Bare Bones Software's BBEdit, one of the longest-standing applications in the Macintosh world, has received a major update to version 9.0, adding a number of features that will likely enhance the productivity of anyone who uses the text editor or currently relies on a less-capable program. Whether you need a Web authoring tool, a programmer's editor, a utility for manipulating massive text files, a writing tool that focuses purely on text, or all of the above at different times, BBEdit 9.0 has new features that will make your life easier. Oh, and yes, if you look hard enough, it has ponies too.

Find Modelessly -- Perhaps the most significant changes to BBEdit 9.0 apply to its much admired searching capabilities. In this version, Bare Bones has separated the act of searching for text within a single file from searching for results across multiple files. A modeless, resizable Find window provides all the grep-capable searching power that BBEdit users have long appreciated. However, if you want to run a search across multiple files, you'll instead rely on a new Multi-File Search window that's also modeless and resizable. Multi-File Search can search through open documents, as well as the contents of disk browsers, recent folders, BBEdit projects, recent Xcode products, and even saved Spotlight searches. There's also an option to colorize grep searches in the Find window, which should make complex grep patterns easier to parse.

After all these years, it's great to see Bare Bones setting the old modal Find & Replace dialog aside ("Thank goodness!" exclaimed Tonya when I shared this news). But never fear, if you're addicted to the old interface, or if you frequently want to switch from searching for text in a single file to searching for the same text in multiple files, an option brings back the old Find & Replace dialog.

Another related feature that has changed significantly, and for the better, is BBEdit's Find Differences. In BBEdit 8.5, Bare Bones added the capability to display which characters within a line were different between two similar files. That was huge for us, since it enabled us to use BBEdit in conjunction with the Subversion version control system to work with TidBITS articles. Though code may have relatively short lines, a line of prose is a paragraph, and without knowing what within a paragraph has changed, knowing only that two paragraphs are not the same isn't particularly helpful. In BBEdit 9.0, Bare Bones has enhanced the Find Differences feature such that it not only shows the changed lines, and the changed characters within each line, it also lets you see and replace individual spans of differing characters within each changed line.

Browse & Edit -- BBEdit has long had File Group documents that enabled you to bring together files and folders from disparate parts of your hard disk, but file groups were really just an alternative view of files that already existed in the Finder; you could open, rename, and delete them, but not much more. Similarly, the program has long featured Disk Browser windows that showed a view of files and folders on the hard disk; within a disk browser you could see, but not modify, the actual content of files. In BBEdit 9.0 both file groups, renamed Projects, and disk browsers now work the way they should in providing not just opening and previewing capabilities, but full editing. Whenever you click a file in the left sidebar of a project or disk browser window, the file opens in the main window, fully editable. Double-click a file and it opens in its own window, just as in previous versions.

For programmers dealing with hundreds or thousands of files, BBEdit's file groups and disk browser windows were useful before, and they're far more useful now. For those for whom the previous features weren't helpful previously, they very well may be now - I plan to give them a try, whereas I'd never seen the benefit before.

Alas, BBEdit's FTP/SFTP Browser does not yet share this editable pane feature, which would be huge for Web developers. It would also be great to see additional version control interface within disk browsers, identifying files that had been changed in the repository but not yet updated, or that had local changes not yet committed back to the repository.

Because it's possible to have a file open in a project window, in a disk browser, and in an independent window, BBEdit 9.0 also lets you change a file in any window and have the changes reflected immediately in all the others. I can't quite imagine why you'd want to open multiple views to a particular file intentionally, but the alternative - keeping track of which window contained which changes to the same file - would undoubtedly cause fits of uncontrolled gibbering.

More Features -- Though editable panes in Project and Disk Browser windows and the modeless Find interface are the marquee features of BBEdit 9.0, there are plenty of other additions. A Scratchpad window provides an constantly saved place to dump bits of text for editing or copying into other documents. If you use BBEdit on multiple Macs, the program can now sync the contents of the ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit folder to other Macs via MobileMe - handy for maintaining the same clippings, text factories, and other settings between computers. One clever technique - if you have to use BBEdit 9.0 on someone else's Mac temporarily, you can simply copy the version of the BBEdit folder on your iDisk down to the Mac to recreate your personal environment.

Also new is text completion, which enables you to type a character or two, press a key, and select the desired expansion from a pop-up (text completion can also kick in automatically after a delay in typing, but I found that a bit overwhelming in normal use). This is probably mostly helpful for programmers, since BBEdit provides language-specific expansions pulled from the current document, nearby documents, clippings, and other sources. BBEdit's built-in language support is also reportedly improved, particularly for Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, and Python.

For sysadmins, BBEdit can now read and write bzip-compressed files (.bz2) such as Leopard's log files, much as it could already work with gzip-compressed files. And last, but by no means least for those of us who write for a living, BBEdit windows now feature a constantly updated character, word, and line count; clicking it toggles between counting for the document and the selected text.

Upgrade Details -- Upgrades for registered customers of any previous commercial version of BBEdit cost $30. New copies of BBEdit 9.0 remain priced at $125, and the educational price remains at $49. The program is available immediately; there's a fully functional 30-day trial version that's a 15.4 MB download. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and is a universal binary.

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2008.
Straighten up your Office with the latest updates to Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. Update today at Mactopia!
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx>  

• Coda 1.5 from Panic is a highly significant update to the single-window Web authoring tool. The most notable new features include support for the Subversion version control system, the capability to search for text across multiple files, custom Web books for your favorite online reference pages, and improvements to the text clipping feature. Support for AppleScript has been expanded, a "Reverse Publish" feature downloads remote items, and tabs now indicate whether files are local or remote. There are numerous other changes and bug fixes in the program; be sure to read the release notes. ($99 new, free update, 19.9 MB)
• RapidWeaver 4.1.1 from Realmac Software beefs up the WYSIWYG HTML authoring tool with support for Leopard's Quick Look feature, an automatic resizing option for dragged-in images, and easier publishing of Web sites to MobileMe. There are a number of other bug fixes and minor improvements. RapidWeaver 4.x requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. ($79 new, free update for 3.6 and 4.0 users, 33 MB)

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.7 -- Latest version offers a
major interface overhaul, new prefs, text clippings, improved
JavaScript, new Ruby/SQL/YAML/Markdown support, code folding.
Over 160 new features in all! <http://www.barebones.com/>.  

Leopard - Microsoft Office Issue -- After running a system update, Leopard wants to run the demo version of Microsoft Office instead of the registered version. (6 messages)

Archiving a Time Capsule -- Archiving a Time Capsule drive seems to work fine at first, then becomes unbearably slow. What's the holdup? (2 messages)

.Mac Slides are missing after iPhoto Update 7.1.4" -- MobileMe no longer offers the capability to share photos with others as a screen saver, but existing .Mac slides still appear in screen savers. (14 messages)

More Photo Backup Options While Traveling -- Readers share more thoughts about backing up digital photos. (2 messages)

Why I Hate the Eye-Fi Share Wireless SD Card -- Adam's experiences with the Eye-Fi Share card elicit one solution to a problem as well as other readers' experiences. (10 messages)

Using an iPhone when I drive -- A reader wants to talk with others on his iPhone while driving - without endangering himself, of course. TidBITS Contributing Editor Mark H. Anbinder covers some devices that are built into new Audis. (4 messages)

iWeb and MobileMe question -- Updating a Web site created on one machine proves tricky from a new laptop. (6 messages)

iPhone Ver 2.0.2 "Bug Fix" -- Who knows what the iPhone 2.0.2 bug-fix release offers? Not us, which is why we can poke fun at Apple, as well as the "MobileMess" situation. (6 messages)

Cleaning out IMAP mailboxes -- What options are available for managing the size of IMAP mailboxes from Mail? (3 messages)

Office 2008 updates won't install -- Readers have trouble installing the latest Microsoft Office updates and discuss what's changed in the suite. (4 messages)

Wine with Bento -- Charles Maurer's article on managing his wine collection with Bento brings to the table discussion of tools to catalog other items such as books and music. (6 messages)

MobileMe Web Interface Insecure, But Other Apps Get It Right -- Readers discuss the security aspects of MobileMe following Rich Mogull's article. (3 messages)

Flash Problem -- After years without fail, suddenly Flash refuses to work correctly on a reader's computer. JavaScript might be the culprit. (2 messages)

I want to say goodbye to Outlook -- It's hard to unshackle oneself from Outlook, but there are alternatives. (3 messages)

 

Copyright © 2008 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.7 -- Latest version offers a
major interface overhaul, new prefs, text clippings, improved
JavaScript, new Ruby/SQL/YAML/Markdown support, code folding.
Over 160 new features in all! <http://www.barebones.com/>.  

