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.

Saw a site on your iPhone you’d like to see on your Mac? Use Pastebot Sync to be able to paste that URL directly from you iPhone into the Safari URL field. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that. Want to quickly paste a snippet from a document on your iPhone to a document on your Mac? It’s so easy.

And now that iOS 4 has multitasking, it’s easier than ever to switch back and forth from Pastebot and any other application. On my iPhone this has been one of my most used apps. It’s become indispensable.

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!

I reached deeply into my troubleshooting repertoire and tried everything within my powers to resuscitate it … but it was DEAD JIM! I tried zapping the PRAM (holding the “Command”, “Option”, “P” and “R” keys while restarting) 4 to 5 times. Nothing. I searched the Apple Support site and Apple Discussions. Some similar issues, but not results, other than replacement. I tried starting up from one of my multi-partitioned external USB drives which have clean installs of both OS 10.5 and OS 10.6. No go. Still blackness. I reached into the depths of my Library folder and trashed the Users/xxxxx/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.xxxxx.plist and did a restart. Still nothingness.

It was time to admit the problem. My 16 month old, our of warranty, no AppleCare extended warranty, 24″ LED Cinema Display was gone. History! After about 10 minutes of shock, anger, and grieving, I went online to the website of the Seattle University Village Apple Store and made an appointment with a Genius.

Fast forward to my appointment. The Genius hooks up the display to his MacBook …. and … nothing! Black! He tells me it’s out of warranty and that it will cost $600.00 to replace the LCD panel. Though he will wave the $160.00 per hour labor fee. WTF!!!! More Shock (anger) and not much awe! I grabbed my display and went home. I WAS PISSED!!!!!!!

After only 16 month of use on a $899.00 display, and that’s it? I expected much more. Oh … like a replacement, and an apology? This isn’t the Apple I knew and loved. I was angry and depressed. After dinner that night, I cleared my desk, and reorganized it to work without the 24″ display. I was ready to move on.

Friday morning I woke up and was pretty much resigned to my fate. Not having enough money to repair or replace the display, I had to make due without it. So I started my morning ritual. Start the MacBook Pro & check mail. Wouldn’t you know …. a survey from Apple. “How did we do?” Oh boy … I get to unload! Of course there were the rate-us-questions. Fail! Fail! Fail! And finally, do you have any comments? With razor tongue I was ready to slice, dice and julienne! But then I had a “What Would Chris Do” moment. Chris being my partner, and the more business savvy person in this relationship. I heard him say, “…leave the anger and emotion behind. Give the facts. And don’t berate.” So I composed a letter.

In the letter I spoke of my disappointment that Apple didn’t stand behind a product that was only 16 months old. I spoke of how I had been purchasing and using Mac computers since 1986 and expected longevity in all their products. I stated that I was Mac consultant and would now have to think twice before recommending Apple displays without the caveat of buying AppleCare on all Apple products, because they don’t last as long as they once did. I also commented that I would have thought Apple would have replaced the display without even a second thought. That was the Apple I knew and loved.

At the end of the survey, I was asked if I would like someone from Apple to call. So I left my number etc. And sure enough … I got a call from Kelii Moreau, the Senior Manager of the University Village Apple Store just a few hours later. He told me that he read my eMail and I was right. Apple should have replaced my display. And if I stopped in later today, they would! It was music to my ears! I was told to box up my old one, and ask for a manager when I entered the store. A brand new fully (1 year) warrantied display would be waiting for me to swap for my old one.

After finishing my morning errands, I was at the Apple store with my defective and boxed display. I asked for a manager, handed the greeter the eMail from Kelli … to eliminate repeated explanation. Within a minute I was greeted by a salesperson and he went off to retrieve my new display. The entire team had already been briefed. Another manager Jennifer Dance came out to greet me and thank me for my letter. She said (and I paraphrase) ” you are a bit of a celebrity here. Everyone on the team got to read your letter. It reminded us all of what Apple has been and what we need to strive to be. You made an impression! And you did it without getting angry. Thanks you for that too.” Really? Wow! Cool! Thank you!

