I’ve been using a Blackberry for some time now, longer than I’ve owned my Macbook. Originally I was always under the impression that there was no way to Sync my Blackberry contacts and calendar with Apple’s iCal and Address Book, without purchasing additional software. So I was content on syncing my Blackberry data with Outlook on my Windows PC, then to my Gmail account in order to get this data to my Macbook. It was a pain in the ass so I never did it much. Typically just used my Blackberry device as my main source for everything and periodically would sync with my PC as a means of backing up in case something was to happen to my device.

Anyways I recently found a simple and free solution to Synchronize my Blackberry user data with OS X’s iCal, Address Book and StickiesNotes. It’s called Pocketmac.

 

A quick tutorial

If you need me to hold your hand through the steps
 

My setup

• Blackberry 8830 Word Edition (Blackberry OS 4.2) running BIS (not Enterprise Server)
• PocketMac 1.0.9
• Mac OS X 10.5.4 Leopard powered MacBook Pro
• iCal, Address Book and StickiesNotes

1. First Download: Pocketmac and install it (you will need to reboot).
2. Open up Pocketmac and attach your Blackberry device via USB to your Mac.
3. Run through each tab representing your Blackberry user data (Contacts, Calender etc.) and check the desired OS X application you wish to sync with.
4. Once you got everything checked, proceed to the giant green “Sync” button to the top right and click.
5. That should do it, give it a few minutes to synchronize everything, and then confirm all of your user data made it from your Blackberry to your designated OS X app.

and heres a little doodle for the lazy, non-readers…

I’ve seen plenty of sweet, interactive advertisements built with Flash technology. This particular one that I ran into on Lifehacker.com today grabbed my attention right away and got me to click on it indefinitely. It’s for an HP Touch-Smart PC, which looks really sweet. The ad starts out like any other Flash animated square ad then when you hover your cursor over it a menu jumps out of the ad in separate blocks, one by one and gives off a really nice looking perspective effect as if its popping out of the screen at you. It also moves around very elegantly as you move your cursor around, anyways good job on the ad HP.

Some guy I work with brought in his home computer for repair that was absolutely taken over by spyware. Normally I don’t mind taking a look at friend and co-worker’s home computer for free, because usually it takes very little effort to clean up things, but this one I wish I wouldn’t have even touched.

It was a Dell Dimension 8110 that was so infected, it couldn’t even detect a USB drive so I could load some anti-virus software or establish an internet connection, even in safe mode. So I pulled out the HD to hookup to another machine to scan as a slave drive, it found a bunch of viruses and “repaired” about 50 problems. So I was hopeful that maybe it was in better shape to at least get some software installed. I installed the HD back into the Dell, to find out the Dell machine no longer could detect the Primary Disk 0 (hard disk). I tried severally different things, swapping out the IDE cable, making sure the jumper settings were correct, I even went as far as trying a different HD, no luck. So it led me to believe that maybe the IDE controller on the board was toast, I did some research and apparently it’s a pretty common problem and the only solution I found was to “wait it out, it will eventually start detecting the primary disk again”. I thought that was funny, so I pulled out everything from the board, and let it just hang out on my desk overnight. I came in the next day, put everything back together and it boots, no problem. Finds the HD and loads right up! unfortunately it was still taken over by spyware to a point where I decided to reinstall Windows.

Windows XP stuck in Safe Mode
This was where i ran into my biggest problem, while troubleshooting I had went into msconfig (Start -> Run -> “msconfig”) within the BOOT.INI tab and checked the /SAFEBOOT option under Boot Options, which basically sets the system to boot in safe mode without jamming on your F8 key while your system is booting. Problem was I never removed this option when I decided to re-install Windows. I came to find out, that although you completely reinstall XP it somehow keeps the bootcfg in memory and uses the options set in your previous installation.

So at the finally steps of the XP installation where your machine reboots and you are asked to set the language and all those settings, it would come to a halt and say “Windows XP Setup cannot run under safemode. Setup will restart now.” Which doesn’t really give you many options because this will happen each time you try to boot from your HD, since the XP installation is only partially complete.

