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Solution: iCal, gCal, and iPhone. A happy threesome

If you followed my previous post about wanting to trade my Kingdom for a way to sync my iPhone, iCal, and gCal, you know that the current situation for an iPhone owner, with a gCal account is pretty much W.E.A.K.

the blackberry definitely one ups the iPhone in this category.

While I’m not 100% happy with my current solution (Thanks commenter Toby), it’s the best solution I’ve come up with so far. My environment is convoluted for sure, but can’t be unique.

Toby pointed me to nuevaSync, which let’s you sync a gCal account through an exchange gateway, which you can then sync to the iPhone. Unfortunately the iPhone can only handle one exchange sync, no idea why.

So I’ve got 2 way Sync from gCal to the iPhone through nuevaSync. Then since I like using iCal when on my mac, or not connected, i use Google’s new calDav support to have 2 way communication between iCal and gCal.

ok mostly there. gCal is my hub, and iCal and the iPhone can talk to it, and get updates back and forth.

Unfortunately since I’m using my single exchange connection for nuevaSync, I had to disconnect from my EUI account. Solution, just as convoluted.

I connected my iPhone directly to the mail server via IMAP, and have entourage (blech) syncing to iCal in an Entourage, which then, mostly, sometimes, will make it up to the cloud that is MobileMe.

I can only imagine what kind of trouble I’d have if I was trying to sync contacts across all these services.

So there we have it. A mostly good solution, to a really stupid problem to have. Thanks Apple, this kind of stuff reinforces why RIM is the business choice still.

Tags: Google, iPhone, Mac

Earthscape for iPhone, Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup

Tuesday (election day) was a busy one; it was the last day of Defrag ‘08, was election day, and was also a denver meeting of the Boulder Denver new tech meetup.

After Defrag Rob, Adam, Fraser and I spent some time in the bar in the lobby of the Hyatt, talking about twitter, glue, communities, etc. One of the best conversations I’ve had in a while.

After a few drinks, we caught the last two presentations at the meetup. One was a phone thing, that I didn’t quite understand, since we missed probably the first 2 minutes of the 5 alotted per company. We did see all of Earthscape(iTunes Link).

Think google earth, with community photo sharing. it’s pretty cool, and easy to use, photo’s appear as you pan through the map.

There’s two view modes; pan mode (looking straight down on the map), and 3D mode (right there to the right).  Both modes are very fluid and easy on the eyes. Initially I was worried that the graphics would kinda suck, but I had to admit Earthscape (and google earth, since it looks like Earthscape uses google earth) has very good graphics. Looking down on my house, it’s funny to see how old some of Google’s images are. I think I can see straight into the 2nd story of the town home, since there’s no roof.

users can, of course comment on photos, you can see all photo’s from a specific user, etc. You can even see Wikipedia entries, which is really cool! It’s cool to see the pictures people are taking of the places they are. Sure it’s a touch voyeuristic, but that’s human nature, and one of the under pinnings of social media :)

The blue circle thing, that’s my house in the middle, I was watching “The Happening” on Amazon unbox. Good flick.

You can see in this pic that some of the map doesn’t always un-blur. At first I thought I had glaucoma, but realized that some times the maps just don’t fully rez.

It’s a free app, I DL’ed it right there in the meetup, and took my first pic of it’s creator talking about it.

iPhone app aside, I’m definitely hooked on the new tech meetup. I don’t know if it is always Boulder, and the “Denver” part is name only, though I suspect that’s the case. Definitely worth the 20 minute drive into Boulder.

Tags: Apple, iPhone, Mac

Well of course there’s an Apple Tax!

CNet Interviewed Brad Brooks, and in that interview he says that Mac buyers pay an “Apple Tax”

DUH

Apple owners have long known about the Apple Tax, we joke about, nothing new Brad! He seems to think we (Apple product owners) think that Apple really pays 500 dollars to build each 16gb iPhone, and 2500 dollars for each Mac Pro. We don’t!

You’re not going to get things like Microsoft Outlook, you’re not going to get the games that you’re used to playing. There’s a technology tax–Apple still doesn’t have HDMI, doesn’t have Blu-ray offerings, doesn’t have e-SATA external disk drives that work at twice the speed of FireWire. And so you’ve got all of these things that are truly taxes.

We don’t want Outlook Brad, It’s a crappy app. He seems to attribute a lack of choice, to being a lack of choice in M$ apps. That’s hardly the case. Aside of a good SQL Server client, there’s nothing I miss from my PC days. Entourage is as crappy as outlook, so nothing there. Mail.app suffices, but hello, Gmail with IMAP anyone? Why have a landlocked desktop mail client? Sure it’d be nice to have blue ray options, but mmm not a deal breaker. I mean when I travel I’ve got iTouch, iPhone, and iTunes to watch video in, why waste Battery spinning a drive to watch a movie? e-SATA? what for? THere’s plenty of Firewire and USB options, why have one more? One more port to get gunk in it, one more thing to buy to keep up with the ever changing PC landscape.

