Demian's Blog

Recommended reading

• Control of Cables | Cocoanetics – The Devil's Horn technique for wrapping up Apple earbuds seems great, will be testing it over next few weeks.
• The coolest kindergarten ever: iPad 2s for everyone –

Just in time for the Royal Wedding, check out our latest iPad app, Kings and Queens, currently featured by Apple as the iPad App of the Week.

The app features interactive timelines of the history of the British monarchy, family trees, maps and video commentary by David Starkey to guide you through the app.

I found it worth to watch the whole 30 mins of this video.  Great app and these guys really get the platform and its potential.  Bit of an impedance mismatch between 955 Dreams and Scoble, but even that’s funny to watch.

I’ve had a lot of problems with Mobile Me syncing my data over the last few months and finally took some time to sit down and fix it. When you spontaneously lose contacts and appointments it can get quite annoying.

If you’re unsure if you have sync problems here are a few telltale signs:

• you’re seeing the same appointments multiple times in the calendar
• multiple contacts
• when you select Groups in the Contacts app, you see multiple sources for the same groups
• when you select Calendars in iCal or the Calendar app, you also see multiple sources

The first thing you need to know which is not at all obvious is that if you are a Mobile Me subscriber, ie you pay your $60/year, you should NOT enable ’sync calendar’ and ’sync contacts’ in iTunes. The two processes are redundant. And if you have a Mac desktop, laptop, iPhone and/or iPad, the results can be disastrous, trust me In addition, you may sync single devices to multiple computers, I find it’s necessary, this creates even worse results. I have the case where my laptop is the master when it comes to photos, because that’s something you want to always have to hand, but my Mini is the master for music, because you can always sync to a device before you go out on the road.

So after you connect your devices (eg, iPhone and iPad) to the multiple computers you sync to and deselect the ’sync contacts’ and ’sync calendars’ options, then hit sync, you will be offered the option to remove the synced data – accept.

At this point your data will not be fixed yet.  In my case the syncing problems caused problematic data sets on my iPhone and iPad.  The trick here is a surprising one.  In the Settings, app, select

> Mail, Contacts, Calendars >Your Mobile Me account

and turn your contacts off.  This will remove the incorrectly synced data on your device, and allow you to set it up again properly.

In my case I was sure that the master copy of my data, ie contacts from Address Book and appointments from iCal, were correct on my laptop, my main machine.  Just to be safe I took a backup before proceeding.

Back on the iPhone, you can now set the contacts switch back to on, and your data will be synced properly.

Recommended reading

• » Android & iPhone App Design: Is it twice the work? Johnny Holland – It’s all about interaction » Blog Archive – A very interesting article detailing the difference in interaction models between the iPhone and Android phones
• IT BEGINS: Apple’s iPads Are Invading The Corporate Market And Killing Microsoft’s Laptops – A lot of corporate buzz over iPads recently, this is good news
• Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Explored and Explained by Pianist and Music Historian David Dubal – WSJ.com – An interesting bit of background on Chopin’s preludes.

Recommended reading

• Inkling – Interactive textbooks for iPad. – A very slick app, definitely check it out
• Vincent D’Onofrio – I’ve always really liked D’Onofrio on Law & Order, interesting to read about his background
• Motorola Snaps Up 280 North For $20 Million – Man I’ve following these guys for ages, can’t help but think the acquisition won’t bode well for the project. Quite an interesting indicator how hot the mobile space is, espec. since Capp is well known to perform like a dog on mobile devices

Recommended reading

• Yahoo! ‘Delivers’ Mail Optimized for iPad | Y! Mobile Blog – One of the better html5 iPad apps I’ve seen to date, even works pretty well offline.
• Price of porting iPhone applications to Android and its adaptation for iPad | The VIactivity Team(Danex Solutions Inc). Iphone, iPad, Android software solutions – Quite a good overview of the cost of porting iPhone apps to Android and iPad
• Apple rejecting apps that require user registration first? – Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come

Recommended reading

• Kindle and iPad Displays: Up close and personal. | BIT-101 – I didn’t think to take such a close look at a Kindle
• Macsimum News – Greg’s bite: How to publish an Apple iBook – How to publish your own book onto iBooks
• How Oracle might kill Google’s Android and software patents all at once — RoughlyDrafted Magazine – You want a conspiracy theory about how Oracle is planning a death wish for Google – here it is
• Straight Dope on the IPod’s Birth – Fascinating article detailing the conception and birth of the iPod
• Snow Leopard: This Cat Has Fleas – An interesting discussion of some serious bugs that still exist in OS X 10.6 or Snow Leopard
• Mail.app: Showing my sent messages in thread view – Super User – Jeez that’s a useful tip!