Unfortunately, the TomTom’s address book only stored two fields, Name and Number. I thought it an obvious omission that TomTom did not expand that to full street addresses so that TomTom users could navigate to their friends.

So again, I did some research…

However, problems ensued when I discovered that POI databases only have three fields, Name, Latitude and Longitude. So, I needed to convert all the entries in my OS X Address Book from addresses to latitude and longitude. Lastly, unlike the telephone address book which stored its data in a simple CSV, the POI’s were stored in a proprietary format called OV2. TomTom supplies a Windows command line tool for converting a three field CSV into an OV2.

[UPDATE: While looking for a link to the Windows tool, I’ve found an untested PHP tool!]

So, with all that in mind, it began:

Step 1: Convert OS X Address Book addresses into Latitude and Longitude

After recently doing a project with some Google Maps integration, it seemed like the natural winner. The next decision was deciding where to store it in the OS X Address Book. While Address Book has a lot of extra fields that I suspect very few people use, nothing really suited:

Download ‘Add Location to Notes’

My favorite bit of the script is one line which executes AppleScript, shell and php scripting in one line (nice one Apple!):

set shellScript to "php -r \"echo urlencode(‘" & formattedAddress & "’);\""

set query to queryPrefix & (do shell script shellScript)

So, what this script will do is to add Latitude and Longtitude to each person (that you have selected) IF they have enough address data to accomplish this. You’ll get a meaningful report at the end saying how many succeeded, how many Google Maps failed to find, and how many just didn’t have enough data.

I added a Smart Address Book Group that helped show me which contacts had enough data and had not yet been passed through this script. I was only after Australian contacts, so you might need to alter this to suit yourself. The last line is the one that hides those you’ve already nailed the lat/long for:

OK, I’m outta time, so I’ll have to finish the remaining steps at another time. Leave a comment if if you’re interested or if you have any questions.

Like many others before and after me, I came to a Nokia E61 from a Treo 650. I had been a Palm OS user from 1999 and always carried two devices, typically the Palm and a Mac-and-Palm-friendly Ericsson/Sony Ericsson phone. The Treo 650 was my first proper converged device. I unsuccessfully hand a Handspring Prism with the VisorPhone add-on which was possibly the worst phone I'd ever used. The Treo 600 was very appealing, but I couldn't go back to a 160 x 160 display due to me religious use of SplashData's SplashMoney.

The 650 was without a doubt the most capable device I've owned. From being fully internet capable, being able to track ALL of my finances, have dictionaries, the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide, the Navman SmartST software and more. However, the devices memory and stability were shocking.

The Palm OS naturally started to stagnate, and with the sale to Access, and the virtual discontuation of Cobalt, Palm's lack of WiFi support in the Treo, and Palm's soon-to-be-released successor to the 650 which was an abyssmal effort for a product 2 years in development from the 650, I was ripe for change.

I watched with baited breath the rumors, pre-announcement, and release of the E61 and got in line immediately.

So, how does it compare?

I won't delve into hardware and software comparisons as it has been well covered before, except a mention of the keyboard, which while requiring a bit of a harder press, it's much more roomy, and occasionally when revisiting with the Treo, the Treo's keyboard feels small and cramped, and overall the Treo looks and feels as dated as a 2-generation-old-iPod.

What I'd like to focus on in this review is software.

First on deck is the common complaint from Palm OS users regarding the lack of a full system search. This was soon rectified with the gray market release of the E50's Nokia Search utility. In my mind, it was even a slight advancement, as I could selectively choose which areas/applications I wanted to search, thus optimizing my results.

Next on deck is the web experience. Being a Mac user, having the same rendering engine of Safari on my mac also on the E61 by virtue of the S60 Browser (based on Apple's open source WebKit), makes for a fantastic visual experience. Blazer on the Treo was unstable, incompatible junk. There are definite usability issues with the S60 browser, specifically the lack of a page down/page up ability as the momentum picked up by naturally trying to scroll an approximate page at a time is poorly thought out. Also, being unable to copy text from a page stings at times, but application multitasking makes visual reading, switching apps, and then typing a possibility.

Of course, I might quickly stick in the HUGE fact that the E61 can multitask!!!! I had the Pocket Oxford Dictionary with the MSDict application on my Treo (and now on the E61), but due to the regular need to trash the Treo's global preference file, I would have to re-serialize my applications. I had SplashID on the device keeping a database of all my serial numbers synchronized with my Mac. SplashID would luckily let me open it in trial mode to copy out my serial numbers and paste them back into all the requiring apps. Unfortunately, MSDict did not permit pasting, and launching SplashID, hand writing down the 30 character serial, closing SplashID, launching MSDict and entering the serial was an annoying experience. I hate paper! With the E61's multitasking, this type of neanderthal process is not needed! I've noticed some users complain about the inability for the S60 browser to save website passwords (not sure if Blazer can, but don't think so), but the S60 browser can indeed store passwords, but only the HTTP authentication variety and it must be stored in the bookmark. Also, like Safari on OS X, the S60 browser can detect if you are using 3G/GPRS and only load downsampled images, thus saving some users from costly download charges. However, unlike Safari, it lacks the ability to load the full resolution version of the image or all images on the page.

