I finally got Live Mesh working on my Mac, my phone, and my fileserver.  I'm waiting on a new laptop for work, so I haven't installed there yet.

I have to say  this is very cool.  At the very basic, it does file sync.  This is what most users will see at first.  I've used several different sync applications, and within a couple of days, I've been quite satisfied with this solution.  One thing to note is that the Windows Mobile client actually does scheduled sync with your Live Mesh desktop in the cloud!

The Windows Mobile and Mac client sync with the cloud.  The Windows client has the ability to sync with the cloud, and to sync peer to peer with other Windows clients.

The interesting thing is that you can sync with other people's Mesh objects, if they invite you.  I can see this replacing Groove and FolderShare when it is release (it's a Technology Preview right now.)

More to come as I play with it.  BTW, there's a SDK as well.

With the new availability of the Mac client, I'm going to try Live Mesh again.  I was able to get logged in to my account, and download the Mac client.  I'm getting an error trying to log in, but I suspect the service is getting hammered right now.

Update: Looks like I'm not the only one getting this error.

On10.net has a good video on Live Mesh, and the Mac client.  If you're interested, it's worth the 10 minutes.

In a bizarre political move from the guys at CodeWeavers, they are giving away copies of their CrossOver products for today only.  Head to their website for all the details, and to register for your serial number.

As mentioned before, I'm now running on my Mac as a Standard User.  Everything seems to work really well.  When you run an installer, it gives you the option to authenticate (the same dialog an admin user gets, except that the username box is blank.)  When you try to install an application using the drag and drop on /Applications method

gives you the option of authenticating.  Each time I have tried this, I have used my alternate Administrator credentials, and assumed that my Administrator user owned the app.

WRONG!

This morning Firefox wanted to update, and I let it restart.  Little to my surprise, it actually worked.  A quick look in terminal showed something very disturbing:

drwxr-xr-x   3 rlobrecht  admin   102 Sep 22 09:43 DVDSpanner.app
drwxr-xr-x   7 root       admin   238 Mar  4  2008 Darwine
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Feb  6  2008 Dashboard.app
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Jun  8 09:41 Dictionary.app
drwxr-xr-x   3 root       admin   102 Nov 30  2007 Drag-N-Scale.app
drwxr-xr-x   3 root       admin   102 Aug 14 15:21 Evernote.app
drwxr-xr-x   3 root       admin   102 Dec  8  2007 ExifRenamer.app
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Jul 10 08:30 Expose.app
drwxr-xr-x@  3 rlobrecht  admin   102 Jul 28 15:26 Firefox.app
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Feb  6  2008 Font Book.app
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Feb  6  2008 Front Row.app
drwxr-xr-x   5 root       admin   170 Mar  3  2008 Gallery Remote.app
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Mar  3  2008 GarageBand.app
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Nov 14  2007 Google Earth.app
drwxr-xr-x   3 rlobrecht  admin   102 Aug 16 15:07 HandBrake.app
drwxrwxr-x   3 root       admin   102 Feb  6  2008 Image Capture.app
drwxr-xr-x   3 root       admin   102 Apr 27 10:53 JetPhoto Studio.app
drwxr-xr-x   3 rlobrecht  admin   102 Aug 17 13:52 Librarian Pro.app

Every application I've installed using the drag and drop method is still owned by me.  This isn't better than Windows, it's just that the brokenness is a little less obvious.  Time to chown again...

I figured out that if I import the iPhoto library on the CD into my own iPhoto library, I can then drag the images into the filesystem.  This isn't exactly perfect, but does seem to solve the problem I was having.

