This week at Mobile Tech Manor #7- iPhone app update wipes user data

Mobile_tech_manor_large_2I am writing this week’s column while hunkered down waiting for the arrival of Hurricane Ike which is bearing down on us here in the Houston area.  This is getting to be a habit as Ike is the third or fourth storm to threaten our area this season.  It is not to be trifled with though as it looks like it’s coming awfully close to us.  This week didn’t see the arrival of any new gadgets, rather an old friend left the building.  I ran into an unexpected problem with the iPhone App Store that I now believe is putting many people’s data at risk.  I experimented with some new programs that are working out pretty well and I also played with some gadgetry that have been at Mobile Tech Manor for a while.  Come on in and have a coffee or tea with me.

Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike looks like it’s going to be an almost direct hit on the Galveston area which means we will likely have hurricane force winds in Houston along with a lot of rain.  The storm is 36 hours away from landfall as I write this but the storm surge has already caused the beaches in Galveston to disappear.  They showed video on the news that showed the Gulf of Mexico has already risen up to the seawall in Galveston, wiping out the beach entirely.  They are predicting the storm surge will be up to 20 feet which will surely wipe out the entire western end of Galveston island.  We’ll have to see how far north the high winds come but they are predicting hurricane-force winds to go far north of Mobile Tech Manor.  It’s looking like there will be a power outage of some sort most likely.

Ike_sat

I am as ready for an outage as I can be with all of my laptop batteries fully charged.  I can get 7 hours out of the two MacBook Pro batteries, 10 – 12 hours out of the two HP 2710p batteries plus 6 – 7 hours out of the two Lenovo IdeaPad U110 batteries.  Should the cable Internet connectivity go out which is a given in a power outage then I hope the Verizon EV-DO network stays up.  All three of those notebooks can use the v740 ExpressCard modem so I’d still have connectivity.  The fact is that in a hurricane all bets are off so I may find myself disconnected for an extended period.

I visited ereader.com and bought several books and downloaded them to the iPhone to make sure I don’t run out of something to read should everything go down.  The iPhone battery will last a full day of reading plus the Richard Solo Backup Battery will give another near full day before I run dry.  That’s one advantage to having an ebook reader instead of reading dead-tree books.  I can read even if the lights go out.

iPhone data erasure

Speaking of the iPhone I had something occur that has me believing there is a big problem with app upgrades through the App Store.  I have mentioned before that I am using the heck out of CarbonFin Outliner to prepare for articles that I have in progress.  I really like this outliner and I always have three or four active outlines going at any given time.  This week the App Store told me there was an upgrade for Outliner so I dutifully told iTunes to get it and installed it.  The first time I fired Outliner up after upgrading it I was distressed to see that all of my outlines were gone.  The only outline remaining in the data store was the sample outline that Outliner installs. 

Needless to say I lost a lot of work with the loss of my outlines.  Outliner is like other iPhone apps, since there is no user accessible file system on the iPhone the program stores user-created content local to the program itself.  When you upgrade the program it actually replaces the old version, data and all.  I have checked around and this happens on many iPhone applications that stores user data internally.  This is important to keep in mind before upgrading these programs if you want to avoid the data loss I experienced.  Had I been aware of this phenomenon I could have emailed the outlines in progress to myself and imported them back into the program after upgrading.  Live and learn.  This new version of Outliner deals with this data wipe affect by letting you sync your outlines to the cloud for retrieval after upgrading.  I have to remember to do that from now on.

See ya, Fujitsu

This week I sold the Fujitsu P1620 and it left for the new owner.  I hated to sell it as I enjoyed using that small Tablet PC but I have so much gear here at Mobile Tech Manor that I just couldn’t justify keeping it given that I wasn’t using it very much.  I regularly cycle through the various notebooks and other gear that I have but I have too many to get to the Fuji enough.  I hope the new owner gets as much enjoyment out of using the P1620 as I did.  I miss it already and that’s the truth.

Taking me to task

I have always been a big user of task lists, or to-do lists if you prefer that term.  I have long used the task list in Outlook to keep track of things I need to get done and to organize them in a way that focuses me on the job at hand.  Unfortunately while the Mac works with my Exchange Server it doesn’t do tasks meaning my task list was never in sync no matter what device I was using at the time.  The lack of task syncing on the Mac is carried over onto the iPhone so I got in a very bad habit of not using a task list religiously as I have always done.

