How to Recover Your Stickies Widget Info After MobileMe Loses it

If you’ve got a Mac and you’re a MobileMe user, be cautious to sync your Dashboard Widgets with the service. Well, I did, trying to sync my widgets along my Macs, which resulted into all of my stickies wigdets to appear blank! I use stickies a lot (the widget, not the Stickies app) when in need of taking quick notes, i.e. telephones, passwords, things to do, even my next great idea, so seeing them all empty wasn’t nice at all.

Here’s how you can restore the information, provided that you do have a backup of your computer’s files. Luckily, my recently bought TimeMachine could save the day.

1. Open up a Finder window, click on your username and then go to Library/Preferences/
2. Locate the file named “widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist“
3. Replace this file with the corresponding file from from your back, either by entering TimeMachine or manually
4. If this problem occured by syncing your Dashboard Widgets with MobileMe, enter the MobileMe preference pane in the System Preferences application and deselect the Dashboard Widgets from the Sync pane.
5. Log out of your account, and then log in again. Your stickies should be populated again with all the precious data you’ve stored in them.

Remember to keep a backup copy of this file in case you’re using the Stickies widget to store any information that you can’t afford to lose.

Baptize your Mac to make it work with TimeMachine

Yesterday I got myself a new MacBook, hooked it up with the iMac and used the Migration Assistant Utility to transfer data from my main computer. Then I turned TimeMachine on and chose my TimeCapsule as the destination drive, but I got the message that “Time Machine cannot create the disk image” (not a verbatim copy, may differ slightly).

Hm, first I checked disk space but there’s enough space in the Capsule to hold the image. I rebooted, updated software, reboot but still nothing. Then it occured to me; I checked out the computer’s name in the “Sharing” tab in the Preferences app, and saw that it was blank! After giving it a name and initiating a backup, it worked.

Of course I had given a name to the MacBook, but I guess either the initial configuration or the Migration Assistant did something wrong.

A probably dark future for Facebook Connect

Since the credit crunch and the crisis in economy started to show their ugly heads, pessimistic scenarios of doom and gloom circulated the Internet. VCs signaled their own mayday, advising their customers to save cash, lay low and accept a possible M&A in order to survive. In other words, they’re telling smaller companies that if they want to stay in business, they better sell themselves to the bigger ones if such an opportunity is raised.

But this doesn’t apply only to small companies. The lack of credit in the world makes value not so “valuable” without cash to back it up, and it has been said that even web start-ups that have been uber successful (like Twitter) could be in danger if they don’t find a way to monetize soon. Considering the hard times that are coming, that’s true. When all cash is burnt, the company either goes to the deadpool, or sells itself to someone with loads of cash.

Facebook faces a monetization problem as well. It may be the biggest social network in the world today (at least in terms of users and visits), yet it had failed to find a way to monetize since not so many people care to click on its ads. However, Facebook does have a lot of cash right now, a part of which (a mere $240 million) comes from investments by Microsoft. But why did Microsoft want to invest in Facebook? I think it was because of fear; fear that Google would, eventually, buy Facebook.

Facebook Connect vs. Open Social

The reason Google would want to buy Facebook is simple: to make it support Open Social, instead of Facebook’s own proprietary Connect. Both of these APIs make it possible to share information from one social network to another. For example, you could use your Facebook account (you have one, right?) to connect to another social network with the same credentials, access your friends list and even do stuff there that would inform Facebook to post a story on your wall.

Facebook Connect

This is so powerful, that it could even merge with OpenID. For example, LivePoker, an iPhone app, lets you play poker online through the device by logging into the system using your Facebook account. Then, you can play against other Facebook users or your friends if they’re online. This way, you don’t have to create yet another account for the LivePoker service, and you’re carrying with you all the social information you’ve so deliberately crafted in Facebook to present yourself online. It’s a huge thing, and Google definitely lusts for it.

