As many of you may know, historically Apple updates have had a tendency to break BMW iDrive communicating with iPhones to sync contacts and make/receive calls.

Apple’s latest update, iPhone 3.0, is launched today (17th June 2009) and I thought I’d let you all know that I’ve had iPhone 3.0 up and running on my iPhone 3G a little early. I’m happy to report that over the last 7 days the iPhone has been working flawlessly with my BMW iDrive, all contacts have been syncing and calls received and made without any issues.

So rest assured you can update your iPhone software to iPhone 3.0 and continue to drive safely with your iPhone fully connected to your iDrive.

]]> http://blog.scoopz.com/2009/06/16/iphone-3-0-and-bmw-idrive-its-all-still-working/feed/ 15 http://blog.scoopz.com/2009/05/12/what-are-they-suggesting-with-pay-by-other-means/ http://blog.scoopz.com/2009/05/12/what-are-they-suggesting-with-pay-by-other-means/#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 13:57:58 +0000 Scoopz http://blog.scoopz.com/?p=840 I recently spotted this in a friend’s mobile uploads on facebook and had to share it.

[thanks to Katie Kidson for the image taken at a Tesco petrol station in the UK somewhere]

I recently downloaded a free iPhone game called Scramble in which players try and locate as many words as possible in a 4×4 matrix of seemingly random letters. At the end of the 2 minute round you are presented with your final score along with a list of all possible words that you could have selected.

I no longer check through all the words that I could or should have found but for my first few plays I went through the list of all possibilities and it came up with some surprising suggestions!

Firstly I’ll have to admit that I was bad enough to find and select the following examples, hence the words appear in the suggestion list in green:

But on one of my very first plays (hence the almost non-existent score) I was shocked at the suggestions:

and then there were words being suggested that aren’t even in the dictionary and only seem to appear in the online “urban” or “slang” dictionaries:

I remember not so long ago that Tweetie app was rejected from the App store as Apple deemed it to contain offensive language since looking at the trends on Twitter threw up a common swear word.

So have Apple now relaxed their policy or did Scramble just slip through the net?

Next time you play on Scramble just have a quick flick through the list of suggestions at the end of the game and if you come across any interesting ones post them in the comments below.

At first I thought I was going crazy and that it must have always been there, but then I thought the icons looked like they’d been squashed together a little, I compared it with another iPhone 3G which didn’t have it and I also put the question out on Twitter to see if anybody else had seen this.

A few on Twitter [1|2]said it happened to them too for no apparent reason, it’s not like I was roaming onto another network whilst abroad, i’ve not even hijacked/cracked my iPhone it’s 100% stock. The folks on Twitter suggested it will clear itself after a reboot of the iPhone but I wanted to see if it would clear itself and within a few hours that’s exactly what it did.

I’m at a complete loss as to what caused this to appear but if you no anything about it please leave a comment below.

This is what it looks like normally:

My iPhone 3G has started showing random “phantom” voicemails from “Unknown” dated 1st January 1970. There are three empty voicemails, 0 seconds long and they cannot be deleted.

Actually that’s a lie, they can be deleted and they go into the deleted messages folder, you can also clear the deleted messages, but as soon as you go back to the main voicemail screen they re-appear instantly.

Powering off and on doesn’t resolve the issue, I’ve not tried a force reset yet or last resort full restore.

A quick search of the web reveals many others have been having this problem over the last year, but as of yet I’ve not seen any explanations or resolutions.

My iPhone 3G wouldn’t connect to my TimeCapsule wi-fi. I rebooted the TimeCapsule and the iPhone but it still gave an error. I then tried with my 2nd home wi-fi network (Netgear DG384GT) and the same “unable to join the network” error message popped up. In case it was an issue with channel interference or WEP password mistakes I switched channels and turned all security off temporarily. This still didn’t solve anything, my MBPro, Air, AppleTV, Xbox etc could still connect perfectly as did my old iPhone 2G. I backed up my iPhone and then carried out a full restore but even the virginal factory fresh restored software refused to connect. Once a friend with another 3G came round and connected without a problem I had little choice but to book an appointment at Apple’s Genius bar.

The Genius tried to connect to the stores wi-fi and it failed, he checked the phone had the latest version, did a force reboot (I’d already done several) and then simply said “I’ll go and get you a new one”.

After checking for liquid damage using an otoscope to view the liquid damage indicators in the headphone socket and bottom port he gave me a new iPhone 3G and I was on my way.

Since I use MobileMe & Exchange PUSH, when I set up the accounts quickly on store on the new iPhone my contacts were pulled down onto the iPhone in under a minute which is useful since my iPhone backup was on my home machine a few hours away.

Range Rover PIN is 2121

I recently tried to connect my iPhone to the built in bluetooth on a Range Rover Sport and whilst the phone could see the car’s bluetooth and start pairing I was being prompted for a PIN number which I didn’t know.

On iDrive equipped BMW’s you pick your own code to enter on the phone, say 1234 and then the car asks you to confirm this code on the iDrive.

On much older Nokia car kits the code was written on a sticker on the hardware so you had to make note of it but all the recent Nokia kits just use 0000 as the code.

I tried 1234, 0000 and some other defaults to connect my phone to the Range Rover bluetooth but it didn’t accept them. I have since discovered (in the manual but obviously couldn’t check this easily) that the bluetooth PIN for all Range Rovers and Land Rovers is 2121.

[This blog entry is merely a reminder for me of the PIN for the future but it may come in useful to others]

I opened up Activity Monitor to see if it was a RAM shortage when I noticed my CPU history was almost maxed out, but NOT by the photoshop process. My cpu cycles were getting chewed up by a system process called ATSServer .

My hard disk activity was high considering I wasn’t actively doing anything at the time.

A little research on the web indicated that ATSServer was OS X Spotlight’s indexing process. Others having this problem had recently copied a large number of PDF’s to their machine and that’s exactly what I had done too.

Spotlight doesn’t just index the filenames, where possible it indexes the entire contents of PDFs, emails, etc and the process seemed to be stuck trying to index the PDF’s I had recently added.

Activity Monitor showed that the process had a full 24hrs+ of cpu time so I don’t think it was simply a case of waiting longer for it to complete. Instead I went into Preferences->Spotlight and added the folder that had all the newly added PDF’s to the privacy folder settings. This, however, did not stop the runaway process nor the thrashing of the hard drive, so i took the decision to Force Quit the ATSServer process and all is well again.

I’m obviously going to have to reboot to start the service running and hopefully things will be back to normal.

To access street view go to Google Maps and search for an area or drop using the Maps app on your iPhone drop a pin and then click the little orange man (see also How to view Street View on an iPhone). There is a little orange man that will appear on the left side if street view is available for that area, if not he will remain greyed out. At present it only covers a handful of areas (mostly the major cities) but these will be added to quite quickly over the coming months I’m sure. If you go to the overall view of the UK and drag the orange man it highlights areas that are live, the same is true at a more zoomed in street level, dragging the orange man shows which streets are covered in blue.

Here’s how it looks on the iPhone:

Google Street View cars have been spotted in numerous other areas that are not yet live, these will getting processed for face blurring, etc and get added eventually. It looks like Google has made a good effort at blurring out car registration plates and faces but a few will always slip through the net:

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) my Macbook Air hinge broke/snapped the other day and this has resulted in the screen folding almost completely flat (roughly 160°).

There were no suspicious “circumstances” when the hinge broke, it had been sat on my desk from the previous day with the lid shut and I simply opened the lid whilst the MBA was on my desk and when the screen reached the usual point of resistance (roughly 120°) there was a momentary feel of resistance followed by a snapping/popping sound and the screen then went completely flat.

The screen was still working perfectly normally, no loss in general resistance of the hinge, the backlight was functioning ok, the picture was perfect and there were no nasty noises when opening and closing the screen.

The hinges appeared to be in tact when inspected just above the keyboard so I closed the lid and lifted it up to inspect the underside of the hinges. It was then that I noticed two tiny (and I mean tiny) specs of metal/plastic sitting on my desk roughly where the hinge was. On inspection they appear to be some kind of light weight alloy metal and look like they have sheared off at one end.

I kept hold of them both and tried to get some photos of them with my digital camera but they were too small too get a decent macro focus on, so instead I resorted to my Veho USB Microscope (handy Christmas present) to take some photos and have included a pencil tip, pin tip and ruler for scale purposes just so you can get an idea of just how small these pieces are. [see the gallery at the end of the post for all the photos]

I’m guessing that these two small parts were integrated into the hinge as “stops” to prevent the screen from opening too far. If that is the case then making them just over 1mm wide seems a little daft to me and I’m not surprised they have snapped.

I don’t really mind too much that the screen now opens to around 160° but I’m taking it in for repair this week just incase the excessive opening angle is causing any ribbon cables or similar connecting the screen to the motherboard to rub and wear through. There do appear to be numerous cases of this mentioned across the web, many seem to just have the screen open flat like me but a few others have cracked hinges and completely broken hinges.

