups like Ghost did. The backup part went really smooth and their process is far superior (uses incremental backups, you don't have to leave Windows, etc.). I will test out the ability for it to read the backup data reliably and update this blog.

So far, my problems with Norton Ghost suggest that the winning horse is Dantz Retrospect Professional.

Desktop Search: And the winner is....Copernic

2005-02-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

I've tried the major desktop search tools (Google, Yahoo! and Copernic) and I must say, Copernic is far superior to the rest.

For those of you not familiar with it, desktop search tools are a new breed of tools trying to do for your own hard drive what search engines have done for the Internet for years: help you find stuff quickly. These days, everyone has large hard drives with their data all over the place. You need a search engine to find your own stuff! Spending time to organize your computer contents mitigates this need, but even then, it's nice to have a snappy tool to assist you in the search process. These tools search not only files on your hard drive, but also search all of your email, often inside attachments too.

Google gives you results in a web browser, similar to their Web Search that everyone is familiar with. However, Yahoo! and Copernic give you a more powerful rich client interface (application) that helps you segment and preview items much more easily.

The Yahoo! Desktop tool is currently in Beta and it felt like it. The indexing must have been messed up on my version - simple things in emails that it could find when I installed it - it could no longer find on subsequent attempts.

So I resorted to Copernic (I've used their general Internet Search Agent before) and I was very impressed. It worked. Flawlessly. I could preview items in one pane and get date sorted results in another - similar to Outlook 2003's segmentation of folder contents. Copernic has been a joy to use and it is quick.

Copernic is highly recommended (and not just cause it's from a Canadian company!).

Skype Upgrades and Contacts

2005-02-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

For those of you on Skype, I've noticed that when you install on different computers, one's list of registered contacts doesn't move to the new computer the way mainstream IM clients like MSN, Yahoo! and AOL do. This is a minor inconvenience and I imagine at some point in the future, Skype will remedy this.

On a related note, Skype tends to have a minor upgrade available every couple of months. I tend to install these as soon as they come out, if for no other reason, so that it'll stop nagging me!

I've just upgraded to the latest and am happy with it; everything still works great. And of course, you won't lose your contacts when upgrading on the same computer as you currently have it installed at.

Configuring your audio setup for Skype

2005-02-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

Skype is great for calls over the Internet if you have a broadband connection.

If your audio hardware is decent and your configuration of such is optimal, you should be able to enjoy excellent sound reception and transmission for all your Skype calls. Of course, both parties in a call need to have a decent setup in order for the conversation to be as effortless and as smooth as regular phone service.

I'm often asked and help out with getting an audio setup configured right for Skype. The two main sources of audio problems are:

1. Low end audio hardware (i.e. cheap sound card)
2. Feedback in non-headset mode

Audio Hardware

If you've got a Mac, you have less to worry about here. Your audio hardware is very good.

If you have a PC, you may have an issue here. Low-end sound cards that sound decent for basic sounds and some music often have much worse audio in (mic input) sub-systems. Furthermore, if the sound card is really cheap, the driver software and utilities that come with it usually are too. Not being able to properly configure mic input volume levels and basic things of this sort can make it frustrating.

In my Dad's computer, we had a basic sound card that used to do the job well before we pushed it with two-way voice over IP telephony. Frustrated with the confusing driver software and performance, I picked up an external, brand name sound "card". The beauty with these, is that they can move with you to the next computer, much like your keyboard, mouse and monitor.

For about $70 CDN, you can get an entry-level SoundBlaster external sound device from Creative Labs. These guys are a mainstream brand name. Therefore, decent software and driver support (as well as above average sound hardware) is something you no longer have to worry about.

As for mics, I'm a big fan of the Logitech USB microphone and for headsets, I like anything Plantronics makes. In both cases, there's an above average quality you can trust in that makes the configuration/troubleshooting phase that much simpler.

Audio Feedback

This is where the bulk of the problems come. We often have our speakers so close to our computers for every day applications, that we don't realize this is just way too close for using Skype, in most cases.

If you are using a computer headset (more common with PCs), you pretty much eliminate the feedback issue. If you are using a microphone and your speakers, then you have to be careful that the sound from your speakers doesn't feed back into your microphone. If you're not sure this is the problem, replace your speakers with regular audio headphones, but continue to use your microphone. With no other sound except that going to your ears, you eliminate the possibility of feedback. Does this sound better? If so, then as far as you think your speakers are, they are still too loud and/or too close. Only experimentation will tell you what works.

If all else fails, use a headset or headphones to kill feedback.

