Jules Says

iPhone: iCal glitch & why it took me 22 hrs to set up my iPhone

Nearly 23 hours after I got my paws on an iPhone, I'm finally up and running, but it was far from painless.

The summary

• I was in the first group of 20 into the Apple store in Austin. I entered at 6pm to the applause of the staff (nice touch), bought 2 8Gig iPhones, and was on my way to my car by 6:04. Impressive!
• I came home and immediately tried to synch. Turns out I had to do some upgrading (yes, I should've known that). So, first I upgraded my system to 10.4.10 (I was one version behind) and iTunes.
• I went through the activation process, which went smoothly. I was porting my cell number from Verizon to AT&T.
• The last screen said it would be about 6 minutes to finish. I went to change, thinking I'd be leaving momentarily for a cocktail party, where I'd be able to show off my fabulous new toy.
• I came back to a screen that said roughly "it's going to take a while, we'll email you when we know how long. The neighbors may well have heard me yell at this point.
• Since I couldn't activate, I couldn't do anything - I couldn't use the iPod, the calendar, or even play with preferences.
• I went to the cocktail party, and rather pathetically showed off the Earth screen and emergency call pad.
• I was home an hour and a half later with an email saying it would be up to 24 hours before my phone was activated.
• I wrote my first bitchy blog post about it.
• I called the number in the email from AT&T to "make other arrangements". The first woman was nice, didn't know much about the iPhone, and gave me another number to call.
• I called that number. It was disconnected.
• I called the original number again, and a guy told me it'd be 6-24 hours - there was nothing he could do.
• This morning at 8am when I got up, my activation had gone through. I eagerly attempted a synch. No go. I got the error message shown in my last post. iTunes seemed to think the iPhone was disconnected. It wasn't.
• I restared my Mac. I restored the iPhone to factory settings. I tried a different USB port, and tried the synch with just the cable and again with the dock. Nada.
• I remembered that with my iPod, I've had trouble using the auto-synch feature of iTunes, so I tried synching manually. That seemed to work fine, and I thought I was set.
• But no. Everything synched except iCal. I tried manually synching just iCal, to no avail.
• Finally around 10:30 I called the iPhone help number. A recorded message said that due to heavy demand, my wait would be "5 minutes or greater." Understandable.
• 55 minutes later, I got a very nice guy who wasn't able to help. He said he'd connect me with someone for "more advanced" help.
• 1.5 hours later (!) I spoke with Nathan from Apple. Again, very nice. Finally I was going to get some help.

The iCal glitch
I have 6 calendars I use regularly. We experimented with trying to synch a single calendar at a time. At first it didn't work, and Nathan speculated that maybe you can't synch more than one calendar at a time. That would be a pretty glaring error if it was so.

My "home" calendar wouldn't synch. It would start, and I'd get the error message. If I synched any other single calendar on its own, however, it worked. Doing that, however, made each new calendar completely replace the previous one. Obviously, that wouldn't do. Then we discovered I was able to synch all calendars at once except for the "home" calendar. Something is apparently corrupted in that calendar.

So I've just spent the last hour going back and re-categorizing my calendars back to January. I deleted the Home calendar. It now synchs beautifully and completely.

My opinion, after a rocky start
The good

• It's lovely - feels good to hold, and I love the mutli-touch screen.
• It's fast, even on the EDGE network. I've played several iTunes videos with no cutting out.
• The browser is fantastic - surprisingly readable.
• I'm getting really good coverage with AT&T - better than with Verizon and miles better than with Sprint.
• The maps support is great - I easily get real-time traffic reports... sweet!
• The interface is elegant and mostly very intuitive. A few things will take a bit of getting used to, but that will happen quickly.
• Same goes for the keyboard. It'll take me a little while to get proficient, but I have no doubt that I will.
• I love the .com button on the keyboard.