Solution: change bootcfg options from Recovery Console

1. boot from the XP CD and into the recovery console.
2. Once you chose the number OS you want to repiar (usually 1) type in this command: bootcfg /list to see what was going on in the bootcfg.
3. Then enter the command bootcfg /rebuild and reenter the necessary info. If you’ve never done this, first you select the Windows installation to use and enter the corresponding number (default is “1″). Then it asks you to enter the load identifier. (Microsoft Windows XP Professional).
4. Finally, it will prompt you for the OS load options. Here you would type in:
   “/noexecute=optin /fastdetect“(without the quotes). Restarted the machine, and the setup continued normally.

Right now I’m reinstalling all his Dell drivers and migrating all his Documents and Settings back to the new installation. It’s been a nightmare with this Dell, and this guy is probably missing his computer, but at least it didn’t cost him anything and now I know that the bootcfg does not get reset during a fresh installation of XP.

After recovering my Macbook Pro using the OS X Archive and Install. I had to manually restore all my documents and settings by dragging and dropping everything from the Macintosh HD/Previous Systems/Previous System 1/Users/mike to my new user’s directory.

Once I got everything in place I was having trouble working with my files on my admin account. I was unable to make changes or rename the recovered files, without giving “Everyone” Read & Write access through the Get Info menu, which obviously wasn’t the solution.

For example when trying to rename a directory; Users/mike/Sites/PSD I would get this Error Message:

Although when I checked the info of the PSD directory, it looked fine (see below):

So OS X was contradicting itself because it was telling me “You Can read and Write” but at the same time telling me “You do not have sufficient access privileges to rename the item “PSD”. I tried a series of things as far as running the Repair Permissions within the Disk Utility, creating a new admin account to try to reset all the permissions enclosed within the Users directory. Nothing was working.

So since the notebook is very new, I still have some free telephone support from Apple so I gave them a call. Spent about an hour on the phone with Tech support and we finally got it working. Here are the steps that we took.

1. Boot your system from the OS X 10.5 install disk. To do this put the install CD into your computer, restart the system while hold the “c” key on your keyboard. This will force a boot from CD.
2. Once you select your language from the Installation wizard, you will notice the menu bar appears at the top of the screen, from here go to Utilities > Password reset.
3. From this screen, select your user account from the combo box. Then without entering a new password, go down towards the button and you will see a “Reset” button that will reset this accounts Privileges and ACL libraries.
4. Once this is done you can Quit the OS X Installation, and reboot your system to your HD. You may need to remove the CD from your machine.
5. once the machine boots, open a Terminal and enter the following two commands, entering your password when prompted. (be sure to replace “Mike” with your own Short Name)
   • sudo chown -R Mike ~
   • sudo chmod -R 755 ~
6. The last steps are simple, open up Macintosh HD/Users then command+click on your Home directory (in my case this was mike) then go to Get Info. In the info screen, Make sure the admin group is in the list, if it’s not then add it with Read & Write Access. Also change everyone in the list to “Read & Write” access temporarily. Then click the tiny Gear icon to and chose “apply to enclosed items” which will apply these permissions to all the files within this directory.
7. Once this is set, go see if you can now make changes to the files. If so then your just about done, you need to only go back into the Get Info screen you were just in for your home directory and change the permission of “Everyone” to Read Only access. Then Apply to enclosed items again.

Hope that works for anyone else having similar insufficient access privileges. After doing a bunch of research on this problem it appears there is quite a bit of issues out there with permissions on OS X Leopard, so if this did not help take a look at these two links:

• Leopard - File permissions | ACLs | User Group Issue
• Administrator privileges gone

Last week my Macbook Pro crashed. It would hang on the startup screen with the Apple logo and the spinning gear for about 5-10 minutes then restart it self, and continue to loop. The culprit may have been a recent firmware update from Apple, but I have a hunch it had something to do with me messing around with the permissions on the HD.

Ever since I setup Leopard I was having problems installing software on my main admin account, mike. So I made an alternate account to install software, I figured this had something to do with permissions, so I decided to try adding a custom permission on the entire Macintosh HD to allow “mike” Read & Write permissions. It took like 20 minutes for the permissions to apply to the enclosed items, after it finished I rebooted, and was never able to recover.