• MacBook Air Update from Apple resolves an issue where one of the machine's two processors would turn off if the temperature rose to a certain point, a feature Apple calls "processor core idling." To quote the other sentence in release notes that are downright loquacious for Apple, "Third-party software that modifies processor operating characteristics such as frequency and voltage is not supported and should be removed before installing this update." In other words, if you've installed software to help work around the "processor core idling" bug, remove it before installing the update. The update also addresses unspecified video playback issues. (Free, 368K)
• Mactracker 5.0.4 from Ian Page updates the freeware utility that provides detailed technical information on a wide variety of Apple hardware with the latest information about the iPhone 3G, new fields for iTunes Version and Machine ID for iPhone models, and updated information for the support status of Apple's latest "vintage" and "obsolete" products. (Free, 20.7 MB)
• Keyboard Maestro 3.4 from Stairways Software adds to the macro utility a Typed String trigger that executes actions whenever you type a particular sequence of characters, optionally deleting the typed characters as part of the process. Other changes are cosmetic, minor, or fix bugs. ($36 new, free update, 6.2 MB)

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Karen Anderson, Lorenzo Kristov,
Harro de Jong, and Pat Curran for their generous support!  

Apple has launched the iPhone in 21 more countries, bringing the total to 43. Reuters reported that Russia will also get the iPhone in October 2008, and we're sure additional countries will come online as Apple negotiates deals with local carriers. Apple's plans for world domination are well underway.

Much has been made about the fact that the iPhone will now be available to 660 million potential customers, but that's pure hyperbole - there's no way to know how it will sell in any given market or what deal Apple will strike with local carriers. What I'll find more interesting is the effect on sales in the App Store; increasing the iPhone installed base by even a million here or there could result in significantly more sales for individual apps.

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

GET FETCH 5 FOR FREE! Fetch Softworks makes Fetch, the original
Macintosh FTP client, free for educational and charitable use.
Fetch 5.3 includes a new look and Leopard technology support.
Apply today at <http://fetchsoftworks.com/edapply>!  

Although the launch of MobileMe wasn't exactly one of Apple's high points in product releases, even the most acerbic of critics grudgingly admits that its Web interface is one of the more well-designed on the market. Unfortunately, MobileMe's Web application is also one of the least secure: Apple allows anyone to listen in to your communications, including the contents of email and calendar updates.

AppleInsider, reporting on MobileMe on 15-Aug-08, attempted to assuage concerns that the MobileMe Web interface does not use SSL encryption to protect connections from malicious sniffing or hijacking. They stated SSL was unnecessary because:

"Data transaction security in MobileMe's web apps is based upon authenticated handling of JSON data exchanges between the self contained JavaScript client apps and Apple's cloud, rather than the SSL web page encryption used by HTTPS. The only real web pages MobileMe exchanges with the server are the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files that make up the application, which have no need for SSL encryption following the initial user authentication. This has caused some unnecessary panic among web users who have equated their browser's SSL lock icon with web security. And of course, Internet email is not a secured medium anyway once it leaves your server.

"If Apple applied SSL encryption in the browser, it would only slow down every data exchange without really improving security, and instead only provide pundits with a false sense of security that distracts from real security threats."

This is, alas, patently false. Those of you who are Star Trek fans are familiar with the term "technobabble," the fictional, technology-laden lines uttered by actors to give the appearance of scientific accuracy. Just as "altering shield frequencies in harmonic resonance with the Klingon's tachyon beams" is a load of poppycock that sounds authentic, so is "Data transaction security in MobileMe's web apps is based upon authenticated handling of JSON data exchanges between the self contained JavaScript client apps and Apple's cloud." That just means that you log in, and JavaScript is used to handle communications with MobileMe; there's no security magic in there.

As reported by Jens Alfke at the Thought Palace blog, although your initial login to MobileMe is encrypted, the rest of your session is transmitted in plain text. If anyone on your network decides they want to sniff your connection and read your email, there's nothing to stop them.

What AppleInsider's statement boils down to is, "Apple checks that you're a real user when you log in; everything else is sent in the clear between your browser and their servers; and we think SSL would bog down performance without improving security." They couldn't be more wrong about that last conclusion.

You (Should) Get What You Pay For -- To be fair, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail also fail to use SSL beyond your initial log in, while Google only recently added complete-session SSL to Gmail as an option. But that's no excuse for Apple's decision. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are free services, while we pay $99 per year for MobileMe. Call me demanding, but I expect more from a commercial service. Google now offers SSL for free, and it's almost always an option (or default) for commercial Web services offering mail.

There's also another subtle, but important, flaw in Apple's handling of user authentication. As noted by Alfke, the secure authentication page points to auth.apple.com while the rest of MobileMe uses the domain me.com. By breaking the bond between the digital certificate used by SSL to verify a domain, and the domain where most of the interaction takes place, users are vulnerable to redirection attacks as highlighted by the recent DNS vulnerability (see "Apple Fails to Patch Critical Exploited DNS Flaw", 2008-07-24). DNS can also be poisoned on a local network, where an attacker floods a network with responses for non-secure domains: say, a hotspot where you're logging in.

A bad guy can hijack the me.com domain temporarily and redirect you to a malicious site without affecting your login experience, since you will still be authenticating to the unaffected apple.com domain. While I doubt many bad guys will completely replicate the MobileMe Web interface, a common attack method (and one I demonstrated using Wi-Fi at the recent DefCon hacker conference) is to redirect you to a malicious Web page, which quickly attacks your Mac and then forwards you back to the real me.com before you notice.

Securing an entire session with SSL does not "slow down every data exchange without really improving security." Because MobileMe is a Web-based application, you're not waiting for page refreshes, but for very small amounts of data to pass back and forth. (The JSON mentioned in the gobbledygook paragraph earlier is a format for lightweight JavaScript objects, in fact.)

(Apple does mark its authentication cookie, stored in the browser, with a secure flag. This token, which is used to maintain a persistent logged-in state, is only sent to auth.apple.com via SSL. This avoids sidejacking, a technique that formerly worked with Gmail and other Google services until the company wised up and made sure tokens were as protected as passwords. See "Sidejack Attack Jimmies Open Gmail, Other Services," 2007-08-27.)

Good News, And Protecting Yourself -- While there's a reasonable, if small, risk someone might sniff your connection when you are out in public, the odds of a redirection attack are extremely low. And although MobileMe's Web interface is essentially insecure, the other MobileMe services (except iDisk) are properly protected.

When you set up your MobileMe email account, it defaults to a secure connection, and in testing iCal, I found both the push and manual synchronization process appears to use SSL. Using a sniffer on my own system, I was unable to access the contents of any synchronizing calendar entries or email. iChat authentication is also secure, and MobileMe installs digital certificates to enable secure chats with other iChat users - unlike AOL Instant Messenger and many other free instant messaging options. Note that if you use iChat with MobileMe encryption enabled, but you correspond with an insecure AIM user, that iChat connection is still insecure.

Although I don't need to use it often, since I'm never far from my Mac or iPhone, I love the new MobileMe Web interface. But since I'm most likely to use it on insecure systems and networks, like Internet cafes when traveling internationally, I'll have to skip the convenience and stick with more secure options until Apple decides to support SSL properly.

 

Copyright © 2008 Rich Mogull. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

GET FETCH 5 FOR FREE! Fetch Softworks makes Fetch, the original
Macintosh FTP client, free for educational and charitable use.
Fetch 5.3 includes a new look and Leopard technology support.
Apply today at <http://fetchsoftworks.com/edapply>!  