And that was that. I got my display replaced and went home to set it up.

Thank you Apple. And thanks to all the Apple managers and staff at the University Village Apple Store, for stepping up, and doing the right thing.

The moral of this story …. be the squeaky wheel! Use all the avenues available to obtain what you think is a fair result. No anger. No animus. Just honesty and fact. Leave hyperbole home. You may end up getting more than you bargained for.

Thanks again to everyone at Apple who helped achieve this result!

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!

This post is no more than what it is. Another mile marker showing that this bug has driven me and other crazy through Mac OS X 10.5 and now 10.6.

I’ve already documented the entire thing in three other posts:
A process to a kill
Mail.app & IMAP Process Update
Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update (No IMAP Fix)

There is nothing more that I can do. None of the Mac blogs out there have picked up the story. Not TUAW. Not MacWorld. Not MacNN. No one.

So unless something else breaks … oh like Apple’s resolve NOT to fix this problem. Or one of the Mac news sites reports on the problem or fix … I think I’m done here. Well at least with this issue.

Good luck!

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 …

Blogo is a Macintosh application that I happened to stumble upon by Googling “twitter clients mac“. I found this great article … Micro-Blogging: 26 Twitter Desktop Clients For Mac. In this article was a small review for Blogo. I went to the Brainjuice website and downloaded the “21-day free trial”.

Once I fired up this great little app I got more than I bargained for. The first surprise is being greeted by bespectacled bunny that looks like something out of “Donnie Darko”. I not only found a way to update all my social media sites via Ping.fm support, I got something else that I’ve been looking for for quite a long time. A dedicated Mac application that I could blog from, without having to have an Internet connection, and be logged into my WordPress account to write a new post. I’m using Blogo right now to write this post. Hell … I didn’t even pay the very worthwhile fee of $25.00 yet and it’s uncrippled and allows me to post to any of my blogs or social media sites.

To be fair, and accurate, you do need a web connection to set up Blogo and have it set up your WordPress template. But after that … you can even preview new posts without a connection. You can even save files of your posts to your hard drive. Pretty cool features if you ask me!

Blogo lets me see my input in rich text format, and with the click of a button, I can also edit the html directly. I can post photos, edit the size location, and alignment. I can add basic formatting, block quotes, lists and links, all from a nicely designed buttons to the right of the text editing field.

Below the text editing field, I can also add keywords & by adding a hashmark I get #categories. Nice touch! Below that is a list of any images I have added. The list of nice touches goes on. The coolest thing other than full screen mode, is the previewing of the post. Blogo can download the needed elements from a WordPress blog. I get to see my post preview as if I were previewing it from within WordPress … all within another Blogo window. Slick slick slick!

I’m sure as I use it more I’ll discover more as I use it. And I have a feeling it will become a huge part of my writing/blogging arsenal. Once I post this … I may hop on over to Brainjuice and pony up my $25.00 USD.

I’ll leave you with a little Blogo wish list. I wish the developers would …

1. Allow larger viewing font sizes in both editors (old eyes).
2. Allow me to add rel=”lightbox” tags to images easily. *
3. Add the “more” tag to the button pallet. *
4. Add text color button to the pallet.

I’m sure I will come up with more features I’d like to see … but those are the ones that jump out at me right now. All in all … color me impressed with my new fave blogging tool … Blogo. Go Brainjuice!

* Update: 07.20.09

I eMailed Brainjuice this morning after posting my article and I was informed by Ben via eMail that items 2 and 3 already exist.e said, “P.S. You can turn on lightbox in the account options, and insert a more separator from the Format > Insert menu.” Thanks Ben!

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 …

Somewhere after finishing the first program exercise of chapter 1, I needed to stop and take care of some personal finances. I went to Chase.com and had a look at my checking balance. To my surprise there were two pending transactions for $50.00 each from the iTunes store.

