Ballmer wants Apple to open up

This is amazing: via cnet. Steve is really feeling the pinch: "Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice." The question is whose choice, right, Mr. Ballmer?

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Microsoft retail push

SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Microsoft Corp's (MSFT) decision to launch a retail push for the first time suggests the company is hoping the success of smaller rival, Apple Inc. (AAPL), in reaching consumers, may rub off on the larger company.

Looks like Zune has not taught them a thing.

Blogging on an iPhone

One of the first apps I wanted to get on an iPhone was one to let me post into my blog. And the first one I have installed and took for the spin was BlogWriter. It is a decent application but I have very soon discovered that it is too basic.

This may be a function of my Blogger setup -- I have disabled automatic formating -- but creating a longer post has proven to be a challenge.

But more importantly it allows one to post to one blog only.

My next stop was iBlogger. The app does have a more polished and overall nicer touch and feel, supports multiple blogging platforms (except LiveJournal). Unlike BlogWriter it does insert a few tags on its own (line breaks, mostly), but it cannot save drafts on a server and does not allow to edit published posts.

The next (and last) application I took for a spin was LiveJiurnal.app. It supports only LJ for publishing, but where it shines is in quasi-rich editing capabilities that do not require constant switching between letters and symbols to insert HTML tags.

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Vienna

There's something charming in a good non-Disney sense of a word about being in Vienna. Measured, balanced living. Beautiful streets with lots of green (or as the case was for me this time -- covered in gold, red and brown colors of fall), buildings that each looks like it has just stepped down from the pages of fairy tales or is a materialization of Mozart's tunes. The smells of the city -- bratwurst here, Wiener mellange there. Sound of horse hoofs on cobble stones and bells of Straßbahn. There's no rush on the streets, but none of the laid-back Miditerrainian laziness you'd see in the south of Europe. Just enough of ordnung to keep things nitly organized, but not too much for any diversity to be seen a danger to stability of boredom.

iPhone me

I have not held myself back for too long after the official launch of iPhone in Russia. No more than a few days, in fact. As I promised to myself, I went to a shop and played with the 3G model for 15-20 minutes. The plan was either that, or Nokia E71. I liked my iPhone experience, hence the decision was made.

It has now been a bit over a month that I have been using the device. There are things I like, and things I hate.

I like overall package. iPhone feels very nice both in your pocket and in the hand, it is ideal size for the purpose -- any smaller, and the screen would be too small (something that would have bothered me on E71). Any bigger and the device would feel awkward when talking.

Having almost a desktop-quality experience always with you is also very nice. Your email, web browsing, news coverage, calendar always just a finger swipe away. A sad omission from this are notes an to-dos that one might manage within Mail or Outlook (if you don't own a Mac).

There's lots that can be picked up at the AppStore to further enhance the experience. From a multitude of calendar and to-do apps, to financial mamagement, astrological maps, and games. In fact, AppStore is one thing that quite a few of my jailbroken friends envy me for.

That said, there are things I can't get used to. In no particular order.

1. Copy/paste. Yes, everybody's darling. One could get it to work by jail-breaking the phone and installing apps from Cydia,something I am still not planning on doing. So, for now my copy buffer (one of the things original Macintosh was so much praised for) resides either in my head or on a scrap of paper.
2. Inability to send contact details. As a long-time Nokia user I am used to how easy it is to share contact details with your friends. Browse names, choose one you need, open it and choose "send business card" option. iPhone offers nothing like that by default and the apps I have seen in AppStore only email contact details, you can't SMS or beam them over Bluetooth.
3. Battery. Yes, another gripe of many. Last thing I want is to ever get stranded with my nice XXI century toy full of bells and wistles lacking juice to make a simple call. I am almost onto the routine of daily charging, but there still were a couple of cases I was on red, looking for anything else I can shut off to conserve power.
4. Editing text. Besides copy/paste debacle, it would be nice to be able to select large area of text to delete. Blackberry can do that, iPhone should as well.
5. Crash, baby. Even Apple's own apps get shut down quite a bit. The most frequent offender is Safari (but it's also most used one). Either it leaks memory or OS is not doing a good job of garbage-collecting after it. Either at, it is annoying. I sure hope 2.2 firmware would improve on it.
6. SMS limitations. Again, coming from Nokia background its taken as given that I should be able to check all details of messages I send and receive. I can't (or I don't know how) on iPhone.
7. Photos. Can I please have a way, not on my Mac, on my iPhone to check when and where the photo was taken? And while we're there, maybe the basic set of editing functions (like color balance, crop, rotate, contrast and brightness adjustments) would be very cool.
8. One last thing. Pun is intended. My old Nokia N80 supported task switching. It could also shut some apps down when memory was scarce, but I could still switch from a web browser to my contacts or a calculator without closing the browser.

Fixing iPod/iPhone/AppeTV syncing issue for iPhoto albums

If you ever come across a situation when iTunes refuses to sync your iPhoto library to your iPod, iPhone or AppleTV, and a very important symptom is that you cannot choose "Selected Albums" option in iTunes syncing preferences, chances are you have an issue inside the AlbumData.xml file within the iPhoto Library.

Luckily, the fix is rather simple:

1. Open Pictures directory in Finder, locate your iPhone Library and Ctrl-click (or right-click) it and choose "Show Package Content..." option.
2. At the top of the list you will see AlbumData.xml file.
3. Drag it over to Safari (either on your dock, or drop it onto a URL bar of an open Safari window).
4. Safari will report an error, note what line that error on, it is likely that it'll say that was unexpected...
5. Open AlbimData.xml file in your favorite editor and navigate to that line.  You will see something like this:

   <key>Comments</key>
   <string>Some comment:<key>PhotoCount</key>
   ...

   Notice that string tag is not closed.  Insert a </string> right before the <key> tag (you can also add a new line after it, for clarity):

   <key>Comments</key>
   <string>Some comment:</string>
   <key>PhotoCount</key>
   ...

6. Save the file and try again iTunes, you should all be set now.

Netbook Remix

A few days ago I have moved back from XFCE4 back to standard GNOME Ubuntu desktop, while at the same time changing my desktop shell for Netbook Remix. This setup is much more convenient than standard desktop on my tiny EeePC 4G, as on one hand I do not need to mouse around as much, but at the same time it is not as limiting functionally as Xandros. And it is stable enough (although there are a few minor quirks here and there). Ten cheers to developers!