I had not been able to synchronize between Outlook calendar and contacts and iPhone for about 6 months.
due to email security issues I had my email coming in to a crappy webmail reader and was using Google’s calendar.

After 6 months of dysfunctional scheduling I was quite ready to have this work again. We migrated out email hosting,
I got Outlook installed a week or two ago and found out that Google no longer supports Google Sync, now what?
Googled a fair bit in the afternoon. Realized I’ll just have to try iCloud (and may try CodeTwo Sync) to make this work.

WARNING: You may want to consolidate your things in one calendar in Outlook first…
WARNING2: There are actually multiple calendars on your iPhone. My tasks on iPhone calendar would by default go to
a mail account I haven’t used in a while, is fwding to another email address.
WARNING3: After this exercise I am almost ready to go back to a paper calendar, contact book and Walkman again…

Quit Outlook
download and install iCloud Control Panel: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455?referrer=iTunes11.0.1&viewlocale=en_US
sign in with apple id and pwd
allowed to send anonymous diagnostics to Apple
push contacts, calendar, tasks, bookmarks, photostream to iCloud.
I turned off bookmarks and photostream
I did not create an iCloud email address to use iCloud mail w Outlook.
Apply…..
I choose to upload regular Calendar, and ingridjanse@comcast.net, Contacts. Not tasks (we’re using TeamWorkPM for that)
2702 items takes about 12 seconds
Calendar takes a bit longer 20-25 seconds
notice of items that cannot be uploaded to iCloud. Keep them in Outlook. Edit and upload later. Yes sure.
Keep
uploaded 4 of 4 photos, though I unselected Photo Stream. Wonder what it uploaded.
Setup is complete. Could not upload 9 items, have been saved in local folders. Learn more… sure.

Decided to move my iTunes out of a folder on my phone. When I hit apply, it started syncing my phone.
We’ll see how it goes… all or nothing
Need to authorize puter for apps. Yes.
Wah! I already have 5 computers authorized. Need to de-authorize a previous computer.
Help.
Can’t deauthorize previous computers? Whaat? http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1420?viewlocale=en_US

Deauthorize a computer which is no longer functional. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4705521
Log in to iTunes,  go to “view your account info” on the itunes store, deauthorise all five,
(Please Note: this can only be done Once every 12 months)  and then re-authorize your current Computer(s) one at a time.

Can’t see a list, just have to deauthorize all. Then Store | Authorize this computer
success.

Select iPhone in iTunes
Info – sync
Apps – sync
Music – sync
Yes, erase and sync
my phone can’t hold all of the music (I’m blaming hubby Tim).
Ok, deselect music videos, voice memos, and select artists. 958 songs.
Leaving 4GB free.
Let’s try syncing again.
Waiting… waiting…
Sync session failed to start.
Double check my sanity. Phone still has all its music.
Try again.

Still not enough space? Says I need 3.35GB though it’s status bar showing 4GB free.
Disconnect and reconnect phone from puter.
No, do not update to iOS 6.1
No, don’t want to import pics. Cancel.
Syncing is automatically starting again. Stil says not enough space.
Under iPhone summary, change Options setting to Sync only checked songs and videos.
Try again
Still nogo.

Time to google

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1503

turn off sync music in iTunes
sync
turn sync music back on, yay it remembered my selection.
apply
sync
step 4 of 4, waiting for changes to be applied
Copying!!! woot!!
taking about 10min to copy music.
(writing more notes, closing about 15 tabs in browser)

Is done. Checking my phone.
Ok music good.
calendar looks the same
think contacts look ok

finishing iCloud Control Panel install
checking to see if iCloud status show up in Notification Area. Is not. Pinning to start menu.

Going to icloud.com
After a refresh, calendars are showing, contacts
Where is the music? Have no clue, right now I don’t care.

…going to get a glass of wine.

The post Where is my Walkman? appeared first on eDao.

We’ve been building a writing/editing/publishing tool with ECT. It was used to publish a kindle book last summer that’s selling nicely. In December, for the first time, it was used to publish a book in Kindle, paperback and hard-cover editions: The Ants and The Coffee Pot. pressWoodInk was asked to appear at a publishing panel and local book fair. In ten days, Ants went from a dozen image files and a copy of the text to being available for purchase in all three formats. The book even has a book trailer on YouTube. A few weeks later, another book was published with ECT: City Limit (GrandViaduct). For us, it’s gravy that they’re great titles with striking covers. It’s doesn’t hurt that people are doing great work with our technology.

I mention covers for another reason. Amazon doesn’t want covers to appear at the front of books. Some people have found a way to force the cover to appear at the front. But, it has what’s called the double cover issue: the cover appears twice. We discovered a way to deliver what readers expect: to pick up a book, see the cover and then open to the beginning of the book. And we rolled that into our technology.

And, I’m now using a release of Nootcards day to day. I open it on my phone, tap create and then tap in my notes, maybe give it a title. Nothing exciting… yet. The first big innovation is chai. Chai let’s you socialize with yourself. Tap and a nootcard becomes an email or a task in Teamwork. Later: a dropbox file, calendar item, blog entry, Tweet. If I tap email, it asks for an email address and delivers the nootcard by email. If I choose teamwork, it asks me which project, what task list and what date to start and then delivers it to Teamwork for me. When I choose WordPress, it will ask me which blog (say a WordPress one) and when do I want it released. This won’t replace those other programs but it will let me do many simple things much faster. As we add support for Calendars, WordPress and Twitter, it’s going to become a hub driving, creating my world.