The Bluetooth support is great! The inability for Treos to have more than one connection simultaneously meant I couldn't use a GPS and car kit or headset simultaneously. I ended up purchasing a TomTom Go 500 to deal with that limitation and after a firmware upgrade on both the TomTom and Treo, I got the two talking although I had to write a Mac OS X Address Book to TomTom address book AppleScript to get the numbers on the TomTom. To the Treo's advantage, it doesn't maintain a Bluetooth connection with headsets and car kits. It works in more of an on-demand way. When the Treo rings, it then conencts to the TomTom, and vice versa, when I told the TomTom to make a call, it would only then connect to the Treo. The E61 and TomTom insist on holding hands at all times, thus surely affecting the E61's battery life adversly, but at least not blocking other Bluetooth communication.

Speaking of multiple communications, the way the E61 handles network communications is fantasic. I can have my phone browsing the web over WiFi, have the IM application connected over 3G, and STILL use the device as a Bluetooth modem for my Mac... amazing! Also, there is the widely discussed and praised Access Point Groups feature, allowing you to create a grouping of access points, be them WiFi, 3G, wired, etc. in a ranking order for your applications to scale with based on availability. You can even define unique SMTP configurations per access point (helpful for some locations that don't allow you to speak directly with your own mail server). However, this fantastic feature, as Jason O'Grady pointed out before me is limited to the Messaging application only! The Web app lets you set in its prefs a default access point, or to always ask, but you can't choose a group in the default selector! Ludicrous! There's some other oddities regarding network selection, e.g. the IM application only allows you to choose 3G/GPRS access points for communication. WiFi is not an option. Why, Nokia, why?

I personally use IMAP mail with the Messaging application so can't comment on the BlackBerry or Exchange support. Both my personal and work accounts are configured and for both, I was able to Bluetooth a self-created root certificate authority file from my Mac to the phone which both the Messaging and Web apps respect and understand. The Treo could not accept such certificates, but at least VersaMail would not balk at the use of self-signed certificate, which is possibly a benefit or a negative depending on how you looked at it. The E61 does not have the ability to store sent mail on the IMAP server (nor deleted), and the Treo, while having this option in its prefs, never was able to do it with my Cyrus IMAP servers. The Nokia allows you to send a copy of mail to yourself, and with the clever use of server side Sieve mail filtering, my IMAP server puts these sent mails in the Sent folder thus not forcing me to receive a new email every time I send a email. While the Treo lacks multitasking and IMAP Idle support, it does have a background process to check mail regularly, albeit this is broken when used with SSL. Neither the Nokia nor Treo understand the server side Drafts folder which is unfortunate.

Treo users will miss the display of SMS's in a chat like, threaded fashion. I do.

With instant messenging, towards the end of my Treo days, I was using pre-release previews of an application named Toccer which is a direct connect AIM client. It also, like VersaMail had some background processing abilities and supported the Palm notification manager making it a great AIM client. The Nokia, like so many of its brethren made by primarily cellular manufacturers comes with the overly hyped, rarely deployed, implementation of an IMPS/Wireless Village IM client. If your carrier doesn't have an IMPS server, like so few do, you can try to find some free alternatives, like the infamous Yamigo, SmartVAS and Speago. Like Jabber servers, some IMPS servers can have server side transports which allow you to connect to AIM, MSN and other services via an IMPS client. Unfortunately, I and many other never got Yamigo to work, althougha few days ago, I successfully got chatnu.dk, another free service, with AIM & MSN transports to work successfully, with caveats, i.e. Buddy list support seems limited to 30 people, and the delivery and receipt of IMs is unfortunately pretty unreliable. Yamigo, SmartVAS,ChatNU are both free services kindly offerend and maintained by individuals in their private time, so acceptance of their limitations are your only option. AgileMessenger and IM+ are commercially offered multi-protocol IM clients, but Agile uses a proxy (a big no no for me) and IM+ choked on my 100+ buddy list and the interface of both are exceedingly contrasting to the OS in general. I maintain my own Jabber server with AIM and MSN transports and hoped that I could find a good Jabber client to provide me with my much desired, multi-protocol experience. However, the only clients I could find were J2ME based (read: ugly, slow and buggy) and none supported SSL, thus that path was also a dead end.

Office document compatibility is sound, and built-in, similar to the Treo, although I had the Treo for nearly a year before I had access to a native PDF viewer on it, which I found in the form of PalmPDF and is also now available in the most recent DocumentsToGo which are bundled with newer Treos. The built in Zip Manager on the Nokia is also a boon. Both devices have a great freeware screenshot utility available for each as well.

The biggest negative for me has been the absence of SplashMoney or a viable alternative. XSFinance, which as discussed, was quite a good alternative, has not been updated for Symbian 3rd Edition. In June, Xcite Software informed me that they hoped to have an updated version in the next 3 to 6 months. I patiently await. Epocware, the maker of many fine Symbian goods has helped me in this area with HandyExpense, which I have widgeted to fit my needs for the time being. It does not support account transfer (I instead enter two transaction, one positive, one negative), nor automated transaction, nor upcoming transactions. I regularly export the data to CSV, import into FileMaker on my Mac, and work it from there. Using the Report -> Paid With Report, I can always get a standing of where each of my accounts are at.

