adding insult to injury

Category: Geek (page 1 of 1)

Import settings from iPhone 3G to iPhone 3Gs

Well, if there’s one available at one of the local AT&T stores, the Best Buy, or the Walmart, I’ll be the proud owner of a new iPhone 3GS. I think my first stop will be Walmart… nobody is brave enough to camp out at a Walmart are they? Not with all the trampling fiascos over the past year…. besides, you can’t beat their return polices.

What I’m looking for is the best way to migrate from one iPhone to the latest and greatest – hopefully taking as many of the settings with as possible. I’m looking for saved SMS messages, email accounts, photos, notes, and other personal settings… everything. Here is my plan.

First, make sure to have the latest iPhone OS 3.0. You don’t want to try and install iphone 2 on the new iPhone 3Gs because, well, it isn’t supported.

The next step also falls under preparation, backup my current iphone. To make sure it’s been done, I’ll plug in my iphone 3G. Right click (control click) on the Phone in itunes, and choose backup.

Your Backup will be stored here:
On a Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

On Windows XP: Documents and Settings(username)Application DataApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup

On Windows Vista: Users(username)AppDataRoamingApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup

I anticipate that I’ll need to enter email account passwords again, but if all goes well, all my junk will all be there.

Update: Well I strolled into my local AT&T store at about 8:00. Fully staffed and no line. They had a 32 Gig, and five minutes later I was out the door. Connected to the wifi at the starbucks next door from my truck and restored from backup. Basically, iTunes walks you though the entire thing and this post is for nothing. 🙂 Apple is cool like that.

Hack your T-Mobile Nokia 6133 to Allow Opera Mini and More

Step 1: Get the phone

Option 1: Get a Nokia 6133 unbranded

  • you’re all set, move on to step 2.

Option 2: Get a Nokia 6133b from T-Mobile

  1. Completely charge your phone
  2. Pay for flashing by www.iunlock.com. Great service. (ship it or drop it off)
  3. Wait for phone to get back (Takes about a week round trip.)

Step 2: Hack iSync and pair with Mac.

Step 3: Get T-Mobile settings from nokiausa.com

  1. Got to www.nokiausa.com
  2. Click on Support » Setup.
  3. Click on Get Settings (under Settings and Browsing and MMS Messaging image)
  4. Click on Get Standard Settings.
  1. Accept terms
  2. start
  3. Choose your phone. (if 6133 is not listed choose 6131)
  4. select T-Mobile USA as your network
  5. select T-Mobile Internet as your service providor
  6. enter your security code, phone number and send it to your phone.
  7. Receive text message with settings. (save, and load them)
  1. Accept them.
  2. Load them

Step 4: Set-up Custom Data Access (for java apps)

  1. Menu
  2. Settings
  3. Configuration
  4. Personal config settings
  5. Options: Add New
  6. Choose Access point from the list
  7. Enter a something for Account Name
  8. Then go into Access Point Settings
  9. Under Data Bearer choose Packet Data
  10. And in Bearers settings enter the following:
  1. Packet Data Access Point: wap.voicestream.com
  2. Network Type: IPv4
  3. Authentification type: Normal
  4. User name: *blank*
  5. password: *blank*

Step 5: Get Java Applications

Get Opera Mini:

  1. On your phone go to mini.opera.com
  2. Download Opera mini
  3. Install it
  4. Start browsing

Best Opera Mini Sites:
My Home Page: m.netvibes.com –it gives me access to weather, gmail, espn, yahoo sports, new york times, and basically any feed you can think of all on one tiny page.

Get Google Maps:

  1. On your phones browser (not opera) go to moble.google.com/
  2. CLick on google maps
  3. Download and install the app

Get Gmail:

I couldn’t get the gmail java app working, there is always m.gmail.com on your web browser (Opera Mini)

Steps I Tried to get Gmail working – none worked, contact me if you get it working!

