In a previous post about How To: Create IMAP Mail Account on iPhone account on the iPhone, I made reference to this ingenious little iPhone app called Pastebot.

Pastebot is a powerful clipboard manager by Tapbots that stores text & images copied from your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (compatible though not universal yet.). You can organize, apply filters to, and copy clippings to be pasted or sent to other apps, or even to your Mac.

Have you ever gone to a website on your iPhone and it was the type of site that would read much better on a full screen? Or maybe the site is Flash based? With Pastebot and a few “touches” you can paste that long ungodly URL directly to your Mac’s browser. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this little utility already.

Pastebot, the “little utility that could”, and does, is only $3.99 on the iTunes App Store. Combine that with the free Pastebot Sync from the Tapbots website and you have a very handy and useful combo.On the iPhone, Pastebot will keep track of every item you cut or copy. It will automatically save 99 items in its “clipboard”. You can name and file any of those items into folders for later use. I have copied all my eMail signatures into a folder in Pastebot, and now I can easily copy any of those back to the iPhone clipboard to paste into eMail I compose on the iPhone.

A few days ago I had the most bizarre thing happen. I was working on my computer, a MacBook Pro 15″ 2.53 HHz Intel Core Duo Uni-body and an attached Apple 24″ LED Cinema Display. I was in the middle of something, when the image on the screen split in half. The left half of the screen was on the right and the right half on the left. For a split second  (no pun intended) I freaked! Then my brain immediately went into troubleshooting mode. After I tried a few things in the Display System Preference, I just decided to restart. That fixed the issue. And I thought nothing more about it.

Now a day later … Thursday June 12th … I was again working on my computer, when the whole 24″ display went black! No warning. No dying wheeze. Nothing. Blackness. Wow … the screen went to sleep? No. The MacBook Pro screen was NOT black. Panic time!

Okay. That may be a little harsh … but you would think after paying for a system upgrade, that was supposed to be rewritten from the ground up … a major bug like the IMAP/PHP bug would have been fixed. I know this problem is still effecting people. They are still logging complaints at Apple’s Discussion Groups. I was hoping … but no go!

There are only so many hours, minutes, seconds in a day. The number is finite. This is a given. But it seems there is an infinite number of social media sites and they seem to grow exponentially. Okay this may be an overstatement … but that’s what it seems like. These sites have a habit of eating away at said hours, minutes, seconds. This is also a given.

I now have both personal {@joestreno} and work {@emacconsulting} accounts for Twitter, blogs for personal {go2jo.com} and work {emacconsulting.com} thoughts … not to mention personal accounts with Facebook, MySpace, Blip.fm, and Ping.com. Though Ping.com is a site that lets me simultaneously update my Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace … plus any other social media sites I might need to update my status on.

Sometimes it feels like I’m teetering on the abyss of info overload! Or maybe “sharing” overload. I can share my thoughts, my photos, my musical tastes, my recipes, my current location and possibly more information than anyone would need to, or even care to know.

What’s a self-promoting egotist entrepreneur computer consultant like myself going to do? Too little time? Too much to share? Enter Blogo …

Warning: This post in not about programing. It’s about an Apple ID security breach.

Updated: 07.02.09
Updated: 06.28.2009
Updated: 06.26.2009
Updated: 07.06.2010

I have always had a fascination with the idea of developing for the Mac. I guess those seeds were planted “… way back in the days of old” when I was creating custom stacks in Apple’s HyperCard, or creating custom databases in Filemaker. Developing for the Mac, or now for the iPhone, is one of those dreams many Apple Fan Boys and Girls have had. To build that one illusive application that everyone wants. Needs. Must have! Cha ching! Hey … I didn’t say my motives were altruistic.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I went out the other day and bought “Programming in Objective-C 2.0” by Stephen G Kochan and Erica Sadun’s “The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook“. Yesterday I started reading Programming in Objective-C 2.0. To get started I needed to log into my Apple Developer Connection account and download the latest version of the Apple developer tools which includes Xcode, Apple’s programing environment.

While I was there I also registered for the iPhone Dev Center. To do so I had to register with my current Apple ID. I then needed to fill out an iPhone developer questionnaire. With that done I could then download the latest version of the 2.08GB Apple iPhone SDK.

Sometimes things don’t always go as planned …

Just completed a new website for my client Compass Point Yachts. This was a huge project. My first undertaking was to try to eliminate as much if not all Adobe Flash from the website as possible. I chose to work with MooTools javascript framework. This way I could do slide shows, as well as nice sliding menus, and other visually interesting elements. Nice eye candy without all the Flash baggage. The most difficult part was getting all the CSS & javascript to play nicely in MS Internet Explorer 7. But in the end … it came off swimmingly!

My second task was to try to break away from making “yet another black website”. The last website, and gee … the website before that were all black backgrounds. Very dark and brooding … but colorful and exciting in their own way. So we went for the polar opposite, white. I also tried to keep the color pallet to green, blue & gray. I think this really made the boat images pop.

Since one of the more recent updates, (I wish I could pinpoint the exact one) when starting up Mail.app multiple processes are opened on my web hosting company’s (blueHOST.com) server. Most times between 8-10. The big problem is they won’t die until either I close Mail.app or kill the process manually via my cPanel’s process manager. As a single user in a one man company, this doesn’t really effect me. In an office of 3 or more people this is a BIG issue. Especially if their website or blog is hosted by the same company, on the same server.

I discovered this issue while working on a clients website. Each time I tried to connect to their blog I’d get a server side page that said, to many processes try again later. Or something to that effect. I called blueHOST.com but got a 1st level tech who had to put me on hold, ask someone questions then come back with not many answers. To be fair to blueHOST this was an exception to always stellar tech support.

When the going gets tough … the tough go shopping!

Took a little trip down Portland way this past weekend. It was a Valentine’s getaway. Little did I know I’d be coming home with a new computer and display. Up until this point my Al SiO2 iMac and my old school MacBook Pro 15″ G4 were doing the trick.

Then there was that fateful trip to the Portland Apple store that Saturday. I laid my eyes on the new Apple 24″ LCD display, connected oh so nicely to a new uni-body MacBook Pro. I was in love … or at least certainly in lust.

Unless you have been stranded on a desert island without a MacBook and a satellite up-link, or you’ve just this moment awaken from a Windows induced coma, then you might know that Monday, January 5th is the start of the MacWorld Conference & Expo.

This is the yearly gathering of Mac fan-boys & girls taking a long deep hit from the fruit flavored technology bong that fuels their euphoric sensory overload of all things Apple. Plainly put, if you are a Mac user. This is the place to be!

I’ve been to a few MacWorlds throughout the years. I was there for the Steve Jobs keynote introduction of the ‘Lifesaver’ iMacs. It was one of those times when great things were happening in the Mac universe, and somehow by being there, you felt part of something big. Something magical.