Tag Archives: Mac

How to publish pictures from Picasa 3.6 (Mac) to Gallery 2

Posted on by
2

Before I switched to my Mac I used a custom button in Picasa to publish pictures to my Gallery 2 site. Installing this on a Mac is little bit more complex…

This is what I did (please read it first, before you try it yourself):

  • read the thread about this custom button
  • noticed that the Mac version of Picasa is not mentioned at all
  • downloading the first zip file and storing it in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Picasa3/buttons does not work (as a folder, zipped, zipped and renamed to pbz did not work)
  • installed the install file in the post from aquanox24 (2008-08-27 08:48): picasa://importbutton/?url=http://efehn.de/files/efehn_de.pbz
  • this will install a button that publishes pictures to efehn.de
  • Go to the folder: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Picasa3/buttons
  • rename efehn_de.pbz to yoursitename.pbz.zip
  • double click the zip file to extract the contents
  • open the folder yoursitename.pbz
  • open the .pbf file in a text editor
  • change all the references to efehn.de into the correct site name
  • change the url param into the correct URL. This is a very important step!
  • save the file
  • remove the original .pbz.zip file
  • right click the folder and select Compress “foldername“
  • rename the .pbz.zip file to .pbz
  • start Picasa
  • Voila! your custom uploading button is finished.

Please check all the prerequisites on the site (see the forum thread for relevant links).

Syncing an Sony Ericsson S500i with a Mac (and with Google contacts)

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday I wanted to sync an Sony Ericsson S500i with an iMac (OS X 10.5).

Unfortunately, out-of-the box this phone is not supported by iSync. After some searching on the Internet I found a solution.

I downloaded a plugin from this blog. The location to put the plugin as mentioned on this blog did not work however.

It turned out that the plugin needed to be put in another location (/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/). This information was found here.

After this syncing worked perfectly with the phone. Additionally I want to sync the address book with Google Contacts as well. For this a small hack was needed (which can be found here). Normally the option to sync with Google is only available when the Mac has synced with an iPhone or iPod touch before.

Missing software on my Mac: eWallet

Posted on by
Reply

For quite some time I have been using eWallet. First on my PocketPC in combination with my desktop. Then after a few years on my iPhone in combination with my Windows desktop. Recently I have switched to a Mac and eWallet is not yet available for the Mac. Ok, they are working on it and there even is a preview of the upcoming Mac version, but this is not as useful as e.g. the full Windows version.

Search and synchronization with my iPhone does not work. Copy and paste also does not seem to work. Now I know how much I was depending on this piece of software. Every time I manually copy a complex generated password I wish their Mac version was finished ;-)

Mozy backup for Mac – Where is my backup data?

Posted on by
1

Yesterday I did a very interesting discovery. Mozy backup was finished and the status screen mentioned that about 30GB had been backed up.

Wait a minute… only 30GB?!? I was expecting about 330GB!

So I started my investigation.

I have a Mac Mini with Snow Leopard. I am not sure about what version I am using. I assume the most current version ;-) . According to the log file the version is: 1.6.0.48085.

When I opened ” Mozy home”  and checked the history I noticed something weird: at a specific moment in time (about a week ago) the backup size was reduced by 300GB! This occurred after a message indicating that the backup had not finished.

Hmmm, then I went online. I logged on to the Mozy website. There I went to the restore screen. When selecting ” all dates” all backup data was visible as expected. However, when I selected the current date, i.e. 26 January, some folders were missing. Also the size of the online backup set was greatly reduced. Please see the images below.

The missing folders are my pictures that are stored on an external drive. I do a local network backup of these files, but as a secondary backup I use Mozy as well. If for example my house would burn down I would have still have a backup.

So the files on my external drive were not considered to be part of the current backup set anymore. Well, that is according to the site. Then I went to check the configuration in Mozy home. Then I was totally flabbergasted: in the client the folders on my external drive were marked for backup. The icon used was actually green. As a simple user I would consider this to be ok. Fortunately I was very eager to get to the bottom of this.

I decided to contact support. On the site there is a link to chat with support from Mozy. This is a feature that I have never used on a website before. Within seconds I was explaining the problem. The support engineer checked my account and listened to my explanation. His suggestion was to open Mozy home and to empty and mark the checkbox for this folder again. His diagnosis was that somehow my external drive must have been disconnected during one of the backup operations. I know that my external drive is always connected when my Mac is on. But of course something might have gone wrong one day.

So, I did what he suggested. It started backing up all the files again. Well, “relinking” the files actually. Since the files were still available online they were not actually transferred again. If this error would have occurred more than 30 days ago I would have had to spend several weeks backing up my files again.

This morning there was a mail from the support guy asking whether my situation was resolved. I indicated that the backup was at 80% and that his suggestion seemed to work. I also indicated that I think that this behavior is a very serious error in this kind of application. The backup software is used as a sort of insurance. Fire and forget. Unfortunately it should be monitored very carefully to prevent data loss since the software is not resilient enough to deal with this.

I would expect at least a very, very, very clear error message indicating what happened and what it means for my backed up files! Or even better, the software should be able to deal with external drives, USB sticks, etc. even if they are not always present in the system. If they are not present it does not mean the files have been deleted and as such can be removed from the online backup set.

So I did a feature request/suggestion. Let’s see how it works out.

My current opinion about Mozy:

  • Service: ++
  • Reliability of Windows client: +
  • Reliability of Mac client: +/-

Transfer from PC to Mac – Mozy

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, the Time Machine backup of my huge pictures collection was completed. So I decided to install Mozy’s Mac client software (http://www.mozy.com).

Mozy is an online backup solution. It provides “unlimited” backup storage online. I say unlimited because I am currently using about 330GB of storage.

You have to pay for each computer you use Mozy on. When buying a new computer it is possible to transfer the account to a new computer. Then it is no longer possible to backup from the old computer. On the new computer you can then restore the previously backed up files or of course configure the backup from scratch.

This functionality is not available when transferring cross platform, e.g. from Windows to Mac. And indeed, the client software returned an error when I selected to transfer my account.

To resolve this I logged on to the Mozy website and deleted my old computer. It warned me that all my data would be removed. I must admit it was a bit scary, but I confirmed.

Then I configured the Mozy client on my Mac and left it running for the night. This morning I noticed that it made huge progress: it already backed up 45% of 335GB of files!! I calculated that with a speed of around 750kb/s it would take around six weeks to complete. Now it is at 83%.

Somehow it must compare the newly backed up files with my old files (that should have been deleted, right?!?) and preventing them from actually re-uploading. That is a very nice solution. I remember it took weeks to complete the initial backup when I first started using the software.

Probably it remembers the deleted files for a period of time as someone suggested. But I did not expect this beforehand.

Way to go, Mozy!