I shall update once I’ve heard back from Apple Service.

UPDATE (4th Feb 2009):  I’ve now picked my MBA back up from repair and I’ve got a brand new lcd screen, surround, lid and hinge, basically the upper half has been completely replaced and from what I’ve researched that always seems to be the case, replacing the whole screen assembly rather than just the hinges. I have noticed that the new screen seems to suffer from the dreaded horizontal grey lines syndrome I’ve been reading about, I guess it’s a screen from the new Rev-B models, it’s certainly not as crisp as my old screen but I’m going to spend some time with it first before I decide if I’ll complain about it. Also, because of a problem with the date and time being lost every time the battery ran low I’ve also got a brand new battery, which was nice.

Your computer’s clock is set to a date before March 24th, 2001. This may cause some applications to behave erratically. Please use the Date & Time preference panel to set the clock manually. For more information, choose Mac Help from the Help menu.

Clicking on the clock in the top right corner of the screen does indeed show that the date and time is set to January 1st 2001. It normally shows midnight but it had been on charge for about 5 hours hence it’s showing 5:13am.

Almost all computers, both desktop and portables, have a small secondary battery on the motherboard (CMOS battery) which is used to keep the computer’s internal clock ticking when disconnected from the mains power supply or a notebook battery runs completely flat. It would appear that my Mac Book Air’s CMOS battery is defective and as such when the main battery is completely drained the onboard clock has no backup power source and loses the date and time.

Other than the annoying warning message it isn’t really too much of an problem for me though, I have had a few problems in the past joining my Windows domain at work as the domain server was reporting the MB Air had an illegal time stamp and a few outgoing emails have somehow been stamped with the wrong date/time although I thought they should have been stamped with my ISP’s SMTP server date/time?

QUICK FIX:

Simply going into System Preferences

Date & Time

and then unticking and reticking the set date and time automatically check box

updates the internal clock with the correct details (as long as you are connected to a network).

I’m not sure how often OS X polls the NNTP servers for the time but I’m sure if I left it alone with the wrong date/time it would probably self-correct within half an hour or so of being connected to a network. I might run little snitch and see if I can see how often it’s pinging the time.euro.apple.com server.

I have phoned Apple customer support and they have said this is obviously not normal behaviour, the onboard CMOS battery should be retaining the date/time for several weeks if the main battery is complete drained and the CMOS battery should recharge itself whenever the MB Air is connected to a power supply. It’s still under warranty for a few more weeks so I just need to take it in for repair but I’ve just not got around to it yet.

UPDATE 4th February 2009: I’ve just received my Macbook Air back from repair, along with a new screen/display unit it’s also had a completely brand new main battery. I called and spoke with the technician carrying out the repair and quizzed him about the faulty cmos battery and he informed me that most of the recent Macbook range including the Pro’s and the Air have phased out motherboard/cmos/clock batteries in favour of a capacitor based system in the MBA and small capacitor/onboard rechargeable battery in the others.. He said that even when your laptop battery doesn’t have enough power remaining to keep the disk spinning and screen on, there’s plenty left to power a simple onboard clock. As such the MBA just has a small capacitor to power the clock if the main battery is left so long that it runs down completely. In my case, however, they ran tests on the battery and it was draining too quickly when the was only a few % left and was showing as faulty. For this reason they were authorised to replace the entire main battery and they have run some tests (not sure what tests) to confirm the problem is resolved. I’m very happy, I’ve looked at the stats on the new battery and it most certainly is new, showing at the time as only have 2 “cycles” (full charges) under it’s belt and 99% health.

I left them all downloading and updating but one, the Safari update, refused to work. It said I had insufficient access rights but considering I’m the only user and I’ve always been setup as an administrator this was strange.

I tried repairing disk permissions but that didn’t work. Then I thought perhaps it just needs to be restarted having just installed all the other updates so I dutifully rebooted and the same thing happened when I rebooted.

The Update Safari can’t be saved. You do not have appropriate access privileges. The installer package has been moved to the Trash. To try again, open the package from the Finder.

I checked the Trash and there was nothing in there so I had a root around and found an easy solution…using Finder to browse my hard drive I navigated to /Library/Updates/

and then deleted the Safari folder that was in there:

and then tried to install the Safari update again from the Software Update window and it downloaded and installed the update without a problem.

I know there is no Street View information live for the UK yet so I headed over to New York on my iPhone Maps app to see how the Street View interface looked, only problem was I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to view Street View images.

I tried switching from Map->Satellite->Hybrid view, zooming completely, turning the iPhone into landscape mode, nothing. Then I accidentally clicked on the little orange man icon on the push pin I’d dropped and presto, street view!

Just thought I’d put this brief blog entry up for anybody trying to figure out how to access Street View, now I know where to click it’s easy, but I wouldn’t say it’s one of the most obvious places to look.

If you’ve just finger dragged to an area you want to see Street View for it looks like you’re going to have to Drop a Pin in order to get the little orange man to click on.

PS – I also like the new 3D buildings in normal map view, nice little touch.

There are two model/spec options for the newer Macbook Air:

So it’s an extra £500 to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to 1.86GHz and 120GB SATA drive to 128GB SSD drive. However, if you click to configure the cheaper £1,299 machine and take it to the same spec as the £1,799 machine it actually works out CHEAPER!

You can see from the screen shot above that to upgrade from the 1.6GhHz to the 1.86GHz costs an additional £140. To upgrade from the 120GB SATA to the 128GB SSD costs an additional £350. So when you add them both (£140+£350) you pay an extra £490 which is £10 cheaper than buying the pre-configured machine with exactly the same specifiation.

Starting with the cheaper model and upgrading the processor and hard drive takes you from £1,299 to £1,789:

But many people assume that a pre-configured bundle must be cheaper, otherwise what’s the point in having it as an alternative option, but it looks like you are paying Apple £10 to click the upgrade buttons for you because it costs £10 more:

This only seems to apply to the UK version of the Apple online store, I just checked on the US online store 

which shows the model with the faster processor and SSD as $700 more than the base model. If you configure the cheaper version to the same spec as the more expensive version:

You end up paying $200 for the processor upgrade and $500 for the upgrade to SSD so a total of $700, the same as the higher spec pre-configured model.

I knew I was typing my password 100% correctly so I thought it might be a strange cookie or cached file problem so I cleared Safari’s history, quit and restarted Safari but the same thing kept happening.

I thought Facebook might be having an few glitches but I opened up Firefox and it logged me in straight away.

After lot’s of hair pulling I finally found the reason I couldn’t log in to Facebook using Safari and I’ve been kicking myself for not realising sooner….I noticed Private Browsing was activated in Safari. My computer gets used by a variety of people during the day so when I come to do any online banking I sometimes turn on Private Browsing and am normally very good at remembering to turn it back off. However, on this occasion I had forgotten to turn off Private Browsing and that was the cause of Facebook failing to login and constantly cycling me back to the login page.

I know this seems obvious once it’s pointed out, and other sites sometimes pop up warnings stating Cookies are not enabled, etc which would normally prompt you to check Private Browsing options but Facebook give’s no warnings or errors in a pop-up or on the re-loaded login page.

I have since turned on Private Browsing and tried to log in to Facebook and it worked fine, so I’m not sure why it wasn’t working before but turning off Private Browsing was definitely the cure.

The iPhone is in perfect condition otherwise, there’s no marking on the rest of the screen or casing. He’s hoping to get it replaced/repaired under warranty but as the nearest Apple store is nearly an hour away he’s sensibly waiting until he’s next in the area.

Some people have mentioned that Apple won’t repair cosmetic defects under warranty but since this is under the glass and there’s no way he could have caused it himself I think they should.

Has anybody else has similar problems?

He’d never used a Mac before so I showed him the basics, email, surf, download, music, video, DVD player, iPhoto, etc and left him to it.

My Macbook Air has now got a fault and needs sending to Apple for 2 weeks for repair so I’ve relieved my father of the Macbook Pro for the 2 weeks I’m Air-less.

Considering my father’s been using the Macbook Pro regularly I was a little shocked to see the show-off widget showing 134 days uptime!

That’s more than I get out of my windows servers at work.

I know many of you will leave comments saying you’ve seen up-times on windows servers/linux boxes, etc going into the years BUT for a laptop, that’s in use by my computer inept father to remain up for over 4 months is worth a screenshot at least:

There were, however, 500MB of updates waiting from Apple so it’s time to wave good-bye to the show-off uptime and follow in the footsteps of Windows and reboot!

I tried several different options and plugins to try and fix this I even tried resorting to using a plugin to allow SMTP to send the notifications but none of them worked.

