MILE

A few years ago when my last employer managed to get duped into bankruptcy I decided to do my own thing for a while. So I started doing consulting work for ad agencies and other companies, trainings and seminars, translations and localizations, wrote a few articles for magazines and blogs occasionally and whatever else seemed interesting and challenging. Even though I usually enjoyed what I did I never really focussed on something or took the time to come up with a decent plan for the future, it was always supposed to be a temporary gig anyway. And now this phase has actually come to an end: a few days ago I signed a contract with an interesting new IT startup here in Munich. They have a promising business model with lots of potential and I am certain that it will be a fun challenge building that new company together with its founders and leading it to success.

Of course I am going to miss the many benefits of being self-employed, being my own boss, having (almost) total control of my time and being able to choose my projects but in the bigger picture I know that it was the right decision for me, although only time will really tell. That being said, I’m looking forward to being part of something new and exciting again really soon but until next Monday I still have a few days to enjoy the weather, the Munich beergardens, a BBQ with friends and whatever else I feel like doing before it’s time to get serious again!

Man, I used to have the biggest celebrity crush ever back then on that girl…!

And somehow I still kinda do…

Even though I haven’t really blogged as much lately as I would have liked to I still enjoy using Posterous whenever I feel the need to post a few words or get something off my chest. Unfortunately the future of Posterous Spaces is currently uncertain since they have been aquired by Twitter. Maybe everything will stay the same, maybe they will even continue to improve and advance the service but experience tells me that’s rather unlikely. Sooner or later they will probably shut down the service and incorporate the staff into the Twitter team and all of us Posterous users will be forced to move somewhere else. Right now I don’t really know where I’d go to but I do know one thing: I don’t ever want the hassle of running a self-hosted blog. Never again.

Actually I’d love to just move all my virtual stuff (or what’s left of it) over to Squarespace, set it all up there and be done with it. But my current state of writing actuvity just doesn’t justify a paid service, no matter how convenient it may be. So for now I have set up two mirrors of my Posterous Space, one on Wordpress and one on Blogger. This serves two main purposes: 1. I have a redundant backup of my posts, which is always a good thing. 2. Whenever Posterous decides to shut down I don’t even have to bother about exporting anything, I can just move over to one of those other services and pick up right there. And the “Autopost” feature in Posterous (one of the reasons I like this service) makes it easy to keep those two mirrors constantly up-to-date by crossposting everything directly on there.

So while I would love for Posterous to stay alive and active and even grow and expand I think I am well prepared for whatever its future may hold.

Oh man, where do I begin? Maybe by telling you that the last few hours have been the worst user experience I’ve had in a very very long time! And that comes from someone who has been dealing with computers for the last 25+ years, going back to DOS and Win 2.1, early Macs, Amigas and what not. Anyway, here’s what’s happening:

Last night I bought an HP Deskjet 3070A to replace the HP Photosmart printer that kept rejecting the black ink cartridge after a while, again and again. And even though I’ve been using (and even recommending) HP printers for a long time now that last one actually made me think I should buy some other brand this time. But since I have all kinds of iOS devices here and the HP printers basically still are the only ones supporting AirPrint I caved and bought another one — the HP 3070A this time. I’ve unpacked that hellish piece of hardware almost six hours ago and have struggled with it for the last five or so! 

After having installed the cartridges I downloaded the latest software from the HP website, installed it and configured the printer for wireless usage. Everything seemed to be going well. I then ran Apple’s own Software Update and it showed me that there was an update for the HP printer drivers available so I installed that as well. Everything still worked fine. I tried printing over the network and it worked fine. Thus far it had been a painless procedure. Then I tried out to print to it from the iPad — and the pain and torture began!