I enjoy wine. I might easily become a wine snob but for three impediments: I have too little money, too poor a memory for names and tastes, and - well, it's difficult to hold my nose in the air while a sommelier is giggling at my French.

I cannot figure out anything to do about my French, but 20 years ago I did learn how to make my want of memory compensate partially for my want of money: I buy inexpensive wines and forget where I put them. After 5 or 10 years I bump into them again and find that they have become something nice.

However, they do need to be the right sort of inexpensive wine. If you ferment good grape juice and know what you are doing, then you can make a quaffable wine. This wine is cheap to produce but nothing about it will improve with age. Alternatively, instead of bottling the wine immediately, you can store it for a year or two in small oak barrels. This adds a bit to the cost and when you finally bottle it, the wine will taste foul. That is the kind of wine to put away. The foul taste comes from tannins that have leached from the wood. Over the years those tannins will gradually oxidize. Combined with the grape juice, the products of that oxidation can become complex and enjoyable.

Over the years my wife and I have built a cellar using this strategy. We buy cases of modestly priced wines that have been aged in oak, and set them behind other cases, so that we forget that they are there. A number of years later, we happen upon them. This lets us drink nicer wines than our budget would normally allow. However, we have no clue what wines we own. We don't even know how many bottles are in the cellar.

This summer we decided that the time had come to sort out the mess - or rather, as such things tend to happen, my wife decided that the time had come for me to sort out the mess. Since organization is not my forte, I hoped to find some software that would help me.

Commercial Varietals -- To be really helpful, a computer would do more than just keep a list of our bottles, it would generate the list of bottles itself. A $199 combination of hardware and software is designed to do exactly this: IntelliScanner Wine Collector 250. A hand-held scanner reads the bar code that is imprinted on nearly every bottle nowadays, then an application reaches out over the Internet to look up the wine in a database. This sounded wonderful to me, so I wrote for one and tried it the minute that it came. I scanned 10 bottles from an assortment of countries. Alas, Wine Collector filled in some information for only two wines and found either no information or incorrect information for the rest. Paul Scandariato of IntelliScanner explained, "Although our database includes 67,000 wines, that's just a fraction of the number of wines available in the world."

If my Mac cannot generate a list of bottles, it can certainly serve as a sheet of ruled paper holding a list: a spreadsheet. However, that list must include a lot of text, and text in a spreadsheet is awkward to enter and awkward to read. For this reason, the Mac would usefully provide data-entry forms as well.

This is what specialized wine-cellar applications do. Unfortunately, their forms provide space for many details that I do not care about and they always lack a field or two that I want. I get no joy from filling in a complicated form reflecting the way somebody else thinks about things, so I decided not to use a specialized application but to set up a simpler form using a general-purpose product. I might once have done this with the now-defunct AppleWorks, but I found an alternative in Bento, a $50 product from Apple's subsidiary FileMaker.

Bottling My Own -- Bento provides a point-and-click dialog box that enabled me rapidly to define the kinds of information I want to keep track of - the columns in the spreadsheet or, in database jargon, the fields. After I defined my fields, I dragged them into a data-entry form and was ready to enter records. To create a list of wines I clicked a button labelled "Table" and then ticked off some checkboxes beside a list of fields. Each tick brought up that field as a column. I arranged the columns as I wanted, and then set up an equivalent of Spotlight to maintain "smart collections" like the Finder's smart folders. For some of these smart collections I customized the columns. Now I can enter information about wines in the way that I find the most sensible, and clicking on an icon shows me a convenient list of our two-star whites or three-star reds.

Bento is advertised as a personal database but unlike FileMaker Pro, Bento is not designed to manage complex databases used in complex ways. Instead, Bento is designed to manage lists. The difference between database management and list management is subtle but profound. To store and manipulate complex information efficiently, a database manager needs to have that information broken down into the smallest possible elements, with uniform formatting and any redundancies excised. In contrast, a list manager does nothing but find and sort, so its information can be held in a natural form. What most people think of as database managers are actually list managers - Apple's Address Book, for example. That's why Address Book lets you enter a telephone number in any format you like. In contrast, a database managing phone numbers for a large corporation would require splitting a number into four separate fields: country code, area code, the number itself, and a PBX extension. (I ought to point out that under the hood, both Bento and Address Book actually use engines that are built to manage complex databases, but those engines are loafing along on only one cylinder.)

Setting up a database manager requires a great deal of expertise and planning but setting up a list manager does not. All you need do is figure out how you want to be able to sort your list - by whether a wine is red or white, by price, etc. - and set out this information in separate fields. The remaining information you can divide into whatever chunks you find convenient.

In theory, the process of setting up a list manager is this: you sit down with a paper and pencil, think about how you want to sort your list, decide upon the fields that you need, design a data-entry form, and then sit down at a computer and create it. In reality you think about the problem, work out what you need in front of the computer while making some tentative entries, and then discover that you forgot about some categories, while others turn out to be impractical. At that point you modify the fields and the form, enter some more data tentatively, and find that you allocated too much space here and too little there. After you change that, you notice other ways to make improvements. After a few more iterations you get everything right, but a week or a month later you decide to modify something else.

Bento simplifies this process by providing a simple graphical interface that allows the user few choices. From the perspective of a database programmer, the choices are so limited as to be outrageous. (This accounts for Jeff Porten's opinions of the pre-release version of Bento; see "FileMaker's Bento: Undercooked and Slightly Fishy," 2007-11-14.) For example, you cannot require a field to be filled in. However, Bento manages simple lists for individuals, not complex data for companies. If I neglect to enter a vintage, when the list is displayed I will notice the omission and fill it in. I can quibble with some aspects of Bento - I particularly dislike being unable to delete a record while I am seeing it in a smart collection - but overall I find its limitations to be more helpful than restrictive, and the package to be well thought-out. In hardly any time it allowed me to make a wine-cellar application that looks and feels like a purpose-built product and that I prefer to any of the purpose-built products I have seen.

If the day should ever come (don't hold your breath) that I decide to catalogue our books, I would use Bento for it. I would also use it for classical CDs, an inventory of hardware, or just about any other kind of collection whose descriptions cannot reliably be accessed programmatically over the Internet. (For movies on DVD, which are well described in Internet databases, I use Bruji's DVDpedia.) Since Bento can export files as comma-delimited text, it can also be used as a convenient adjunct to a spreadsheet for entering research data.

I have noticed some minor bugs in Bento's user interface but the current release seems to be reasonably well polished and takes good advantage of the tools built into Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. (It will not run under Tiger.) I could wish that it had a few more features, and I am sure that it would be easy for FileMaker to add them, but it would be even easier for FileMaker to kill Bento with feature-itis, so I shall not wish for them very hard. As it stands, Bento is not so simple that your grandmother will be able to start using it without help, but setting up and using a data-entry form in Bento is hardly more difficult than customizing and using Address Book and iCal. Since Address Book and iCal are purpose-built list managers, this is an impressive feat of design.

Try My Wine Cellar File -- If you happen to be looking for wine-cellar software, you are welcome to download an empty version of my Bento file, to see if it can serve you as a starting point. But note that this file is not a template - Bento will not import templates - it is an empty version of Bento's actual data file, the file "bento.bentodb" that Bento maintains in ~/Library/Application Support/Bento/. If you are already using Bento, you will need to be careful to protect your current data file and you will not be able to copy the forms from my file into yours; you will need to recreate them instead. Bento itself is available for a 30-day free trial.

If you are unfamiliar with Bento and are trying it with my file, you might want to change two of Bento's settings. Bento will work with your address book and calendar, and it displays these by default, but displaying them adds some clutter and confusion. To hide them, go to the File menu, choose Address Book and iCal Setup, and then uncheck both boxes in the dialog that appears.

Below are screenshots of my entry form and a listing form, plus explanations for some of the fields.