I then read this thread over on the Wordpress support forums and on page 4, thanks to teknics there is a fix that worked instantly for me. Just a simple addition to my .htaccess file was all that was needed, if you alread have a .htaccess in place please be careful not to mess up anything else in the file as it could prevent your site from working.
Just adding the following line to the end of the .htaccess file was all that was needed:

php_value mail.force_extra_parameters '-f webmaster@example.com'

I have checked the earlier email notifications I received before it all stopped working and my return path was listed as apache@iomart.com (where iomart are my host, aka Easyspace), after adding the line above to my .htaccess file my return path is now showing as webmaster@example.com and notifications are working ok. I’ve since it to be my actual email address of my account I use for my Wordpress profile to keep things tidy and all is working well.

I’m not sure why this works exactly but if you can shed any light on why forcing an extra parameter suddenly gets things working please do so in a comment below.

I have 2×4GB SDHC cards which each hold around 40mins on the highest quality setting, when they get full I normally just open iMovie 08 and import all the footage before wiping the card. The problem is, I sometimes do this on my MacBook Air and was shocked to find a warning saying I was low on disk space on the Air. I had 10GB free before I started importing 4GB of video but I didn’t realise that iMovie 08 un-packs all the video from the video camera’s compressed format so the 4GB ends up being ~16GB+. Importing the video on my MacBook Air is also quite a slow process, on my Mac Pro it’s not too slow but I needed a solution to copying the card contents whilst on the road in order to free up the space on the card.

After a little experimentation I’ve opted to use Apple’s built in application, Disk Utility, to make a straight clone of the SDHC card as a disk image file (dmg). The benefit of doing it this way into a disk image rather than just dragging and dropping the SDHC card contents into a folder on your desktop is when you remount the disk image file iMovie 08 recognises it as a connected camera and starts the video import wizard, creating the disk image is also stupidly faster than importing the footage into iMovie which requires heavy processor time.

I’m also using it as a useful backup procedure taking a snapshot of each SDHC card before I format them. Even though I have all videos ultimately imported into iMovie 08, should iMovie decide to corrupt its database or wipe all the imported files I can also start from scratch if I have clones of all the raw footage.

There primary reason, however, I want to backup the raw footage is to preserve the 5.1 surround sound data that the Panasonic SD-100 records. At present iMovie 08 doesn’t support anything other than stereo soundtracks, so regardless of how fancy your camera is and how many surround mics it has, if you are using iMovie 08 the 5.1 sound is going to get down-sampled to stereo. I know Final Cut Pro handles 5.1 surround channels but that’s a little too advanced and out of my price range at present. I’m hoping that iMovie 09 will support 5.1 channels and also BlueRay burning options but we’ll have to wait and see. Rather than kick myself next year when I suddenly have the ability to edit movies with 5.1 surround and realise the additional channels have all been down-mixed to stereo and lost forever, if I take a backup of the SDHC cards now into DMG format then I can re-import them as and when needed.

Create Disk Image (.dmg) from a SDHC card

Open you Applications folder and find the Utilities folder:

then select Disk Utility:

Ensure you have connected your SDHC card to your computer using a card reader and that it is appearing on your desktop or in your finder window. You should see the SDHC card mounted in the left pane of Disk Utility, more than likely it will have a sub-disk branching off it. Click on the SDHC card in the left pane, if there is a sub-disk make sure you click on the highest level (i.e. the top branche or the upper one of the two).

Once the disk is selected click on New Image at the top of the Disk Utility program window:

This will popup a new window asking you where you wish to save the image, I’d suggest you create a new folder called “SDHC Backups” and save them all in the one folder, be sure to give each image file a unique name so you can find it later:

Note that the default option is for a compressed image, whilst this might work and save you some space it’s not the quickest method to create a backup image and I haven’t tested how well it works, so change it to Read-Only with no encryption. I will do a few experiments with compressed images and see how processor intensive they are, any increase in time taken to create an image and how much space is actually saved compared to a non compressed read-only image, I’ll update this article once I’ve done that. UPDATE – On a Mac Pro the compressed image takes no longer to create however there is very little space saving, uncompressed = 3.68GB whilst compressed = 3.66GB so I’m going to stick with uncompressed read-only for now.

That’s it, hit Save and it will show you the progress:

You should now have an image file the same size as the SDHC card in the folder you specified on your hard drive. You can now eject the SDHC card from your computer, and just to double check, double click the image file you just created to mount it on your computer. You can click skip on the validating stage if you are feeling confident, once you see it mounted in Finder open up iMovie and it should detect that a camera has been connected even though the SDHC card is no longer plugged in.

UPDATE [21st Nov 2008] – Apple have released iPhone 2.2 software update which appears to fix all known issues with BMW bluetooth and iPhones. If you had no contacts syncing or bluetooth kept dropping the connection every 20 or 30 seconds then update to 2.2 and you should find it’s all fixed.

Ever since Apple brought out iPhone 2.0 software many of us found that the iPhone contacts that used to appear on the BMW iDrive or BMW radio display suddenly disappeared.

Since iPhone2.0 we all waited patiently for a fix from Apple, 2.01 and 2.02 failed to deliver but hopes were high when reports that 2.1 fixed a similar problem with Chrysler uConnect systems but again no change for BMW drivers.

Recently I configured my iPhone to sync contacts with my Exchange server at work and this PUSHed another 2500 contacts onto my iPhone and suddenly all my contacts appeared on the iDrive. I suggested to others this might be because I had multiple address books on my iPhone but this theory was soon disproved, I then suggested that it might be because I had a high number of contacts on the iPhone keeping which may change a timeout option somewhere on the iPhone or iDrive.

Some blog readers tested this theory and created 2000 fake contacts with no phone numbers but that didn’t work, then they tried 2000 fake contacts each with a unique contact number and this worked! By using contact names beginning with Z they appeared at the end of the iPhone and iDrive list but it did take a while to sync so many contacts with the iDrive. Another reader then tweaked this to get 2000 fake contacts each with the same phone number, the iDrive ignores any contacts that have the same telephone number and only syncs with one of them, so now we had 2000 Z-contacts on the iPhone all with the same number and this allowed ALL the contacts on the iPhone to sync with the iDrive but only showed ONE z-contact at the end. [Thanks to Rajesh and vants for their help with this!]

So far the feedback has been extremely positive with around 10 out of 12 people reporting a success.

To make life easy for you I have compiled instructions on how to add 2000 fake contacts to Outlook for the Windows users and Address Book for the Apple users.

Apple OS X Users:

It really couldn’t be simpler for you, simply download the following zip file:

DOWNLOAD FOR APPLE USERS – 2000 Fake Contacts for Apple users

Open the zip file and you should have a single vCard file, simply double click this vCard file and Address Book should spring into life and ask you if you really want to import 2000 new contacts.

Just click add and you’re all done, 2000 contacts z0001 to z2000 should now be in your Address Book. 

All you need to do now is re-sync your contacts with the iPhone via iTunes. [Note - if you use MobileMe to PUSH all your contacts from your computer to MobileMe and then PUSH them down to your iPhone it will still work just have some patience and check your phone after 10 minutes]

If, for neatness, you want to have the 2000 z-contacts in their own folder simply click the +plus at the bottom of the group pane:

then give the group a name:

and now click on the Last Import folder, in the middle Name pane click on the first z0001 and then press Apple+A to select all the entries and then drag them onto the new group you just created.

You can now jump past the lengthy Windows Instructions to read what to do next..

Windows Outlook Users:

Its a little trickier for you guys, it seems it’s not as easy to simply import 2000 contacts from one vCard download, so instead you need to download the following CSV file:

DOWNLOAD FOR WINDOWS USERS – 2000 Fake Contacts for Windows Users

Once you have downloaded the CSV file in Outlook click on File from the top menu and select “Import & Export”

Then select “Import from another program or file”

Then select “Comma Separated Values (DOS)”

On the next screen click Browse and navigate to where ever you saved the CSV file to (in my case it’s on my Desktop)

Leave the option to allow duplicates and click next

Select a destination for all your contacts, in general this will be your Contacts folder

but if you want to you can create a sub-folder in contacts called “z Contacts” or “Fake Entires” and save them in there for neatness but this is not a necessity and has no influence on whether the fix will work or not.

Note: You cannot create the subfolder once you’ve started the import wizard so if you want to, you’ll have to click cancel to exit the wizard then right click on your Contacts Folder and select “New Folder” and name it “z-Contacts” or “Fake Entries” then restart from step one:

That should be it now, you’ll be present with the final screen of the wizard where you can choose to map custom fields. Originally this was necessary but I’ve since added a header row to vants CSV file so the Wizard picks the right fields for Name and Phone number automatically, just click Finish. It should then start importing all the contacts, leave this going, it can take some time, on my machine it took a few minutes but that’s because my profile isn’t store locally, you may find it’s done much quicker.

You should all be done now, if you look in your contacts your should see 2000 Z-contacts all with the same phone number.

All you need to do now is fire up iTunes and re-sync them all to your iPhone.