This is probably a perfect segue to explain the decisions regarding Symbian 3rd Edition and 3rd party applications. As I understand it, the decision was made to start the Symbian Signed program. Basically, as a 3rd party developer, you send in your application to be evaluated, and if successful, the application is signed with a Symbian certificate which then allows 3rd edition devices to install it and if desired by the developer, permit certain activities, for example, being able to access protected parts of the file system. This process costs money, but Symbian Signed have also set up an avenue for freeware developers which reduces or completely avoids this cost. Developers can still release software that is not signed by Symbian, but it must be at least self-signed with a roll-your-own certificate, and users of devices must first go and alter a buried preference to even allow that, and lastly, self-signed applications have limits that can NOT be overridden, like the aforementioned ability to browse certain areas of the file system, no matter what. Firstly, as a user coming from the Palm OS platform, observing what I perceive to be the number 3 position that Symbian holds in 3rd party developer support, I find this decision pretty crazy! I'm of the opinion that Symbian needs to do EVERYTHING it can to attract 3rd party developers, and this flies in the face of that reality. Secondly, and even more infuriating, is that similar to the promises of Intel's Trusted Computing Platform, I, the owner of this device, AM NOT TRUSTED TO PERMIT WHAT I SEE AS FIT! I understand that the proposed principle of this decision is device safety and security, and the conspiracy theorist in me sees it as another excuse for a revenue stream, and as badly as this raises the barrier to entry, the fact that I can't override it kills me. As my friend Stephen Colbert says, "Moving on..."

So, the status and quantity of 3rd party application is regularly discussed and is often heated. I'm of the opinion that lots of applications aren't needed, as long as the bases are covered. I find that concept similar to comparisons made regarding the availability of software for Windows vs. the Mac OS. There have always been fewer options for the Mac OS, but the best application in each genre was always comparable, thus, all the extra apps on the other platform were usually mediocre and below. I feel this philosophy does apply to Symbian, but unfortunately, especially in the example of financial applications, NOT all bases are covered. In the linked article, Steve Litchfield discounts many of the recent complains about lack of applications stating that with a modern web browser and modern connectivity, it's not needed. I wonder if he uses GoogleCalendar and Gmail in his S60 browser instead of the native apps. Hurrumph.

Back to the comparison of the two devices, the PIM applications in my opinion are quite comparable, although the Nokia gets a bit of flak in this area. My data entry is probably evenly split between my Mac and phone, and the synchronization between the Nokia and the Mac is FAR superior to that of the Treo or other Palm OS devices. While there are a couple of free iSync Plugins available for the Mac, I had initial trouble with time zones, and bought the bullet and bought Novamedia's iSync plugin which has worked flawlessly (I've heard that the free options work fine now as well.) Virtually every field (with slight exception) is synchronized. Early in the Nokia's life, i created a contact using every possible field possible and sync'd it over to see what would make it, and it faired quite well. All day event synchronization from the Mac to Nokia is a bit annoying. I get meetings from 12:00 am to 11:59 pm. The Nokia calendar has an event type called a Memo, which behaves in every way like you'd expect an all day event to, but it lacks the ability to have alarms attached or be repeated, thus not usable multi-day events. However, in my testing, I found that creating a Nokia calendar memo and syncing properly created an iCal all day event on the Mac. If I extended that all day event to span multiple days and synched, the Nokia properly had the memo attached to each day. I wrote Novamedia to point this out and ask if it was possible to use this Memo functionality, but it took two requests to get the condescending, "No" I received. Another shortcoming, although I'm not sure which supplier is to blame, is that any iCal birthday that predates 1980 DOES NOT GET synchronized, and thus, nor do any of its repeats, so I keep forgetting about the birthdays of my friends over the age of 26, which is quite common. Neither the Treo nor Nokia understand OS X's Address Book Groups or iCal's different calendars, but the Nokia synchronizes To Do alarms with iCal and the Treo does not. The Treo also can't handle multiple address, is limited to 5 phone numbers or email addresses whereas the Nokia is relational in this area. Another nice touch for the Nokia is the fact that OS X's Address Book pictures are synchronized with the Nokia Contacts, and the E61 shows said pictures for both incoming and outbound calls. Is Nice!

Lastly on the topic of syncing, as Apple promised when they first announced iSync, SyncML is now supported in the latest version of iSync and on the Nokia, thus no iSync Agent is needed. Also, the phone gives great feedback (better than iSync actually) regarding what changes were made and what was synced in which direction. Palm HotSync Manager with its iSync plugin is no where near as tantalizing, and The Missing Sync has never been reliable in my experience to trust it with data so important to me. While HotSync Manager is a bit dated, it of course is extensible meaning I could synchronize SplashID data along with all sorts of other 3rd party apps and most importantly, HotSync Manager would backup my ENTIRE device at every sync!

Backup on the Nokia is a bit rough. There's an included Memory application which allows you to backup your device to your card (and of course restore it). The resulting file is named Backup.arc but no arc expanders I've found understand Nokia's proprietary use of the format here (shame on you Nokia!) Additionally, the stupid 3rd edition lockdown makes it impossible for me to use the included File Manager to send the backup file to my Mac. ARRrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh! So, what I've resolved to do for now is manually run the backup before bed each night, and remove the miniSD card from my phone and leave it on my night table each day. On the Treo, I had an automated nightly backup to the SD card, and the aforementioned full device backup every sync. I miss that.

I'll never be able to comprehend why neither of these devices has a decent, multi-day alarm clock. It's mindnumbing that I have to set my alarm for waking up for work EVERY night before i go to bed. Absolute rubbish! Both apps have nice World Clocks, but the absence of the above is just plain stupid. I played with Epocware's HandyClock for a bit, but it had initial bugs with being unable to cancel an alarm on an E61, and to fix it, they removed the ability to snooze, so I'm back to settin' my alarm manually with the bundled Clock app every night.