First the iPad just showed that it couldn’t find any available AirPrint devices. I thought it might be some small glitch and went back to the Mac OS X Print Center to check the printer again only to realize that even though it showed up there as connected it really wasn’t. When I tried to check ink status it said there was no information available. When I tried to print it told me the printer wasn’t connected. The HP Utility app did communicate with the printer only to tell me that it was an unknown device. The only thing that solved this problem was removing the printer from Print Center, then restarting it and then adding it back again. Then I tried scanning through Print Center and as soon as I tried to change the scan settings the app totally froze and had to be force-quit. Which again led to the printer showing up but not being reachable, then having to be deleted, restarted and re-added once again. Basically every time anything went wrong - which it did a lot - I had to do these steps all over again. Like whenever I changed something and gave AirPrint another try the printer started playing dead all over. Again and again. I had no idea why trying to print to it from an iOS device totally kills the stupid thing. And I had no idea why it wouldn’t show up on any of my iOS devices either

Then I started browsing the HP support forums and found some recommendations about updating the firmware of the wireless router, setting it to channel 11 and what not, so I did that as well. Although I really thought to myself that people should even have to do that — if everything else on the network runs just fine except for the HP printer it’s not the router’s fault, it’s the printers. Also the majority of users wouldn’t even know what to do, they’d just want things to work. Which they didn’t. But anyway, I did all the router setup and so on but it made no difference: AirPrint still didn’t work and trying to use it still killed the printer completely forcing me to delete it, restart it, add it again. And again. Now I was really getting frustrated. Not only was I not able to use AirPrint (the only reason why I bought the printer in the first place) but every attempt to do so made it completely unusable and lead to a laborious revival process!

While I was trying all kinds of setup variations I received a reply to my rant in the HP forums by an HP employee nicknamed “PrintDoc” who tried to help me solve the problems. First he also went on about the importance of having the right firmware on all devices, which I did. But again I thought to myself why would I have to bother wit that in the first place?! Anyway, then he came up with his actual suggestion: “Finally, if that does not fix it, let’s set a static IP address and its own DNS for the printer.” Are you freakin’ kidding me?!

Even though I really appreciated his help (and I honestly did) his suggestion really stunned me at first. A manual IP address for the printer? Its own DNS?! Really?! People shouldn’t have to do things like that nowadays. And while I am tech-savvy enough to do it I had to wonder what the many many regular users out there were supposed to do.

Anyway, despite my reluctance and frustration I wanted to give this a try so I did it, followed his instructions to the letter and actually assigned a manual IP address and a separate DNS to the printer. Rebooted everything and then tried again. Would you like to know what had changed? Nothing!

Every single iOS device still showed that there was no AirPrint device available, I still couldn’t print over AirPrint, every single attempt to do so still made the printer totally unresponsive, forcing me to restart it and usually delete and add it again.

Does anyone at HP seriously think that this is an acceptable user experience?! I hope not. Something like this shouldn’t be so hard. It just shouldn’t. It’s not like I’m expecting the damn thing to make me pancakes, I just want to use one of its main features, one that’s advertised on the box, a feature that Apple has been recommending HP for ever since they introduced AirPrint. But I can’t. I’m sure that many geeks out there enjoy fiddling with all kinds of network settings but there’s a time and a place for that kind of “fun” and this is not it.

Anyway, just because I seem to be bored and kinda masochistic I fiddled around some more and here’s the grand finale:

First I actually changed the IP address again and rebooted everything and while AirPrint still wasn’t available on any iOS device now at least trying to use it didn’t make the printer unusable from the Mac, it “stuck” now — but that’s all.

While trying all kinds of other options I then used the printer’s web interface to de-activate Bonjour services and then re-activate them again — and for the first time ever it showed up on an iOS device! And for the first time ever I was able to print to it via AirPrint using an iOS device! And that was it. I was able to do it once! Every other attempt either resulted in a message that the printer wasn’t available or it just attempted to print but nothing ever happened. After restarting the printer I was able to repeat the whole procedure: it showed up on the iOS devices again, I could print to it, just once. As soon as I tried again it failed. Every single time.