[Windows users - notice how much easier this whole process was on an Apple perhaps it's time to switch! Just kidding, lets not turn the comments section into an Apple vs PC bash. I spent most of my time on an XP machine at work and manage my entire office's Windows workstations and just use Apple in my free time]

Next Steps (Apple & Windows Users)

Ok so if all went well above you should now have 2000 contacts at the very end of your iPhone contact list, all of which should have the same phone number. [Remember it doesn't matter if you have the 2000 z-contacts in a sub-folder or not]

That was all I needed to do, the next time it paired with my iDrive (2006 BMW M5) the contacts list appeared after a short wait HOWEVER, some people have said it’s best to keep the iPhone from sleeping whilst waiting for the initial sync to happen and some have said they had to delete the iPhone-BMW pairing and re-pair, so lets be safe and do both.

Delete the pairing – On you iPhone go to Settings->General->Bluetooth and if you see BMW##### [where there #'s are the last 5 digits of your car's chasis number in case you didn't know that] click it and select unpair. Now go to your iDrive (or prof radio if you don’t have iDrive) and select info sources/settings and find the bluetooth page (it differs depending on software version, etc but I’m sure you know where it is) and delete any pairings for any phones you have in there to be safe. Now go through the whole re-pairing procedure again, I will try and post a video on how to do this with iDrive as a few have asked but until then just follow the manual.

NOTE – If you find your iPhone contantly connects and drops the connection via bluetooth then you may have another problem for which I don’t have a solution just yet.

Keep the iPhone awake – Once you have paired the car will try and connect with the iPhone and sync the contacts, if you go to the communications tab of the iDrive (push and hold up on the iDrive controller for 2 seconds) and try and browse A-Z it will probably say “Please wait” with a little clock. Now here’s what some say is important, whilst that is showing you need to open the contacts app on your iphone and just sit there scrolling the contacts up and down randomly to simply keep the phone from entering sleep mode.

Wait a few minutes (up to 5mins lets say)…..DONE?

Did it work for you? Your comments are much appreciated on this matter and many others reading this thread may benefit from knowing what combination of iPhone, software version, model, year, etc you have.

Good luck!

48 hours later and it’s already broken, the little ringer/vibrate switch has snapped and fallen off. I did notice the switch was much stiffer than my original iPhone, which I thought was a good thing as it would prevent mistaken switching of modes but unfortunately when I flicked it across the button popped off and landed on the street somewhere, never to be seen again.

There seem to be plenty of reports of this across the web too:

MacRumors – Broken Ringer Switch (and here too)
AppleiPhoneApps – Broken Ringer Switch
Apple Support – here / here / here and many more

Perhaps a faulty batch, design flaw or simply the result of substituting the expensive build quality of the original iPhone with much cheaper and more fragile plastics?

If you look closely at the photos you’ll notice a large rectangular green/blue area on the remaining stump where the button once lived. I wander if this is some sort or air bubble or impurity in the plastic from the moulding process? Also, when looking at the macro photos, the cutting of the casing around the switch seems rather jagged and rough, or perhaps I’m getting a little too fussy now?

 Back to the O2 Store tomorrow for a swap!

Here’s the obligatory photos, click to get larger versions.

UPDATE (27th August 2008): The local O2 store had no problems in issuing a replacement handset, and after a slow and painful restore I’m back up and running. The new handset switch feels even more stiff and fragile than the last one so I’m not holding out much hope of it surviving too long.

UPDATE (29th August 2008): The replacement iPhone has failed already! Exactly the same fault, the ringer/silence switch has just fallen off. I’ve been back to O2 and they’ve offered to replace with a 3rd unit (NB I got my first one 6 days ago) but I kindly pointed out to them that I think they’ve got a faulty batch so same thing would just happen again. I’m currently on hold to the Apple Store in the Trafford Centre to see if I’m allowed to exchange a faulty iPhone bought at an O2 store in the Apple Store.

[Also check the other post covering this with several hundred comments - iPhone 2.0 update breaks BMW iDrive contact/address book syncing!]

UPDATE – Sorry guys and girls, it looks like a was a little premature on this one. My contacts DID all show up on the iDrive screen and I scrolled through, jumped from A-N-W-etc and I came in to get the camera for a few shots for this article. When I went back out, my iPhone paired but after a long wait screen there were NO contacts shown! I removed both pairings, powered off the car and the iPhone and tried again but still nothing. I then updated my friends brand new 3G to 2.02 and tried syncing that (which has never been seen by the car before) and it paired but still no contact sync.

For those of you who have been experiencing problems trying to get your iPhone to sync contacts with your BMW iDrive here’s the good news you’ve been waiting for….iPhone 2.02 has finally fixed the issue! [or maybe not, I've just been out and tried it again and it's not syncing any contacts now, I've deleted both pairings, repaired and rebooted the iPhone and going to try again and see if that makes any difference, I thought it was too good to be true!]

I have just taken my original iPhone updagted to 2.02 out to my car (2006 BMW E60 M5) and am pleased to say that after a 30-60second wait all my contacts appeared on the iDrive screen as they used to before iPhone 2.0 update.

I know that Chrysler owners trying to pair the iPhone to uConnect had similar problems, as did some Mercedes, Jeep, LandRover, etc owners. If you’ve still got problems or found that iPhone 2.02 update has solved your problems please leave a comment below to assist others. Reports are coming back already that it’s not solved connection issues for those with uConnect systems.

Warning: Compilation failed: characters with values > 255 are not yet supported in classes at offset 16 in /vhost/vhost6/s/c/o/scoopz.com/blog/wp-includes/shortcodes.php on line 213

This only appeared on 1 or 2 posts the rest remained unaffected. I realised that most of the posts affected were those which had galleries inserted using Wordpress Media Manager and the [ gallery ] tag.

After some research it appears to be a known issue with older versions of PHP. My site is hosted with Easyspace who unfortunately won’t upgrade me from PHP Version 4.3.2 unless I pay extra for a new hosting plan.

Somebody pointed out that if you try adding a test post with new images and insert a gallery, the error doesn’t appear unless you add ALT tags to the images (Image Caption).

For now I’ve simply removed the gallery from the affected posts until I either get my PHP upgraded or the next update from Wordpress.

UPDATE (20th August) – I’ve updated my web hosting so I’ve now gone from PHP4.3.2 to PHP5.1.6 and inserting a [ gallery ] still causes the same error at the top of my posts. I’ve noticed there is another update out for wordpress (2.6.1) so I’ll try updating to that and see if that fixes anything.

UPDATE (20th August) - Just finished updating to 2.6.1 and the problem has now disappeared, so if you are experiencing this issue I’d highly recommend upgrading to Wordpress 2.6.1

I thought this was just the person on the other end not paying attention until I called a friend of mine and he didn’t appear to speak when he answered the call, when I asked him about it he too complained that even though he says “Hello” the third party cannot hear it.

I’ve just done a few tests calling myself from another phone and it does seem like Apple have introduced a short 0.5 second delay from sliding the answer tab to the mic being enabled with 2.01. I guess this is to give you time to get the iPhone up to your ear and start a conversation but I’d like the option in a menu somewhere to toggle “Instant Answer” on/off.

This is my experience with the original iPhone updated to 2.01, if you’ve noticed similar problems with your 3G iPhone and somebody not hearing you for a split second when you answer a call leave a comment below.

Just connect up your iPhone and iTunes should announce that there’s an update ready and waiting.

I don’t really care what other bugs it fixes so long as my contacts will syncronise with my BMW iDrive via bluetooth…soon find out.

[30 minutes later]…Bad news for BMW drivers, iPhone 2.01 still doesn’t sync address book contacts with iDrive. When Apple mention numerous bug fixes with this version I’m not too sure which “bugs” they’ve fixed but immiediately the phone does seem to be more responsive. The horrible lag when you click on contacts before you could scroll through all your contacts has not gone but it is much shorter now, and after sending a few SMS, the keyboard lag seems to be gone now too.

I’m sure there will be many other fixes “under the hood” but to me and 1000’s of other BMW, Chrysler, Mercedes, Jeep, etc drivers out there, not fixing bluetooth connectivity issues with 2.01 was a big mistake.

There are only 3 official sources for the iPhone 3G in the UK:

1 – Apple
2 – Carphone Warehouse (CPW)
3 – O2

If you are an existing iPhone owner and wish to upgrade you cannot go to an Apple store! All upgrades for current iPhone users have to be done through Carphone Warehouse or O2.

The problem is, Apple have so far not given any stock of the White iPhone 3G to either O2 or CPW. This effectively means that existing iPhone users cannot upgrade to the White iPhone 3G and must, for now at least, settle for the black version.

I’ve made near daily visits and several phone calls to both O2 and Carphone Warehouse trying to confirm a date that they’ll be receiving stock of the White iPhone 3G so that I can upgrade and some of the responses I’ve been getting are shocking:

“oh no sir, there’s no white iPhone only black, you must be confusing it with the iPods?”