The bad

• It felt hazardous to try to make a call while driving. The flow navigation doesn't work well with one hand. Once a bunch of people are on my "recents" list, this will be less of an issue, as I won't have to hunt for them.
• Making calls, even with "recents" takes too many touches. I want a favorites widget.
• 8Gigs will soon seem like not nearly enough. I'm already ready for an 80Gig iPhone :)

Overall, I love it, although my enthusiasm was seriously tempered because of my crappy initial experience. That'll wear off, though.

See also:
iPhone: still crippled, but getting there
iPhone: I'm officially pissed off

Wiffiti: your phone and my computer can make beautiful text

In my recent post about Reactee, I mentioned that I enjoy playing with new applications of technology that may seem silly or even useless at first. Wiffiti is another one of those.

With Wiffiti, you have a screen. You can show that screen on the Wiffiti site, full screen on your computer, or embedded in any web page. You have a name - people text @name to your SMS address (a five-digit number) and their message gets broadcast to the screen. Several messages show at a time, floating around the screen, getting smaller as they age.

Try it here - send an SMS message to 25622. Start the message with @jules, then type your message. It'll show up right here :) This screen is live. [update: odd... publishing this post cut off a whole chunk of text after the embedded screen. More of the review & a bunch of screenshots showing usability problems are after the jump.][update 2: if you're looking at this post in a feed reader, you may not see the screen - click through to the actual blog to see it.]

Rechargeable USB batteries

I'm always running out of AA batteries. I use them for wireless keyboards, mice, game controlers, remote controls, clocks. I buy the big family-size packs. I don't have to contend with yet another power adapter that eventually ends up in a box with other orphan adapters that render their original devices useless.

Moixa Energy has developed some new battery technology. USBCell is selling their rechargeable USB batteries. They're nicely designed:

• A plastic cap comes off with no trouble, and reattaches with a simple clip.
• The cap is attached with an elastic band, so you don't have to worry about losing it
• There's a light right on the battery, with a simple key that explains Light On means charging, Slow Flash is 90% charged, Light Off is charged.

It took about 30 minutes to charge one up, and it promises to be good for five hours of use. Not a lot, but if I keep a bunch charging in a USB hub, it's not a big deal. They're also available in 9V, AAA, and a few other sizes.

They run a hefty ~$19/pair, but the way I go through batteries, it'll be worth it. There's a 10-pack discount that brings them down to ~$17. And even though they shipped them from the UK to the US, they only charged a couple of bucks for shipping. With the 10-pack, shipping is included in the price. Nice!

My first Woot-off

I let my inner gadget slut out to play yesterday.

I first heard about Woot! from Tori. Seemed intriguing enough – a single possibly almost too-good-to-be-true gadgety deal per day, with the occasional Woot-off, deals in rapid succession, sold one at a time until there are none left. Yes, it’s Home Shopping Network for geeks.

I checked it out. I even installed a Woot menu bar that alerted me to current deals. Nothing interested me, though, and I began to resent the real estate the menu bar occupied, so I got rid of it.

Then today on Gizmodo (I think. Might’ve been somewhere else. That’s the problem with reading blogs via a feedreader – they all look the same) I saw an announcement that there was a Woot-off going on right at this moment.

Off I went. Up I signed.

The first item I saw was one of those round vacuum cleaners that run themselves. I have no idea if it was a name brand or not – I’m not up on this technology. I went to check the product site, though, just to compare the price. Manufacturer’s direct price was ~280. The Woot price was $150. Not bad.

The site is fun – the product descriptions are very clever. Apparently there’s a daily podcast – today it’s the Woot-off theme, which is hilarious. They show some useless but interesting stats (as usual, click to enlarge), and have a sense of humor about each product. These folks are having a lot of fun doing this. Here’s the product description for that land line phone decked out in camoflage you see above:

Yes, We Know What You Mean. Yeah. Yeah, Vern, I know it. I know it, I told them “Hey, I got cats to label with unreasonable grammar, I ain’t got time for that.” Hey, hey, hold up, guess what I’m callin’ you on. No, go on guess. You ain’t gonna guess? Go on, just guess once, one guess. You ain’t got it, you big dummy. It’s a Uniden DCT746M 2.4 GHz Cordless Camo Phone. A camo phone! Yeah, just like Snake Eyes. Wait, was he the guy with the beret? The ninja? Hell, I don’t know. But I do know that I got me a sweet phone. It works on the 2.4 GHz band, handles Caller ID and Call Waiting, Three Way Conferencing… YEAH BUDDY THREE WAY WOOOOO You sure right about that, Vern.

