Spammers need grammar lessons

"Hello from Ms vivian shaka, I am writing with the earnest prayer that my attention will meet favorably with you."

I really want to reply and say, "Hey, Viv! What the heck does that even mean?! 'My attenion will meet favorably with you,' indeed!"

iPod touch 3.0 Review

I was very glad for the 3.0 software update. I've wanted some of these new features since I moved from using a Palm handheld as my PDA to using an iPod touch. (See iPod touch Wishlist, and My New PDA: iPod touch. All of my "wishes" were granted except for the Task Manager.) The $9.95 (USD) was well worth it.

It is hard to decide which new feature is my #1. I don't care, for example, about the enhancements to the Stocks app or the addition of the Voice Memos app. (I have the iTalk app, which I got when I bought a microphone from Griffin.

Here, in no special order, are my top new features, and why.

• Copy and Paste. This is probably my #1 and it works with all of the Apple-supplied applications. It is intuitive, too, apparently. I did not look at the manual, first (of course). I just experimented. In a nutshell, it rocks!
  
  I needed to copy something from a Google Calendar entry to take with me to a place with no WiFi. Standing about to walk out of the house, I clicked on Google, selected apps, then my Calendar. (I needed an entry from a shared calendar I do not sync with iCal.) I held my finger on the entry. The software wisely selected the entire text of the calendar entry. I selected Copy, hit the Home button, selected Notes, hit the plus (add) button, pasted into a new note, and I was done and on my way. I have and will use this for copying and pasting URLs from mail messages, etc. Great stuff.


• Search. Wow. There is a global search of the whole iPod. (Which application data are searched is settable in Settings,General, Home, Search Results.) Globally, it shows you by application where the searched for string is. Also, individual apps have a search function built in (for example, to just search Notes.) In the Mail app, each folder allows me to search that folder, both the data on the iPod as well as the data not yet downloaded. (Pull down on the window showing the messages in a folder, to expose the search window.) In Calendar, this is in the List view.


• Notes. Some people never use Notes. As I said in and After Windows, What?, I used Memos (Notes equivalent) a lot on my Palm. I have notes with notes from meetings I want to remember, quotes I want to keep, a list of my prescriptions, the cost of the DC Metro from Greenbelt Station to L'Enfant Plaza—currently 33 Notes in all. I had some of these on my Mac, copied from my Palm. I used a trial version of some app to get them into my Notes, but had no way of adding more on my iPod without typing on my iPod. So, I was happy that this was a feature in 3.0.
  
  Notes now syncs with Notes in the Mail app (or with Notes in Outlook). I did not use Notes in Mail, but for creation and modification for syncing to my iPod, it is great. I recently wanted to add instructions for accessing free wireless at Starbuck's using my Starbucks card. I had 2 ways to save the information onto my iPod in a note (before going to Starbucks). 1) I could access their web page on my iPod from home and copy the information and then paste it into a new Note. 2) I could access it from my Mac and create a create a new Note in Mail that will be synced.


• eMailed Calendar Events now get added to Calendsr when you click on the .ics attachment. Apparently not. :-(


• iPod changes. There may be more, but one thing I noticed this morning on the way to work: there is an adjustable speed control on podcasts (1x, 2x, and 1/2x speed). This is similar to the speed control settable in iTunes before on audio books, only. This is nice. I find that many podcasts, lectures, etc., are easily understandable at 2x the speed.

As you can tell, I am pleased with the 3.0 upgrade and was happy to spend the money.

Gmail: Can it be trusted?

In Mail and Gmail and More on Mail and Gmail, I discuss my move to Gmail as my main avolio.com mail server.

Gmail Glitch Shows Pitfalls starts off with "When Google Inc.'s online-email service shut off for over two hours earlier this week, it brought to light concerns about whether businesses can safely rely on software that their employees access over the Internet." The Wall Street Journal On-line article goes on to say, "... companies are finding that going online to do business-computing tasks via services like Google's ... comes with a risk: When something goes wrong, customers must sit idly while waiting for someone else to fix the problem."

I say this is FUD. Who doesn't have to suffer occasional outages? Servers go down, ISPs disconnect occasionally, cables get cut. Owning the servers and employing those who run them may feel safer, but I suspect does little to mitigate the risk of an outage.

Is it worth the risk? I think so.

Intolerance

I am embarrassed to say I am strangely intolerant about two things (but only two :-)), both in the PDA realm. The first, is people referring to any and every Palm Computer as a PalmPilot. As Wikipedia says,"The first two generations of PDAs from Palm were referred to as "PalmPilots". Due to a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by the Pilot Pen Corporation, since 1998..." Back then, US Robotics manufactured the PalmPilot, and I had one. Probably, no one has a PalmPilot today, yet people still call it that.

And on the Apple discussion groups and elsewhere, people will talk about there iTouch when they mean iPod touch. Yes, even spelled with a lower-case "t." You have an iTouch if you have an this iPod touch knock-off.

iPod touch and "Shuffle Albums"

Older iPods had a feature that would allow you to shuffle songs or albums. It would play a random album in its entirety, then another, etc. This is not available on a touch (an unjailbroken touch).

What I mean by Shuffle Albums," is really randomly find and play an entire album. I started to want this recently when "shuffle songs" would turn up a song I haven't listened to in years. I would have a "Wow,I remember this album," moment. This is a simple, obvious way to get this functionality.

1. I select songs to list all the songs on my iPod touch.
2. I push the "Shuffle" command.
3. I push the Next Song" command until a song comes up from an album I'm interested in.
4. I select the list of songs on the album (top righthand side)
5. I select the first song in the album

It seems like a lot to go through, but really step 3 doesn't usually take that long before I stumble upon .. shuffle upon ... an interesting album.

Note to a Chinese Phisher

Sometimes I do a quick scan of my Spam folder. See the attached annotated image from my Google Mail Spam folder. (Click for a larger image.)

On-line Backups

I have written about the importance of system back-ups many times before. I talk about it specifically in System Back-ups.

Today, in my news aggregater, Macworld reported on BackBlaze. BackBlaze is a $5/month online backup server and service for Macs and PCs, and has no limit to how much you can back up.

Also, The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a review with shiny pictures.

I've not tried it yet, but I intend to. The questions that have come to my mind are all the obvious ones. They answer some on their web page. For many of you, the important answer is "It is better than the backup scheme you currently have," knowing that many of you (twice I wanted to write "most") don't backup at all.

If you try it, let me know what you think. I will do the same.