I knew right off … they weren’t MY charges. Immediately I went to the iTunes store and tried to log into my account with my Apple ID. “Sorry Apple ID does not exist.” (or something to that effect.) Now wait! I just used this very same Apple ID to log into the Apple Developer Connection just a few hour earlier. Hmm. Maybe I typed my password incorrectly. Type type type. “Sorry Apple ID does not exist.”

Okay. New tact. Let’s try resetting the password. I clicked on the link and was sent to this page on the Apple website. When I put in my correct eMail address I was told “Account does not exist.” I was livid! Someone had broken into my iTunes account! And they locked me out!!!!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Like any good investigator the first thing I did was a Google search on “apple id login stolen” … and I got a bunch of hits. One was to a site called “dropsafe”. The post here was from 2006 entitled “Easy AppleID Password & Account Theft“. The second hit I looked at was from a Technorati Discussion which points to this blog post by Marko Karppinen, principal at MK&C, an eight-person software development studio in Helsinki, Finland, “Apple just gave out my Apple ID password because someone asked“. They too had a similar issue with their Apple ID being easily “hijacked” by someone other than the real owner.

With this information in hand, I tried calling Apple. “Sorry. Please call back during our normal hours of business.” I tried calling Chase. “Sorry Our systems are down. Please call our dispute department during normal business hours.” Does no one have 24 hour customer service anymore? It was now 12:30 AM and there was nothing I could do. I went to bed.

Woke up around 7:00 AM and got right back to it. I first called Apple customer support. I spoke to a very apologetic and very helpful agent named Heather Banks. I told her what happened. In our discussion of the the hijack and charges made to my Chase debit card for two iTunes electronic gift certificates, eMailed to the gMail address rosianhotmailcom568@gmail.com, she put me on hold while she spoke directly to an iTunes Store agent. They first wanted to void my account and issue me a new one. I said no. There were too many purchases and computer registrations attached to that account. They finally reset the password, restored my old eMail address & I was able to log back in. Yeah!

I then changed my Apple ID & my password, as well as my “security” question. All was right with the world. Well almost. I was still pissed off, that Apple’s security for handing over anyone’s ID was, using an eMail address, a security layer that includes your birth month, and birth day, and a question of your own devising. The first two things could be found out easily by looking at any of my blogs, my FaceBook account, or my Twitter account. But my question is … did this person know my info from my registering on the Apple Developer Connection, or is someone watching the list of “newbies” and then exploiting their Apple IDs somehow? Too many questions, and not enough security, or answers on Apple’s part.

What is still incredibly irksome is that this has been going on for YEARS!!!!! And Apple hasn’t done a thing to improve the security around their Developer Connection site or getting or resetting a password associated with an Apple ID that is just an eMail address that ANYONE can know or find out. How secure is that???? Not very … evidently!

So I filed a complaint online with the Washington state Attorney General’s office, via a very well done web page. Now I don’t know if this is the under the prevue of the AGO … but by this point … I didn’t care. My next step was to write this post, which will go up on both my blogs, to warn others. Then off to the Better Business Bureau to lodge yet another complaint against Apple for for such lax security. Then I’ll try to write to TUAW, MacWorld, MacNN etc etc and try to get this story out …. yet again!

I’m frazzled. Tired. And feeling violated. I don’t expect some grand mia culpa from Apple. But I am hoping to shed light on this problem, in the hope that others will pressure Apple to act in the best interest of their customer’s security.

Hey … APPLE … are you listening.

::::::::::::::: Joe stepping off soapbox :::::::::::::::

This is a letter I sent to Apple Developer Connection today, via a web form on the Apple website. I figured this way I might actually get something in writing from Apple. They sent a confirmation eMail with a “Follow-up” number. It’s a start to getting some real response from Apple.

I’ll try to keep this post updated as I get more info.

As of right now, I have not been contacted by Apple yet. Maybe tomorrow.