My step-son gave me a bunch of pictures on CD, which had been burned by iPhoto.  This created actual iPhoto Libraries, but not being an iPhoto user, I couldn't figure out how to get the photos out of iPhoto, and into my filesystem.  That's fine, the iPhoto library is actually in the file system, and all the files were right there, I should just be able to copy them.  The format is a bit interesting:

--Data (contains the thumbnails as jpgs)
--Modified (contain some of the images, which had been altered)
--Originals (contain all the images)

Under Modified and Originals, there was a 2008 subfolder, and then Roll x folder's under that.  I decided the easiest thing to do would be to copy the contents of the Originals folder, and then lay the Modified folder over that.  Should work fine.  I first copied the three Roll x folders from the Originals folder (and waited a few minutes, since CDs still aren't that fast.)  I then copied the two Roll x folders from the Modified folder and got this question:

I blindly clicked Replace, and went on.  A few more steps into my photo workflow, and I realized I didn't have nearly as many pictures as I expected.  After taking a more detailed look, I realized I only had the contents of the Modified folder.  After re-reading the question, I realize that it did exactly what I told it to, it replaced the entire folder with the second copy of the folder I was pasting.  The only way I could figure out how to get what I was looking for was to copy the contents of each folder individually.  A complete pain.

Anyone know a better way?

I finally installed Sugarsync, and it is mostly working as described.  I installed it on the MacBook and our Windows Server 2003 fileserver.  I still need to install it on my work laptop.  The Pocket PC client is next to useless (it only has access to the photo galleries, which it insists on creating, but I have absolutely no use for.)  The Mac client claims to be in beta, and it does feel that way.  None of the options which are supposed to interact with the website work (i.e. Versions and View in Online File Manager).  I've also got a problem where a bunch of files have refused to upload (314 to be exact.)  I'm still playing with it, but am undecided as to whether I will pay when the 45 day trial is over.

Every week or two, I get the above error message.  My Time Machine backups go to an external firewire drive, which is only used for backups.  It isn't full, and Disk Utility doesn't show any problems with it.  No clue what is going on.  There are tons of posts with the same error, but no one really seems to know what is going on.

While at my parent's this weekend, my mother asked me about setting the font to Bold in Word 2008 for Mac.  She claims to have turned on the Formatting toolbar, but wasn't seeing the ability to Bold her fonts.  Not being a Word expert, and being in a hurry, I pointed out that she should buy a book (which I've told her to do before) or visit the Genius Bar.

This morning, I decided to take a look and see what the options are, in comparison to what you would see on Windows.  Actually, it is quite similar.

Microsoft Word 2000 on Windows XP

Microsoft Word 2008 on Mac OSX Leopard

As you can see, the selection method and resultant toolbars are surprisingly similar.  Honestly, I'm not sure what my mother was doing wrong in turning on the toolbar.

Office 2007's ribbon is quite different, however, I don't believe she has any experience in that area.

Word 2008 does have a Mac specific formatting feature, the Formatting Palette.

The Formatting Palette is a little floating window which contains a number of formatting controls.  It seems to be quite powerful.

Given the two methods for performing the same task in the Mac version, it appears that Microsoft has done a fairly good job of keeping their switchers and Mac-faithful happy.

My default configuration on a non-development Windows box is to run as a standard user (i.e. one that isn't in the Power Users or Administrators group.)  When I first bought the MacBook, I wasn't with it enough to try this configuration.

At this point, I've learned enough, that I thought it was time to switch my login from an Admin to a Standard account.  Doing so was trivial (after first creating another Admin user.)  There was a little challenge of changing the ownership of some applications.  It seems that apps which were installed using an installer were all owned by root, however apps which were installed using the drag & drop into /Applications method were owned by me.  A quick chown -R later and everything was happy.

Except Photoshop Elements.  When attempting to use any of the effects or layer styles, none of the selections show up.

The left image is from an Admin user, and the right image is from my standard login.  A quick google search turned up this Mac OS X Hints article and this Adobe Forums thread. It seems that PSE users need write access to /Library/Applications Support/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/File Agent/6.0/en_US, and the two articles give several options for setting the permissions. 

My first attempt was to use chmod (being somewhat command-line oriented.)  Major FAIL.

Even though I can create a file in /Library/Applications Support/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/File Agent/6.0/en_US, PSE doesn't seem to be able to do it's thing with MediaDatabase.db3 (that file doesn't exist for me.)  Another odd thing is that my test file (created with touch) was created with rlobrecht:admin as it's owner, instead of rlobrecht:staff.  Weird.  chown-ing the en_US directory to root:staff doesn't seem to help either.

Even logging in as my Admin user (which does work) I don't create the MediaDatabase.db3 file referenced above.

Back to the web for a huge RTFM moment.  It seems there are two directories referenced:  /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/6.0/Locale/en_US is the other one.