• ID#: For convenient reference each record is assigned a unique number.
• Variety/name: The variety is either the grape (Chardonnay, Merlot) or the region (Burgundy, Bordeaux), whichever makes more sense to me for the bottle at hand. The names and marketing labels I punctuate as shown, to keep things clear.
• Alcohol content: If dinner guests are coming from any distance, we choose wines with less alcohol.
• Notes: My own comments and/or some reviews picked off the Web from knowledgeable sources. However, I must admit to finding most wine reviews to be incomprehensible and numerical ratings to be ludicrous. People do not describe odours with a common vocabulary - each person uses his own idiosyncratic set of terms - and imagine numerical descriptions applied to other genres: "Hamlet" is a 95, "Macbeth" a 93, "Oliver Twist" is a 91, "David Copperfield" an 89.
• Quality: My wife and I feel able to distinguish only five levels of quality. The lowest and highest levels we do not buy, the one because it is too low - the jug wines served at student parties - and the other because we cannot afford them. That leaves three categories for the wines that we cellar: dull wines that are (or ought to be) cheap enough to serve at large parties, simple but flavourful wines to enjoy while eating, and complex wines to savour while dining. If the wine was a gift, so that we have only one bottle, or if we have not yet cracked the case, then I take a guess based on whatever information I can find over the Web.
• Special: Some wines I flag as special because they cost a lot, or because they come with an exceptional recommendation from a reliable source, or because they come from an unusual grape or place. These we keep for knowledgeable guests.
• Award: If a sticker says "Silver Medal, XYZ Wine World" - well, no competition will see more than a paltry proportion of the world's wines, and often many if not most of the entries will receive some kind of award. This wine's competitors may have been only a dozen within a sharply delimited class (e.g., Merlots from $11-$15), and 20 percent of the entries may have received silver medals. We attribute little to awards but if we take a bottle as a gift to someone who does not know wines, a bottle labelled as winning an award will seem more special than a bottle that has not.

[If you found Charles's article to be useful, he asks that you donate an amount equal to the cost of your average bottle of wine to Save the Children. See the bottom of the page for links to the organization in different countries.]

 

Copyright © 2008 Charles Maurer. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Karen Anderson, Lorenzo Kristov,
Harro de Jong, and Pat Curran for their generous support!  

Apple puts a lot of effort into being opaque, especially lately. Recent software updates, such as iPhone 2.0.2, provide only "Bug fixes" as their release notes, and problems with the MobileMe launch and extended email problems were either not acknowledged or done so halfheartedly. (See "Comparing Apple's MobileMe Contrition with Google and Netflix," 2008-08-19.)

Perhaps that's why it's so surprising that a helpful back-channel of communication has emerged, one which provides straight answers that Apple's spokespersons can't offer: Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

A TidBITS reader shared with us that she received a personal email reply from Jobs concerning an iPhone issue that some people are facing. After updating to the iPhone 2.0 software and iTunes 7.7.1, she was unable to load any third-party applications, and iTunes showed the iPhone's memory as being empty. Subsequent iPhone updates haven't resolved the issue. (For more customer reaction to the problem, see this Apple Support Discussion thread.)

Jobs's single sentence reply to her email is direct and helpful, acknowledging the problem and providing a time frame for its resolution: "This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September." (We've seen email from Jobs before, and this telegraphic, direct style is his trademark. In January 2007, a reader shared a response from Jobs after the reader complained via email to the CEO about the odd $5 charge for a Draft N enabler to turn on a hidden Wi-Fi capability in many Mac models: "It's the law.")

Jobs clearly isn't bound by the secrecy he has imposed upon his employees, and, frankly, it's refreshing - not necessarily because a customer can email sjobs@apple.com and receive a reply, but because the reply is substantive. If he were to follow the current Apple modus operandi, Jobs could have replied with the type of non-reassuring fluff that comes from most companies: "Thank you for your email. Apple works hard to make its products the best they can be..." Blah blah blah.

We hope Jobs will foster a more open level of communication at Apple. We understand the need for secrecy to protect unannounced products, but the company's recent stonewalling is counterproductive. Instead of projecting the image that no news is good news, the stubborn silence from Cupertino makes Apple's customers and those of us who follow it start to wonder just how bad things are behind the curtain.

 

Copyright © 2008 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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In email sent to MobileMe users late on 18-Aug-08, Apple announced that the company will be extending all accounts in the system by 60 days. Any paid or trial account that was active as of midnight on 19-Aug-08 receives two additional months. The 60-day extension will be given to subscribers who may already have received the 30-day extension Apple previously granted (See "MobileMea Culpa: Apple Apologizes and Explains Tiger Situation," 2008-07-16, for who qualified for that extension.) The 60-day extension will be applied to accounts within a few days.

The full 90 days of membership extension add up to $24 for an individual subscriber who paid .Mac/MobileMe's full $99-per-year cost. (Tip: Buy boxed editions of MobileMe for new accounts or renewals to save money; Amazon sells the $149 MobileMe Family Pack for $109.99, for instance.) Although Apple hasn't published subscription numbers for MobileMe, two million users is regularly bandied about online. However, I heard that number from a source within Apple several years ago, so I'd expect the current user base to be larger, particularly given the role that MobileMe plays for the perhaps six million iPhone and iPod touch users out there. That means that Apple is forgoing at least $48 million in gross MobileMe membership fees, and perhaps quite a bit more.

That financial hit may account in part for why Apple doesn't quite seem apologetic about the MobileMe transition, which has been marked by lost email, service outages, syncing problems, and more. Internally, I'll bet that Apple feels that the service extensions make a loud statement because they add up to a lot of money for the company. Or rather, it's a lot of revenue to push into the future, since all it will really mean is that Apple will have to wait an additional 90 days for MobileMe renewal revenue to come in for current subscribers.

But for any individual user, $24 isn't that much, and if you spent hours dealing with lost email or pulling your hair out with syncing problems, $24 doesn't begin to make up for it, especially when none of Apple's communications start with "We're sorry!" Apple has made several public statements about the situation that acknowledge that there were problems - though Steve Jobs's internal email was by far the most plain-spoken - but only one has used the word "apologize," and only once.

That first email message to MobileMe users read, in part:

"We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge."

This was also the only public message to explain at all what was going on. All subsequent statements, including today's email, have asked for patience and made vague statements about the transition to MobileMe being rockier than hoped, but haven't repeated the apology or provided any details. From today's message:

"We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users' patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe's launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around."

As a writer, I'm struck by how Apple's statements seem to dance around the matter, and as a parent, I'm reminded instantly of that oft-repeated phrase to misbehaving children told to apologize to another, "Say it so he can hear you, and say it like you mean it." It may be instructive to compare with several other high-profile outages of late.

Both MobileMe Mail and Google's Gmail went down on 11-Aug-08 for a few hours. Apple's recent email doesn't mention that outage as part of the rocky transition, and the only acknowledgment I could find of it was a pair of entries in the MobileMe System Status page (bookmark this page, folks!). There was no mention of the outage on the semi-anonymous MobileMe Status blog at all, with the most recent posting being from 29-Jul-08, claiming that lost email had been restored and promising (but not delivering) another post later in the week. Since I initially wrote this article, Apple has officially closed the MobileMe Status blog, perhaps recognizing that it had no credibility from the start.

Google, in contrast, quickly posted a highly apologetic message on the Official Gmail Blog titled "We feel your pain, and we're sorry." It outlines in reasonable detail what went wrong, why it happened, and what Google is doing to prevent the problem in the future. I don't know if Google offered paying subscribers to Google Apps Premier Edition (who are guaranteed 99.9 percent uptime) a credit, but since Gmail is free to most users, an apology is mostly what's warranted.

For another example, look at how Netflix handled the communications surrounding their shipping system outage last week. Within two days, an email message arrived entitled "We're Sorry DVD Shipments Are Delayed." The first paragraph of the message explained what was happening, the second paragraph apologized and explained that Netflix would be recompensing users for the inconvenience, and the third paragraph apologized again and gave a customer service telephone number for anyone who needed further assistance. And this is for an entertainment service, not something like MobileMe or Gmail that is relied upon for business by at least some people.