Brooks: You know, I think it’s a good point. I think the question is, though, do customers really know what they’re getting into? I don’t personally believe that customers really know that a copy of Parallels is going to cost them $80, or that when they really look at what they’re going to have to pay in terms of another $200 for a (full boxed copy of Windows), that they’re going to pay for another $149 for MobileMe to put on there, Internet services, which they can basically get all the same functionality when they have Windows and Windows Live working together.

Brooks also thinks consumers are stupid. I’m not sure what Windows Live is, but Mobile Me is optional and a vast majority don’t use it. I do, because I have three macs and want my data all in one place. There’s cheaper options, but Mobile Me is baked in so the integration is nice.

Those who need VMware or Parallels, etc need Windowz for work for the most part, so the casual Mac owner, won’t ever pay that “Tax”. Every Mac buyer doesn’t buy a copy of VMware or Parallels, most are looking to leave Windows behind and not look back.

A funny statement:

Just the fact that we’re having this long of a conversation about Apple, it seems to reflect a shift in Microsoft’s thinking that Apple is more of a threat on the PC side. I mean, how do you guys view Apple in terms of a competitive threat on the desktop?
Brooks: The conversations that we’re having really started back around our partner conference in early July. And I came out and said, right there onstage in front of tens of thousands of partners, “we’re drawing a line in the sand.”

A line that many are running as fast as they can right up to, stepping over, and never looking back.

I won’t keep posting tidbits, of M$ non sense, read the entire article.  I want to get back to my point. Yes there’s an Apple Tax. I paid it when I bought my Macbook Pro, that is now three years old and not likely to be replaced any time soon. Where as my wife’s Inspiron is in dire need of either a re install from all the Crapware (wait, crapware on a PC? No way according to Brad, oh wait, she’s XP), or just a new machine. My iPod Photo, still running, the Apple Tax I paid nearly 7 years ago, well earned in my opintion. I wonder if a Zune will last that long…?

However to insinuate there’s no Windows Tax is just plain silly. Sure it’s not paid on the hardware Windows runs on, that’d be the Dell Tax. It’s paid in time lost rebooting, waiting for outlook to load, waiting for the wireless network to figure itself out and get working, waiting for the newest 20+ software updates to download. It’s also paid in having to run Anti Virus software, having to re install the OS every 6 months to a year just to get some performance. For Vista users, it’s my understanding (thanks to Tom) that it’s paid in waiting for it to reboot after you put it to sleep or changed wireless networks.

There’s a Windows Tax, to be sure, to say otherwise is plain disengenuous. Brad is no doubt your typical mud slinging marketing wonk, but really, CNN why waste time even talking to him? Especially when it’s clear he thinks the reason Apple is doing so well is that consumers are stupid and un aware of the choices they’re making. Brad, I hate to break it to you, but we know, and we’re ok with it.

And it is not a question of whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the experience, it’s a question of whether they really know what they’re getting into when they choose to embark upon that path.

To close another funny. Brad might not be the best person for interviews since even Ina picked up on it.

Is there risk in the way you guys are doing this that some of the messaging sounds like “you, the consumer, just don’t get it?”
Brooks: That’s far from the message that I want to deliver.

Bummer Brad, that’s the message you did deliver.

Tags: Apple, CNET, Mac, Steve Jobs

setting up Wordpress on a mac, easy minus one lame small gotcha

I’m installing Word press locally on my work laptop so I have a test bed for something bigger that I’m doing. I found an old OS X 10.4.x blog post guide, which was really helpful, until it got to connecting Word Press to mySQL.

Then I lost all sense of self, and slowly went insane, for an hour.

I’m no dummy, but man, setting up PHP and Word Press on my mac was PAINFUL.

Getting PHP up and running, check.

MySQL. been there done that, check.

word press install, no check. kept getting “error connecting to database”

Googling revealed many posts on this topic, in the Word Press forums, the MySQL forums, and Apple. All talking about where the mysql.socket is kept, and how it should be in one place, but isn’t and many ways of working around that.

No joy.

Finally I did another search for Word Press on 10.5.x, which yeilded even more threads on the database error topic.

Then 6 months ago, on this thread, jonokane posted this gem,

Followup: After spending what seems like an absolutely ridiculous amount of time on this, I have figured out the embarrassingly simple issue.

localhost != Localhost

My Mac identifies itself as Localhost, NOT localhost! Learned something extremely obvious…. :)

So the config should look like this:

It certainly shoulda been obvious! I know the Mac is *nix, and capitalization is key, but it was just too close, too obvious. It was also the default, so it never occured to me to think on it.

So, lesson learned, and now, next time I do this. This blog post will light my way!

Tags: Mac, Wordpress