All data should be open and accessible

Google wants everything to be open. They’re big supporters of openness. Android is an open API, and they managed to get the FCC to support openness in the wireless spectrum. They simply want all data to be accessible, so they can index it and use it. Google wants to have access to all information there is out there in the world; they want to know everything about anything and they have an infrastructure to support this. If Facebook goes against this openness and insists on using their own proprietary API for their own good, Google has no other solution than to acquire them and force them to open up and conform to Open Social.

Considering this, Microsoft did a good thing investing in the popular social network, thus extending its runway and delaying such an acquisition. Otherwise, Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of the board could quite probably find themselves considering an M&A with Google when the times are dark and the cash has gone, which would happen if they don’t find a way to monetize. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but at least for now they have time to try and find such a solution.

The dreaded Google - Facebook M&A

Future Facebook

Why do I speak of such an M&A as dreadful? Because it will probably be one of the most big-brother-ish things we’ll see in the years to come. When everything will be social and there will hardly be any human in the western civilization without an online presence, when all the major and minor web services will be supporting open APIs to exchange information (that is, our personal data) and our social network account will become the One Universal ID, I’d be afraid of Google claiming this data for their own use. That is simply going to be too much power in one company’s hands.

Think about it this way: they’ll be crawling and index the whole Web as well as bazillions of e-mail messages from millions of users (Gmail & Google Apps), they’ll be running major web services on their infrastructure (Google App Engine), they’ll have mapped the whole globe (Google Maps & Google Earth) and they’ll have created a “cloud” that would pretty much know everything about anything (like I said in another post that’s what Google officially claim as their goal). I wouldn’t want them to “own” my One Universal ID credentials as well.

One account. One ID. One company. Scares the bejesus out of me.

A traditional dead-easy way to read the news with Alltop

When I first started using the Internet in the mid-nineties, I didn’t know much about it apart from that it got information about almost anything. I knew there was a search engine that helps you find the stuff you’re interested in, so I usually fired up a browser and went to Yahoo to browse it’s categories and find interesting webpages.

Later, I found out that Google was working in a different way and returned search results based on relevance to they keywords without any categorization. At first I didn’t like that, but I guess the Internet is huge enough to categorize every web page that exists, so I made friends with the idea over time. But I miss those early times of my Internet adventures and Yahoo’s categories.

Today, most of serious Internet users (web freaks and information addicts like us) spent a big fraction of our online time reading our favorite feeds, Twitter conversations and the like, but I still find it hard to convince non-tech friends of mine (e.g. lawyers, accountants etc) to use RSS. They either can’t see the usefulness in it or don’t seem to get it at all. So they end up visiting the same old half dozen of informative sites they know on a regular basis to get the news.

An easy to use headline aggregator

What these people could benefit from, is a single news aggregator with an uncluttered and dead-easy interface with almost no features at all. And it turns out that Alltop.com may be just that, a place where one can get the headlines of the best sites about a topic. No RSS or any other acronyms to grasp, no need to download a feed reader application to your device, no social features that clutter the interface, and perhaps the most important of all: categorization done by humans.

Just find the topic you’re interested in, bookmark it and visit it when you have time to read the news. Since it’s actual human beings behind each source that gets into a topic, this means that all sources are relevant. Of course this means that the set of sources is limited, but I guess that’s exactly what this team of users want: a limited set of relevant news sources to get the job (of providing information) done easily and quickly, instead of spending hours digging interesting stuff out of automated aggregators.

In an era where start-ups spring like mushrooms after the rain and we’ve laid our hopes of getting information in either the hands of algorithms or social interactions, I’m glad to see a different approach that goes the traditional way. It will be interesting to see if it gets to succeed or not.

Brief notes about the iPhone Tech Talks

The banner for the event

Last week I’ve been in Rome for the iPhone Tech Talks, Apple’s so-called worldwide event promoting iPhone development. Apparently the moto “Stay where you are. We’re coming to you.” didn’t apply to Greece, so I decided to fly to Rome and attend the one-day seminar. In the beginning of the day, we were informed that the event was considered to be confidential and we shouldn’t blog/tweet/facebook about it, but I think it’s ok to express my impressions about the event as well as my (probably useless) comments about my trip.