I would say that I have really tried everything humanly possible (and probably more) and when every other component within the network functions flawlessly except for the printer it’s not the Mac’s fault, it is not the router’s fault, it is not a problem with any of the iOS devices — it’s the printer that isn’t working properly and causing all these problems. It just is.

No AirPrint is still a dealbreaker and all this hassle and frustration has worn me down, so this thing goes back to the store first thing in the morning. As I said before this shouldn’t be so hard. It just shouldn’t. I will return this clunker and either just get my money back or buy some other printer, I don’t know. What I do know is that this was my last HP printer ever. I’ve been a loyal customer for 15+ years but they’ve finally lost me.

It still blows my mind though that stuff like this is still happening today. And I just don’t get the attitude of those support officials in the HP forums either. While I do appreciate their (attempted) assistance nobody ever said something like “Yeah, that’s really bad and it shouldn’t be happening. We’re sorry and we’ll try to fix that.” Instead their idea of a solution is to blame it on the the router and have the user fiddle around with web interfaces, network settings, IP address setup and what not!? Really?! Call me a fanboy but man, I really wish Apple would still make their own printers…

Ever since the developers of Sparrow for the Mac teased an upcoming iPhone version of their mail client many users have been eagerly waiting for its release. Well, it’s here now and it’s really, really nice. And I won’t be making it my default mail app anyway.

First of all I actually like Apple’s Mail app and I think it gets the job done so I don’t really feel a need to switch to another solution. Not only that but no matter how nice other apps may be or how many additional features they might have, no 3rd party app will ever be as integrated into the OS as Apple’s own native apps. Add the inconsistency of possibly having different mail apps on the iPhone and iPad and that’s more than enough for me not to move all my email accounts over to Sparrow.

Oh, and then there’s one more thing: the current version of Sparrow has no push ability, which is also kind of a dealbreaker for me. Yes, I know, Apple hasn’t allowed them to include it (yet) but it’s a checkmark on the negative side anyway.

Just as its Mac counterpart though Sparrow handles Gmail accounts way better than Apples Mail app does, so if you’re a hardcore Google user or even if you just like nice and aesthetically pleasing apps you might want to give Sparrow a try. It may not be for me but it just migh be right for you.

Okay, so the title may sound a little arrogant and jobsian because, after all, who am I to tell you how to use an app, right?! OINK is gaining lots of users every day and buzzing with activity, so what am I complaining about?! Well, here’s the point: From my understanding — and also by Kevin Rose’s description in the launch video — the idea behind the app is for people to go out and discover and rate things at all kinds of places. So you go to a store and find (and oink) a cool shirt, you go to a sandwich place and see what others have enjoyed there, you find this amazing new cupcake store and tell others about it. Sounds like a fun and useful way to discover things around you and let others know what you liked at certain places. I like that.

Unfortunately, people have instead instantly turned the whole thing into a GetGlue clone by oinking basically everything they can get their hands on or even think of! It may be tempting, but I really think you’re not supposed to oink the web browser on your Mac, even though you may love it. You shouldn’t rate every single movie you’ve ever watched on Oink either, there’s a load of other apps for that kind of info. Nobody cares that Seinfeld is your favorite show ever, at least not on OINK! It’s great that you love photography but how is that of any use to your followers?! This level of generalization is generating a huge amount of useless buzz that’s totally messing up everyones timeline and watering down the actual information about fun new places and things.

Maybe I’m totally wrong about the whole thing though, who knows?! Feel free to tell me if and why you think I might be. But the way I see it right now this is not what the app was meant for and if it continues OINK will lose its appeal as fast as it has rocketed up the app charts in the iTunes store. Which is kinda sad, because I actually liked the original idea…

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 Apple added a new support document that deals with the “Mac Defender” malware — which is NOT a virus but a trojan based phishing attempt that targets unexperienced users…! Interesting sidenote:

In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants.  The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware.