Ocean kayaking and whisky!

Ok, this has got to be the perfect tour: Ocean kayaking around the coast of Scotland on a tour that includes stops at some of the finest scotch whisky distilleries on the islands. I really can’t think of a better vacation.

How a web site design goes straight hell

I love this little sequence by The Oatmeal. It’s unfortunately far too true to life. It does baffle me that so many clients will hire a product design firm (whether it be web sites, marketing materials or hardware) only to completely disregard their cumulative decades of experience in favor of “Miffles the dog.”

Anyhow, buy The Oatmeal a cup of coffee. (Coffee gives me amazing powers too!)

Is Email Marketing Still a Viable Marketing Channel?

This was just too funny. I use Postini to keep my mailbox clear of junk mail (and I’ve got to say, it does a fantastic job — and, you can now use Postini with your Google mail account). The Postini service sends me an email every morning with a nicely organized summary of messages that have been quarantined — it only takes a few moments to scan through and see that, in fact, it’s all junk and I can delete it.

But today an email with the subject line “Is Email Marketing Still a Viable Marketing Channel?” caught my eye. No, I didn’t bother opening it. And I’d say the answer is… no, it’s not.

Finally, definitive iCal to iPhone syncing

We’ve all been there — utter frustration that our iPhone can’t show us a comprehensive picture of our schedule. Until recently, getting it to synchronized with Google, iCal and a Mobile Me account has been a constant battle of tweaking, subscribing to third-party services (such as NuevaSync) and realizing that it just wasn’t worth it.

The good news is, with iPhone OS 3.1 we’ve got better options.

The bad news — well, it’s still a bit of a hassle to figure out how to make it work.

iPhone OS 3.1: Subscriptions, finally!

With the latest release of Apple’s new iPhone OS subscription calendars configured in iCal on your Mac will sync via MobileMe to your iPhone. This means that if all you want to do is get calendar subscriptions to show up, and you are syncing your iCal calendar with your MobileMe account, you’re all set.

This does require a MobileMe account though. I haven’t found a way to get an iPhone to subscribe to calendar subscriptions all on it’s own — so this is where other solutions come in very handy.

Spanning Sync: Google calendars (and subscriptions)

SpanningSync is another possible solution — for those of us either without a MobileMe subscription, or just interested in solid synchronization between Google calendars and the iCal. SpanningSync is a preference panel that reliably and accurately synchronizes your iCal with Google Calendar and Address Book with Google Contacts. In my first week of experimenting with it, I’ve found it flawless. Furthermore, updates both from and to Google calendar happen within minutes, if not faster.

So, how does this help iPhone users? In conjunction with a MobileMe account you can get a full synchronization between Google, your desktop and your iPhone. SpanningSync takes care of the Google to desktop synchronization, while MobileMe takes care of the desktop to iPhone connection.

Using SpanningSync, it’s also possible to synchronize subscription calendars to the iPhone, provided that your Google calendar account subscribes to the calendar. SpanningSync is smart enough to pick up every calendar (subscriptions included) on your Google calendar and put it on your desktop.

Another product in this space is BusyCal, from BusyMac.com. BusyCal offers an iCal replacement with a number of groupware features:

BusyCal is a desktop calendar that provides seamless calendar sharing and enhanced productivity tools for workgroups and individuals. BusyCal combines the calendar sharing and synchronization technology from the award winning BusySync with a beautiful desktop calendar interface that is instantly recognizable to iCal users — all in one easy to use integrated application.

BusyCal bills itself as “a better iCal,” but this approach does require dropping Apple’s calendar application in favor of BusyMac’s.

My solution

In my case, I’m using iCal, MobileMe, Google calendar and SpanningSync quite successfully. My iPhone is always up-to-date with my desktop and with Google.

I tend to use iCal and MobileMe as my primary scheduling tool. Consequently, most of my calendars are, actually, iCal/MobileMe calendars. I’ve got a few subscriptions as well, but most are in iCal/MobileMe. Finally, SpanningSync takes care of making sure my two public Google calendars (for shared meetings and office scheduling) are correctly synchronized to iCal.

All of the iPhone synchronizing takes place through MobileMe. As soon as SpanningSync picks up a change — either on Google (sending it down to my iCal account) or on my desktop (sending it up to Google), my MobileMe subscription reliable picks up the change and pops it into my iPhone and vice-versa. So far I haven’t had any problems making changes to calendars on the iPhone. MobileMe picks up any change, sends it to iCal and within moments SpanningSync relays the change to Google.

It is a bit complicated but, fortunately, it’s all behind the scenes. Granted, life would be easier if iCal and MobileMe knew how to talk effectively to Google — but then, where would companies like BusyMac and SpanningSync be?

No contingency plan

According to the research firm TNS and its Personal Risk Assessment and Risk Literacy Survey, almost half (about 46%) of consumers can’t come up with $2,000 in emergency funds on a month’s notice. Even those making between $100K to $149K, a quarter responded that they couldn’t raise the funds either. Given that the survey asked if funds could be raised from sources such as savings, credit cards, friends, family or other sources, this sounds dire indeed. Is it just a phenomenal lack of planning on the part of Americans, or is our economy doing far worse than we think?