The next day saw a similar message from Netflix, "We're sorry your DVD shipment was delayed," which explained what had gone wrong and that systems were back up. It then went on to apologize several more times, and included this nicely crafted statement:

"We pride ourselves in delighting you, and we've let you down. We apologize, and we will issue a 15% credit to your account in the next few days. You don't need to do anything. Your credit will automatically be applied to your next billing statement."

Netflix also did an excellent job of posting updates on the Netflix Community Blog to keep users apprised of the situation, starting on 12-Aug-08 and including one or two posts per day until the situation was resolved on 15-Aug-08. Now that's contrition. Admitting mistakes, using apologetic language, and issuing credits within four days.

Apple isn't denying problems or pretending the entire situation will just blow over, and that's good. But at least to my ears, the blog and email communications from Google and Netflix sound significantly more contrite - these people really are sorry for having inconvenienced me. I also find myself feeling more kindly towards the messages from real people - the postings on the Netflix blog in particular give a sense of just how hard Netflix's people were working to resolve the problem and how terrible they felt about the outage. Apple's anonymous and pseudonymous messages don't carry nearly the same weight.

Plus, although there are some who may try to avoid apologies on the grounds that they can be seen as an admission of guilt or weakness, there is also a lot of evidence that sincere apologies can instead actually fend off lawsuits, since people often sue because of perceived stonewalling. It's well worth reading Sarah Kellogg's DC Bar article "The Art and Power of the Apology," and there's an entire Web site - Perfect Apology - devoted to learning the best ways to apologize and explaining why apologies are so useful.

Speaking not just as a commentator, but as someone who has messed up mailings to tens of thousands of TidBITS subscribers on more than one occasion in our 18-year history, the moral of the story is this: When you're faced with a problem that affects significant numbers of users, communicate the details of the situation quickly and clearly, have the message come from a real person, and, for goodness sake, say you're sorry so everyone involved can hear you!

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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Apple is shelling out another $17 or more per MobileMe subscriber to make us all happy. An email appeared from the service today stating, "To recognize our users' patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60 day extension. This is in addition to the one month extension most subscribers have already received." The tone of this email was much more human - one of my criticisms of the previous apologetic note - and clearly signals Apple's intent to make amends.

The 60 days' extension comes on top of the previous 30 days that I described in "MobileMea Culpa: Apple Apologizes and Explains Tiger Situation," 2008-07-16. That earlier apology applied to a variety of subscribers, including those who had their accounts expire or let them lapse.

Subscribers who already received an extension of 30 days can also receive this extra 60 days as long as you were either a paying or trial subscriber on 19-Aug-2008 at 12:00 am (the start of that day). Details are explained in an Apple KnowledgeBase note.

 

Copyright © 2008 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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• iPhone 2.0.2 includes "bug fixes," or perhaps bugs that have been fixed to prevent them from mating and creating new little bugs. As usual, Apple is utterly unhelpful in its release notes. We hope the update resolves issues with 3G reception in some phones and magically fixes everything. (Free via iTunes, 241.9 MB)
• Inquisitor 3.2 is the first update since the instant search enhancement for Safari was acquired by Yahoo. With Inquisitor installed, typing in Safari's Google search field provides a menu of instant results that you can either click to load or ignore to send the search to Google. New in 3.2 is support for Yahoo's open search Web services platform for faster performance and a slightly cleaner interface. It's also available in eight languages. (Free, 606K)
• WireTap Anywhere 1.0.1 from Ambrosia Software is a new product that lets you route the audio output of any Macintosh application or hardware input device to any audio recording application, such as Ambrosia's own WireTap Studio. This would enable you, for instance, to record both sides of a Skype conversation and have music from iTunes recorded in the background as well. Even cooler, WireTap Anywhere can aggregate any combination of applications and devices into a single logical device. It also includes an Audio Unit generator. ($129 new, 13.1 MB)
• TextExpander 2.4 from SmileOnMyMac includes bug fixes and performance improvements for the utility that turns keystrokes into replacement insertions of text. The company says key among these is an instant drop-down of their snippet library menu even if you have a large array of snippets. Keyboard navigation of the menu was also added. ($29.95 new, free upgrade for 1.x and 2.x users, 4 MB)
• Airfoil 2.6 for Windows from Rogue Amoeba features an overhauled code base, more device support, and better integration with Apple TV. We don't typically mention Windows updates, but Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers (remote sound control) work with Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, and integrate with AirPort Express and Apple TV. ($25 new, free upgrade, 3 MB)

 

Copyright © 2008 TidBITS Staff. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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iPhone Apps That Go Beyond Entertainment -- Readers note that some iPhone applications can be purchased only from the U.S. App Store. (5 messages)

Eudora folder merge? How do you merge two Eudora folders prior to moving to a new email program? (3 messages)

Odysseus, "Eudora style email client" -- A query about a new email program brings up questions of how well REALbasic can be implemented. (11 messages)

NetShare app on iPhone -- NetShare, which enabled someone to get Internet access on a computer by using an iPhone as a tethered modem, was pulled from the App Store. For those who purchased it, will it be removed at the next sync? (2 messages)

Garmin nuvi 255W Focuses on Navigation -- Adam's review of this GPS device elicits comments about its performance, as well as that of other devices. (3 messages)

Backing up Photos While Traveling -- Readers suggest strategies for keeping one's digital photos secure while on the road. (10 messages)

[ANN] Apple Security Update blocks Microsoft's update process -- The latest Apple security update prevents Microsoft AutoUpdate from working under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. (1 message)

MobileMe Mail and Gmail Go Down Simultaneously -- Readers note issues with MobileMe and Gmail after both services experienced an interruption. (4 messages)

 

Copyright © 2008 Jeff Carlson. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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I fit into a category of photographer for whom the Eye-Fi Explore wireless SD card is a neat fit ($129.99 at Amazon). Adam Engst, our fearless publisher, has a different model - the Eye-Fi Share - that he excoriates in "Why I Hate the Eye-Fi Share Wireless SD Card," 2008-08-15. Oddly, I agree with most of Adam's points, but I have found over the last several weeks that the Eye-Fi Explore works quite well for me. (I wrote a longer, more technical review at Wi-Fi Networking News; you might enjoy this summary and quasi-rebuttal of Adam's thesis if you like it short and sweet.)

Explore's Extras -- The Eye-Fi Explore adds geotagging and hotspot uploads on top of features in the Share model. Its geotagging support inserts an approximate latitude and longitude into the metadata of pictures based on the Wi-Fi environment around you when the picture is snapped. Eye-Fi uses Skyhook Wireless's Wi-Fi positioning data, the same as is used for one component of the iPhone's location services, which means that it works best in cities and suburbs in industrialized countries. If you're taking photos out in the country, on the beach, or in small towns, you're unlikely to pick up a recognized Wi-Fi signal and thus a match. (You can check Skyhook Wireless's coverage online; the map shown below gives you a sense of how much of the United States they've mapped.)

I love the geotagging because it involves no effort, and puts two more dimensions onto photos, making it far easier to find and organize pictures. I'm hoping Eye-Fi figures out how to build a GPS radio into future models, or how to use an external GPS that pairs with their card.

The hotspot feature is a bit more problematic. A one-year subscription to upload at any of about 10,000 Wayport-run Wi-Fi hotspots is included in the purchase; subsequent years cost $19. Wayport powers about 9,500 McDonald's restaurants and a scattering of several hundred hotels in the United States. This is fairly thin coverage if you don't frequent fast-food franchises, but dropping in for some food-like substance and an upload isn't horribly inconvenient, given McDonald's ubiquity.

(Oddly, even though we perceive McDonald's is everywhere, they're spread rather thin in Seattle, with the nearest one to my house about a 10- to 15-minute drive away; Adam's in the same boat. McDonald's may make more sense as an upload location when you're traveling, where you would make a specific pit stop to upload pictures. Wayport has a map of their McDonald's and other locations.)

The Explore has a problematic setting: if you use the Wayport uploads, the card also demands to upload to any open, login-free hotspot of any kind. I don't like that, as that behavior can get you into trouble; it should be a case-by-case and intentional choice on the user's part.