My mother joined the Cult of Steve shortly before I did, buying the same Spring refreshed BlackBook.  She has been a long-time Palm user.  She recently retired from her public school district job, but will be continuing working as an educational consultant for National Geographic.  Upon her retirement, her IT department took back the most recent Palm that she was using, and although she has an older one she could use, she mentioned buying whatever the current model was.  I suggested that an iPod Touch may be a better choice as a stand-alone PDA.

My initial thought is that an iPod Touch will sync with iCal and Address Book.app without any Third party software.  I believe the Palm still needs Palm Desktop/HotSync manager to sync using iSync.  It seems that a bunch of people are doing this, so I need to read a bit more on it before suggesting a little more strongly.

Carl is considering purchasing a Mac, so we decided to pop down to the local Apple Store while out at lunch.  Much to our surprise, there were approximately sixty people in line waiting for their iPhone 3G.

After looking at the iMac for quite a while, we were able to spend a bit of quality time with the display iPhone's (white models) and it does feel a bit smaller than the old one.  Unfortunately the placement of the security cable, made it really difficult to get a good understanding of the feel in the hand.  Once again I was reminded how nice the software is.  I still had a very hard time with the keyboard.  The other thing I wonder is if the volume control buttons are available via the SDK.  The are placed quite nicely for use as an eBook reader, but it they don't work, it means flipping pages by touching the screen.

I'm still not buying one.

I stuck a blank DVD-Rom in my MacBook, and it didn't mount.  Nor would it eject by holding down the eject key on the keyboard.  After some brief googling, I found a suggestion to restart the computer while holding down the mouse/trackpad key, so I thought I would try it.  As I started shutting down apps, I suspended an XP image running in VMWare Fusion.  As soon as I did this, the disk mounted.  I was able to eject it, and reinsert it, and it mounted fine.  It looks like Fusion grabbed onto the disk mount.

I've been using FolderShare for quite a while to keep things in sync between my machines.  With the recent addition of the MacBook, I was quite happy to have FolderShare also supported there.  In the Windows world, I've actually been running it on Windows Server 2003, because I rarely log into my desktop, and all of the backups run from the server.  A couple of weeks ago, FolderShare stopped connecting on the server complaining that the version was too old (although we know they haven't really changed the back-end since the ancient Mac version still connects.)  This morning I attempted to update FolderShare on the server and was greeted with this:

Come on Microsoft.  I guess I'll be trying all those other sync apps I've been linking to.

Along with my MacBook, I bought a copy of VMWare Fusion, knowing that someday I'd have a reason to run a Windows app, and today is the day.  Once again, its the lousy Entourage which is failing to meet my needs.  What Ineed to do is forward a complicated HTML message.  Entourage fails miserably.  OWA on either of the browsers on my Mac also fail (although not quite as badly as Entourage.)  Even IE7 on Windows fails to forward it correctly (the images don't come through.)  Now obviously I have access to Windows boxes, and can use them, but I'm using this excuse to set up an XP VM with Office 2003.

Yesterday, UPS delivered Adobe PhotoShop Elements 6 for the Mac, which I had ordered shortly after it shipped.  I installed it last night, and actually started looking at it this morning.  It installed something called Adobe Stock Photos CS3, so I thought I would check it out.  Here's what I got:



Did they really do this?  They shipped something that they canceled within a week of it shipping?  That's just odd.

A beta invite to Dropbox showed up in my email this morning.  This is another cross-platform file sync utility.  The big difference I see with this one is that it has a specific area where your sync'd files have to live.

I'll check it out.

I can't believe how simplistic the HTML capabilities of Entourage are.  And apparently it's well known, and worked around.  I ended up having to write an email in Word, just so I could enter a simple hyperlink (apparently Entourage will turn a URL into a hyperlink, however you can't create a hyperlinked bit of text.)  I'll have to try the script I linked to, however commenters are reporting issues on 2008.

I've just had one of my FolderShare libraries totally freak out.  It basically deleted every file in the library.  I know that the files were there last night, and I think even earlier today.  Of course there's backups, but it's still a total pain in the behind.

I only wish the FolderShare trash was a little more intelligent (similar to the Windows Recycle Bin.)