The post Officer, those really arn’t my skidmarks. Really. appeared first on eDao.

Breaks means, of course, that it used to work. That’s what you want back. With websites and web applications, that “used to work” is the combination of what the people who host your website provide and your website. Usually the people who host your website will also back it up. So, some disasters, are simply a matter of calling them and asking them to restore it from their backups

Except when they can’t or won’t. The company that, at the time of the attack, hosted one of our customer’s sites didn’t restore the website and our login until almost a month after the attack. I don’t think they were hanging out at the pub trading stories instead of handling our trouble ticket. Or maybe they were. Either way, if your website is down for almost a month, you’ve got a problem.

Going forward, part of ours is providing independent restoration of those websites. In other words, if their support people can’t be reached, we can restore things. And, if they’re completely down, we can restore the website to a completely different website. And in about the same time.

Now for the fun bit. Even if “the bad guy” (yes I’m enjoying putting that in quotes) gets inside the walls, destroys the hosting company and takes us out, too, there’s Plan C (or Plan 9…).

Google actually keeps a copy of every page it indexes. If people can find your site, Google has cached part or all of it. And you can pull it out.

The post Apocalypse Now appeared first on eDao.

We’ve have better methods to protect sites and, when things happen, we’re better prepared to clean things and bring them back.

We learned a whole bag of new tricks to secure websites. It’s impressive what’s possible. At this point, we could literally write a book. Perhaps Security Best Practices for WordPress.

But, that’s really only one piece. Last year, I read an article about how they approach take to security in Africa. Our approach is to build the strongest castle possible to keep “the bad guys” out. In Africa, companies often don’t have the resources to pay to build those castles. They assume the bad guys will get in. They’re right. Sometimes “the bad guy” is one of the employees. Or “the bad guy” convinces an employee they’re the server repairman. Or, ”the bad guy” finds the security hole that only shows up at low tide under a full moon that allows him to crawl through the castle wall.

If the castle walls won’t keep ”the bad guy” out, what do you do when it happens?

The post Clean up appeared first on eDao.

Now for a little personal political commentary. As they say, eDao, Inc., it’s employees, owners, affiliates and lackeys are not responsible for what follows. Me, myself and I are responsible for the opinions that follow.

One of the two  sites —GrandViaduct.com— was replaced with a message of protest “against disrespect of the prophet Mohammad”.

The image is cropped because you can guess a lot of the rest (and because I’m not going to give this site cracker any credit).

What I will do is draw a contrast with Anonymous. Anonymous targets their actions. They don’t declare war against the world, they declare it against a specific company, group government. Sticking with that war analogy, they’re following one of the core tenets of the laws of war: you don’t attack non-combatants.

On the other hand, this type of attacker is blasting anything and everything; whether or not they’re involved. He or she apparently missed the fact that the filmmaker is now in prison for what amounts to fraud related to making the Innocence of the Muslims. The U.S. government condemned the video.It’s a bad piece of video and a good case has been made that the “filmmaker’s” purpose was to enrage people and cause exactly what happened.

“Protests” like the one posted to GrandViaduct’s website don’t work. If you disagree with bozos like those behind the Innocence of the Muslims, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, etc., enable you to convince people.

Me, I just got convinced to pepper this post with the title of a stupid video. Because I can. And because what I just did is more likely to convince people. Of what? That both those who make videos like Innocence of the Muslims and those trashing non-combatant websites are wrong.

The “filmmaker” is paying for his crime. If there’s a balance to these things, “protestors” who target non-combatants will, too. Who knows, maybe the warden can shack them up together. And then can they work out their differences in person..

The post Posts I don’t like doing appeared first on eDao.

Yesterday, received an email from one of our clients whose site I set up with Job Manager. They are a government contractor outfit and landed a large contract this summer. Hence, it was time to update their site with a job manager thingy. The email was a forward from an upset applicant – upset rightfully so: his resume was publicly available and was showing on Google.

Da’s no good! After poking around on Google a bit, found some postings on wordpress support, specifically  ‘how to protect media uploads folder‘ . Found the one bit where the poster, wwhitehead, made the brilliant suggestion to add an .htaccess file to the /wp-content/uploads directory which blocks ANY outside access to the uploaded files.

So, we did that. And had a little fun with it. Try this, and note the URL when you get there: A BLOCKED FILE

Ahh, as my husband said: there are a few times when this job is fun, and this is one of them.

oh, and for you coders: here the .htaccess (for yahoo.com, use what you wish):

IndexIgnore * 
Options +FollowSymlinks 
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?myprotectedmemberssite\.com/ 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !hotlink\.(gif|png|jpg|doc|xls|pdf|html|htm|xlsx|docx) 
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|png|jpg|doc|xls|pdf|html|htm|xlsx|docx)$ http://yahoo.com/ 

The post Turning sour grapes into fun redirects appeared first on eDao.