Adam's Aggravations -- Adam and I have a lot in common, but our attitudes and behavior around digital photography diverge mightily.

• Adam uses iPhoto; iDon't. I'm not a fan of iPhoto, and instead I use Microsoft Expression Media, which was once iView MediaPro, to organize my images without having to import them and deal with all of iPhoto's overhead and nonsense. The Eye-Fi's limitations with iPhoto don't affect me.
• Notification doesn't work for Adam because he doesn't carry a cell phone all the time, doesn't check email every few minutes, and avoids email during off hours. My home computer, a laptop, sits on top of our entertainment cabinet, which is near our Wi-Fi hub, and it's where I place the camera when it's not in use. I also generally carry a cell phone. The Eye-Fi's visual upload and notification features work best in such a situation, so I don't have the problem Adam does with forgetting to turn off the camera after it's done uploading.
• Adam finds the Eye-Fi Wi-Fi upload sufficiently slow that he stops paying attention to the camera. I see 8 megapixel photos zoom into my computer, and it only takes at most a few minutes for even dozens of photos to transfer. My camera also seems to use an extremely small amount of battery charge to keep its display active; there's no control to turn off the display after a few minutes, so, as long as the camera is on, the display is active. This is an effective reminder for me to turn it off.
• I don't mind having my "bad" pictures uploaded and transferred. Although I'd prefer to sort through and discard bad or uninteresting photos on my computer before uploading to Flickr (my choice for an online photo-sharing service), the Eye-Fi makes it much more convenient to upload everything. I have a Flickr Pro account, which puts no constraints on uploads and storage, which was a problem for Adam using his free account. True, I have to sort pictures in two locations, but since I also treat Flickr as a kind of off-site backup for photos in addition to my other forms of archiving, it's only mildly inconvenient. (I'm also not polluting the public face of my Flickr photostream with bad pictures. When I upload, I typically set privacy so that only I, or only friends and family, can view the shots; I then sort photos into more public sets, if any.)
• The lack of support in Eye-Fi for raw images doesn't bother me; my camera doesn't offer that as an option, as it's more of a snapshot model. Eye-Fi's failure to transfer movies is more troubling, because, like Adam, I have to remember to insert the card into a USB reader to transfer movies before I erase the card. This irks me, and the company could fix this very easily.

Neat, But Niche -- The Eye-Fi Explore has fit right into my consumer workflow for taking pictures. This last weekend, my wife and I threw a birthday party for my older son, Ben, who turns four today. I took pictures like crazy over a couple hours, and because we had the party at the house, most of those photos were already on my computer and up at Flickr by the time the party was over. We didn't have to swap batteries - my camera uses two AA rechargeables - and we never had to think about uploading. Now, we still have to edit and cull, and we can do that locally on our media computer (for making prints, typically) or on Flickr (for sharing with family, friends, and the world).

Future Eye-Fi models should factor in more of what Adam suggests, however, as the Eye-Fi remains a niche product, even if that niche is large, because it requires many shutterbugs change their behavior to match the card instead of having it meet their current needs.

 

Copyright © 2008 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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Wouldn't it be nice if every picture you took was automatically uploaded to your Mac - and to your Flickr account - without your having to do anything? That's the premise behind the Wi-Fi-enabled 2 GB Eye-Fi Share SD card, and it was sufficiently compelling that I plunked down my money (it's $99.99 at Amazon; I've seen no discounts) for the opportunity to use it with my Canon PowerShot SD870 IS. Unfortunately, despite incredibly slick packaging and a generally well-considered interface, the Eye-Fi card made my standard workflow for importing photos into iPhoto slower and more confusing, to the point where I lost data several times, stopped using its wireless capabilities, and eventually moved to a larger, faster card.

The Eye-Fi Share is a new name for Eye-Fi's original card, which is actually what I have (and yes, I've updated its firmware and software so it's completely current). The company now also makes two other versions, the Eye-Fi Home ($79.99 at Amazon) that can upload only to your computer and the Eye-Fi Explore ($129.99 at Amazon), which can geotag photos and includes 1 year of access to Wayport hotspots (subsequent years cost $19). Glenn Fleishman recently reviewed the Eye-Fi Explore for his Wi-Fi Networking News site; his opinion differs fairly significantly from mine. He also wrote a summary for TidBITS along with some rebuttals to my points below in "Why I Like the Eye-Fi Explore Wireless SD Card," 2008-08-18.

Basic Setup and Usage -- The Eye-Fi card is a normal-looking 2 GB SD card, but, through a feat of engineering magic, it also sports a Wi-Fi radio and an extremely tiny computer that enables it to communicate with wireless access points. Don't assume that it will promiscuously connect with just any open access point, though, stories about thieves being foiled by Eye-Fi uploads notwithstanding. You must set up your Eye-Fi card to connect to specific open wireless networks by name; the fact that I've configured mine to connect to my "TidBITS" network means that it can't, without further configuration, connect to any other wireless network unless it, too, is called "TidBITS". If the network in question has a password, the Eye-Fi won't connect to same-named networks that are open, either.

(The Eye-Fi Explore has a different and worse setting: if you use the Wayport hotspots, which are intentionally available to you, you must also allow the Explore model to connect to any open hotspot it finds. This is a bad move, and may violate laws in certain cities, states, and countries.)

Configuration of new networks requires that the Eye-Fi card be connected to your computer via USB; it comes with a little USB card reader for this purpose, which means you won't be able to connect to just any Wi-Fi network while you're out and about unless you also have a computer handy. WPA Personal and WPA2 Personal are both supported, as is WEP, though not the form of WEP used by Apple's AirPort base stations - but WEP is worthless anyway. The Eye-Fi Share card can't connect to any public hotspot that requires a Web-based login for obvious reasons, and even the Eye-Fi Explore shares this limitation.

A tiny bit of software on your Mac provides a menu bar item and handles some aspects of communication with the Eye-Fi card; it also provides a menu item for accessing Eye-Fi Manager, an application that runs as a Web server on your computer, and which you control via a Web browser. Eye-Fi Manager lets you configure wireless network profiles, choose which (if any) online file sharing services to upload to, choose whether or not to upload to iPhoto or a normal folder on your Mac, and turn on email or SMS text message notifications of when it starts and finishes uploading.

Once the card is configured, you can use your camera just as you always do, but as soon as the Eye-Fi senses that it is within range of a recognized wireless network, it starts uploading photos. The Eye-Fi software on the Mac displays thumbnails of the photos as they're being received, and it automatically imports photos into iPhoto or into your specified folder in the Finder.

After the photos arrive on the Mac, they're then uploaded to your favorite photo sharing service, as long as it's not MobileMe. (Eye-Fi has cut deals with each photo-sharing, print-making, and social-networking service for uploads, and Apple doesn't have any outside deals with anyone.)

Sounds good, doesn't it? Yes, but...

Nice Idea, Annoying Reality -- Don't take the criticisms that follow the wrong way. The Eye-Fi card is a miracle of engineering, and its creators have done incredible work in creating a piece of hardware that can work with any SD-capable camera.

That said, no piece of hardware or software has irritated me more than the Eye-Fi in recent memory. Some updates have improved it; for instance, when I first got it, it couldn't send photos directly to iPhoto, which required another manual step or error-prone automation.

The problems I've run into fall into two categories: limitations of the Eye-Fi software that could theoretically be fixed and basic conceptual conflicts with how I - and many other people - work with cameras and photos. Many of these latter problems could be addressed if the Eye-Fi could communicate bidirectionally with cameras. Only a single camera - a high-end model from Nikon - has been released since the Eye-Fi's introduction in late 2007 that allows communication between the camera's computer and the onboard process on the Eye-Fi.

Camera makers have produced a series of consumer models with Wi-Fi built in that typically have far more severe limitations than the Eye-Fi, but there's no indication whether those manufacturers are interested in working more closely with Eye-Fi, pursuing their existing poor strategies, or improving their current Wi-Fi integration. (Glenn Fleishman wrote a detailed screed on this topic for a PC World blog.)