Roaming with the iPhone

Apart from the original frustration of not being able to connect to any cellular network (because for some stupid reason my carried switched roaming off when I upgraded my plan), the iPhone’s done well roaming into a foreign country. I don’t know if italian 3G networks are slow or if it was the roaming, but even on 3G everything was pretty slow.

Getting to the event

When I walked to the La Sapienza University, I thought I’d spot the familiar Apple logo on a banner or something, directing me to the place where the event was held, but as much as I looked around, I saw no apples at all. And almost everyone I asked was either unaware of it, didn’t speak english or would rather not talk to a stranger. I spent about 15 minutes asking and going from one place to the other, until I finally found it. They had a banner, but it was up on a balcony at some place.

A few minutes before the first session began

Event sessions

The day consisted of many sessions, some of which were more informative than the others. I’d rather like it if all sessions were tech talk, but hey, it’s their promotional event. Information on the actual technical stuff was coming fast enough so you can keep up and yet include as much as possible. Some people were taking notes but I think it wasn’t really useful to do so. I wouldn’t consider most of the talk being confidential, since in essence it’s all written down in the Apple documentation about the iPhone, but oh well.

One of the reasons I wanted to attend the event was to get to ask some questions to an Apple evangelist, but I wasn’t that lucky. The only chance to ask a question was to find the one Apple guy during the breaks, but that means fighting your way through the crowds that engulfed him instantly the minute the sessions ended. And all this talk between the developers and the Apple guy was in italian, so it was useless to me. Well, at least I had time to visit the buffet, but hey- don’t forget it was a free event.

It was funny that I was the only non-italian person attending, so the host had to speak in english throughout the sessions even though he was italian as well. Sorry guys!

Some interesting notes

Being there among all those italian developers, I quickly came to notice some stuff (most of which I Tweeted about anyway). First, I thought everyone would have an iPhone, but that was not the case. However, almost all laptops were Macs, I didn’t spot a PC in there. New MacBooks could be seen, but old aluminum Pro’s, plastic MacBooks and even my 12″ PowerBook G4 diversified the gamut.

When the audience was asked, quite an impressive amount of people raised hands about using Xcode and Objective-C. Less people were actually developing an iPhone app, and about a dozen and half already had an app deployed on the app store. I wonder how many of the rest of the developers are actually going to build an app, since it was a free event and it was obvious that some people attended maybe out of curiosity only.

Evaluation time

So was it worth it? Well, if they come to your city, it’s definitely worth it to go if you’re interested in developing for the iPhone. But flying abroad just to attend the event (at least the European schedules) wasn’t something I’d recommend, since most of the stuff is readily available in the documentation. The event was probably a good chance to hook up with other developers (an italian start-up was looking for developers there) and often great start-ups form out of such meetings. So if you’re an upcoming developer that haven’t dug deep yet into iPhone development, you should definitely go since it puts you into a mood and briefs you about the technical difficulties involved (i.e. memory management etc.)

Night shot of the Pantheon using the iPhone's camera

As for me, I tried to increase the value of my trip to Rome to make it par with the money I’ve spent, so I took a nice walk the evening after the event, re-visiting most major sites in the historic center. Piazza Di Spagna, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Campo Di Fiori, Fontana Di Trevi and other small piazzas here and there, a taste of italian pizza and buying souvenirs and gifts for my wife made that evening worth the trip! And since it’s all about the iPhone, here’s a (slightly enhanced) night shot of the Pantheon using the iPhone’s built-in camera.

Twitter delivers the news faster than the media

There are still enough people that don’t get what all this social networking/microblogging thing is about. I was one of them, when I first learned about Twitter when it launched. I mean, why should I inform the public of what I am doing? Why is it so important to post details about my (probably meaningless to others) daily activities? Heck, I was even negative to blogs at first. Social networks, I deterred from for some time. But Twitter? Come on, that’s absurd!