The flashed phone is not recognized by google so you have to circumvent the certificate by placing it on your phone manually. The certificate required by Gmail Mobile Application is available for download at www.verisign.com/support/roots.html.

Here’s an alleged guide to get the required certificate to resolve the “Your phone doesn’t have the appropriate certificate to communicate with Gmail” error.

  1. Download the certificate at www.fourteenfloor.com/files/PCA3ss_v4.cer to your computer.
  2. Transfer the certificate into your mobile phone and store it. .
  1. Click on the File in the finder
  2. Click on the Finder menu » Services » Send file to bluetooth device (shift-apple-b)
  3. Choose your phone from the list and choose send
  4. Accept the file on your phone

www.gmail.com/app/v1.0.0/en/gmail-g.jar

  • On your phone go to gmail.com/app (on your phones browser, not Opera Mini)
  • Select Download Gmail
  • “Application Source Unknown” Click Continue
  • Accept Certificate
  • Launch gmail
  • Note Widsets are kind of fun.

    No Tivo Nooooooo!

    I think my Tivo died. It was stuck in a reboot cycle the other day and was a bit hot. I pulled the plug on it and now it will not come back to life.

    Mass hysteria and panic are ensuing as I adjust to live TV.

    Update: The new replacement Tivo should arrive today.

    Update 2:Found some power supplies for under 5 bucks. At that price you could buy two.

    What the tivo brand series 2 tivo requires is a PS-70 – SWITCHING POWER SUPPLY from allelectronics.com.

    Why I use GMail

    gmail spam countI now use Google’s free email service, GMail for about 95% of the reading and composing of messages that I do. I have roughly a dozen email accounts that all get funneled in one way or another to Gmail.

    The built in spam filtering is not quite excellent, but it’s darn good. It stores the last 30 days spam messages for you in a folder aptly titled “Spam” – and mine usually has between 1,300 and 1,400 depending on what time of day it is That’s 46 emails per day that I don’t have to see touch worry about virus’.

    I don’t miss the emails from Usnu Buku.

    Update: The recent flood of Rolex spam has pushed my 30 day spam count over 1700. Ugh.

    Demo Expires in 49,710 days.

    bbedit demo expirationI use a program called BBEdit very often. I purchased version 6 and version 7 of the software. Version 8.0 just came out so I started using the full featured demo to see if it was worth the upgrade price — and it is. I didn’t plan on purchasing the upgrade until after the 30 day demo expired. Yesterday the application said it would expire in less than 24 hours. Today, it says it expires in 49,710 days. For the mathematically challenged, that’s in 136+ years. I’m guessing that’s a quiet feature change in the new version they released today (8.0.2). why they just released another update to the demo. I guess I’ll just keep waiting until it expires.

    Update: The demo expired the next day. It was a dialog error, not a demo expiration error.

    Import Mail from Mac OS X into Gmail

    Everyone who is migrating to Gmail loves the google search feature for all your new mail, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could get all of your old email messages into Gmail from your Mac OS X Mail.app without forwarding the thousands of messages you’ve accumulated over the years by hand?

    Mark Lyon wrote a great little PC program in python that automates importing your old email messages to your gmail account. The site instructions and the program are for Windows and work great, but what about us Mac users?

    He was nice enough to include the python source code that also happens to work with Mac OS X, but for those of you that have no idea how to run python scripts, or don’t even know what python is and have no clue about mbox files, I’ve written a simple applescript that uses the terminal to automate the process for all of your mailboxes.

    The script requires you to download Mark’s source code, modify a few settings and then click run to automate the process for all of your Mac OS X Mail.app mailboxes, while allowing you to exclude other mailboxes.

    1. Download Mark’s script to your Desktop. Instructions Here.
    2. Download my gmlAutomator AppleScript.
    3. Open the script in Script Editor.
    4. Modify the properties at the top of the script
    5. Run the AppleScript.

