July 2008
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Month July 2008

Entries 4 Total

Wallet has corrupted my data for the last time.

Jul 31, 2008 10:00 PM

For quite a while, I’ve been an advocate of the wallet/data security application “Wallet” by Waterfall Software for OS X. It has a quick and simple interface with great security and is very reasonably priced at $14.95. However, over the two years or so I’ve used it, it’s been a smooth ride other than for the fact that it will randomly refuse to open my .wallet database. Since I’m usually rather proactive with backups in SuperDuper, I could quickly revert back to a working version and shrug it off as a random computer glitch. It’s not like Microsoft Word or Pages hasn’t eaten an important paper once or twice before…

Early last week, the same problem occurred again – however I do not have the luxury of a recent backup to revert to. My most recent was from the beginning of June and I had made significant changes to the entries in the database since then. I emailed customer support from the Wallet developers and ten days later, I’ve heard absolutely nothing. As such, I’ve spent the better part of a day resetting various passwords via e-mail and reentering data into my new password/data management application of choice, 1Password.

1Password takes a much more logical approach to storing this data. It uses the existing secure keychain feature of OS X and repurposes that in a powerful interface. In my week of toying with it, it has worked quite well and is looks like it will be far more flexible a solution than Wallet for organizing and securing data. To migrate the old backup over, I exported the database as a tab-defined text file and imported it into 1Password. A cursory amount of reformatting of the data fields and notes and I’m good to go. My only concern is the GUI isn’t as pleasing to the eye as most other applications for OS X, but it could look like Lotus Notes on OS 9 for all I care as long as it works reliably.

My advice is that other Wallet users out there either keep ridiculously frequent backups of their database or to switch over the 1Password. I have no regrets at all about purchasing 1Password which is more than I can say about Wallet.

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Apple iPhone – Cancel or allow?

Jul 22, 2008 10:28 PM

Allow, obviously.Oh, on second thought, don’t allow. I opened the mapping application and clicked the locate button because I actually wanted to be asked if I want to allow this application to know where I am. Yes, thanks. Apple recently mocked Windows Vista’s UAC security implementation, but the quirks of the new location-based are adding a pseudo-UAC experience on the iPhone.

Fix it, Apple.

On the other hand, I’m not having nearly as bad a time as most others are reporting with the new software and third-party applications. I’ve only had one random crash which happened with the WHERE application, but otherwise it’s been smooth sailing. The finance application from Bloomberg is fantastic – it gives charts and stock quotes alongside their news headlines in a simple and speedy interface. It’s one of the few that doesn’t seem to be simply a mobile-optimized website as its own application (I’m looking at you – BofA Mobile Banking). Here’s hoping that iPhone 2.1 software is released with a slew of bug fixes before I buy my iPhone 3G.

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iPhone 2.0 Software and the App Store

Jul 20, 2008 11:36 AM

    

‘iPhone Dev Team‘ released the latest version of their Pwnage Tool yesterday which meant that I could finally upgrade my iPhone 2G to the 2.0 firmware. With the 2.0 firmware comes the biggest addition, the App Store – which allows third party applications developed through the iPhone SDK to run on users phones. Free and paid applications are available and the starting line-up of software is actually rather good.

Thus far, I’ve installed AIM, AOL Radio, Bloomberg News, Bank of America Mobile Banking, Evernote, Facebook, Mobile News by AP, NetNewsWire, Pandora, Remote, Twitterrific, Where, Whrrl and Yelp. In the short time I’ve played around with it, it seems that Bloomberg, Pandora and Remote will be the most useful. Bloomberg’s application offers a better way to interface with their news stories and market data (with support for landscape charting!). Pandora is a user-friendly client for the Pandora online radio service which works wonderfully. Lastly, Remote is an application from Apple that allows one to remotely control their iTunes library or Apple TV from the iPhone.

The firmware itself has been rather stable albeit a bit more sluggish that 1.1.4 but I assume that will be fixed in time. This software update will hold me over until I can buy the iPhone 3G (16GB white, yo).

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Solution: Bouncing Dock Icon for Pwnage Tool 2

Jul 20, 2008 9:02 AM

Are you having an issue where the PwnageTool from the iPhone dev-team simply will not launch on your computer? For many, it just bounces in the dock for about three minutes and then does absolutely nothing (it sticks around in the dock except you will not see the open application indicator under it). This seems to be affecting primarily MacBook and MacBook Pro owners but it also is failing on some older PowerPC equipment.

It’s a pretty easy fix although.

Open ‘Activity’ Manager and show all processes (even root)
Quit the process named ‘ps’ (you will be asked for admin privileges)

You should do this while the PwnageTool is open. Also, you will need to ensure the folders \<user>\Library\iTunes\Device Support and \<user>\Library\iTunes\iTunes Software Updates  exist on your machine.

To be quite honest, I’m not certain what the ‘ps’ process does and you should always take cautiou when fiddling with processes on your machines; however I have used this will no ill effects however I did restart once I finished ‘pwning’ the phone. Good luck!

EDIT (7/21): This bug has since been fixed in version 2.0.1, read here.

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