Steps to Recovery
First thing I tried was the obvious, Safe Boot, which is Mac’s equivalent to Microsoft Window’s Safe Mode. To do this as soon as you power on your computer start holding the Shift key down. I had no luck with Safe boot, so I was hoping I could boot to CD still in order to run the Disk Repair utility thats built into the startup disk that came with my Macbook, or at the very least reinstall the operating system.

To boot from CD, the steps are similar to Safe Boot only as soon as you power on your computer start holding down the “C” key, once your CD is in the drive of course. This was successful, So I proceeded to load the startup disk. Without Clicking next on the Setup Wizard I chose Utilities from the Menu at the top of the screen and went into the Disk Utility. From here I was able to run a “Disk Repair” and also a “Permissions Repair” both returned no errors, so I was pretty sure the problem wasn’t fixed.

I eventually came to the conclusion I needed to reinstall OS X. Although I didn’t want to lose all my files and settings only thing I wouldn’t be able to recover was my Thunderbird e-mail and folders. As i started the setup wizard I notice the installation method chosen for me by default was called “Archive and Install” after doing some research I discovered OS X will make a directory of all your user’s files and settings from any previous installations of OS X. This is completely new to me, when reinstalling Windows everything will be erased during the re-installation, unless you chose to do a repair install, which I guess may be similar to the Archive and Install. Anyways the installation took a little over an hour, when I was finally up and running again I opened Macintosh HD to find a directory named “Previous System 1″ that contained all my users’ directories, and application folder. So I was able to drag and drop the contents of my old Libraries folder, Documents and Applications over to my freshly installed OS.

So everything is back and better then it ever was. I can now even install software on my main user account. Only problem I had was with Adobe Photoshop CS3. Apparently if you do an Archive and Install on OS X, then the system doesn’t copy the Adobe Unit Types file to the ScriptingAdditions folder, you can read more details in this Adobe Technote.

Conclusion
After this experience I will no longer procrastinate setting up Time Machine to get a backup of my system as frequently as possible. I also know that if all else fails, the Archive and Install method works great and makes it simple to recover files and settings from a previous installation of OS X.

Since I’ve been talking a lot about cell phones lately I figured I’d share some knowledge I gave to a co-worker that saved her Blackberry the other day. I got a call on Monday from Kristen, She apparently had dropped her Blackberry in the bath tub while it was filling with water. The Cellphone was lifeless with no display or LED lights.

I instructed her to remove the battery asap, and use a blow dryer on both the device and battery until they were dry. After doing this for a few minutes, she put the battery back in her phone, tried to power it on and nothing happened, still dead. So at this point I told her to either leave it out in the sun in attempt to remove all the moisture form inside the battery/device, try a replacement battery and hope the actually Blackberry is not damaged or there was one last thing she could try that I recently just learned. Apparently leaving a soaking wet cell phone in a bowl of uncooked rice over night would suck out all the moisture and bring life back to the once lifeless cell phone.

Since there wasn’t any sun light available, she proceeded with the bowl of uncooked rice trick. The next morning her phone powered on and everything appeared as it was prior to the dip into the bath tub. She was thrilled and thanked me a million times.

Obviously if you are bringing your cellphone anywhere where you could potentially drop it into water, just be extra careful. In the unlikely event you do happen to submerge your cell phone into water and it no longer works, I would try the following steps before spending the money on a replacement.

• Remove the back of the phone and battery right away.
• Try to get both the device and battery dry as possible with a cloth.
• Use a blow dryer to remove the moisture that may have gotten inside.
• Leave your cellphone in a bowl of uncooked rice overnight.
• Leave the battery and the device with the back off out in sun light for an extended period of time.
• Try a replacement battery before replacing the device. Hopefully you have a friend with the same phone or maybe your provider has a shop nearby that would let you use a battery while in the store.

Traditionally I would only use AIM for an internet messenger. That was before I had a MacBook running OS X Leopard. Apple’s MacBook line comes with a built in camera called iSight, which naturally would allow you to video chat with another person that has the required equipment.