“the White iPhone is going to be exclusive to the Carphone Warehouse, O2 won’t have any”

“the White iPhone is going to be for Pay As You Go customers only”

“The White iPhone will launch between October and December along with the PAYG version”

For Pay As You Go customers only!! Don’t talk rubbish, why would a PAYG customer (who’s going to be paying well over the odds for the phone in the first place) be restricted to getting the White one, which is 16GB only? Christmas time? Really? The Apple store has plenty of them in right now.

There have been a few people who decided they didn’t want to wait and purchased a White iPhone 3G in the Apple stores (who have plenty) and signed up to a new O2 contract in store. When they got home they just called O2 and played *dumb* pretending they thought that was the way they were supposed to upgrade and had their original contract moved over and the new contract just signed in store cancelled. This is risky though, if O2 don’t take pity on you or think you’re trying to pull a fast one they could leave you stuck with 2 simultaneous iPhone contracts!

I’m the kind of person who would have normally tried doing the above *playing dumb* trick by now but unfortunately it’s not that straight forward for me. I need to simultaneously upgrade my existing iPhone and migrate from a personal to the newly available business tarriffs. I also need to do the same for one of my employees and migrate us both to the same shared business plan and then migrate two current O2 Nokia users to the same shared iPhone tariff but using the two superseeded original iPhones…and as luck would have it, all this is possible but only at an O2 store who don’t have White iPhones.

If you happen to know of any O2 stores that have White iPhones in stock please do leave a comment below and put me out of my misery.

UPDATE (23rd August 2008): Good news, existing iPhone owners can now officially upgrade to the white iPhone 3G at any Carphone Warhouse or O2 store (stock levels permitting). I walked by both CPW and O2 stores today and saw signs advertising white iPhones now in stock. Half an hour later and I’m walking out the door with a white iPhone 3G. I asked when they had stock of the white ones and they said yesterday (22nd August) so if you’ve been waiting, go get one, the white is DEFINITELY better than the black in my opinion as it doesn’t show up any finger marks or scratches on the back!

Simultaneously press the Home and Power buttons (i.e. – press and hold the home button and briefly press the power button whilst the home button is held). The screen will flash white to indicate the screen capture has been done and you will find the screen shot in your camera roll in the Photos section, ready to be downloaded into iPhoto, etc When iPhoto loads the camera roll ready for importing, you’ll notice the screen shots do not have an associated thumbnail, just an blank empty thumbnail. Clicking the blank thumbs and hitting import selected still works though and they appear fine as PNG’s in the main Library.

Home screen right now:

My page for Apps:

My Web shortcuts page:

You’re not restricted to screen grabbing just the home pages either, you can do a screen shot whenever you want in ANY application, so you could screen grab your high score in SuperMonkey Ball and email the screen grab to your friends instantly, here’s a few examples:

NOTE – Do not press and hold the Home button and Power button for more than a few seconds, hold them too long and you will end up hard-rebooting your iPhone. No damage done or data lost but you need to know these things.

UPDATE – *FIXED* - It appears we’ve found a fix that will get all your contacts showing up on the iDrive again. You simply need to add 2000 fake contacts to your iPhone. There are detailed instructions, vCard/CSV files available to download and step by step screen shots in a new post here – Fix for Fix for iPhone and BMW iDrive address book not synchronising.

UPDATE (18th August 2008): There’s a FIX!

Looks like we’ve found a fix for this that involves creating a large number of fake contacts on your iPhone. Mine started working when I sync’d with my Exchange server and 2500 new contacts appeared on my iPhone and at the time of writing this 3 out of 3 people who tried the fix have reported back with success. Click below to jump to the relevant place in the comments and read a few above it from Vants and Rajesh too for more info:

iPhone and BMW iDrive address book sync fix

You’ll need to download this file to automatically add 2000 empty contacts to your address book:
DOWNLOAD 2000 fake contacts vCard [2000 unique names, 2000 identical numbers]

UPDATE (18th August 2008): ****FIXED***** ****NOT FIXED*****
Apple have just released iPhone 2.02 update and I’m currently downloading it. Hopeful that this update will finally fix all the iDrive address book issues, watch this space…..I’ve just got back from testing 2.02 with my iDrive and finally, it’s working again! (iPhone 2.02 fixes BMW iDrive contact syncing)Sorry guys and girls, it looks like a was a little premature on this one. My contacts DID all show up on the iDrive screen and I scrolled through, jumped from A-N-W-etc and I came in to get the camera for a few shots for this article. When I went back out, my iPhone paired but after a long wait screen there were NO contacts shown! I removed both pairings, powered off the car and the iPhone and tried again but still nothing. I then updated my friends brand new 3G to 2.02 and tried syncing that (which has never been seen by the car before) and it paired but still no contact sync.

UPDATE (6th August 2008):
If you are affected by issues relating to the iPhone pairing with your BMW bluetooth please spare 2 minutes to complete 13 questions about car year, model, iphone version, etc.:
Online Survey – BMW / iPhone pairing issues 

UPDATE (5th August 2008):
Apple have just released iPhone 2.01 update but don’t get too excited, it doesn’t seem to resolve any of the BMW iDrive issues.

I downloaded the 240MB update, waited patiently for the iPhone to backup, update and then restore and then nipped out to my car (at 1:30am) excited to see if it worked…NOPE….seems Apple thought better of it than to help us BMW drivers out. It still doesn’t sync the address book with my M5’s iDrive.

I deleted both pairings and then repaired, gave it plenty of time to search for and sync contacts and it still shows no contacts available.

Thanks Apple!

UPDATE (18th July 2008):
I’ve had an email from Apple about this issue but unfortunately:
********************************************
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS
MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE
********************************************
so I’m going to play things safe and not simply cut and paste their email on my blog but let’s just say if I owned a software company I would most likely only send out an email in response to a bug report if I was aware of the reported issue and getting engineers to look into it.
Summary:
OK some bad news for all iPhone owners (original and 3G version) if you drive a BMW that has an iDrive; in summary the iPhone 2.0 software stops your BMW iDrive from seeing your iPhone’s contacts list.

IMPORTANT – If you are affected by this issue, which many seem to be, please submit a quick feedback/bug report via Apple’s iPhone feedback form. The best thing to do is to post your iPhone version, car make, model and year as a comment to this thread then copy and paste the same to the Apple Feedback form. The more feedback Apple get the more likely they are to bring out 2.01 fixing the issue.

In Detail:

The original iPhone running all versions up to and including the latest 1.1.4 would connect to BMW’s bluetooth perfectly and then all your contacts would appear on the iDrive display for you to scroll through or better yet voice-dial if you had that as a factory option.

I have just downloaded and installed iPhone 2.0 onto my original iPhone (yes 1 day early so it might not be the official version i know – it’s showing as version 2.0 5A347) and went out to the car (2006 BMW E60 M5) to check the compatibility with my iDrive via bluetooth.

I really wasn’t expecting there to be a problem, since BMW actively advertise they are working in partnership with Apple to make the iPhone integrate with iDrive and since there’s not been any hardware change as it is my original iPhone that has always worked with iDrive from v1.1.2 to v1.1.4.

BMW also sell the iPhone snap-on adapter for the iPhone (see this earlier post: Official BMW iPhone snap-in adapter / cradle [PICS]) so it’s in their interest to ensure the iPhone remains compatible with iDrive.

I turned on the ignition and at first I thought I’d have to pair up the phone again having had to update the software and restore a previous backup. To my surprise when I checked in the Blueotooth menu on the iPhone, all my old paired devices were still there and sure enough it connect to the BMW bluetooth automatically. I waited until the signal meter appeared along the bottom of the iDrive screen showing the pairing was successful and then I opened up the iDrive communication page to list my A-Z of contacts and they all appeared…briefly!

After my initial relief that iPhone 2.0 didn’t “break” anything in the way of BMW iDrive to iPhone contact syncronising, I slowly realised that the initial list it shows is a cached version from the last time the phone was connected and then the little clock timer appeared indicating it was searching the phone for new/modified/deleted contacts to refresh it’s cached copy. After about 20 seconds it was done and I was presented with a BLANK A-Z, it had wiped them all off the iDrive.

I powered the car off, powered the phone off, powered them both back on, let them pair and sync and still nothing. The iDrive was reporting that there were NO contacts on the iPhone that it could see. I check the iPhone to verify I’d not been an idiot and told iTunes not to sync contacts but they were all there (600+), in the nice new Contacts icon on the home screen with the new search feature.

I decided to start from scratch and removed the pairing from the iDrive bluetooth menu and from the iPhone bluetooth menu. Then I began the setup new phone procedure on the iDrive to connect my iPhone as though it was a new one. iDrive went into bluetooth visible to all devices mode, iPhone found the BMW bluetooth, paired, asked for passcode, 0000 on iPhone, confirmed 0000 on iDrive and connected.

It showed a “Please wait…” message along with that damn annoying clock timer icon again as it browsed the iPhone to suck all the contacts out of it. It returned NOTHING. The A-Z was empty. I tried voice-dialing from the BMW voice dial button, feature not available.