Outsourcing your offshore nearshoring? What?

Can someone explain what this means? I found it in my email this morning: “You heard it, India is outsourcing outsourcing. So why should you consider nearshoring your outsourcing, instead of offshoring it?”

The article was about how India is now outsourcing to Mexico, apparently because India is becoming as expensive as the United States (or at least, approaching those rates). But seriously… Grammar, anyone?

A little scifi story

I tap the screen on my phone, and tell it “buy cream cheese at the market.”

The next day, when I walk into the market, my phone pings and reminds me to pick up some cream cheese. It knows this because the last time I was near the market, I tagged the location. My phone also knows what I need to do when I get to work on Monday, such as “remember to meet with Chris regarding the widget, first thing on Monday.”

Sure enough, my calendar has a meeting scheduled for 9:00am, Monday morning: “meet with Chris regarding the widget.”

It’s not scifi though. Take a look at reQall and see what it can do with Evernote and your smartphone.

Snow Leopard headache

Being the helpless technologist I am, I had to install Snow Leopard (OS/X 10.6) the day it shipped. Actually I’ve been looking forward to this release for some time — a release almost entirely focused on making the operating system more stable, faster and more compact. How novel! Of the handful of new features coming out, the most useful for me will be improved Microsoft Exchange Server integration — something I haven’t tried out yet.

Unfortunately, the point of this post is not how splendid 10.6 is. Now that it’s up and running, I’ve no complaints. But getting it up and running — that was another story. My advice: if you are faint-of-heart when it comes to your computer upgrade failing mid-stride, wait a little while. We’ll be seeing a 10.6.1 release soon, and hopefully it fixes the problems I ran into while upgrading my Mac Book Pro.

The most disturbing problem was the installer crash, something very uncharacteristic for Apple software. After getting the preliminaries out of the way, the 10.6 installer was merrily chugging along at about 15 minutes into the upgrade when it just disappeared. I had glanced away from the screen so I assumed the computer was still doing something — but ten minutes later I was still staring at a blank screen. Completely blank. No indication of life beyond my mouse pointer. I had to do a hardware reboot, holding down the power key until the system restarted.

Fortunately, the installer restarted automatically and detected it’s failure. I was given the option to “recover” my failed install attempt, which I did. This time the installer finished the job, the only incident being a point where it got hung up around “40 minutes remaining” and ultimately took close to one and a half hours to finish. All appeared good and my machine rebooted just fine. Then I tried to login.

I ended up staring at a blank screen again. The same one, with no sign of life but my mouse pointer.

Here are the steps I followed to diagnose and ultimately repair the problem. Fortunately, it didn’t require going back to Leopard:

1. First, verify that it’s your specific account and not the system. Try logging in as your systems’ Administrator, or another user. If this works, it’s a good sign you have a problem with your login items.
2. Start up in “safe mode” by restarting your computer and holding down the “shift” key.
3. With “safe mode” enabled (you’ll see an indication on the login panel), log in under your troubled user account.
4. Disable all of your login items using Preferences.
5. Try rebooting and logging in again. If you still have problems (as I did — once again, getting the blank screen and having to hard-reboot), you may have a font management problem. In my case, I restarted in safe mode, removed all of my fonts except those in the default system and, just to be safe, uninstalled Linotype FontExplorer.

Our media stinks

So, how many of you took the last few week’s news about better unemployment figures to heart? How many of you would be disappointed to hear its just another failure of our media to report the real state of the nation? How many would be dismayed that even our President is promulgating entirely misleading figures — and the thing is, he knows better. So does the media, but they’re a lost cause already. It dismays me no end that our President would go on TV to brag that our unemployment claims dropped by about 303,000, knowing full well this merely means those 303,000 people have used up their benefits. That’s right, the “good news” is that there are now another 303,000 people without any source of income whatsoever. These figures will all be adjusted when phone surveys are conducted, but by then I’m not sure who will be listening. Why doesn’t the news report that IRS collections so far this fiscal year are running 33% less than last year, and 37% less than predicted?

Iceland

I miss Iceland. I was there for less than a week—maybe it’s my distant Viking heritage trying to call me home.

Actually, I’m a bit surprised, given that my first impression of Iceland was “barren.” The landscape along my ride from the airport to Reykjavik was about forty-five minutes, a long winding road with a stunningly beautiful ocean on one side, and broken, volcanic, treeless landscape on the other. After about twenty or thirty minutes, my impression had been modified from simply “barren” to “barren, stark, and dramatically beautiful.” The day is windy, enough so that the waves are being whipped up into whitecaps in stark contrast with the deep blue ocean and sky. It’s a clean, crisp and cold day, invigoratingly so. There is no pollution—I feel like I can see forever, right up to the glacial mountains in the distance.