The Palm OS has an application named Prefs which is this great, centralized location to setup all of your device's settings. It is also extensible so that 3rd party developers can also include options here as well. The E61 is unnecessarily riddled with mamy applications to set various device settings, namely Settings, Themes, Profiles, Bluetooth, E-mail key, etc. I've heard many a user say something like, "I don't remember where I did it, but my device is now reading the names of callers and I can't find where to turn it off." This is definitely an unintuitive obstacle for the average cellphone user. By the way, regarding the feature where phone does speak the name of the caller in a robotic voice, it's explained that this is there to help you understand how your phone interprets the names of your contacts, as you don't set voice tags for voice calling, you just say the name. I'm not big on voice calling or hearing the name, until my boss, a recent purchaser of a Nokia N73 with the same feature pointed out the benefit being that if your phone is on the other side of the room and ringing, you know who's calling without getting up. I since reactivated the feature... after spending 10 minute remembering where it was (Profiles).

The Nokia also has USB Mass Storage support built in meaning that your phone can acts as a miniSD card reader without any software to install on modern computers of any operating system. Unfortunately, the internal memory is not also available, and it's not very Mac friendly. When you used under Windows, and you're done, using the Safely Remove hardware command properly tells the Nokia that it's done. On a Mac, ejecting the disk icon does not provide the same feedback to the Nokia forcing you to disconnect the Nokia and receiving a stern warning from the Nokia that you've been bad. The 3rd party application Card Export by Softick for the Treo provides the identical functionality for the Treo and is a bit more Mac (and thus, Mass Storage compliant?) friendly. On the Treo, I had also used another Softick produc called BlueFiles which enabled you to browse, get and send files to and from the Treo's internal memory and/or card over Bluetooth. The Nokia has this Bluetooth FTP (?) server/service built in, but yet again... crippled by the platform security.

The Nokia's got HP JetDirect and LPR (both over WiFi) support in addition to Bluetooth and Infrared printing, supported by all the office apps and others. I configured my HP LaserJet 5100 without issue, printed an email once to prove I could, and haven't touched it since, but alas, it's there.

The built in Connection Manager application turns the Nokia into a simple pocket WiFi scanner, and the recently released WLAN Wizard (intended for the N80 Internet Edition) takes it a bit further allowing it to auto-define protected access points, a limitation of the E61's built in software (secure access points must be manually created).

The Active Standby screen on the Nokia is fantastic. You can have six applications spread across the top, see the messages from the mailbox of your choice (SMS's are considered a mailbox), and the calendar shows you the next entry and you have a total number of To Do's listed as well.

I think I've pretty much covered everything relevant to me. I've never been a big fan of phone camera quality, so didn't mind the absence of a camera, but have been disappointed in its absence for the sake of quick improptu photos. I don't use any of the multimedia aspects of the device (it's a business phone, remember? ;-) so I won't comment there.

Not, last, but definitely not least, the reason the Nokia E61 is the best thing since sliced bread!

VOIP

Nokia had the infinited wisdom to do what every cellular carrier in the world will now hate them for, and that was to include a tightly integrated SIP over WiFi (actually works poorly over 3G too!) client into the phone.

Now, two or three months ago when I started to try and get this to work with my ISP's bundled VOIP service, and a few of the other big providers out there, e.g. Gizmo Project, information was scarce and success was unattainable. There were reports and copied emails directly from Nokia that stated that the SIP client could not work from behind a NAT router (due to a lack of STUN support), and that it was designed to be connected to corporate VOIP PBXs on the same LAN as the phone.

However, slowly but surely, people started reporting success with various providers, namely gizmoproject.com and voiptalk.org. I got Gizmo Project working, behind my NAT router, but the quality was abyssmal. I tried many of the other people recommended, but I really wanted to get it working with my ISP's (iiNet) service. Low and behold, a wonderful person posted his successful configuration on forums.whirlpool.net.au, which I mirrored, and it worked, and the quality was AWESOME! For a few weeks though, I couldn't get incoming calls to work, and I had moved house and my cellular reception was useless and I got a landline with a cheap monhtly fee in return for very expensive call rates (only needed it for ADSL) so I needed to get incoming calls working. I ended up changing one of the settings recommended in that forum, and everything worked!!! I was gleeful.

Now, there's two additional settings that make this what I believe to be the killer app. Firstly, you can set VOIP registration to be "When Needed" or "Always On" and you can set your default call type to "Internet" or "Cellular". If you have it set to "Internet" and registration set to "Always On", when you get within range of the WiFi access point defined in the VOIp settings, the Nokia auto-connects and registers to the VOIP server and by default makes all calls via VOIP! So that means that without thinking, if I'm at home and navigate to a contact and press call, the Nokia trys to do it over the internet first. If I'm not home, it only pauses for quick second to check for the presence of my WiFi network and when not found, naturally makes a cellular call. So, my Nokia transforms into a cordless landline phone with super cheap call rates when I'm at home, and returns to being a cell phone when I'm out!

This feature to me is the clear future of the phone market and makes the Nokia E61 the best handheld device I've seen, used and owned. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the phone is great too, and people will have their own opinions of why they came from a Treo to the Nokia and possibly went somewhere after that. But I'm thrilled to say, "Bye bye" to Palm, and "Hello" to Nokia

Long Live Adzuki!