When the phone rings for an incoming call it shows the you number on the iDrive display but doesn’t link it with the name in the contacts. If you have the iPhone in your pocket and want to call somebody, unless you’ve received a call from them recently so that they’re in the iDrive recent received list you’re going to have to get the iPhone out your pocket, unlock and find the contact the old fashioned way.

This is really bad news for those in the UK and other countries where not only talking on a mobile whilst driving is illegal, but where even touch your mobile whilst driving carries fines and penalty points. I’ve gone from being fully legal with hands-free voice dialing to illegal overnight, thanks Apple!

Please use the comments section below to post your findings stating your car model and year plus your iPhone version. If you have other cars that sync the contact list (Mercedes? Audi? etc) then post your results for them to for others to see.

UPDATE (14 July 2008) - The following is an extract taken from BMW’s official website, I’ve taken a time-stamped PDF copy (download here: PDF copy of BMW website stating iPhone address sync) just in case they ever try to deny they said address book sync’ing would work:

It’s the kind of innovative forethought you expect from BMW: the Apple is compatible with most BMW models from day one. The communication and music functionalities of the Apple iPhone can easily be operated with the in-vehicle control elements and displays.
All you need besides the Apple iPhone to make a call, listen to music or access your address book in a BMW is the USB/audio interface and a suitable mobile phone preparation with Bluetooth interface. Enjoy your Apple iPhone and your BMW in parallel, for the sheer pleasure of both worlds.

iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc.

With the immenent launch of Apple’s iPhone 3G a week today, I’ve been searching the internet high and low to find out whether or not it’s going to be compatible with and sync with BMW’s bluetooth and iDrive. I also need to know whether it will fit in the BMW snap-in adapter I have for the original iPhone or will I have to buy another cradle from BMW?

Once I get the new iPhone 3G on 11th July I’ll update this topic with the actual answers, but for now I shall just give my preditions:

My predictions:

1. Bluetooth & iDrive: UPDATE – Be aware that several people have reported that the iPhone 3G does not sync the contacts with the iDrive, this is also the case for people who have updated their original iPhone to 2.0, including myself (more info here). The iPhone 3G doesn’t appear to have any hardware changes in relation to its bluetooth module and since the iPhone 3G and iPhone original will both be running iPhone software v2.0 next week, other than addition coding for the GPS module and 3G connections they should be identical. So I am predicting that the iPhone 3G will work with BMW’s bluetooth and iDrive, [Note: if you have an older vehicle that the original iPhone didn't pair with don't expect the iPhone 3G to suddenly work, I'm only referring to vehicles that pair and sync with the original iPhone]
2. BMW snap-in adapter: Looking at the profile of the new iPhone 3G with its more sculptured and curved back, coupled with the fact that many case manufacturers are launching new cases for the iPhone 3G lead me to believe that the iPhone 3G will not fit in the BMW snap-in adapater for the original iPhone and that BMW will bring out a new cradle for the iPhone 3G in a few months. But then part of me thinks that the iPhone 3G uses the same screen, iPod port, etc, is the same height and width and that it may fit in the snap-in cradle for the original iPhone albeit it a little loose and wobble. My final thoughts…I predict the iPhone 3G will fit in the original BMW snap-in adapter but it won’t lock down into place fully but will charge and connect to the external antenna.

The actual facts:

1. The iPhone 3G and original iPhones updated to iPhone 2.0 appear to not work properly with lots of manufacturers factory blueotooth kits. BMW, Mercedes, Jeep, Chrysler, Land Rover, and many more are all affected.
2. The iPhone 3G *does* fit in the original BMW iPhone cradle….just! But it’s not a comfortable fit as the iPhone 3G is a few mm longer. Prolonged forced insertion into the cradle will badly scratch and damage the back and top edge of your iPhone 3G.

I was recently asked or help with a problem opening links from emails in Outlook Express. It seemed that clicking web/url links in an email didn’t open the default browser and load the page, it just did nothing.

 Fortunately there was an easy fix [for those using Internet Explorer as their default browser at least]: 

1. Click on the Start button in the lower left corner
2. Near the bottom right of the Start Menu you should see “Run…”, click that
   [This should then bring up a black window with some text in?]
3. In that window type the following (without the quotation marks)
   "REGSVR32 URLMON.DLL"
once you have typed the above in hit return key.
4. A small window should popup saying
   “DLLREGISTERSERVER in urlmon.dll succeeded”
   Click OK in this popup window.
5. You can now close the black window that opened up after Step 2.
6. Open Internet Explorer and click on Tools in the top menu and then select Internet Options from the list.
7. Once it has opened the internet options pages, along the top you should see various tabs, click on the tab called “Programs”
8. There should be an option in there to check that Internet Explorer is the default browser. If it is ticked, untick it, hit apply then re-tick and hit apply again. If it is not ticked just tick it and hit apply. Either way you need this option ticked but if it’s already ticked you need to untick and then retick it to make sure.
9. You may also need to click on the “Advanced tab” and see if there is an option to reset internet explorer settings at the bottom, if so click that too and hit ok to close the settings pages.

Now reboot the computer, once rebooted try opening Internet Explorer first and if it prompts you that it is not the default web browser you should click yes to make it default. Next open Outlook Express and see if that has solved the problem with the links in emails.

It’s official, you can now use Time Machine with a USB drive attached to your Airport Extreme, don’t rush out and buy a Time Capsule just yet! You can even have multiple USB drives connected to a USB hub and use a different drive for different computers.

Apple have released several updates for the Airport Utility, Time Machine and Airport Disks.

Apple annoyed a large number of Airport Extreme owners when they released the final version of Leopard with Time Machine. Beta versions of the operating system allowed Time Machine to select a USB hard drive connected to the Airport Extreme Base (AEB) station as its target drive. By the time the final release of Leopard hit the streets, this functionality had been stripped out and you could only use Time Machine with a USB hard drive connected directly to your machine or with the up-coming new Time Capsules, which in essence are just an Airport Extreme with a SATA hard drive strapped into the unit.

Many people came up with “fixes” or “tweaks” to get Time Machine working with their AEB but I decided I’d fork out for a new Time Capsule. Fortunately for me my local Apple reseller still hasn’t had any Time Capsules delivered, and with the latest firmware update for my AEB I’ll be saving my pennies for something else as I have all the Time Capsule features with my Airport Extreme now.

First thing is to run the software update utility and download all the updates, which will then require a restart. It’s quite important that you restart at this stage.

After restarting, go to Applications->Utilities and open up the Airport Utility. This should then show a list of all available Base stations and then alert you that updates are available for selected devices:

By default it should select all the relevant devices, but if you have any devices in the list that aren’t currently powered on, tick all the other boxes just to download the firmware for the future. It should then begin to download the selected firmware:

Once the download is complete it will inform you that it’s ready to update your device:

You are then prompted to enter the Airport Extreme Base station’s password:

The update should then start, ensure you do not power off your computer or base station during the update:

You get a progress bar showing the status of the upgrade:

Once the upgrade is complete your AEB will restart itelf so have some patience:

You are then taken back to the main Airport Utility screen where your AEB should now be showing up as version 7.3.1:

That’s it done. Prior to updating the Airport Firmware to 7.3.1, the screen to select the Time Machine disk looked like this:

After the update, I connected a small 40GB USB disk to my Airport Extreme and the list now looks like (ignore the orange 80GB drive that’s another drive connected directly to my Mac Pro):

See the bottom entry….Untitled (Scoopz Airport Extreme). Thanks Apple!

I decided to check everything works ok and let it try and Time Machine my MacPro to the tiny 40GB hard drive even though I need 600GB minimum. Sure enough it started to backup before presenting me with an error stating my disk is full:

All I need to do now is buy a large USB drive and I’m all set.

I have just dug out an old USB hub and connected that to the USB port on the Airport Extreme. I then connected the 40GB drive and a 280GB drive and when choosing a Time Machine location you can choose from either of the connected drives. This is ideal for me as I can now use up all the smaller drives I have lying around and have a dedicated wireless TimeMachine drive for my MacBook Air, one for my MacBook Pro and I’ll need to get a bigger one for  my Mac Pro.

After 9 days with my Macbook Air I’ve returned to the shop to ask for a replacement.

I noticed a few dark pencil thin marks appearing on the trackpad button and just wiped them away with my thumb. But they kept reappearing in the same place and getting more and more visible and also creeping onto the palm rest area too.

The marks are being caused by the top edge of the screen surround / bezel scratching the lower trackpad and palm rest areas when the case is closed and there appears to be a noticeable mark appearing on the edge of the bezel too.

I have also noticed that my trackpad button isn’t level in the case, the left edge sits lower than the right edge and consequently the right edge is getting more damage from the screen than the left.

My local Apple reseller have asked me to return the unit with box and all the bits on Monday when the area manager is around, I hope for a complete replacement considering the machine is 9 days old today.

I’ve had a quick search on the web and there doesn’t seem to be anybody else reporting this fault so hopefully its just a one off faulty unit and not a design fault across the Macbook Air range.