It does a lot more crazy stuff too, like connect to other Uniden phones and accept other handsets, but I got no idea where I set that manual so I ain’t never gonna figure that crap out. But hey, I got it so I can take this baby out to my yard. Yeah, that’s where we are right now. I’m out back in the woods, right by the air conditioner. Yeah, the tall grass I ain’t never been mowin’. Hey, we gotta… AW HELL I DROPPED MY PHONE! I DROPPED MY PHONE!! VERN!! VERN!! I CAN’T FIND MY PHONE, VERN!! GOD DANG IT IF THIS DON’T WANT TO MAKE ME JUST KICK TESLA IN THE NUTS! SAY SOMETHING REAL LOUD, VERN!! AW, CRAP IN A BAG, WHY DOES THIS STUFF ONLY HAPPEN TO ME?

I checked back in a while later. There was an RCA Dual Format DVD Recorder w/DivX, HDMI, and UD upconversion for $69.99. I wrestled with myself for a bit, pretending I needed a reason to buy this. Haven’t people asked me tech questions about DVR recorders at some point? Shouldn’t I know this technology? Ultimately, of course, I bought it. Later I bought a US Modular 12GB Monster USB Drive for $50 (that’s basically a little jump drive – like the one on my keychain but maybe 2x the width, and it holds 12GB.)

This was yesterday. At this writing, the Woot-off continues. It’s a good day to be a geek :P)

Love this? You can't have it. Yet.

Those clever folks at the MIT Media Lab have done it again. This I/O brush looks like what I think of as the kind of brush men used to use for shaving, but it picks up color, texture, and movement of any brushed surface. Sound amazing? It is. According to the Media Lab I/O brush web site, they're looking into a consumer version.

What do you think a system like this would cost? I'm thinking it wouldn't actually be that expensive. Existing monitors could be adapted for touch screen. There's a camera, a couple of LEDs, and two touch sensors. None of that's particularly expensive, I don't think.

I'll be in line for this, that's for sure :)

Verizon V640 Wireless Broadband for Mac: a review

Well, it's been a couple of weeks and a couple of trips out of town, and I now feel qualified to rate the Verizon V640 Broadband Wireless card for Macs (known as the EVDO ExpressCard).

The short version: it's now working well everywhere I need it to.

The longer version: it's been glitchy getting going, and still has problems. The first problem:

After a week or so of using it successfully in Austin and San Antonio, I lost connectivity. I called Verizon, and had to explain to the tech person what a V640 is, that I couldn't possibly be calling from that device. I was told there seemed to be an outage in my area.

I was on hold for so long I forgot about the call, and disconnected the call.

I called back, again explained that the V640 wasn't a phone, and this time was directed to tech support. I basically had to reinstall everything, after which the card worked fine. There was no outage after all.

A week later, before I left for Wisconsin, I was synching up my Macs, and for the first time tried to send mail from the laptop. No go. I could send mail from my .mac account, but not from any other email addresses. My Time Warner SMTP server wasn't working.

Again I called Verizon. Again I explained the device. I was told I needed to register separately for SMTP server access. It would take several days to implement this. Several days!? The rep told me to check for messages on the device for a temporary password. Messages on the device? Apparently if I use their software to connect (which I didn't and don't) there was a place for Verizon to message me. I loaded up the software. I found no messages, indeed no place for messages.

So I had connectivity on my trip, but was only able to send from a single email account. I never heard from verizon about smtp service, and was simply too busy to deal with it. And now that I'm home, it's not as urgent. But I do need to deal with it. Seems like a crazy system, not automatically offering access.