Near to Reykjavik, the landscape changes. The hillsides become fissured, covered with moss and grasses still brown from winter. Curious stone monoliths dot the landscape, and I wonder if these have something to do with the legends of elves I’ve been cautioned not to bring up too much. A few lonely outposts along the oceanside soon turn into a city, modern but still quaint in many regards. The buildings are charming, colorful. The roads are clear and wide with lighting every hundred feet or so. I can’t help notice that most of the taxis seem to be Mercedes.

So what am I doing on a volcanic island midway between Greenland and Europe? Well, it’s about my kids, and finding a better lifestyle. I’m visiting CCP, an Icelandic company best described as a builder of the hands-down largest virtual world in existence today—although, if you’ve heard of them, odds are you identify CCP with EVE Online. CCP has bigger plans than EVE, and those plans are intriguing.

Moving to Iceland is an exciting prospect, but, alas, over the past year or so I haven’t been able to bring it to fruition. It’s far away, and the economic differences between the U.S. (and the complexity of owning real estate in the U.S.) make it a tough nut to crack.

As a U.S. citizen, I’ve always felt terribly dismayed at how insular the United States is. Very few of us travel internationally, and only marginally more seem to have any knowledge of the world at large. Most of our students can’t draw a map of the world or even a reasonably accurate map of Europe. In fact, I recently saw a video clip in which confused interviewees claimed they would support Bush’s plans to start a war with Australia, which had been incorrectly labeled as “Serbia” on a world map. On the whole, as a people the United States is not a part of the world. There is nothing beyond our borders worth talking about, unless perhaps it has some financial impact on our future.

There’s also the matter of the horrible state of education in this country. Granted, we still have good colleges, presuming you can pay for them. But pre-collegiate education is suffering—continuing a steady decline that began in the 1970’s. Bush’s “no child left behind” is, in fact, making sure that we leave nobody behind—at the cost of our nation’s future.

This is not the environment I would like my children to grow up in. And according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Iceland—for that matter, just about all of Europe, New Zealand and Australia—would be an immense improvement. The prospect of my children gaining a European eduction is irresistible… and yet, at least for the time being, out of reach.

…Sorry, my phone crashed

I still think it’s funny that we actually say things like “sorry, my phone crashed.” When did this happen? When did our phones become complicated mobile computing devices that actually require customer support and drive us crazy with endless fiddling? I suppose this particular rant is more about how awful AT&T is at customer support. But whether it’s AT&T or the “Genius Bar” folks, it seems “do it yourself” is the theme of the day.

Over the past couple of week’s I spent at least two, probably three hours trying to figure out why my girlfriend’s iPhone apps all crash. They would start up, display a splash page for a second or so, and then drop back to the main iPhone screen. This happened to every app we tried to install.

After hours of reading other people’s accounts of the problem — apparently it’s pretty common, unfortunately — and trying out numerous solutions I finally stumbled on a fix. At least, a fix for this particular issue — based on the different threads, this problem manifests itself in different ways.

Some iPhone users have found a relatively simple solution: Delete all the iPhone apps from the phone and from iTunes, then download the apps again from the iTunes store and re-sync their phone. Alas, this is not a cure-all, and only works for some people.

Others reported success in re-authorizing their computer with the iTunes store. I tried both of these approaches, with mixed results. Even though my computer was already authorized, and iTunes told me so when I re-authorized it, some apps started to work. Unfortunately, though, not all — which was completely baffling and very frustrating. (Imagine me dancing around thinking I’d found the solution, only to find that after several hours of work I had merely reduced the problem from “completely reproducible” to “finicky and unpredictable.”)

In the end, I had a strange mix of some applications that worked on my girlfriend’s iPhone, and some that didn’t. My final last-straw solution was to delete the misbehaving apps from her iPhone, and download them directly to the iPhone (not through iTunes). This, finally, seemed to work — but now I’m afraid to touch the phone… or, more precisely, afraid to sync again. I’ve turned off application syncing, so hopefully it won’t break again. In the meantime though, Apple, I hope you are listening to tdavis312 in his Apple discussion post:

This problem continually occurs on my iPhone (along with the dropped call problem). All of the solutions presented here are for fiddlers. A phone is an appliance. Apple sold it to zillions because it is carefree. Download a sexy app and use it. Not go to a GENIUS BAR (puke) or reload, or reset, or fiddle, or or or. Some people have lives, responsibilities, and interests. This is not 1980. We have moved on beyond the Apple II. Apple needs to email us all an official workaround and apology. THEN FIX THE **** THING.

I couldn’t agree more — unfortunately, I’m afraid Apple may just not be listening. They marked the post as “archived,” and any further responses are… not allowed. (“Maybe if we ignore the problem it’ll just go away.”)

Antiprivacy policy

According to AT&T (via Wired Threat Level) AT&T has the protection of your privacy in mind. No really, despite their record (there was that little thing with the unwarranted wire tapping, after all), you can trust them. I mean, their new policy says they’re listening. Yes, it says that: “We’re listening.” Hmm.