So now, it appears that both are a bit better behaved in that the Treo will properly advertise itself as an Audio Gateway and an Address Book, and the TomTom behaves like a Bluetooth headset in that it only connects to the Treo once I try to make a call and the Treo only connects to the TomTom when it receives a call. Unfortunately though, the phonebook retrieval does not get numbers from your Treo’s Contacts app, rather from two other areas, your Call Log on the Treo and any Favorites you have configured in the Phone application. You can still dial a contact on your Treo, and if the TomTom is near, it will just pass it off to it like a normal Bluetooth headset, but by not having ALL of my contacts and numbers in the TomTom, I can’t tell who’s calling… and I want that feature!

After some quick research, it appears that TomTom store a simple file in the root directory of the SD card named “contacts.txt” in the following CSV looking format:

"Full name of person","+612345678"
"Full name of another","+613456789"

I’ve been mamanging the same master, digital phonebook since 1999, so I’m at about 1500 contacts and there’s no easy way to get this file created with the existing Address Book functionality, thus I decided to go with AppleScript and started away!

After writing for a short bit, I decided that there were probably others interested and I was going to share my work and thus, thought Automator would be a much better environment to create the script in so that others could modify certain aspects quite easily (like only choosing certain Address Book groups) Anyway, no such luck there, as Automator in 10.4.4 is one of the biggest, buggiest, most sluggish, unstable pieces of poop out of Cupertino in a while! My console.log just filled with all sorts of exceptions, it would crash, it would bring my [admittedly weak] 867MHz 12” PowerBook G4 to a halt and lastly, I faced a few issues with certain actions I couldn’t surpass, so I returned to just using a simple AppleScript. Here are the issues I faced in case someone can offer some help or advice:

1. Address Book -> Get specified Address Book items
   This was the perfect action to start with. Users were presented with an interface to put together an amalgamation of groups and users and they would be passed as “Address Book Items” to the next Automator step. In the next step, I had a custom AppleScript which would arrange the Address Book info nicely. I set it up to trap for presence of Organization names, first, last, to put commas in the appropriate places, add phone number “type” flags to the end of each, like (Mo), or (H) or (W), etc.

   SO, anyway, my script had to somehow coerce the potential mishmash of people AND/OR group class types coming in and somehow end up with one nice big group that only contained objects of the class Person. Between that and the idea of nested groups, I couldn’t get the user supplied data nicely coerced into one large person-only group. Anyone?

2. Another problem with the above, is that there did not seem to be any way for the user to choose the [proverbial] group “All”, which was personally my choice!

3. Line endings, Text encoding and line breaks
   Basically, the TomTom is a bit picky and insists on Western encoded, DOS line break ending, text files. Apple really prefers Unicode encoded, UNIX/Mac line break ending, Rich Text files. I tried using some BBEdit Automator actions like Sort Lines, Process Line Endings. and using the Text Edit -> New Text Document, but in the end, I just could not get it to run smoothly or reliably. I was very disappointed to find that the BBEdit Automator actions did not have the same fit, polish and reliability of the BBEdit app… I don’t think ANYONE, especially Apple, is really putting a lot of Q & A effort into Automator and Automator actions. Such a shame, because to me it seems like a great AppleScript framework, even for complex apps.

So, without further ado, here is my completed AppleScript for download:

Download ‘Export TomTom Address Book Exporter’
Version 1.0.2 (change notes in Script description)

There are some properties you can set in the top of this file once you open it in Script Editor (which is completely optional. Just skip this bit if you don’t know what I’m talking about):

1. filename
   This needs an applescript file object, like file "Macintosh HD:Users;jay:Desktop:contacts.txt, but just leave it blank and run the script and it will let you choose nicely and then automatically remember your choice.

2. progress and progressFrequency
   My 1500 person (1900 number) address book took quite a while to create this file (about 3 minutes on my PB), and there was really no visual feedback, so if you leave progress as true and set the progressFrequency to the number of contacts you want to see a quick status report after (leave it at 25 or change to 50 for starters), you will get a dialog alert showing you a progress update. It will give you the option to cancel and it will also automatically time out after 2 seconds as to not hold up the script if you don’t want to cancel.

   I found what I believe is another bug here as if my mouse is not moving when one of these updates is delivered, it just flashes instantly and you can’t see it, not for the 2 seconds I’ve specified. If I’m slowly moving my mouse around in a circle, it then stays on the screen visible for you to interact with if desired.

   Additionally, it appears that if Address Book does not come to the front when these dialogs appear, they don’t naturally time out.

   Lastly, if I use the cancel button 1 parameter in a script that only has one button (thus is the auto-default) or the cancel button choice matches the default button choice, Address Book crashes!

   I think this all works fine if I use the display dialog instead of display alert, but man, that display alert looks SO much more OS X!

The best place to store this file is in your User’s Library’s Script Folder, or in UNIX path-speak, ~/Libbrary/Scripts/, but you can even get a bit more clever by taking advantage of the AppleScript menu (launchable via the AppleScript Utility application), and then set this script to only appear in that menu WHILE you’re in Address Book, thus feeling like a more natural, integrated part of it. If setup right, the AppleScript menu will look like this when Address Book is frontmost:

To get this effect (which works for all Applications, use THIS path:

~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Address Book/

Usual warranties apply… as in none. If you can use this, great, please do, leave a comment, but I’m not required to support or help you (although I’ll try to a certain degree). Please also free to edit and re-use my code, just share alike!