    Update:
    Another even more simple way to accomplish this was sent to me by Ken. The process is to create a new rule in Mail.app with the action “redirect to
    [email protected]”. Have it match whatever messages
    you’re interested in bouncing up to gmail, for example all of
    ’em. Select the messages you’re interested in sending off and
    run Message -> Apply Rules. Done!

    If you leave the rule in, new (matching) messages will also get
    bounced to gmail (and still preserved in Mail.app).
    Read more

    Cheap and Easy TiVo Upgrade

    complete_no_fan.jpgThe TiVo I bought back in January was the bottom of the line, 40 hour in a TiVo branded box. It’s worked great. Right away I added on the USB ethernet adapter so it could talk to home base through my broadband internet rather than dial up because I don’t have a land line – haven’t since ’98. I got the home media option so I can wirelessly stream mp3’s to my tivo, but I hardly ever use that feature.

    The problem I’m having is I can only save like one episode of a few shows and they’re automatically deleted after a couple days to make room for upcoming shows. I needed a bigger TiVo. So I watched the deal sites for a economical 160 GB drive (51$ shipped). I bought a slick case adapter for the tivo that allows for an extra fan and a second hard drive. Then all I had to do was burn a boot cd, format the drive, set the jumpers on the internal 40 GB drive to Master, add the second drive and fan to the TiVo, and plug in the machine.

    Now I’ve got a dual HD TiVo with 208 hours of recording time, instead of 40, and it was on the cheep. Plus, I didn’t loose any of my settings or old recorded shows.

    Geeky. Sweet.

    Unlimited GPRS With T-Mobile for $3

    Now that I have a camera phone I had to add the $2.99 unlimited picture messaging option to my 3000 anytime minute plan ($49). I just a got note from T-Mobile that informed me that with this cheap option, I now get unlimited GPRS.

    “Ooooh, big deal. So you’ve got a GPRthingamajig on your phone, but what the hell does that do?” you ask.

    Handy geeky crap that’s what.

    GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is how cell phones transmit data packets for when you surf the web on your phone – they used to offer this service for 20 bucks a month.

    Now, because I’ve got bluetooth and Mac OS X panther, I can use my Sony Ericsson t610 as a GPRS wireless modem with my Laptop. Better still, I don’t need a dial-up ISP (like earthlink etc) to access the web, it acts as my ISP. So I can check my saltedwound email and my mac.com email all as if I was connected to my cable modem at home – only slower.

    Basically anywhere I have cell phone coverage I can now access the internet at nearly 3k per second (comparable to land line dial up) to check email, surf – whatever (Ozzy, you could surf for porn everywhere you go). I just choose connect from my modem menu, it finds my cell phone even if it’s 30 feet away in my jacket pocket, and dials out. It would also work with inferred, but but bluetooth is nicer because it doesn’t require “line of site”.

    Simple, slick. You can read the extended entry for info on how I set it up.
    Read more

    PHP and Apple’s URL Protocol Support

    With the release of Panther (Mac OS 10.3) Apple has built in a new technology, called URL Protocol Support, that allows for a clickable link in a browser to launch Script Editor and populate it with a script. This makes it easier to share AppleScripts online.

    On my handy little script section of Objective Labs I’ve just implemented support for this new feature.

    Apple has an AppleScript that is sort of cumbersome in that you have to pre-convert your scripts into clickable links to put them online. If you’re a big geek like me, and you store your scripts in a database, it’s easy to use php to convert a script to a clickable url protocol link on the fly.

    Just use this php code:

    $yourScript = rawurlencode($the_variable_holding_your_script);

    and place it in the scirpt portion of the link like this:

    <a href=”applescript://com.apple.scripteditor?action=new&script=<?PHP echo $yourScript; ?>>The Link</a>

    And you will end up with something like this:
    Panther users click here to open this in script editor.

    May-Day, We’re All Going Down!

    I was in the Computer room the other day when all I wanted to do is take down one simple little computer and remove it from the group. I went to the Special menu and selected Shutdown as I’ve done thousands of times before. I don’t remember selecting a super-shutdown-all-these-mothers button, but that’s what happened. Do you know what 17 servers shutting down simultaneously sounds like? Exactly, “OH SHIT!”