The Good news is, the two $50.00 charges disappeared from my Chase.com online account. Which means Apple must have canceled them, though they still show up in my iTunes purchase history.

Here are the the iTunes Gift Certificates that the “bandit” purchased. Now I wonder if the person is stupid enough to actually cash them, or if s/he did cash them while I was locked out of my account. But then again, I didn’t see any purchases other than the cards. So honestly … what good are the cards, unless someone this person tries to sell them on Craig’s List or something. It makes no sense.

So we’ll see what happens tomorrow, Monday. I really do want to hear from Apple. We’ll see.

Called Apple customer support yesterday (07.01.09) spoke to customer service agent Bob Henderson. I asked him why Apple did not credit back the charges for the two iTunes cards charged to my debit card. He informed me that the procedure was to file a dispute with Chase and then Chase would contact Apple. I also asked him why no one at Apple (iTunes Store, or Developer Connection) has contacted me yet. He said he did not know. I then asked him why Apple has not fixed this gaping hole in password security? He said Apple has been looking into it (yeah right), but if I’d like to write an eMail to him outlining what I’d like to see happen to make things more secure, he’d be happy to pass it along to “the powers that be.” I’m in the process of doing this.

On the Attorney General front …

Got a reply back from the Washington State Attorney Generals office in response to my filing a complaint against Apple. Color me amazed!

Now we’ll see what will happen. This may be part of the reason no one from Apple has contacted me. Or not. I’ll tell you this post is getting a LOT of traffic. Don’t know what that means, other than people are interested.

I’ll keep adding to this post unless, something major happens & requires me to start a new one.

New Post: My Hijacked Apple ID … continued …

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.

For the individual yacht information pages, I kept things sparse and clean. All photos, videos, etc were triggered by sliding menu items and shown in a shadow box. Nice effect, keeping the focus on what is being shown. Also one of the ways I like to see photos these days. A victim of the times? Maybe. But I still like it.

I also reworked their WordPress blog, so it looked more integrated with the rest of the website. I of course chose the WordPress Christmas v1.1 theme from the creative folks at InstantShift.com again. I really like how clean it looks. Once I stripped everything down to white with 1 px green outlines, and shrunk its width to the same size as the rest of the site … you wouldn’t know it was the same theme. It’s clean and slick, and really displays images well too with the articles (again after some CSS tweeking).

I realy like the end result, and so does the client. That is certainly a win win!

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.

I ended up doing my own research. I called my client, had them quit Mail.app on all 3 computers in that office. I went to their cPanel & killed any remaining processes. I then screen shared with each computer & started each remotely. For each user relaunched they created around 8 + processes each. And these IMAP processes would not die until Mail was quit, or killed manually. There were some IMAP processes that didn’t die and had to be killed manually.

I called BlueHost again today and got an amazing tech. I again explained the issue to him. “How odd” he said, “let’s see what we can find.” So we spent 30 minutes on the phone trying many different things. He on his end and me on mine. I even tried Entourage using IMAP. Entourage only opened 1 connection, and that was it. No multiples.

In searching Apple Support Forum I found this thread “Topic : Mail is killing the processes on my server with IMAP” talking about the very same issue. There were multiple people with different web hosting companies reporting the same behavior. So I’m not alone in this and the problem does indeed exist. The thread showed no “solution” to the issue yet. Bummer!

Now I hope Apple is listening, and fixes the issue very soon.

(I also sent this to MacFixtIt)

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.

Apple has finally made it too easy to connect this beautiful 24″ display to to its new line of uni-body MacBooks and MacBook Pros. In an instant I saw my future. It entailed selling my old 24″ iMac & my trusty MacBook Pro, in order to make way for this magnificent new combo. I was hooked. I must have it. I must have it now! To my credit, I waited an entire day before making the purchase. I was doing my duty as an American citizen to help stimulate the sagging economy. Yeah! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Now that I’ve had the 15 x 24 combo … I’m liking it so much. I like having two displays. This is an awesome way to get a 15″ pallet display, and a 24″ working display. Yes it takes up a little more desk space … but in the long run it’s worth it. I also don’t have to sync two computers. When I go to a client … I have everything I need on this one computer. Oh … and did I mention it’s even faster than my old 2.4 Ghz 24″ iMac? Now all I need to do is replace the 350 GB 5200 RPM HD currently in the MacBook Pro with a new Segate 500 GB 7200 RPM HD and it will be even zippier. Woo hoo!