I have 2 other complaints about the V640: I've had several hard crashes while it's live. At first I thought I was just crashing when I had the card in and I ran out of juice. But no, just this afternoon I had a fresh charge with the card in. I closed the Mac, and when I reopened it 15 minutes later, it was crashed. The other issue: it's hell on battery life. I get just over 4 hours on a charge with Bluetooth disabled, and not even 2 with the card running.

Still, I can get online everywhere I've tried except for at 35,000 feet somewhere over Missouri. Had to try, though :)

Mac sync magic

Wow, I can't believe I just now discovered this. It's easy - no-brainer easy - to sync your iCal, Contacts, Mail (all accounts & rules), Keychains, and Safari Bookmarks across multiple computers.

Let me back up. I've worked on multiple computers for years. I've always had the problem of certain info living on a desktop computer at home, and different info on my laptop. Email was the worst. Getting mail on both and leaving/deleting from the server from the other is far to cumbersome with any significant mail volume. Back in my PC days, I was never able to get iMap to work for email. I tried numerous times, as did our netops guy, all to no avail. For awhile I was fine using GoToMyPC, which essentially let me work on my desktop remotely from any other computer, even a Mac. (Sadly, they don't have a client for accessing a Mac, but I highly recommend it to all you PC folks).

Then I switched back to Mac. No more remote access. Vine Server is simply too unreliable for me. I guess I've been afraid to try iMap on the Mac - I just didn't want to go through what I went through in the past trying to get it to work. I keep running up against the fact that despite several months back in the Mac world, I still don't expect things on my computer to work as they should. I bumped up against this the other day when I had messed up my font folder. I called several Mac nerd companies looking for immediate help. Finally one of them said "Have you called Apple?". Doh! I simply am not used to thinking that the makers of my system software are available to help me. I even have an AppleCare plan and I still forgot. I called. They fixed my problem in 5 minutes.

But back to iMap. I went upstairs. First I tried to change my existing mailboxes to iMap. No go - I had to set up new mailboxes. I did so. It worked. I came out to my patio and did the same thing. It worked. Then I discovered the little option at the bottom of the mail preferences window: Synchronize with other computers using .Mac. I did so. It worked. I ran back upstairs and did the same thing. It worked!

There was one surprisingly cryptic dialog message along the way - I got this for several sync operations. I was really surprised - I rarely encounter poorly-written dialog boxes in Mac software. Or am I being blinded by the light?

30 minutes after deciding to tackle iMap, I not only can now get my mail on either computer without losing it on the other, I have access to all my appointments and contacts, so I can sync with my Treo (using The Missing Sync) while I'm out of town :)

I'm having one of those "I'm so glad to be back on a Mac" days.

When technology bites back

So there I sat Friday morning, an hour away from an online meeting, surrounded by 5 robust computers, unable to do anything I needed, ready to tear my hair out. Some of the problems I brought on myself, some were beyond my control.

My first mistake was trying to do a shortcut installation of a CD full of fonts the night before. On my MacBook Pro, I was gradually, painstakingly installing them in Fontbook one at a time. But on my desktop Mac I tried to take a shortcut and copy a ton of folders directly into the Font folder. The fonts seemed to work fine in Fireworks and Dreamweaver, but when I tried to open Word, I got a popup window telling me about a corrupt font. I clicked "Ok" (the only option) and up popped another one. When I realized this was going to happen for each of the thousands of fonts I had copied, I forced Word to quit. "Crap, gotta deal with that soon," I thought, and used a different word processor.

The next morning, an hour before my meeting, I went to open the Powerpoint presentation I'd need to reference in the meeting. The same thing happened - I wasn't going to be opening the presentation on my iMac. Unfortunately, I don't have Office on my laptop Mac, so I was going to have to turn to one of the PCs. I booted up the nearest one, and turned back to my iMac to see if I could solve the font problem. After several minutes I realized the PC wasn't booting. It was trying - over, and over, and over. The reset button was stuck, and it was booting over and over, never quite making it. No time to mess with that - I moved onto the next PC. It booted fine, but the wireless keyboard batteries were apparently dead. I ran downstairs to scrounge for batteries. Couldn't find any. Did I think to grab a wired keyboard from a different PC and plug it in? No I did not. OK, one computer left, and it's the old PC laptop.