    Apparently redundant power with a UPS battery backup and a diesel backup generator are nothing when you put 80+ amps on a 20 amp circuit breaker it’s going to trip when there is a power spike of any kind, like shutting down a computer (go figure!).

    I had to scramble to get as many up as possible while migrating some to another location. I called in the network boys and a PC supportster and got them to pull new cat-5 and move equipment while I’m typing logins as fast as I can.

    The kicker was, when I was planning on adding a new g5 to the group earlier that morning, I wondered out loud:

    Me:“Do you think we’ve got to much running off this circuit?”
    Group:“Awww hell no, this baby is wired for anything!” was the collective answer.

    Well I showed them.

    The Antivirus

    There is a new worm on the loose, but this one is much better intentioned.

    It actually removes the blaster worm from an infected computer and patches the hole that it and blaster use to access your system. I don’t believe this is the best way to solve the virus problem on the web, but something had to be done before Ýmore destructive blaster variants were released unto the world – too bad it will probably bring routers to their knees.

    I think the saddest thing is that this will probably be more effective than Microsoft’s auto update or the media blitz of information about the virus.

    Update: 2:56 PM
    “SoBig virus variant rapidly inflecting Windows machines”, the third virus in as many days. We mac users, still, couldn’t care less – virus emails are just spam to us.

    About Salted Wound and it’s Author

    My name is Tim Conner. I’m a Macintosh application developer and project manager for one of the largest financial printing companies in the US. I live in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and have been contributing to this site as well as other web based entrepreneurial and freelance projects since 1998.

    One project that I’m least proud of, though it’s received the most recognition, is The Caption Machine. It’s basically a community site where I choose a photo from the thousands that have been uploaded. Then I allow the site patrons to add captions to it. It was one of the first on the web to be simply powered by a blogging content management system. Originally it was listed on Blogger.com as a weblog of note. Then it spent a couple days on the front page of “My Yahoo” as a featured site which brings new meaning to being “slash dotted” let me tell you. It was also part of a “cool sites” feature on Tech TV’s, The Screen Savers, and I was interviewed by the New York Times (it actually made it to print – my mom ordered a copy and framed it — that’s what mom’s do).

    My other site is my shareware, freeware, and free AppleScript site called Objective Labs. (Originally called Web Entoruage, but Microsoft Layers “asked” me to change the name) The flagship product was BlogApp and was featured in MacWorld magazine. It’s since been overpowered by competition and a serious lack of updates. I have a few other jems on there including a Mail Merge program that uses the built in Address Book of Mac OS X and your email program of choice. It’s aptly titled MailMergeApp.

    The Tech of Salted Wound.
    The main or weblog portion of Salted Wound is powered by Movable Type version 2.63. Over the years it’s been also powerd by Blogger, Blosxom, the defunct B2 which is now called Word Press and is being developed by a new team.

    The Photo Gallery on this site is powerd by PhotoStack. It’s a PHP based photo gallery maker that is simple and clean.

    The referrer log is powered by Refer. It uses mysql and is full of referral spam and is now all but useless.

    Comment spam blocking is thwarted by the always evolving Blacklist-MT. I’ve also got a cron task running daily to update my blacklist with the new additions at the blacklist clearing house.

    The five recent photos you see at the top of the main page are placed there via Flickr. Currently in beta but soon to be released community photo site that allows me to snap pictures on my SonyEricsson T-610 camera phone and send them either to flickr, or to flickr and my weblog. I can also upload photos via email, or through a desktop client application. It’s quite nice, and you don’t need a weblog for it to be useful.

    The “Listening To” section is now being generated by a desktop app and site combo called Audio Scrobbler. The list on the page is generated using a php based rss reader called MagpieRss

    Big Day at Objective Labs

    Time for an Overhaul

    I’m sure you didn’t notice, but if you’re reading this, I’ve just switched weblog engines. I went from a php/mysql based, and now defunct, content management system called B2 to the most actively developed CMS solution around, Movable Type.