Practical Limitations -- As is so often the case, the devil is in the details, and for me, the Eye-Fi card fell down on the details.

• It can upload only JPEG images, which means that it ignores non-JPEG content such as movies or raw images. This forces an extra step where you must either plug your camera into your computer via USB or mount the Eye-Fi as a regular SD card through a card reader, and then transfer your movies and raw images. Otherwise, you could lose everything but your JPEGs. This isn't a hypothetical problem - I lost movies on more than one occasion because of this limitation, causing much swearing. Eye-Fi should fix this inexcusable problem by transferring everything to a target computer, even if they don't provide automated uploads or conversion for non-JPEGs. (Eye-Fi's hardware won't erase photos, but you will likely get into a rhythm of erasing your card in the camera after an Eye-Fi upload is complete.)
• When the Eye-Fi imports photos into iPhoto, it creates an event for every photo, requiring you to select all the events created during one import session and merge them. To solve this problem, the Eye-Fi software would have to upload all the images and only then send them all to iPhoto in one big import.
• The Eye-Fi also creates an album in iPhoto for every day's imports, but since you have to merge all the individual events anyway, the albums are utterly unnecessary and must be deleted manually. I presume this is just sloppy design or programming; the Eye-Fi software should import into iPhoto in an unobtrusive manner that doesn't create more work for the user.

Conceptual Problems -- Although Eye-Fi can and should address the above implementation details, the more serious problems relate to the Eye-Fi card's inability to communicate with its host camera and to be configured other than through a full-fledged Web browser running on a computer, and its all-or-nothing approach with photo sharing sites.

• Because uploading via Wi-Fi can take a number of minutes, depending on the number of pictures you've shot, you must disable your camera's capability to shut itself off after a period of inactivity. Perhaps others are better at remembering this than I am, but I frequently forgot to turn the camera off after the upload was finished, leaving me with a dead battery the next time I wanted to use the camera. (It's not that the Eye-Fi is using so much battery life, just that the camera drains its battery when it's left on for a long time.) Little irritates me more than finding my camera battery dead after I've left the house. This is an insurmountable problem unless camera manufacturers give Eye-Fi hooks to control power saving settings in the camera.
• Although the Eye-Fi can notify you when it's done uploading, it can do this only via email or SMS text messaging. This is key for the Eye-Fi Explore when uploading via a hotspot, since you'd have no other way of knowing when it was done. But for me, with the Eye-Fi Share, both are useless. I get email on my Mac when I check manually or every few hours (and certainly not every few minutes - I'd never get anything done!), so email notification would never arrive soon enough. Since I work at home, I don't have an active cell phone in my pocket at all times, and being cheap, I'd be offended at having to pay for each SMS text message. Collaboration with the camera manufacturers so the Eye-Fi could shut the camera off automatically would eliminate the need for notifications.
• Since the Eye-Fi starts uploading as soon as it senses a known network, you can't necessarily prevent it from uploading bad pictures by deleting them in the camera first. This isn't a huge problem if you'll be culling bad photos in a photo management program like iPhoto, but if you're working with an online photo sharing site in a Web browser, it will require more effort to weed out the bad images online. Without in-camera control over when the upload starts, there's no solution to this annoyance.
• Eye-Fi makes much of being able to upload to the photo-sharing sites, and while I initially thought I would like this feature and would use it to take more advantage of Flickr, I turned it off nearly instantly. Most troubling is the fact that you can't select which photos to upload. Thus, you'll need an unlimited service that can handle the gigabytes of photos; I maxed out my free Flickr account on the first upload. Since you can't cull photos in the camera reliably, you have to cull them online, which assumes that you don't use a program like iPhoto, or else you'll have to cull both online and in iPhoto. You can set privacy options (dependent on the specific service), but it's an all-or-nothing situation, requiring manual intervention for every photo that might not fit your overall privacy setting (careful with those kid-in-the-pool or late-night photo shoots!). Finally, although the online services offer some editing tools, none that I've seen compare with even iPhoto, much less Photoshop Elements, so you're setting yourself up to share unedited photos.
• Although there are many networks whose names have remained at the default "linksys", the fact that the Eye-Fi Share must be configured to use every individual network (and works only with open networks that don't require Web-based login) means that it's essentially useless if you're in an unfamiliar area, and even more so if you didn't also bring a laptop. Of course, if you had a laptop, you could just copy photos from the camera to the laptop via USB. (Ad hoc, or computer-to-computer wireless networks are not supported.) One Wi-Fi firm, Devicescape, has client software that lets devices like the Eye-Fi communicate over most open, free, and for-fee networks to pull down new credentials for logins, as well as automatically "click" OK for standard terms of use at free hotspots. Eye-Fi would do well to incorporate something like that, where a Web site accessible from anywhere could be used to update the card's settings.

So What's the Point? It's clear that I'm not the target audience for the Eye-Fi card, and in fact, I've given up using it entirely in favor of a Transcend 4 GB SD card that's faster (helpful for recording longer movies; the Eye-Fi couldn't keep up after 1 to 4 minutes) and costs less than $15 at Amazon. Eye-Fi won't say how fast the Eye-Fi cards are, but they seem to be on the slow side. Ironically, I quite like the little USB memory card reader that came with the Eye-Fi, and it works fine with the new Transcend card. (Eye-Fi chose to not offer cards larger than 2 GB capacity to avoid compatibility problems with older cameras that can't read the high-density SD format required for 4 GB and above.)

So who is the Eye-Fi aimed at? Surely not professional photographers, or even serious amateurs, since it doesn't support raw images. That leaves casual photographers, but I count myself among that group, and the Eye-Fi did nothing but annoy me due to its awful integration with iPhoto, inability to handle movies, complete inability to communicate with a camera, and all-or-nothing approach to photo sharing sites.

Hmm. That narrows it down. The Eye-Fi card could be great if you:

• Use an SD-capable camera - there are no Eye-Fi variants for other card formats, and Compact Flash adapters may not work well
• Are a casual photographer who never shoots raw images or movies
• Prefer to have photos uploaded to a folder (perhaps for use with a different photo management program) rather than into iPhoto, or don't like to keep photos on your computer at all
• Use an unlimited account on a photo sharing site other than MobileMe for all your photos
• Want the same privacy level for the vast majority of your shared photos
• Don't care to cull photos before uploading or to edit them on your Mac
• Can respond to email or SMS notifications of uploads, or can remember to shut your camera off when it's done uploading
• Have ready access to a predictably named open wireless network at appropriate times

For me, it turns out that it's faster and easier to connect my camera via its USB cable or use a USB memory card reader to import into iPhoto, cull and edit photos there, and then upload select photos to MobileMe or Flickr. If you're like me, you can get a larger, faster SD card for a fraction of the price of the Eye-Fi Share. Or, if all of the bullet points just above are true of you, the Eye-Fi Share could be just perfect.

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

MARK/SPACE, INC: Take it with you! The Missing Sync makes
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The former general counsel at Apple, Nancy Heinen, agreed to settle civil charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding her involvement in planning and issuing backdated stock options while at the company. She will pay $2.2 million, but neither admit nor deny wrongdoing.

Heinen, along with former chief financial officer Fred Anderson, were sued by the SEC in April 2007 for their involvement with how certain grants of stock options were handled. The agency said Heinen created minutes for a board meeting that never occurred after the date on which it was alleged to have happened, as well as moved back the dates on which options were granted without properly recording or acknowledging either of those changes. Anderson settled immediately, also without admitting or denying any incorrect behavior.

In December 2006, Apple released a report that essentially agreed that there were irregularities in stock option grants, raised "serious concerns regarding the actions of two former officers," and revised its past years' earning statements to include the hidden cost of the backdated grants. The Justice Department ended its criminal investigation into Apple's backdating in July 2008.

You can read the long, involved history in our series, "Apple's Trouble with Backdated Stock Options."