The downside … if any … is no FireWire 400 on the new uni-body MacBook line. The MacBooks only have USB 2. No FireWire at all. The MacBook Pro had only 0ne FireWire 800 port. Onthat count I’m lucky. All the external storage I have I bought with multi-interface ability, including FireWire 800. But my trusty LaCie DVD burner, will go by the way of the Dodo. It only has FireWire 400 capability. Yes there are adapters to be had to use it on a FireWire 800 bus. But once a single FireWire 400 device is connected to an 800 chain, the entire chain is slowed to 400 speeds. Drat!

Like every technology advance there will be those who wax nostalgic and or rant about how Apple is forcing them into a place the user is not ready to go. From my point of view … oh well. Don’t buy it. But at some point you’ll have to give up your OS 6 running Mac of yore. Or not. That’s the beauty of being a Mac user. Macintosh computers tend to last (almost) forever. And we are such a vocal and loyal bunch that sometimes we don’t want to give up what we have known and loved in our pasts.

Not me baby! I’ve always been bleeding edge. Ouch! I’m always a dive in head first and see how long I need to tread the digital waters. It’s how I learn. It’s part of how I keep up. I need to go through some of those growing pains. I need to experience what my clients might go through, so they don’t have to. It’s part of being a consultant. I bleed so you don’t need to.

As of this moment though … I’m in love with my new gear. As always I’ll keep you informed as I find new things to rant or rave about. Right now … I have some new external hard drives I need to look at. Mmm … technology.

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. There was electricity in the air. You could feel it. So I do understand the goo-goo eyed fan-boy concept. I must admit. I’ve been a fan-boy ever since 1987 and buying my first Mac Plus.

But this year may be the beginning of the end of MacWorld. Or a least the beginning of the end of Apple’s participation in the San Francisco MacWorld. Steve Jobs dropped the bomb a few weeks ago, that Apple will be pulling out of MacWorld and he would not be giving the final keynote.

Now, you have to understand, a Steve Jobs MacWorld keynote speech, is the ‘stuff’ of myth, dreams and legend. Many an attendee has been mesmerized by the Steve Jobs ‘reality distortion field’. There is no other experience quite like it. Sadly, for the final Apple attended MacWorld and keynote, Steve will not take the stage. Phil Shiller, the senior vice president of Apple’s worldwide product marketing, will valiantly attempt to fill Steve’s iconic black T.

So many people are trying to read too much into Apple’s and Steve Jobs’ choices. In the long run it probably will be a good thing for Apple to not have to meet MacWorld deadlines to get out product. Plus, when something big is announced, it’s on Apple’s website and every news site or blog within minutes. So yeah. Why does Apple need events like MacWorld?

I don’t know if Apple might need them in a financial sence, but Apple has built more than a company. Yes, there are those who would argue that point, but they built a community of crazies. Those of us who were asked to ‘Think Different’ and embrace all that it entailed. For all the virtual meeting places there are in the virtual world called the Internet. I think there is still something to say about meeting face to face, and being hands on. There’s something to that thrill and excitement of seeing other in the flesh, and experiencing something together.

Only IDG can determine if MacWorld will contine past next year. Right now there is just a sence of unceetainty. That’s a hell of a way to leave things. But we all need to look forward. Yes. There will be a day that Steve will no longer wish to, or be able to run Apple. He too is just flesh and blood. We are still feeling the diminished effects of a weakened ‘reality distortion.’

Good luck Steve. Good luck Apple.