UPDATE (3rd March 2008):
I have just had my Macbook Air replaced without any questions. Becuase it was less than 2weeks old they were able to return it to Apple as DOA (Dead on Arrival) and issued me with a new MBA on the spot. I’ve not opened the new one yet but will be sure to report back here if the same thing happens with the replacement.

The BBC has now launched a special iPhone specific web page to allow you to browse and listen to all the BBC podcasts on your iPhone.

You can simply go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts on your iPhone now, the site will recognise that you are browsing from your iPhone and take you straight to the iPhone-formatted version of the page.

If you go the the link from a normal web browser on your computer you will be presented with the normal full version of the page. For those of you who want to see what the iPhone version looks like in your normal browser then go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/directory/ip/#_welcome

I’ve just quickly tabbed through the directory and started streaming the Chris Moyles podcast, started instantly from within Safari as a “video”, basically the quicktime player.

If you’d like to listen to it on the journey to work/college/etc I’ve just tried turning my wifi connection off and it continues to play. If you start listening to it while you’re at home and give it enough time to cache the entire podcast (keep an eye on the white timebar, that’s showing you download progress you can continue to listen on the move.

BBC – Radio – Podcasts – Directory

The firmware is supposed to address some of the “bugs” introduced with 1.1.3 such as the SMS sorting bug and wifi connectivity problems. 1.1.4 is also rumoured to contain the framework to allow 3rd party application to be installed without the need to hack/jailbreak your iPhone. Some of these 3rd party apps and games will be made available for download from the iTunes store in due course.I am currently updating my iPhone to 1.1.4 as I type and shall hopefully report back with some good news on bug fixes……

…..140MB download and 5 minutes install time later….

1.1.4 has successfully downloaded and been installed on my iPhone. I didn’t encounter any errors, warnings, or weirdness (using iTunes 7.6.1(9) under OS X 10.5.2)

Unlike 1.1.3 there aren’t any NEW features  for those of you who are looking, but I have checked on the SMS sorting bug by sending myself a series of SMS in a short period of time and I’m happy to report it works as expected now.  I didn’t have any SMS conversations saved that were in a mess from 1.1.3 so if anybody reading this has a conversation that was in the wrong order could you please have a look at it after updating to 1.1.4 and report back in the comments section below?

There haven’t been any immediate issues with wifi connectivity either which is promising. If you’ve read my post about wifi problems with 1.1.3 you’ll be aware that there were problems as soon as the phone had finished updating to 1.1.3. One person has so far reported that under 1.1.4 his wifi issues are almost resolved but the widgets (stocks/weather) are unable to update when connected to wifi. I have just done some thorough testing of stocks and weather running under 1.1.4 connected to my Airport Extreme and can report I have no problems.

Summary

• SMS Sorting Bug = FIXED
• Wifi connectivity = FIXED (no problems for me at least)

Method 1 – Create from Scratch

Right click on the desktop and select New -> Shortcut:

You will then be asked for the location of the item for the shortcut. Ordinarily you would just type http://the_url_you_want/ here but that would cause the page to open in your system’s default browser which is not what you want. Instead, copy and paste one of the following depending which browser you want to force the shortcut to open in:

To force open a URL in Internet Explorer:
“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” http://url_you_want

To force open a URL in Firefox:
“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” http://url_you_want

After copying the blue text above you simply past that into the item location field, replacing the “url_you_want” with your chosen url. For example, if you had firefox set as your default browser but wanted to have a shortcut to http://blog.scoopz.com/ that always opened in Internet Explorer it would look like:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://blog.scoopz.com

Method 2 – Modify a shortcut to the browser

What if you want to open in a browser other than IE or Firefox (Opera or Safari, etc). You can acieve the same result as Method 1 by first creating a shortcut to the browser program itself and then modifying this shortcut to include the URL or web page you want.

Click on Start, Programs and find the browser you wish to use. Click and drag the icon for the browser to the desktop from the Programs menu whilst holding down the CTRL key.

You should now have a shortcut to the browser on your desktop. In this example I have chosen Internet Explorer (see icon to the left).

Next right click on the shortcut you just created and select properties from the popup menu. This should then load the shortcut’s properties page.

All you need to do now is click on the target field in the properties page and scroll to the very end (or hit the End Key on the keyboard). You now need to type the URL that you wish to open at the end of this field, in the example to the right I have chosen http://blog.scoopz.com and appended this to the end of the target. Leave all the other settings the same for now and that’s the new shortcut done.

From this shortcut page you can easily choose a Shortcut Key combination (CTRL+ALT+B, etc) to launch your shortcut instantly and choose whether to open the web page in a maximised, minimised or normal sized window.

BMW has released an official snap-in adapter for most of it’s model range. Costing £60 (~$130) it allows the iPhone to remain on charge whilst also connecting it to the car’s external antenna for a stronger boosted signal.

UPDATE (14th July 2008) - There has now been a software update for all iPhones taking them to iPhone 2.0 which seems to cause lots of problems with iDrive integration. Read more about that and other issues with iPhone 2.0 and iPhone 3G here: iPhone 2.0 and 3G break BMW iDrive address book synchronising

I picked up the cradle this morning, BMW part number 84-10-9-182-792 costing £59.99 in UK money which was the same price I paid for the Nokia 6230i snap-in I previously bought. Installation is…well I wouldn’t even call it installation, press down on the snap-in eject button, the old Nokia 6230i cradle pops out, snap-in the the new one…I’d say 10 seconds at most!

NOTE – it seems all UK spec cars have the snap in holder (eject box) as standard, those in the USA may have a money tray here instead, in which case you need to buy two other parts to replace the money tray and other users have reported a 30 min installation time for those, see this thread, but the extra parts needed are 84 21 6 946 075 [snap in adapter / Eject box] and 51 16 7 060 175 [Eject box frame]

First impressions are good, feels heavy, solid and robust, the pop up spring mechanism when you eject also feels sturdy yet smooth. You position the lower edge of the phone in the adapter and then press on the top edge of the screen to lower the phone down until it locks in place. There is a small plastic lip that then pops out to lock the top of the phone down. To remove the iPhone simply press the eject button and the top lip slides back and the phone lifts up at an angle for easy access. At first I had to press several times and with some force to get the eject mechanism to work but it’s much easier now once it’s been used a couple of times and things have “freed up”.


The snap-in charges the phone and connects it to the external antenna of the car. I’ve NEVER noticed any signal difference on any of the phones I’ve ever owned with BMW/Nokia car kits using external aerials but this is more likely due to strong signal everywhere I go. There aren’t any areas I can think of where i’d normally have little to no reception to test if there is any gain using the external antenna.

NOTE – the snap-in does nothing other than listed above [charge and aerial], it does NOT offer a hard-wired connection to the iDrive, the connection between phone and iDrive has been and always will be bluetooth. Several people have also wandered if this would allow you to access the iPod features on the iPhone through the stereo but it DOESNT.

I’ve taken far too many photos of the adapter, to see ALL the phone click here or click on the image above.

see more photos | digg story

Along with my local “Computer” speakers and Airport Express “Lounge” speakers that I used to have in iTunes

the AppleTV now appeared in the drop down list of available speakers to stream music to:

I hit play in iTunes and selected the AppleTV speakers from the selection box, after a few seconds pause to connect with the AppleTV, my song started streaming through the TV speakers and surround system in my lounge.

This is great news for me as I only purchased my Airport Express to stream music to the Lounge since the AppleTV didn’t have Airtunes functionality. Now I can remove the Airport Express and put that into the kitchen, and I was about to buy another Airport Express just for that so I’ve saved £70 thanks to Apple’s free update.

There is an new option page in the AppleTV settings for Airtunes allowing you to turn the feature on/off and also set an Airtunes password:

UPDATE:
If you have your TV turned on and showing the AppleTV source, when you change tracks on your computer/laptop and stream to the Apple TV Airtunes speakers the corresonding track name and album art are shown on the TV as if you were selecting and playing the music from the Apple TV.

Obviously not content with the iPhone sales figures in the UK, O2 have announced they are changing all three iPhone tariffs to the benefit of the end user.

Those on the lowest £35 tariff get triple minutes and double SMS!
Those on the £45 tariff now get the same as the old £55 tariff, basically double mins, same SMS.
Those on the £55 tariff get dropped down to the new £45 tariff, so basically you’re saving £10 a month but you do have the option if you wish to jump up to the new £75 tariff if you really feel you need 3000 minutes!

For them to make such drastic tariff changes less than 3 months after it’s UK launch is a bold move, but definitely in the right direction. I know of 4 people who have all bought an iPhone after I’ve shown them all the features on my own device, but there are so many of my friends who would all love to get an iPhone, the cost of the handset itself doesn’t bother them, it’s the over-priced tariffs that have stopped them from taking the plunge. For the early adopters it’s a welcome break as many can now drop down a tariff and save some £££ over the course of the 18 month contract, I still wish they’d add an unlimited SMS option to the tariffs though.