I have found that placing the speakers on the ground created more feedback and rumblings, but that placing speakers behind me and pointing sideways (instead of having the sound come directly at me from behind) worked very well.

In my own setup, I keep a couple of speaker sets around the room. If I'm doing a Skype call, I'll kill the power on the nearby speakers to eliminate the feedback. Now I can walk around the room and have a Skype call, hands free.

Affordable dial-up plan as backup for broadband and travel

2005-01-30T18:17:00.000-08:00

Do you find yourself using broadband everywhere and thus, not really needing a dial-up account? Wherever you go, there's wi-fi or an ethernet jack you can plug into, right?

But what about the times that's not available, and you could use a 56K dial-up service? You don't want to pay $30, $20 or $10 a month for something you're not going to use more than a few hours the entire year, right?

So what do you do?

I signed up with Crosspaths Internet (www.crosspaths.net). They have a dial-up plan with nationwide numbers (across the US only) like all the big boys, but they only charge you $1 / month. That's no typo. With that $1 a month, you get 60 minutes of connection time. Need more? It's only a $1 each hour more. So if you use dial-up for 3 hours one month, you get billed $3. If you don't use it for a month, you just get billed $1 for that month. It's a great pay-for-usage type plan.

They no longer advertise it on their website home page, but if you want it, you can sign up via the telephone number for their sales department. I've found this service invaluable - but only if you're in the US (apologies to my Canadian readers!).

Securing Sensitive Data on a handheld / Smartphone and Desktop

2005-01-27T15:09:00.000-08:00

This has always been a pain with so many passwords, logins and other sensitive information to manage that you just can't keep in your head anymore. What to do?

It used to be that folks stored sensitive login information in a Word document, and put a password on that (which MS Word lets you do). The problem today is that you can buy $50 software quite easily that will break this weak encryption, which was never meant to be bulletproof. Furthermore, even if you had a heavy duty PocketPC PDA or SmartPhone, you have the same breakable encryption problem or your mobile device.

I am experimenting with a program called FineCrypt that is freeware at the basic levels and acts like a secure zip archive. It's not as intuitive or seamless as I'd like it to be, but it may just do the job on the desktop.

I want to eventually keep login info on a smart phone (likely a Treo 600/650 soon) and friends of mine already want to do this now. So I looked into it. I've not tried anything as yet, but I am intrigued by Splash ID. It's available for PocketPC and PalmOS and has both a mobile and desktop client (both Windows and Mac!). You can define custom fields to protect and record data in, and it is all protected with 256-bit blowfish encryption (the algorithm Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security devised - and he's quite the guru on the subject).

I'll keep readers posted on my trials with these products.

How Does Plaxo Make Money?

2005-01-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked this question after a friend received a Plaxo update from me.

They've got a VIP service that charges, but only a small percentage would actually sign up (in my empirical estimation). Lots in industry wonder about this.

I think it's an initial user base accumulation strategy. Once they hit a larger mass, there's more they can do (subtle changes to privacy policies over time to unsuspecting users enabling lots of data mining applications).
They are now charging for "send to phone" for contacts, so non-smart phone users can have an easier way to update cell phone contacts.

Certainly, they need a large cash pool to ride out this longer term, incremental strategy.

Hopefully, the other business ideas they can launch with having address book information will allow them to survive without resorting to subtle, sneaky privacy policy changes over time that others in industry are apt to engage in. It may even be a pay-per-year subscription in a year or two - charging loads of users $5 / year or something similarly inconsequential - which would add up given Plaxo's current and projected user base.

Backup Solutions - Maxtor One Touch and Norton Ghost 2003

2004-06-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

I really like my Maxtor "One Touch" backup drive. I got the 300 MB version (has both Firewire and USB 1.1/2.0 interfaces). I use the Firewire interface and connect it to my server. It was about $330 at CompUSA.

Note that the "one touch" button just launches any program you'd like, including backup software. Since I schedule a nightly incremental backup of data, it really isn't necessary for me. If you had one of these one-touch drives attached to each of your computers, then I can see value in configuring it to do an incremental capture of the local system and data on demand.

There's a flash demo available as well.

I use this for data file backups from shared (and secure) data folders across the home network. The Dantz Retrospect Express Software is very good. It takes a little getting used to, but then it works reliably.

For image backups, I recommend a copy of Norton Ghost 2003 for each machine to be backed up. Configure it so the image gets dropped to a file share on your server (the Maxtor drive, in fact), and everything is centralized for backups.

Initial Blog Post

2004-06-10T12:45:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

This is my first post to my first Blog, so this will be a short test!