But after some time, I realised that focused people posting articles about their domain of expertise was a good thing and blogging is not useless after all. The social stuff was harder to grasp though; I admit that I wasn’t an early adopter to Facebook, MySpace or the rest of the social networks. For quite some time, I stayed away from them, but then I started to realize the potential that comes from connecting to people. There’s no better advertising than virally spreading the news to your connections, and they forward it to theirs and so on. It’s fun too.

But Twitter? Posting status updates in 140 characters? Why go back to a primitive Internet-style SMS when we’ve got computers, and Internet, social networks- I couldn’t get it. But as in all things, it’s more probable to grasp the idea of something if you participate in it, rather than judging as an observer.

The power of microblogging

Had it been only for status updates, I’d still consider it silly, but it turned out that Twitter evolved into the so-called micro-blogging platform which has potential and momentum. Messages are instant, short (hence easier to read), spread around all followers immediately, it allows personal communication and it’s accessible on-the-go from virtually anywhere on Earth there’s cell signal. If you provide useful content, people follow you and get informed; you can evangelize and promote your stuff and services; you can get the news first.

Get the news first? There’s no “breaking news” sessions in Twitter, that’s only in TV. But the latest tragic incidents in India, showcase (in a very sad way) that the microblogging platform is not only a news source, but the news come faster than traditional media. At least that’s what Arrington claims, and I agree with him. In fact, when I read about the Mumbai attacks on Twitter messages from the people I follow, I asked my wife “hey what’s going on in India?” but she didn’t know, even though she was on the TV.

Uses and abuses of the microblogging wonder

Twitter may not be the most credible news source out there (but is the media credible anyway?) since people can always lie. But when many people seem to claim the same thing and it reaches a critical mass, it becomes a reality. When, for example, you witness the public timeline and everybody’s talking about the attacks, you can’t claim it’s false news, there’s no way all these people would lie at the same time.

But there are cases where people could lie. Think of it, even before Twitter and the Internet, rumors still spread fast and many times they were proven wrong, but it would take longer to span the globe. Today, with the power of the interconnection of billions of people, a malevolent rumor can spread like wildfire affecting millions of people before they get a chance to distrust it. For example, imagine how some fake news could impact the stock market, if some “insider” claimed something “hot” is going on. I bet that a hoax about Steve Job’s heart attack originating from a paramedic (perhaps with a photo attachment of poor Steve in the ambulance) and then being confirmed by numerous other witnesses and insiders, could travel faster than an official statement of Apple about the matter (and Apple is indeed a bit slow when it comes to press releases).

When a critical mass of people lie, that lie becomes a reality. It may not be true, but all that matters is what people believe to be true.

Power to the people

Traditionally, the power of information was a privilege of the media, so when people begin to claim back some part of it, it sure is not a small thing. De-centralizing the news sources and spreading it to individuals around the globe could potentially harm long-standing balances in society. People-casting is radically different from news media, yet quite powerful. The strange thing with people is that there are too many of us and almost totally uncoordinated, yet from within this soup of (mostly useless) information, patterns begin to emerge and it’s not at all improbable for a small piece of information to cause a “hurricane” in a worldwide scale. It’s chaotic, and it can’t be controlled.

I’m pretty sure more and more power will come to the hands of individuals and if the media don’t jump on this wagon they’ll probably regret it. But perhaps the most thrilling aspect of this interconnected information chaos is how it can be (ab)used to deliberately inject information into the network. Will the people maintain the power of information-anarchy, or are they simply going to be the medium through which the same old powers are going to rule the world?

Trapster: A Nice Idea Poorly Implemented

There are lots of uses for an iPhone and it’s good to have one in your car, especially in the case of Trapster, an iPhone app that aims to alert you about speed cameras and other gear out there in the streets that can get you fined. It’s a brilliant idea, but let’s see if this app does what’s promised and whether it performs that task well enough.