The new tariffs come into effect as of today but depending on when you’re billing cycle is you may not notice the changes on your bill until mid March at the absolutle latest.

All current O2 iPhone customers should have by now received an SMS from O2 detailing the changes with a link to tell you more about it. The link varies depending on which tariff you were on, £35 link, £45 link and £55 link and includes instructions on how to easily change to a different tariff or you can simply click here and follow instructions to change tariffs.

I checked the BT HomeHub and the broadband light and LAN lights were on but I rebooted the hub just for good measure.

I then connected my iPhone to the hub via wi-fi and it was instantly online so no problem with the broadband connection itself and access to google.com and hotmail.com was fine.

The ethernet cable from the router to the computer was seated correctly, the XP machine had picked up an IP properly from the router’s DHCP, it all seemed ok.

I tried accessing bbc.co.uk just in case it was a caching error and to my surprise it loaded the page without delay.  After trying a few others, skynews.com, digg.com, etc I established it was just a handful of sites affected.

Rather than the usual, “just give it a reboot” I wanted to see if I could find a fix without restarting. Since almost all site except ones used regularly on that machine were working it had to be some sort of DNS or cacheing issue. I’d tried emptying internet explorer’s cache and relaunching IE7 which had not effect. I then found firefox hiding on the system and never used so I tried that and same problem, so it wasn’t a program specific cache it was a global cache somewhere on the machine and there appeared to be a very easy fix, just clearing the local DNS cache from the command prompt.

Simply open up a command prompt window (windows key+R, then type “cmd” and hit return). Once in command prompt just type:

ipconfig /flushdns

This will clear any local DNS cache which Windows XP has created to speed up access to some sites you have recently visited. After flushing the DNS Internet Explorer opened google.com and MSN Live messenger signed in without a hitch and no need to restart either You can edit your Windows registry and set the local DNS to never cache or have a much shorter cache refresh period but I didn’t bother in this case.

I know this is common knowledge to a lot of people but it should serve as warning when testing for an internet connection, don’t simply try to access google.com, or some other well known site that may be in a corrupt local dns cache. It’s the first time I’ve been caught out by it and it’ll certainly be my last.

Simply click on the thumbnail of the voucher to enlarge it and print.

[NB - you must pre-book your table, I simply phone them to book on the walk there from the car park ]

UPDATE January 2009 – There seem to be a large number of visitors to this post recently (Jan 2009), perhaps looking for the latest 50% off Voucher for Blackhouse Grill that is running throughout January 2009. There is no “voucher” as such for the latest offer, you now have to book online in order to get the 50% off and it’s limited to Mon-Fri but open to everyone.

Please click one of the following to book online for your 50% off:
Blackhouse Grill Restaurants – 50% Off – Book Online
Gusto Restaurants – 50% Off – Book Online

It looks like there’s a bug with software version 1.1.3 that affects most people but only under a few certain conditions:

1. If you send short SMS to people and they reply very quickly
2. The clock on your iPhone is set slighlty off true “atomic” time (GMT) in my case.

I have taken a few photos to demonstrate this to you but to give an overview, the new software seems to sort outgoing SMS by the iPhone time it was sent but sorts incoming messages by the time on the SMS server of the 3rd party. If you’re iphone time happened to be 1 minute behind the time of the SMS server, then if your 3rd party replies and you send another message out in under 1 minute, initially the SMS will look ok on the screen, but exit to all SMS list and then re-view the thread and your messages will all be out of sync.

Trust me it’s much easier to visual in the photos and try replicating by sending yourself some SMS:

I then tried updating my iPhone clock to exact GMT but it doesn’t allow me to set seconds, although seconds may set to zero when hitting save. As you can see in the last two image, I must have set the phone a little ahead of GMT as the problem was reversed with my messages grouping after the replies!

1. Two finger text entry for capital letters. To get a single captial letter prior to 1.1.3 you had to press shift then press the letter you wanted. With 1.1.3 you can now press shift+letter simultaneaously and it gives the same result as a standard full sized keyboard.
2. SMS alert popup now rotates between portrait and landscape, pretty sure it didn’t do that in 1.1.2
3. You can tap white circles to jump to another home screen rather than swiping. This has always been the case in weather app, etc but there are still iPhone users out there who don’t know this.
4. Enhanced gmail access via IMAP now rather than POP, although I already have my gmail setup via IMAP using the “other” option pre-1.1.3
5. iTunes store gift voucher redemption from the phone, should any body give you an iTunes gift card and you need to buy some songs/movies whilst out and about.
6. Manually manage music/videothrough iTunes

….I did have lots more but they’re pretty much well known about know so I’ve left this post unfinished but feel free to post in the comments section.

Luckily there was a nice easy fix:

1. Quit Outlook
2. Click Start->Run
3. Type “outlook /cleanreminders” without the quotes and hit OK.
4. Outlook will then launch after cleaning any corrupt appointments.
5. Quit Outlook again.
6. Click Start->Run
7. Type “outlook /cleanfreebusy” without the quotes and hit OK.
8. Outlook will then launch after cleaning any corrupt free/busy slots.
9. That’s it.

4 of my employees had this problem with Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003. The above fix worked first time for all of them.

All I want is the bare bones console with no extras, I’ve checked all the Wii stock check sites, Tesco’s, Toys ‘R’ Us, Argos, Woolworths, Game, HMV, Amazon, Play.com and more and they’re all out of stock or bundles only.

Guess I’ll just have to keep waiting…….

UPDATE: I’ve since bought one from Woolworth’s who had 3 in stock

Well having successfully updated my iPhone to 1.1.3 I have noticed that I am no longer able to join wi-fi networks, it says i’m connected to my Apple Airport but browsing web pages fails stating unable to connect to server.

I jumped into settings and turned wi-fi off then back on and let it join the network again. Same problem.

I then tried the advanced tab for the network and told it to forget the network and then find it again, same problem.

I tried force closing Safari (by holding down the home button) and then relaunched Safari, still not working.

Next was to reboot the airport express, didn’t solve it.

I tried my MacBook Pro on wi-fi, worked ok so it’s not an internet or airport problem.

Finally I noticed in the advanced tab of the wi-fi network that the phone was getting a self assigned IP address (169.xxx.xxx.xxx) not picking one up from Airport DHCP. Clicking renew lease didn’t work, still self assigned IP so this appeared to be the problem, the iPhone wasn’t being assigned an IP by my airport express. I tried my netgear (Sky) router and the same problem with that.

I finally turned the phone off and back on (with a forced reboot, holding down home button and power button for up to 10 seconds) and then checked the wi-fi advanced page, finally it picked up a DHCP assigned IP and all is well again.

Not sure what 1.1.3 did but I’d never had that problem before.

On a side note: a family member also has an iPhone and updated to 1.1.3 last night. He said it all went well, he was playing with the new features before he went to bed and then turned his phone off last night. On the way to work he powered his phone back on and it’s simply showing an icon saying connect the phone to iTunes, emergency calls only. So it looks like its gone back to the “virginal” or “as new” setting for some reason. So he’s without his phone and all his contacts until he gets back from work.

UPDATE: Two friends updated their iPhones to 1.1.3 and neither could then connect to wifi (Apple Airport or their Orange Livebox Router). Same problem with it not picking up an IP via DCHP. They gave me a call so I pointed towards this blog to follow the instructions. They both followed all the steps above and this worked for one of them only. The other iPhone still wouldn’t pick up an IP. In the end he fixed it by simply going into the settings menu and choosing

“Settings”->”General”->”Reset”->”Reset Network Settings”

so you might want to try that first as a quicker and easier fix?

Back to the iPhone update. Upon reading about the announcement I clicked the Apple logo in the top left of the desktop and ran a manual software update to obtain the latest iTunes, etc. Half way there…….After opening the new iTunes and connecting the iPhone I clicked “Check for Updates” only to be informed that Apple’s Software Server is Busy or unobtainable, check internet connection or try again later. Since my network was functioning correctly and all web site were accessible I assumed the server had reached its connection limit with everybody trying to get the update.

True enough, half an hour later iTunes asked me to agree to some new T&C’s before downloading the 1.1.3 software.

I thought it had already downloaded the update but a quick look at my network activity showed it downloaded at full speed (1MB/s) for a while:

Finally the update of my iPhone firmware began:

and I am pleased to say all went smoothly.

• Blank Theme (Zip File)
• Blank Blue Theme (Zip File)
  
• Liquid Theme (Zip File)
  
• Liquid(light) Theme (Zip File)
  

XML Sitemap Tool for Google Yahoo MSN

WARNING – I’ve found that trying to use the tool in the link above from an Apple running OS X 10.5 crashes both Firefox and Sarafi. I’m not sure why but once it starts to load the java app everything just hangs. Works fine on Internet Explorer 6 and 7 under XP.

I’ve been looking for a way to integrate JAlbum into WordPress and stumbled across this plugin:jAlbum plugin for WordpressI’ll give it a try later and post back with results.