    This will mean absolutely nothing to most of you, but you geeks out there are sure to notice the subtle changes. I had to export the 1,000+ entries and the 2,000+ comments from the mysql tables to the flat file database that MT runs. That means the archives are now thousands of files on my server rather than thousands of records in the database. Also, links are now to actual files rather than SQL queries and results. In the conversion some things may have been lost, and there is still a lot of work left. Certain things will look a little strange while I’m still massaging the data and patching old links to new files, so let me know if anything is broke.

    Yes, I know. Geek.

    I was at a friends apartment and opened my laptop to enter an address. Seconds later I hear my “new mail” chime. My TiBook had found a wireless network, logged in, and checked my mail. Sweet.

    I got curious, and drove to work today with my laptop on. 10 wireless networks showed up in my 6 mile drive, one was less than a block from my house. Looks like I’ll have to make a Cantenna and scam on the neighbors bandwidth.

    Who says you can’t get free internet access?

    Scriptable Bluetooth cellphone remote

    Remember when I said I wanted a bluetooth iTunes remote for my T681? Well, Jonas went and built it, with a couple cool features.

    First and geekmost foremost it’s scriptable. So you can add features to the phone part of the app that can control any AppleScriptable application – that’s most every application if you didn’t know.

    A cool feature is the proximity sensor. It’s a feature that performs an action when it finds a phone, or a known phone looses contact. So, when you walk into a room your iTunes music starts, or your email program launches, or you computer says “welcome home Dave”, or (if you have x10.com devices) the lights come on, or the shades open; well, you get the idea. It’s Bill Gates style house automation on a budget.

    All you need is a Bluetooth mac, a sony t68i phone (currently free with activation at amazon) and the Sony Ericsson Clicker system extension.

    Learn Unix on Mac OS X

    cover O’Reilly & Associates has released a new edition of “Learning Unix for Mac OS X”

    Learning Unix for Mac OS X, 2nd Edition” by Dave Taylor and Brian Jepson is just about the best way to get into the geekness of OS X. It offers sections on how to: customize the shell environment; print from the Unix command line; edit and create files with the vi editor; access Internet functions; understand pipes and filters; use background processing; and use Fink, the best way to install open source Unix software on Mac OS X.

    All kinds of startup mac geek goodness.

    Automatic discovery of RSS feeds

    I’ve been playing with, partaking in, and following the developments concerning the automatic discovery of RSS feeds, written about extensively on dive into mark Basically, you insert the following code (note: it has changed slightly, so if you did this a while ago, double check your code):

    <link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”url/to/rss/file”>

    The code goes in the <head> section of your html. You may have noticed my (experimental list) to the right. Just tinkering you see, but I think there are some real possibilities with it. I’m working on making it auto generate the list using PHP from a list of URL’s by reading the sites link tag. It’s quite simple.

    Someday, when the google api supports this, you will be able to have content from sites that google believes is similar to your’s embeded into your site with some simple javascript.

    PS2 price reduced by a third

    Sony just announced a Play Station 2 price reduction of $100. It may be time to buy one, and sell your X-Box because I say the PS2 is going to win this battle. Sega couldn’t take it, and I doubt that can Microsoft will stay in the arena too long. Though, Micro$oft, full of cash, is probably not the best company to start a price war with. Still, Microsoft reportedly loses $87 per box at the current price – how much can they afford to lose? A lot would be the correct answer.

    Your Mobile

    I found a slick site for those of you who simply love bombarding your brain with low level radiation via your Nokia cell phone. The site is YourMobile.This handy tool has every ring tone you can think of – theme songs, oldies, rap, hip hop, and all for free! Just click send, enter your email and cell phone number and the tone is sent directly to your phone. My tone of the moment is American Pie by Don McLean.