 

Copyright © 2008 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Microsoft's MacBU: Supporting Mac users with Office 2008.
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Multiple press reports reveal that retail chain Best Buy will begin selling Apple's popular iPhone for use with AT&T's wireless network on 07-Sep-08 at 970 full-size stores and 16 Best Buy Mobile stores in the United States. The Associated Press, Reuters, and other news outlets say Best Buy is adding the iPhone to its stores as part of their Best Buy Mobile division, a joint venture between Best Buy and the UK's Carphone Warehouse Group.

As with Apple and AT&T retail outlets, customers will have to activate the iPhone on the AT&T network, with a two-year commitment, before leaving the store. We wouldn't expect any of the other Apple or AT&T policies about iPhone purchases to be different for phones bought at Best Buy.

Best Buy has already been successful selling iPods, including the iPod touch, and has opened Apple-focused store-within-a-store "mini-shops" in 600 stores. In those locations, the iPhone will be available in the Apple mini-shop rather than at the cell phone counter.

 

Copyright © 2008 Mark H. Anbinder. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.7 -- Latest version offers a
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Microsoft released updates to both 2004 and 2008 versions of its flagship Microsoft Office for Mac, citing stability and performance improvements in both cases, as well as fixes for vulnerabilities in the applications. The updates are available immediately at the Microsoft Mactopia download page as well as via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility (remember that each version of Office has its own version of Microsoft AutoUpdate).

Microsoft's release notes say the Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.1 Update improves stability when opening Word documents that contain a numbered list and updates the Japanese postal code dictionary, in addition to fixing vulnerabilities that an attacker could use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code. The Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.2 Update fixes the same vulnerabilities, fixes an AppleScript issue that prevents running a script from the Script menu without restarting the Office application, speeds up opening the Word application for users with lots of fonts, improves the display of text in Word tables, fixes an issue opening Excel documents when some sheet names include invalid characters, improves number formatting in Excel for some international languages, fixes duplication of events between Entourage and iCal when syncing, and includes several other small changes.

The Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.1 Update is a 15 MB download, and the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.2 Update is a 160 MB download. Because both updates repair significant vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office that could leave your computer open to attack, we recommend updating your copy of Microsoft Office immediately.

On the same day, Microsoft told us about a special promotion offering up to 30 percent off the price of Microsoft Office 2008 (the discount depends on the selected edition) when purchased along with a Mac from participating resellers through 08-Sep-08. The press release implies the discount is available to students and educators, but a visit to the Amazon offer page linked from the Microsoft page suggests no such restrictions on eligibility.

 

Copyright © 2008 Mark H. Anbinder. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

WebCrossing Neighbors Creates Private Social Networks
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You're planning a big trip, and you know you'll be taking lots of photos with your digital camera. What's the best way to protect those photos while you're away from home and your normal backup gear?

In "Backing up Photos While Traveling" (2008-08-11), I shared my thoughts about how to back up while traveling, including the following:

• Internet Backup: If you can be certain of finding an Internet connection with high-speed upload capabilities on a regular basis, uploading photos to a photo sharing site like Flickr or to a server you control is a great way to ensure that disaster cannot claim your photos.
• iPod Storage: Although it's slow and limited, Apple's $29 iPod Camera Connector could be a good solution if you happen to have a supported iPod model.
• Mac Storage: We settled on the blindingly obvious approach of copying photos from our cameras to my MacBook every night, leaving the photos on the 4 GB SD cards as well, so we had two copies in separate locations at all times. This worked well on this trip, but would have fallen down if we'd been gone much longer (since my MacBook didn't have much more free disk space) or if I hadn't wanted to take the MacBook at all.

Ever-alert TidBITS readers immediately sent me email with several other solutions that they've employed over the years. Depending on your situation, one of these might be just what you need on your next trip.

Recordable Disc -- David Malin suggests bringing a number of recordable CDs or DVDs along with self-addressed envelopes. Then, whenever you have enough photos to fill up a CD or DVD, you burn a disc, pop it in the envelope, add postage, and mail it home. This approach would require bringing a laptop, of course, but it eliminates the disk space concern. Eric Watson worked around the need for the laptop by finding a shop down the street that would burn his photos to DVD for a few bucks. I'd be leery of depending on there always being such a shop down the street, though it could work if you're mostly staying in one place. I'd also be concerned about the effort of figuring out the necessary postage and mailbox locations, but even having the photos on disc would meet my goal of two copies in separate locations.

Hard Disk-Based Photo Wallet -- Lynette Kent and Rick Redfern enthusiastically recommended the PhotoSafe II and Picture Porter Elite from Digital Foci, and Dale Gould pointed me to what look like similar devices: the NexTo eXtreme ND2700 Portable Storage Unit and the Vosonic VP8860 Multimedia Viewer Recorder.

The PhotoSafe II and the NexTo Extreme basically let you copy memory cards to the device's internal hard disk; they have only small text-based LCD screens that provide feedback. In comparison, the more-capable Picture Porter Elite and Vosonic Multimedia Viewer Recorder provide color LCDs that are larger than those in cameras for viewing your photos; they can also play and record audio and video, play FM radio, and print directly to printers. All these devices have rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for use away from a computer. They can also connect to a Mac via USB 2.0, at which point they can act as memory card readers and as normal external hard drives. Prices depend on the size hard disk you want, ranging from about $130 to $500.

I'd be hesitant to buy one of these devices for a single trip, but I like the fact that they can be used as battery-powered external hard drives as well, since that would make them more generally useful beyond travel. Lynette also said that the Picture Porter Elite can copy files back to memory cards, which would make it possible to create additional backups on inexpensive memory cards and mail those home for even more peace of mind.

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

MARK/SPACE, INC: If you have a smartphone, we can sync it!
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Former Apple product guru Jean-Louis Gasseé pins the responsibility tail on the MobileMe donkey in a long blog post in which he describes the machismo that leads to playing chicken with launches. Gasseé writes, "No one had enough brains and guts to risk humiliation, to raise a hand and say: Chief, we're not ready here, let's stop everything. As a result, MobileMe badly crashed on launch."

He goes on to explain why sync is hard, and why it's easy - despite Apple's many years in providing a kind of semi-working sync that I had many problems with - to underestimate the complexities of live reconciliation and coordination. Gasseé believes that Apple didn't eat other people's dog food: they didn't learn why BlackBerry is called Crackberry, and how Research in Motion (RIM) developed a reliable system that's used so broadly. RIM spent a decade tuning the system to where it's at today.

Gasseé was a critical figure at Apple in the late 1980s, and he had a heavy influence on the firm's product development. Through the 1990s, he ran Be, which developed an operating system that had many admirers (although few users) and some influence on Apple.

 

Copyright © 2008 Glenn Fleishman. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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For a period of several hours on 11-Aug-08, both MobileMe Mail and Google's Gmail were inaccessible for many users, although Gmail reportedly remained accessible for those retrieving email via IMAP and a standalone email client. MobileMe's outage was not accompanied by any acknowledgment of the problem on the status blog, and after a few hours, access returned. If Apple is going to be serious about providing a status blog, they should at least put the effort into updating it promptly (see "MobileMe Status Page Promises Updates, But Tone Rings Flat," 2008-07-26). We'll see if Google provides any more explanation than Apple when the dust settles.

Other MobileMe and Google services were unaffected, as far as I've seen, but it's distressing that MobileMe continues to suffer outages even after Apple claimed to have fixed the initial problems after the .Mac-to-MobileMe transition. Steve Jobs dissected the MobileMe launch in an internal email message, coming to essentially the same conclusions as Glenn Fleishman did in "Apple Claims MobileMe Mail Fully Restored" (2008-07-30).

I haven't tracked Gmail outages separately, but for the most part, I haven't heard complaints about frequent problems. Although there are no guarantees with any email service (heck, my server has been inaccessible for my few local users every so often too), people relying on email for mission-critical services would do well to maintain alternate accounts in case of trouble.

 

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you're reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.7 -- Latest version offers a
major interface overhaul, new prefs, text clippings, improved
JavaScript, new Ruby/SQL/YAML/Markdown support, code folding.
Over 160 new features in all! <http://www.barebones.com/>.