His name is Agustin and he is an independant filmmaker.

Enjoy!

On Wednesday, I drove the Kombi for the first time since early June right after it had gotten tuned up and I had taken my Mother down the Great Ocean Road with Eva and my mother’s friend Nancy. I had been driving Eva’s car recently as I wanted to drive the Kombi less for conservation reasons.

So on Wednesday, Eva needed her own car, so I took my car and headed to Moorabbin to see a client first thing in the morning. At 3 PM when I was done at the client, I tried to start the Kombi, which did its standard 10+ second engine starting… but rather than finally turnover and start, all electricity cut out. I called my friend and mechanic Nick, who gave some suggestions, but I was unable to isolate the issue, so I called RACV, who then called a tow truck whom towed the van to Nick’s nearby garage. Nick quickly realised that in fact the lead had become disconnected from the battery. I had not noticed this upon my own inspection because A: this was the lead in the far back of the battery, and the cable had come undone from the contacts, not the contact undone from the battery and B: I really don’t know my way around cars at all. Nick quickly and kindly fixed her up, and I headed home.

On the way home, I was close to running out of fuel, so I stopped at a nearby petrol station, which unfortunately did not have the required leaded petrol that my van requires. They provided me with an additive which I squirted into the petrol tank and then proceeded to put 51.77 Litres of premium unleaded into the tank filling it all the way up (I keep track of these things). I drove home without incident and that was that.

On Thursday, I drove Eva’s car to work and then back home again. I had to head out to help my friend with some ADSL issues, so I jumped in my van in my garage, and started her up. I smelled a bit of petrol then. However, I always floor the gas pedal when starting the vehicle due to its long-turnover-before-starting routine so I thought I might have flooded the engine a bit. In addition, when I had first acquired the Kombi, passengers in the rear originally complained about car fumes (this went away after the 1st service) and lastly, the Kombi’s heat system was on from the day before, which pumps hot air from the engine compartment to the front. So, between those three things, it didn’t really seem that abnormal, and I figured it would stop smelling after driving it a bit, so I proceeded on my journey being attentive to the odor.

I made it onto Brunswick Street and headed about four blocks down towards the city and was stopped at the Johnston Street traffic light about four cars back. At this point, I could STILL smell the petrol, and was now quite concerned, so i stuck my head out the driver’s side window to see if possibly my petrol tank cap had fallen off or something, and it hadn’t. At that point, the gentlemen in the white truck behind me got out of his car and came up to my window, “Hey Buddy, your car is leaking petrol bad!”

“Shit, I said… I thought I smelled something,” I retorted.

He said, “Look, you should pull over quickly. I’ll block traffic for you. You don’t want to drive. One person’s stray cigarette could be your end.”

I said, “Thank you so much, but I live three blocks away. I’ll just slowly and carefully try to get it back to my garage and take a look.”

At this point, the light turned green and the few cars in front of me went on their way. I very slowly took my time, and decided to make a left turn on Johnston, and head back through the back roads to my house. There were people crossing Johnston, so I took my time, just in case one of them might have had a cigarette that they were going to flick. All the pedestrians were well across the street and I started my turn.

Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a loud backfire! I immediately slowed to a stop and started agressively checking my mirrors. Within seconds I looked out my driver side window to see the same guy that had previously warned me was again out of his vehicle and was on the street yelling to me, “Get out of the car! GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE CAR!!!”

Instantly, the adrenaline flowed and I grabbed my laptop bag on the seat, wrenched out the parking break and jumped out. I looked to the back and there were minimal flames visible. I quickly looked in the car to see if there was anything crucial worth grabbing. I jumped back in and fidgeted to grab my phone in an utter panic thinking that the van was going to blow sky-hi! I grabbed the phone and ran to the sidewalk on Johnston Street.

At this point, someone had begun recording video footage with their still camera and that is where the QuickTime clip below begins.

Within seconds you see an employee of the corner bar on the Northeast corner run out with a fire extinguisher which he empties on the van, but the fire rages on. Another man with a larger extinguisher comes running out of the Provincial Pub on the other corner, and also empties his extinguisher with no luck.

At this point, the flames get more and more wild. All of the traffic both ways on Johnston Street and Brunswick Street is backed up as far as the eye can see. The smoke is pooring North up Brunswick Street. You couldn’t see five meters in that direction.

My flatmate, Fineen, who works in a nearby cafe comes running out and sees me on the sidewalk and gives me a hug. People are collecting everywhere watching the van burn. The next thing I know is Eva calls me… I immediately cut her off, “RUN DOWN TO JOHNSTON STREET NOW!!!!”

“What’s going on?” she frightenly asks!

“RUN DOWN TO JOHNSTON STREET NOW!!!!” I return and hang up.

I guess the rest is in the video. The cops arrived pretty quickly and two fire trucks eventually followed finally extinguishing the fire.

My emotions were really unexplainable at the time. I was somewhat in shock… there were parts of me that started to say a few minutes into the ordeal…

“My van going to explode!” “My van is not going to make it out of this alive”

It was just so fucking surreal. There I was at this famous Melbourne intersection, with the view of the long street and skyline beyond it, with my beloved van in the middle in raging flames.