Tonight I found one of the most amazing new features in Leopard, Screen Sharing w/ iChat. I discovered this while looking for an alternative for internet meetings on GoToMeeting.com, since Mac users are only allowed to join meetings and not host them. If another user is running OS X Leopard you can utilize iChat for both video conferencing and screen sharing, making a great, free alternative to GoToMeeting. You can request to view other’s screen, control there screen remotely or show your own screen seamlessly.

Heres the tutorial I followed to get started using Screen Share w/ iChat that also covers Screen Sharing via The Finder which is a bit more complicated to setup. (OS X Leopard only)

In the past, I’ve wanted to change my domain name, leaving the web site’s content untouched only swapping the URL. When your in a situation where you have a lot of links that are indexed by search engines and other URLs out on the web that reference an old domain name (dugg articles, link backs etc). You don’t want to lose that traffic to a 404 error page.

For one you want your old domain to just point to your main main site/new domain and secondly if someone attempted to access a URL that referenced the old domain (http://www.olddomain.com/2007/12/11/complete-wordpressvbulletin-bridge/) you would like that link to be accessible and working while only changing the reference from olddomain.com to your new domain (http://www.newdomain.com/2007/12/11/complete-wordpressvbulletin-bridge/).

How do I do this?
Pending on your web host, it can be as easy as using your domain manager and just pointing the multiple domains to the same directory on your server, which is how I accomplished this in the past on GoDaddy. Now that I’m on Media Temple this must be done via SSH, using a symbolic link. Basically you have to remove the folder that contained the data for your domain or you can also rename it to your new domain to avoid moving all the files on your server to the directory of the new domain. Then you need to create the symbolic link, linking your old domain to your new domains directory (where all the data files are). This is done like so:
1. The first step is obvious, you need to make sure your new domain is posting to the correct name servers of your server use your old domain name as a reference if you are unsure.
2. Using an FTP or SSH rename the directory on your server that is associated with your old domain name; {SERVER ROOT}/domains/olddomain.com/ to the name of your new domain; {SERVER ROOT}/domains/newdomain.com/. Keep in mind once you do this, your site will be down until the process is complete.
3. Now you want to connect to your server via SSH. I used a terminal on a Linux machine.

ssh serveradmin%example-server.com@example-server.com 
cd ~/domains
rm -rf olddomain.com 
ln -s newdomain.com olddomain.com

4. The final step is to ensure you don’t have any configuration files or records in your data base that references your old domain as the home page. In my case since I am running Wordpress there are two fields in my database that needed to be updated manually. These fields are ’site_url’ and ‘home’ which are located in the wp_options table of your database. If you do not have access to your DB tables then alternately you can add the following lines to your wp_config.php file to update those records.

define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://www.newdomain.com/');
define('WP_HOME', 'http://www.olddomain.com/');

5. Now test out your domains. They should both direct you to your new domain, not matter what permalink you try.

If you have any questions or feel that I was unclear about something please feel free to email me at mikecicc@gmail.com and I’ll get right back to you. Thanks for reading.

I’ve had the Q for about a year now and ever since I’ve missed one feature that was really nice on previous cellphones. That feature was chat threaded SMS text messages, in other words instead of receiving text messages 1-by-1 like emails, you can view all your texts in their own chat thread or conversation, much like an instant messenger client (AIM, MSN etc.)

Thanks to Extreme Text, this feature is now available for your Q and will make it much easier to have a conversation via text message. Once this application is installed you can scroll through your conversation and view time/date stamped text messages that you have sent or received to a specific contact. No more changing between folders from your inbox to your sent items to check the last message you sent to someone, or wasting time looking through hundreds of text messages in your inbox searching for a specific message. Extreme Text works with your regular Windows Mobile databases so all your current messages will be included and you can switch back to the default text program at any time without losing a message. It also adds great features including emotions, following links in the text, photo contact support, and more..

If you have a Motorola Q and would like to try this application out you can download a totally free trial here. However the trial period will eventually end and at that point, just buy the license it is only ~$13.00.

For additional information and screenshots, check out Extreme Text’s home page.

A great video tutorial to hack a soda can for the cheapest and easiest wifi signal booster around!

Caffeine Boost Your WIFI