How does it work?

First of all, even though the app’s description doesn’t clearly mention it, the app alerts drivers based on a user-populated database; the iPhone does not have the necessary equipment to detect speed cams! What that means is that you get alerts only for those traps that other people have reported, and that data may be inaccurate or even completely false. There is though a means of rating each trap and the app calculates a confidence level for each one, but still this is all based on people’s good will.

One case in which the user-centric database can be of no use is that of systematically submitted false alarms. Some anti-trap-alerting group, for example, could massively submit numerous traps that are not real, thus making the app useless for a driver that would constantly get alarms for cameras that are not there. But assuming that there are no such groups (yet) and the authorities would never come up with this, false alarms shouldn’t be a big issue, although some of them surely exist.

Jeez, where’s that camera?

The main problem with Trapster is not the data, but the way it reports traps to the user, who in this case is, the car’s driver. This is where Trapster fails to deliver in a practical way, for many reasons. First of all, the reports are using a synthesized voice that not only sounds rather ridiculous, but is hard to notice at times over the noise in the car. Also, don’t hope that you can scroll the map as in the Maps app -no, no! The map stays fixed and you have to hit a “center” button to re-position your car in the map.

But most importantly, the problem is that the algorithm for trap detection is based purely on proximity and doesn’t account for the car’s direction, thus alerting drivers for traps that are monitoring the cars that are going to the opposite direction! This can be rather frustrating if you’re driving in quarters that you’re not familiar with (but that’s the point of this app, if you already know by heart where the traps are, it’s of no use, right?) since you’ll be alerted for traps that aren’t meant for you, but you’ll still be slowing down and wondering where in Earth that trap is supposed to be.

Another problematic area that can be improved is when a user submits a trap, since the map problem mentioned above doesn’t make this too easy for a driving person. I think it would be a good idea to let users log in to the site when they get to their computers and fine-tune the data they entered in a hurry while driving, or even add some more details about the trap.

Bottom line

Trapster is a nice idea that is poorly implemented, at the moment. However, it can still be quite handy and save your from a speed ticket or two, so it’s good to have the app running in your iPhone while driving in a highway. Knowing it’s problems and limitations will reduce your frustration, and keep in mind that this app uses data generated by people like YOU - so don’t forget to submit the traps you see, or rate the existing ones!

Wishlist

Here’s a list of a few ideas that would make this app much better:

• Detection algorithm should account for the vehicle’s course (e.g. create a vector simulating the vehicle’s track and associate that with a user-submitted trap, then check against this before alerting users).
• Use a clear and loud human-recorded voice for reporting traps.
• Calculate the vehicle’s speed and use audio cues to report how close the vehicle is to the trap (i.e. a driver’s that’s moving too fast should be notified earlier than one who’s barely above the speed limit).
• When such audio cues cease, drivers would also be informed that they have passed by the trap and are no longer in it’s range.
• Fix the interface, please (draggable map, zooming with gestures, auto-following the vehicle - you know, like the Maps app!).
• Allow users to refine trap data through the website.

Going to iPhone Tech Talks, Rome

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Apple confirming my registration for the iPhone Tech Talks in Rome, on 19 November 2008, so I’m glad to announce that I’m going. Hopefully the event will be useful for a newcomer to iPhone development, like myself. Plus, Rome is a wonderful place and it will be a pleasure to be there again!

When I get back after the event (and NDA forbid) I’ll share as much as I can. If anyone else who’s reading this is attending the event, let me know!