I'm not really a programmer (developer) however I have programmed professionally off an on for over fifteen years.  I started with LOGO and BASIC as a kid.  During college I had proper courses in FORTRAN.  Since then I've programmed primarily in VB and C#.

There are a few little utilities I'd like to whip up for the Mac, so I installed XCode.  Wow, this world is really different.  At quick glance things looked similar:

• there are GUI widgets that you drag and drop onto your forms
• project templates start you off with the right kinds of files
• heck it even creates your menu for you, and populates it with most of the basic stuff you need

But the similarities end there.  I've been trying to read several cocoa sites, however I think its time for a book.  If you can recommend a Cocoa/XCode/Objective-C book geared towards beginners, I'd love to hear from you.

Adobe has shipped Photoshop Elements 6 for the Mac.  I'm pretty sure that I'll be purchasing this one (the real Photoshop just isn't in the budget), however I'm a little disappointed that there's not a trial available.  The Windows version has a trial for download.

I used to love OneNote on my tablet PC.  I haven't found it as useful on a normal Windows machine, so its not currently installed anywhere, but I do occasionally miss having its capabilities.  I'm currently using a mix of this blog, del.icio.us, and Google Reader's shared items to track online things of importance, but I worry about link rot. 

Enter Evernote.  It looks similar to OneNote, except cross platform and synchronized.  That's right, they support Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, the web, and even several mobile browsers, and your notes on all the devices are supposed to remain in sync.  They also have an email to note function (which should work great with camera phones.)

I've signed up for the beta, and installed it on the MacBook.  I've downloaded the version for my phone, an will install it at work on Monday.  I wonder if there's a One Note to Evernote conversion utility.

I now have a very unique set of requirements for a password wallet.  I realistically need something that is file based (as opposed to database based) and runs on Windows, Windows Mobile, and Mac OS X.

It needs to be file based, so I can use FolderShare to keep it in sync between our fileserver, my work PC, and the Mac.

The platforms are obvious.  I still have a Windows based desktop in my home office, and a Windows based laptop for work.  I won't be switching phone platforms for quite a while.

I've been using Ilium Software's eWallet for ages.  It meets all of my requirements, almost.  I actually have it working on the Mac under Darwine, however there are some issues.  Occasionally, the clipboard between X11 and the Mac has stopped working (i.e. things copied in eWallet can't be pasted into a normal Mac app and vise versa.)  It also has this totally bizarre problem where in the card view, all the text is in some bizarre symbol based font.

I went on a big hunt for a cross platform password wallet.  SplashID looked perfect, until reading the fine print.  The only way to move from a desktop platform to a handheld platform is via it's appropriate sync manager.  I don't actually ActiveSync my phone with anything except the Exchange server.  They do have this awful export/import work around, which would mean clear-text versions of my wallet available every time I needed to update it.  It's also not clear if the Mac and Windows versions are file compatible.

The last one that I checked was the open source project Password Safe.  Their tact for cross platform seems to be to go the Java route.  There's an ancient Pocket Pc version (from 2003) but that seems to be dead.  I guess I could attempt to port it to Windows Mobile and Mac OS X, but given my lame coding skills, and lack of time, this seems like a very poor choice.

I've just now seen KeePass which is another open source option, this time with active Windows, Windows Mobile, and OS X versions.  I think I know what I need to test next.  Migrating my data is going to be a bitch.

[update 03-14-2008]
Marc Tassin from Ilium Software sent me an email pointing to their official blog, and their iPhone announcement.  This quote definitely gives me something to think about:
"4. Will you make a Mac version?
I’m not allowed to give you a definite answer on that one yet, but as some technical types might already know, the iPhone and the Mac run very similar software. I’ll leave it at that for now."

I've been using FolderShare for quite a while to keep a select subset of my personal files synchronized between my work laptop and my home environment.  I've blogged about it a few times in the past.  Now that I've added the MacBook, I'm using it there as well to keep an even larger selection of my documents synced from the Windows server to the MacBook.  Microsoft recently announced an update to Foldershare, changing the backend from PHP to ASP.NET.  Unfortunately, there's not a new Mac client, so we're stuck in Rosetta-land. 