I remember reading or seeing a conversation either in print or in a film where people are discussing how they want to die. One person says, “I’d rather die by drowning, or in my sleep, as quickly and painless as possible.”

The other person responds, “Not me. I wanna fall out of a skyscraper or go down in a crashing plane. We only get to experience death once. I want the full show.”

That conversation kept coming back to me and all I kept thinking was…

“I don’t want to lose my beloved van, but if I have to… FUCK, this is the way for her to go!”

Click Image to Play
(QuickTime Version 7 Required)

R.I.P. Pumpkin - November 1, 2002 to June 23, 2005

As much as I’ve been enjoying my week with MT, along with some great discoveries, I’ve come across a few issues…

As I mentioned in a previous post, I came across MovableType while I was researching blog software for two of my flatmates in need. After tooling around with it a bit, I decided to use it for myself, and of course, it’s my nature to extoll the benefits of any technology I favor, and thus, many of my friends are now interested as well. Therefore, it’s quite good that I got an Unlimited Personal License. So, this means that on one server, with one installation of MovableType, I can have an unlimited amount of blogs and authors, granted they all use the software for personal, non-commercial use. Great! No worries.

So, all I needed now, was a nice clean way to install it in a centralized manner. Now, the primary domain name of this server is lisbonhouse.com. My first install attempt placed MovableType at http://lisbonhouse.com/MovableType/, CGI’s, static elements and all. This worked fine. I began to create the initial weblogs at lindalane.com, technokitty.info plus others. All of these blogs were placed in the server’s user’s individual Sites folders (an OS X paradigm). Also, all users were logging into the MT Admin area at http://lisbonhouse.com/MovableType/.

I didn’t like this when I noticed that each sites’ users would see lisbonhouse.com up in their browsers’ locations while cruising the site (call me pedantic). As I started to experiment with my own site more and more, delving into TypeKey and TrackBack, I noticed lisbonhouse.com popping up more and more… For example, to enable TypeKey remote sign in, each of my blog author’s would have to register the URL, http://lisbonhouse.com/, with TypeKey, and not the URL of their own blog.

I decided to try a different server location/configuration for MT. I placed it in the central OS X server CGI-Executables folder which is mapped to every virtual host’s /cgi-bin/ path should I tick the appropriate box. I then set mt.cfg’s CGIPath to /cgi-bin/mt/. Now, this was more the type of results I was hoping for. Each user could access MT at their own domain name, and whenever comments were previewed/submitted, the URL’s host name properly stayed consistent. However, upon playing further with TypeKey, TrackBack and comment notification, I found the flaw in the system. MT renders out TrackBack URL’s, Comment Approval URL’s and TypeKey Sign in Referrer’s using <$MTCGIPath$>, thus MT generated URL’s were only valid if you were at the original site, not in comment approval emails, or TrackBack URL’s, etc.

The first plan of attack was to merely update my Templates to reflect my setup. I quickly discovered by inserting http://<$MTBlogHost$> in front of every <$MTCGIPath$> the problem was typically fixed. This seemed OK at first, but I was worried about the breadth of how deep I’d have to go to make this work, and could not initially find where, and then how, to edit MT’s email templates… Ugggh. Secondly, MT was using new funky undocumented tags like <$MTRemoteSignIn$>, which when parsed, create the URL for logging in to TypeKey for registered comments. This left me no room to parse. Luckily, a post from Tweezerman over at the MovableType Support Forum revealed the Template code to get the same effect:

<a href="<$MTSignOnURL$>&amp;<MTIfNeedEmail>need_email=1&amp;</MTIfNeedEmail> t=<MTTypeKeyToken>&amp;_return=<$MTCGIPath$><MTCommentScript> %3f__mode=handle_sign_in%26static=1%26entry_id=<$MTEntryID$>">Sign in</a>

This worked perfectly. However, after finding more and more difficult hills to climb to satisfy my funky installation, I feared more and more for authors of newly created blogs on my server, and how I would have to somehow modify the existing template install to accommodate all of this. In the end, it wasn’t worth it, and I went back to assigning a consistent location for MT, and updating the CGIPath in mt.cfg. Everything worked again. Thus, it would be great to see Six Apart make centralized installation a bit more straight forward.

Hyperlinks

Firstly, I’d like to see MT auto-link any fully qualified URL automatically. There’s a setting in the preferences for each blog to do this for comments, but not posts? Bizarre.

Secondly, on most forums and on some of the blogs I’ve visited, links by default are opened in a new browser window. This would be great too, although I am unsure if it is proper etiquette. If it is proper, some finer control over this type of functionality would be even better. Perhaps the ability to dictate that fully qualified URL’s should open in new windows, and relative and root URL’s should not target their href.

Tags in Tags

The ability to execute MT tags in tags would be great. Granted, there already are a few plug-ins to address this, but the couple I’ve tried haven’t behaved as expected.

One of the first things I did while getting into the Template section of MT, was to extract the header and sidebar as Template Modules. This was perfect as if I wanted to alter the header or sidebar, the changes would be consistent across my site. This is when I found my first need for tag-in-tag functionality.