When I said earlier I was surrounded by 5 robust computers, I lied. I was surrounded by 4 robust computers and one rather slow machine. It's a decent PC -  a newish X41 Tablet - but it's only got 256k RAM, so it's dead slow. I new it would be 15 minutes or so before the thing booted, updated, and finally downloaded the 11MB file, so I decided to tackle the font problem. I decided to simply delete all the fonts in folders. Bad idea. Suddenly the IM conversation I was having with Susan turned to gibberish. My keyboard was responding to my typing, but not with the correct letters. My email and stickies no longer displayed correctly. I had broken my Mac.

I watched my PC laptop struggle to get the file open. I tried to launch YM on it, but it was too busy struggling with Powerpoint to respond.

So there I sat, with all this technology around me, unable to do a damn thing.

Just my luck: the meeting got moved out an hour.

I was able to fix the font thing. To do so I accessed the Library via the Macintosh HD (as opposed to from my home). The font folder there contains the default set (or the right set, at any rate). I copied them, and pasted them into Home > Library and I was good to go. It was that simple. I loved my Mac again.

The meeting went fine, although there was no speakerphone on the other end, so my "call in" was a cell phone sitting on the table - I had to ping them via IM if I wanted to talk.

We had a good laugh about having bad technology karma for the morning, but man was it frustrating. I'm still not back 100%. My Windows installation on my main Mac is hosed, and I don't know yet if it's a Parallels issue, a Windows CD issue, or a CD Drive issue. But I'm up and running again anyway. But I'm really ready for technology to get another order of magnitude simpler and more reliable.

DRIVE director commentary via Twitter

Last night's Twitter experiment was interesting. Drive is a new Fox show made by Tim Minear, the same guy who made Firefly. It stars Nathan Fillion, the same lead actor. Fox decided to offer director commentary during the premiere of the show Sunday night.

Sadly, the show itself was pretty lame. I'm sure there are some very disappointed Firefly fans out there. It definitely didn't hold my attention well, so you'd think I could have easily kept up with the tweets. It didn't really work that way, though. Twitter is very fast, but it's not real time. Doing standard DVD-style commentary and saying "we wanted to do x here..." doesn't work. By the time the tweet is delivered, "here" has passed. I'm sure sometimes it was the 140 character limit keeping any more descriptive info from being included. If that's so, then perhaps this isn't the right medium (or 140 characters isn't the right cutoff point) for real time commentary.

That said, I think this was a clever experiment. I'm sure we'll figure out better ways to do this sort of thing. We'll look back on this first attempt and why some things weren't more obvious to us. I still think advertisers have to love this sort of thing. They're all scrambling to find ways to deliver ads to people with DVRs. Well, here's one way. Normally I'd record the show so I could watch it later and fast forward through the commercials. Instead I watched it in real time so I could get the commentary, which means the advertisers got my partial attention.

I'm sticking with Twitter. I still believe it (or something very similar) is going to become an important tool.

The screen shot is obviously not the Twitter web site - it's a sweet little Mac desktop widget called Twitterrific.

Previous posts about Twitter

Extra, Extra: Jules passes on the latest gadget!

Nope, I won't be getting an Apple TV. Yes, I am a notorious gadget slut and yes, I have renewed my love affair with Apple. I will not be an early adopter on this one. Why?

For one thing, it only the resolution only goes to 720p. I paid big bucks for my big fancy system. I'm not interested in 720p. I won't even watch Battlestar Galactica until it comes around in reruns on a high def channel.

I have a DVR. I subscribe to Netflix. There are very few things I find exclusively online that I feel the need to see on my monster TV screen.

Believe it or not, I'm going to wait for it to improve. Awfully pragmatic of me, don't you think?