Enter Dropbox.  DropBox appears to be similar to FolderShare with a twist, it also syncs to the cloud, S3 to be precise.  Plus it does file revisions.  The DropBox client is written in Python, and runs on Windows and Mac OS X.  One interesting difference between the two is that DropBox is a special folder on your machine, where FolderShare is able to monitor and sync any local folder(s).

I've requested a beta invite for the new DropBox service.

We use Exchange for Lobrecht.com's email.  i was counting on the fact that Entourage was supposed to work with Exchange.  Well it does, sort of.  It isn't even as complete as Outlook Web Access.

My first problem is with the certificate for SSL communication with our server.  My server has it's own certificate authority, and has generated it's own certificate.  Apparently Entourage didn't like this, and Leopard seems to have changed the way certificates work.  This MacRumors form post had the answer for me.  I needed to use certtool as root to import the certificate into a certificate chain which is no longer accessible through the keychain access application.

sudo certtool i certnew.cer v k=/System/Library/Keychains/X509Anchors

This change has allowed me to consistently connect to my email.
The second problem is around message formatting.  Unlike any other mail application that I've used in recent history, this one seems to have absolutely no way to automatically format your messages (either newly composed or replies and forwards.)
The third problem is with my contacts.  Even though Outlook, Outlook Web Access, and Entourage all have Categories, it seems that Entourage doesn't bother to get the Categories for contacts from Exchange (and I assume Calendar entries as well, however I haven't looked into that yet.)  Entourage also doesn't download Distribution Lists, even though it has Groups which look like the same thing.  This is going to be a pain that I will have to solve.

After a grueling 13+ hour wait, UPS decided to deliver my MacBook.  I've now had it for a bit over one full day, and even though I'm making progress, I'm still baffled by lots of the Mac-isms.  I ordered the black one from Amazon. 
So far, I've installed:
Office 2008
VMWare Fusion (although I haven't created any VMs yet)
Firefox
Thunderbird (although this will be coming off because my employers SSL VPN doesn't support OS X)
Quicksilver
Darwine
Foldershare
eWallet (under Wine)

A few frustrations so far:

• during the initial boot, i was trying to connect to my wireless network which only allows specified MAC addresses to connect.  The wizard knew that the WAP was only allowing specific MAC addresses to connect, but it gave me no way to know what the MAC address of my MacBook is, and the WAP doesn't log rejections.  I ended up having to turn off the MAC filtering, connect, capture the MAC from the log, and then turn it back on.
• My fingers are very used to Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V for copy and paste.  On the MacBook, this is ⌘-C and ⌘-V which is where the Alt key is on a PC keyboard.  I'll get used to it.  BTW, how do you type a ⌘ character?  (I copied that one from another site.)
• In both Firefox and Safari, Saving an image or file gives you this totally gimped folder selection dialog.

As Carl alluded to, I've decided to "switch," at least part way.  I've ordered a MacBook.  Main purposes will be image and video processing, light document and spreadsheet work, and web development.  Why a Mac?  Mostly for the change.  Vista is such a terrible disappointment, I don't see Microsoft truly recovering.  Apple seems to have strong momentum, and their close eco-system makes for incredibly stable machines.  It runs Microsoft Office, and Entourage is supposed to connect to Exchange just like Outlook does. 

 

We'll see next week, when the package is delivered.

The open-source disk encryption leader, TrueCrypt, has shipped their latest version, and is now supporting encryption of a complete Windows system (similar to what PGP does.)  I happily used PGP's full disk encryption on my work laptop for a while, until a policy came out about not using any non-approved encryption on company machines.  I've happily used TrueCrypt for creating encrypted containers, and love it.

The other interesting new feature is a Mac version of the software (without system encryption support.)

Both Carl and I have had ultra portable machines in the past, so we were waiting with baited breath for the Jobsnote announcement.  Even though the design compromises make the MacBook Air a not likely candidate for either of us, we still wanted to see it.  Yesterday, we popped into our local Apple Store to grope one.

They had one front and center (well actually left as you were facing the store from the mall) on a pedestal in the front window, and two on the very front table (with a black MacBook in between.)  The first one was being examined by someone with a concierge next to him, so he was either serious about buying, or doesn't have "we're just looking