blog

Since the review of Todo and Things a lot of things happened (and I don't mean the US elections!) and recently a new Todo application has been added to Apples AppStore - the Remember The Milk app for the iPhone. Time to compare it with Appigo's Todo application, which I use since September and was updated several times since then.

Remember The Milk for iPhone
It was just a matter of time until RTM would launch their own application. And while Todo can also sync with RTM this app is of course highly optimized for the own service. It features everything needed for GTD so I just want to outline the postive and negative highlights:

• RTM supports tags, locations and searching for tasks.
• It even allows saving the searches ("smart searches") and re-use them at a later time - a very handy feature!
• The biggest drawback is the requirement for a Remember The Milk Pro account which costs USD 25,- per year. So while the application seems to be free it requires yearly payments to keep the service up and running.
• Another feature I was missing is "quick adding", which is available in Todo. In RTM you have click many more times to simply add a task without further options to the Inbox. In Todo just click the quick-add button, enter the task title and press "Done" to add the task (with the default settings) to the current list. Very handy to take quick notes at any time.
  
• Also I dislike the blue title bar, which perfectly fits with the RTM corporate identity but makes the app look like any 99 cent todo application out there...
  

Todo (Appigo)
Since the last review two new releases have been published by Appigo. While the first one "only" contained bug fixes and translations the update to version 1.4 introduced a lot of great new features:

• Todo now supports contexts, which are automatically synced with Toodledo.
  
• It also syncs tags, which are a very handy way to categorize tasks even further.
  
• Todo learned searching tasks, unfortunately it does not offer to store the search like RTM does. Maybe this is included in a future release?
  

Whom to choose this time?
Based on the pros/cons above the USD 25,- price tag for the Remember The Milk application seems a bit high to me. Certainly you get a lot of options and access to one of the best GTD list managers out there. Nevertheless if you already have a working system it is not worth switching and migrating all your tasks, especially because both Appigo and Toodledo are updating their products constantly.
If you start from scratch also check out Toodledo for the iPhone, which supports all features available but yet has to proof that it is working as reliable as Todo.

Labels: english, gtd, iphone, mac, tech

Almost every Apple-fanboy would agree that during the last few releases (i.e. iPod nano, new MacBooks) something was missing. The (positive) shock of something that no-one had imagined - not like for the new Nanos, the iPhone 3G or the new MacBooks, where images and almost all specs leaked before the official event took place.
So what is Apple planning in the near future? Why are there so little great announcements?

One more thing, please!

So I'm gonna tell you what Apple is working on and what the strategy of their MacBooks is - and it is relatively simple and obvious to everyone who follows the news. It is:

Multi-Touch.

Yeah, right! Or why do you think Microsoft is focusing on MultiTouch in Windows 7? They already announced it, but I'm sure Apple already has it already ready for production. Or why do you think there are only "performance increasements" in Snow Leopard? They will have it ready long time before Microsoft will be able to react and it will work perfectly because of the iPhone experience. Or why do you think all of the new MacBooks have a full glass front? Glossy screens suck but on the other hand it is the only option to implement a large touch screen that also can be cleaned easily.

Enough reasons, let's see what happens in January, if Apple will have "one more thing" and there will be another big bang when they release Snow Leopard and new MacBooks with a full multi touch enabled screen. I would hope so, otherwise their releases this year have not been that impressive...

PS: Please note that I'm not working for Apple nor am I affiliated with them in any way!

Labels: apple, english, mac, rumor

Yesterday Apple announced a new MacBook and a new MacBook Pro. While the overall design and the attention to detail is again amazing and sets Apple apart from its competition, the event itself and the amount of buzz was... missing? different? wrong?

I remember a while ago when Apple announced the iPhone - speculations around the Blogsphere, lots of self-drawn images, buzz everywhere. Will they? Or won't they? What will be included? And finally Apple delivered an amazing phone, that still beats all of its competitors in terms of usability and design. But since then - a mess with MobileMe, unresolved security bugs and missing features. Apple seems to loose its buzz?