Of course, my Header Module contained the HTML <head> element and sub-elements, including the <title> element, and I did not want to have the same page title for every page in the site. For example, in the original Category Template provided by MT, the title is rendered with:

<title><$MTBlogName encode_html="1"$> - <$MTArchiveTitle$></title>

My hope was to replace the entire header chunk of this Template with <$MTInclude="Header"$>, and place the following line of code above it:

<$MTSetVar name="pageTitle" value="<$MTBlogName encode_html=\"1\"$> - <$MTArchiveTitle$>"$>

and then in the Header Template, I would have:

<title><$MTGetVar name="pageTitle$></title>

This, of course, didn’t fly, I made a few other attempts:

Escaping the quotes:

<$MTSetVar name="pageTitle" value="<MTBlogName encode_html=\"1\"> - <MTArchiveTitle>"$>

Removing the quoted parameter, and the “$” signs:

<$MTSetVar name="pageTitle" value="<MTBlogName> - <MTArchiveTitle>"$>

And every other possible iteration I could come up with, but MT just wouldn’t have it. This was quickly rectified with a bit of php in each page:

<?php $pageTitle = '<$MTBlogName encode_html="1"$> - <$MTArchiveTitle$>'; ?> <$MTInclude="Header"$>

And lastly, the following code in the Header Template for the <title>:

<title><?php echo $pageTitle; ?></title>

PHP was quite helpful in enabling the display of other unique elements originally located in each Template’s <head> elements, in the Header Template module.

I also used PHP to change the style class of the currently active category link in my menu bar as a visual indicator to inform the user which category page they were on:

<MTCategories> <li><a <?php if (<$MTCategoryLabel$> == $archiveTitle) { echo 'class="selected" '; }; ?>href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a></li> </MTCategories>

PHP Integration

This works great, as just documented. However, there are a few dynamic pages in MT’s arsenal, specifically Comment Preview and Search Results, that are served from MT’s CGI’s and thus, PHP calls in those resulting templates won’t fly. But, for quickly solving an issue like the situations previously mentioned, or for integrating MovableType and other PHP applications (check out my photos section), it does the job.

I won’t go into this benefit any further, as I’m sure those familiar with PHP will have no trouble getting right into it. And, I’m considering doing another write up on the photos database application I’ve built and integrated into MovableType, so I’ll save more detail for then.

Plug-Ins

It does appear that there are a few plug-ins out there to address some of these issues, and also some plug-ins that add entirely new levels of functionality to MT. Also, their level of integration isn’t limited to new tags. However, I’m surprised that there aren’t many photo gallery plug-ins, at least documented on http://www.mt-plugins.org. I expected that concept to be quite popular. Since I have my own pre-existing php photo database, and have successfully integrated it, this doesn’t affect me personally.

My favorite plug-in, by far, is John Gruber’s Markdown, which is currently being used in this post, and has also been back-applied to all of my previous posts. It offers the ability to ‘markdown’ a fantastic natural text language for posts, by parsing it into glorious HTML. The original text document does not look marked up at all (with the exception of some elements, primarily images), and the resulting HTML is loaded with all the necessary tags to make it look great when rendered. I recommend this one to all Movable Type users. The fact that Aaron Swartz has had great involvement with it (Swartz being one of my current heros), which only adds icing to the cake for me.

I came across John Gruber’s weblog, http://daringfireball.net/ when following the controversy between Apple’s Dashboard and Konfabulator. I thought John’s commentary was insightful, well documented, to the point, and accurate. I have enjoyed reading his commentary since. Discovering that he was also the competent coder that developer Markdown, I was further impressed. Keep up the great work John.

Hopefully, a few other MT users will come across this post and offer me some suggestions to overcome some of my issues, and hopefully a few other MT users will come across this post, and in some way, it will assist them with some of their own issues.

Comments are MOST welcome.

Jay D.
1 Linda Lane
Central Islip, NY, 11722
www.lindalane.com
emailaddress-at-lindalane.com

Coming up on the agenda is learning more about TypeKey, which is a common login across any MovableType blogs (would love to know some statistics!), and seeing what I can do to integrate my database of photo users with the comments system. I figure, worse case scenario, when users are logged into the photo site, I will auto-enter their name and email in the comments form.

I’m positive there are many more things on my agenda, but my brain’s calling it quits.

It all began with Eva’s upcoming trip to Europe and Andy’s desire to start posting his own photos to the web in an easy fashion. Unfortunately, my photo (media) engine is a bit specifically tailored to my needs, and I really don’t have the time to make it generic. So, I began to do some research to identify the simplest, most stylish way for Eva to easily update her friends in regards to her European travels. The search initially began for something PHP/MySQL based, my personal tools of choice. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything that was using that technology to be as slick, professional and impressive as MovableType. I’m quite intrigued by MovableType, their community and their pricing, and therefore will save further discussion regarding that for a later date.

SO…. in the meantime, I’m going to incorporate my photo/media engine with the MovableType engine and see what I can come up with, so patience is appreciated…. but let’s be realistic… it’s not like you’re all banging down my door…

1. I've completely modularized the site. I've done this with the intention of offering up this 'media' content system to everyone. All of my specific settings are now store in a configuration file, making it easy for others to adopt for themselves. Upcoming enhancements include an installer script to build the database.

2. Some minor database changes. The 'photo' table is no more. Long live the 'media' table! That means I'll be introducing other types of media in future updates, specifically movie files and text files. Also, an 'author' field has been added to give credit where credit is due and to eventually open up the site to others.

3. I'm running the site from my home again on Mac OS X Server!!! Let's see ya hack it ;-)