During my trip and on the day of the event I’ll be posting updates via my iPhone which you will be able to read on Twitter and FriendFeed.

jQuery: What to do when replaceWith() doesn’t work

Nothing’s perfect in this world and jQuery is not the exception to prove the rule. Sometimes the replaceWith() function doesn’t seem to work, no matter what you do. It looks like the function does nothing, and that’s a problem. But don’t bother; this will do the trick:

instead of

$('#someElement').replaceWith('something');

use this:

$('#someElement').empty().append('something');

How to trade your great idea for nothing

Have you ever had an imaginary friend? Well maybe not (I haven’t), but for once let’s imagine that you do have one. Picture a cloudy-like, fuzzy-shaped form with unlimited knowledge and memory, always willing to answer any question your soul could possibly want to ask (expect maybe for the Ultimate Question which has already been already been answered anyway).

Specifically, your imaginary friend’s characteristics could include (but not be limited to) the following:

• It’s your best friend.
• It’s always available to you, wherever you are.
• It has instant access to all the facts of the world.
• It has a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen and know.
• It can tailor answers to you based on your preferences, your existing knowledge and the best available information.
• When a question is vague, it could ask for clarification.
• It would present the answers in whatever setting or media worked best.

Now, that sounds nice! Our imaginary friend (which we’ll lovingly call “Cloudie” for the sake of our paradigm) would be the perfect companion. Omnipresent and omnipotent, it would have a (pretty much) thorough knowledge of everything regarding you, as well as the whole world, thus being able to answer any of your questions. The perfect friend, companion and tool.

Before you start imagining how privileged you would be with such a best friend, I am sorry to spoil this by informing you that Cloudie would not be exclusive to you - it would have other friends of its own as well. And it would be best friend to every one of them, not only you. Oh, and picture that there would be millions of them (thus explaining how Cloudie could possibly have access to all the facts of the world).

So how would you feel about that? I imagine I would be terrified , knowing that someone had that much information about me and about every person in the world as well. First of all, what if Cloudie, my best friend, disclosed some of my private information to a third party? Sure, it says it would never do that, but how do I know? Sometimes even your best friend can’t be trusted; and also , what could such a powerful all-knowing being evolve to, if it decided to be malevolent? It’s terrifying, really.

Back to reality

Frightening as it may sound, our fictional friend already exists and its name is Google. It’s not yet capable of doing all the nice things I’ve mentioned, but it’s what it yearns to become - and this is not my point of view, but rather the definition of the ideal search engine according to Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, as seen in this TechCrunch article. So before you begin to question my conspiracy/totalitarian/big-brotherish fears, you can check out for yourself that it’s all true.

But that’s not why I decided to write this article, really. It’s another thing that made me write about Google - their newest project, coded Project 10¹⁰⁰.

We don’t have the answers, but we believe that you do. And we want them.

Basically, project 10¹⁰⁰ aims to make the world a better place, by doing something that would help 10¹⁰⁰ people all around the globe (that’s orders of magnitude greater than the population of the Earth). But it turns out that the all-knowing search engine giant doesn’t have the answer to every question; quoting their blog:

But what would help, and what would be most helpful? We don’t believe we have the answers, but we do believe the answers are out there.

So since they don’t have the answers, they ask us, ordinary people, to provide them . For this reason they’ve made a submission form which you can use to submit your idea for helping a lot of people and making the world a better place. Google experts will review the submitted ideas and the best 100 of them will be announced for the public to pick the semi-finalists, then “an advisory board will choose up to five final ideas for funding and implementation”, according to the project’s webpage.

That’s right, the company has committed $10 million to fund the top-5 ideas. They will own your idea, implement it and make the world a better place. Oh, and they’ll probably make tons of money by integrating their ads in the final product (not to mention the information gathering by the product itself).

So what do you get for giving Google your best idea on how to make this world a better place? Nothing, except for “fame”. If you’re the kind of person who would fancy your name being announced in the top 5 ideas that will change the world and that will make you live happily ever after, go ahead and submit your idea before the deadline expires on October the 20th, 2008.

If you’re not that kind of person, and would imagine that Google was searching for the brightest minds to incorporate with them, to fund them and help them create a product that will change the world for the best, you’re out of luck. Sorry, you still need to seek funding.