Rtm

Remember The Milk web interface

Rtm_gmail_firefox_integration_2This week I tasked myself with coming up with a method to work with my tasks that transcends the platform and device I would be using at any given time.  I checked out several software systems and for the moment I have settled on Remember The Milk (RTM).  RTM is a web-based task system that is full featured yet simple to use. Since it’s web based I can use it on both the Mac and the Windows notebooks making it cross-platform.  It is icing on the cake that they have a Firefox extension that adds an RTM sidebar to the GMail web interface making it a snap to interact with tasks while working with email.  There is also a special URL that is formatted for work with the iPhone which seals the deal for me.  I am slowly getting back in the habit of keeping a good task list to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.  It’s amazing how fast you can get out of that habit.

Rtm_iphone

RTM iPhone interface

RTM has versions optimized for Blackberry, Windows Mobile in addition to the iPhone/ iPod Touch version which require a $25/ year Pro account.  They also have a slew of widgets and tools that work with just about every service you can think of.  I’m going to use RTM for a while and see if I like it enough to pay for the Pro version.

iTunes gets a Genius

Apple released an update for iTunes (8.0) that adds a new feature with some far-reaching possibilities.  The Genius Sidebar is a new feature that purports to learn what kind of music you like by analyzing your music library.  This allows iTunes to do two things: make a "Genius" playlist based on a seed song you indicate and suggest tunes to buy.  I have experimented with this a lot and it works well for me although I’ve spoken to some who find it awfully faulty.  I think it works well for me because I have over 2,500 songs in my iTunes library, a lot of which were purchased from the iTunes store.  It’s not clear why it’s working for some lucky folks like me but not for others.  The new Genius feature also is used to suggest songs you might like to buy from the iTunes store based on that seed song, but this seems to only work as well as the playlist feature.  I think when Apple gets this perfected so it works well for everyone they will sell a lot of tunes based on the Genius suggestion so it’s another gold mine for Cupertino.

This Genius feature could also play a role toward offering a subscription-based service that is rumored to be in the future.  If Apple were to allow you a download and listen to as many songs per month as you wished for a fee then you’d need some sort of ability to find music that you like.  Enter the Genius.  Those guys at Apple are always two steps ahead of us, aren’t they?

Playing with smartphones is fun

I got a chance to play with a couple of phones that have been floating around Mobile Tech Manor for a while and had a lot of fun.  The Nokia E71 is a very full-featured smartphone with enterprise written all over it (thus the E) yet it’s smaller than the iPhone.  The QWERTY keyboard feels very nice for tapping out emails and web URLs and the Profile switching from personal to work home page is pretty cool.  I am more impressed with the E71 the more I use it.

The other smartphone I have been playing with this week doesn’t impress me so much.  The mwg Zinc II is well constructed sure enough but it has a few things that bother me and I can’t get past them.  The first thing that bugs me is the QVGA display.  In this era of high-res displays on phones that resolution is just too low on the Zinc II.  Another thing that bugs me, and it REALLY bugs me is the lack of dedicated punctuation keys on the slide-out keyboard.  The keys are good enough for typing short email and the like but even the comma and period keys require the pressing of the Fn key first.  This is such a pain that it makes me very frustrated very fast.  Throw in the low user memory on the phone and the Zinc II is a pass for me.  I am impressed with the build quality and design of the Zinc II so I think MWG is a group to watch for future phones.

Book of the week

I finished Devil Bones by Kathy Reichs that I started last week and it was great.  I won’t give the story away but I still can’t believe the butler did it.  I am now knee-deep in Faces of Fear by John Saul.  Saul can create stories and characters that deeply disturb the reader and this is no exception.  I am enjoying the heck out of it so far.  It’s that serial killer thing again.

So long for this week

That pretty much wraps up this week at Mobile Tech Manor.  I am settling down nicely into this writing gig and am still surprised how much writing I can get done in a week.  I’m glad you stopped by for this visit, come back next week and we’ll do it again.  I have to go now and tie the dog down so he doesn’t blow away.  Peace out.

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