Murphy Mac writes:

If you were looking for the blockbuster announcement you were at the wrong event. If there is one, we’ll know about it some time in December, when the Macworld rumors start leaking. Personally, Murphy hopes Apple has something big, and that they manage to keep it under wraps until the keynote. It’s more fun that way.

I could not agree more - let's hope Apple finds back to its roots, keeps it promises and "shocks" us positively with new, amazing gadgets!

(Image from apple.com)

Labels: apple, english, mac, rant

Finally it gets the attention in the press it deserves:

The first concerns the iPhone's email application, which automatically downloads images within an e-mail, said Aviv Raff, a security researcher, on Thursday.
That's problematic because the image will refer back to a server-side script when it is downloaded, indicating to the sender that the e-mail has been opened and the e-mail address is valid. The address can then be spammed.

Apple already knew about this design flaw when they released the iPhone. Also I wrote the support several times about how to disable the loading of images but all I heard back (from both Apple and t-mobile) was that this feature is not available. The support person did not not confirm that this is a security issue or write back anything in particular about this problem.

It's the same problem (with Apple, not with the products!) that they don't listen to the community or bug reports - I also reported the SSL issue in MobileMe as a detailed bug report and through the support. The bug report was closed with "thanks, we don't confirm anything" and the tech support.... uhm... to be polite: was not very tech savy and said "SSL is not needed as MobileMe uses JavaScript and CSS"....

Grml. Why the heck don't they fix those issues and take more care about the security of their users data? Is Steve Jobs himself using MobileMe and exposing all his calendar data, business contacts and mails to the public? Would be interested to hear back from him... or is he not using his own service?

Read more about the iPhone security issues.

Labels: apple, mac, security

Since the Apple AppStore launched I was looking for a ToDo application - the iPhone itself does not synchronize iCal ToDo's and it also only offers a simple list. No way to implement GTD with iCal. Until now all free applications in the AppStore turned out to be very basic and a one-way solution. Enter task on the iPhone, view them there, that's it. But it would be great to have a Desktop app to also manage my tasks, synchronization and an open interface to my data.

Finally there are two canditades which I'm going to review - Appigo's Todo and Things from CulturedCode. These candidated have been chosen because of their price tag and because they had a lot of positive reviews within the AppStore. Please note that I did the review without actually buying the apps as only the winner will make it onto my iPhone.

Things (CulturedCode)
According to the screen designs a very clean, iPhone like interface is offered; not like some free apps which hinder the workflow and look... Java based. More important, what else is offered?

• Things stores its data as XML which allows to re-use it easily.
• CulturedCode offers a native desktop application for the Mac to sync the data with.
  
• The data is synced locally and not stored on an external server.
• The costs for the desktop application are pretty high - 49 USD.
• The application is Mac only right now.
  

Todo (Appigo)
The screen design of Todo looks very similar than of its competition - it's "just" a Todo application, so there is not a lot of room for innovation (but a lot can go wrong - check out the Freebies!). Lets talk about the unique features of Todo:

• Todo is able to sync its data to Remember The Milk (pro account only) or Toodledo.
• Syncing is done over the air, so it's not as secure as a local synchronization.
• I had a deeper look into Toodledo - even in its free version it offers a lot of features including a simple, open API, a Firefox plugin, Dashboard integration etc.
• Toodledo is free, the Pro account is reasonable priced ($14.95/year!), but not needed.
  

Whom to choose?
Based on the bullets above I'm going to invest my money into Appigo's Todo application. The main reason is the synchronization with Tooledo, which offers an API and seems to have a larger community behind it. Yes, I cannot store confidential information there, but in days of social networks a secured Todo account with a strong password is not that much of a problem compared to public profiles at social networking sites. And I can access my Todos whenever I have a browser available, no need for a Mac. Let's see how it goes!

I'll blog more about Todo, GTD and Toodledo in the future, just subscribe to the RSS feed to stay up to date. And another wish for Apple - would be great to test apps out of the AppStore for i.e. a day without any payment!

Labels: english, gtd, iphone, mac, tech

This morning I discovered that I have more than 1000 contacts in my "Personal Address book" within Thunderbird. What the he*k? Why are there so many duplicates, addresses from spammers, mailing lists etc. I definitely never added to my Personal Address Book? Seems to be mixed with the "Collected Addresses", where Thunderbird collects all this crap for me. But why?

I'm using the Sync Kolab plugin to sync my addresses between various computers using IMAP - a smart way of using the protocol to keep contacts in sync. Unfortunately I made a mistake when I setup Sync Kolab on a new computer - I mixed up "Collected Addresses" and "Personal Address book" which caused the mess. Not a big deal to fix - just change the settings, remove unwanted addresses and sync again. But wait - Sync Kolab does not really sync! It just adds addresses, but it never removes them. It also does not seem to detect obvious duplicates (same name, same address, same fields!). As soon as I start the sync process the locally removed addresses are added back to my Address Book. Not very smart. Resetting all the IMAP data does not work as well - the other computers will again add all the addresses.

So what are the alternatives to Sync Kolab? One option is to wait until Thunderbird 3 is released (end of 2008), as it supports the usage of the Mac Address Book. Which syncs itself using me.com. Which does real syncing including deletions and works flawlessy so far. There are costs involved, but that's fine as the syncronization between the Macs and the iPhone is really worth the money. Of course then switching to the Mac Mail application is an option as well, unfortunately it does not support everything Thunderbird does - Mac Mail seems to be more "basic" - but I'll leave that open for a future blog post. In the meanwhile feel free to research on your own.

Labels: english, mac, rant, sync, tech

Do you regularly create backups of your data? Just in case the harddisk decides to die? Or anything else happens to your computer?
I sort of do. "Sort of" means that I used to run a backup only about once a month - then I started iBackup and waited for about 3-4 hours until it finished the backup to my NAS system (which I bought exactly 2 1/2 weeks before Apple announced its TimeCapsule :( ). Way too long for just an incremental backup. The reason for this lengthy incremental backup is that iBackup uses SMB to connect to the NAS - which means it transfers too much data to just check if it has been changed since the last backup.

Time to create my own script - a bit of Bash scripting, rsync with an exclude file and an Automator workflow - voila, my incremental backups are now executing in about 5 minutes! Perfect for daily backups via cron and way better than the old backup "process" which took a few hours!

Here is the script: rsyncbackup.sh.txt. Feel free to adopt it as needed!

So my recommendation to everyone - review your backup process, it has to be simple, painless and fast. Otherwise you are not going to use it! Which brings up Mozy - why not using this great, unlimited online backup service? My personal reason is that I don't want my Mac to be running to do the uploads - that's what my NAS does in the background - and that I already own a me.com account as well as a 50GB Bingodisk account. No need for another service...

Labels: english, mac, security, tech

Migrating an existing, running and working Thinkpad (from Lenovo :) ) into a Parallels image is relatively easy - just download the Transporter for Windows, install it and reboot. Afterwards select the computer from the Mac Transporter and wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Finally reboot your newly created image. If you are lucky it just boots, if you used a Thinkpad as source computer you might end up with a Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) as shown in the image to the right. PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. In this case follow these steps to get the issue resolved:

1. Boot the image in Safe mode
2. Open up the Device Manager
3. Enable viewing of hidden devices in the menu
4. Find a device tree called "SM DRIVER"
5. Uninstall all devices (SM BIOS) below that tree
6. Reboot and hope :)
   

At least for me this worked fine and I could boot the image. And begin uninstalling all the Thinkpad software.

(Original instructions)

PS: doing the migration over a Wireless connection is no good idea. Will take veeeery long. Instead use a direct, wired connection between the Thinkpad and the MacBook and enter the IP directly (169.x.x.x) in the Transporter Wizard. No need for a router. No need for a cross-over cable, the Mac is capable of auto-sensing.

Labels: english, help, mac, tech