Blogger app

At long last, Google has released an upgrade of their (free) Blogger app (version 2.0.0) for managing (Google) blogspot.com blogs (like this one). The previous version (1.0) had very limited functionality, so I never used it for anything but experimental tests. This version has enough functionality that I am using it for at least some of my entries here (starting with this one, at least the first time round; a snafu wiped out its contents and I am rewriting it on my PC to be safer).

On my (iOS 5.1.1) iPod, Blogger recently (?) started reporting a warning about Safari not being a supported browser to manage blogs:

With the Blogger app now usable for basic posts from the iPod, I now have an alternative to Safari (although I continue to "risk" using Safari for some Blogger use).

In the Blogger app, you can assign labels, though without the benefit of seeing existing labels.

You cannot preview an entry.

You cannot schedule a publication time for an entry.

You can include a picture from the Camera Roll (or even take a picture live to include, although I don't expect to have need for such). Current reviews in the Apple App Store suggest that images can only be positioned after all text, and that if you put in more than image, their final order is not guaranteed.

You can style your entries with raw HTML, although the spacing between lines of the final product is a little odd (e.g., when using unordered lists).

I had already edited this already-published entry in the Blogger app several times when it had text only. I then tried to add an image (the above image), and all my existing text was wiped out. I mistakenly thought Blogger had gotten confused and was trying to create a totally new entry, so I chose Save, which wiped out my existing text. Had I chosen Discard, it's possible that my existing text would have been preserved. Like another person who reviewed this app in the Apple App Store, I usually write my entries in another app (Notespark) before accessing Blogger, at which point I do final editing, so at least I still had some of my original observations from which to work. The Blogger app also crashed on me a couple of other times through 11/18/12, but I only lost data once (the incident just described).


On the iPad interface (new with this version), in addition to a Publish button, there is a Save button. If you are editing a previously published entry, using Save will actually take that entry out of circulation (remove it from being seen on your blog) and place it in Draft status. The entry still retains its timestamp, so when you re-publish it, it will fall into its previous place among other entries. Having learned of this Save button behavior, I will probably forgo its use. I'm not sure if I will ever want to, only temporarily, remove an existing entry from circulation.

Google Search app: Voice Search

Today's update of the (free) Google Search app (version 2.5.1) calls attention to its Improved Voice Search:

I almost never used this app, normally using Google through the search bar in whatever browser I was using. I just tried out Voice Search for the first time I can recall, doing a few test searches, speaking slowly and clearly in a quiet room. I was very impressed with the voice recognition accuracy, and the resultant suggested links.

The results were so good that I've moved the Google Search app out of its former app group and into one of the "coveted" four slots at the bottom of the screen, so it's now one of the four apps which are always visible, no matter which Home Screen you are on.

Owners of devices which can run Siri are unlikely to be excited by this (presuming they are happy using Siri), but iPod users like myself may find this a good way to avoid typing for at least some searches. Theoretically, that should speed up the process of getting search results.

The Google Search app has plenty of other capabilities which I am not discussing here, but I'm probably likely to use the app mostly or entirely for Voice Search.

GoTasks to-do list app

11/4/12: Added a number of updates. Holding back from updating the app to a newer version until at least after I finish a particular project for which I am using a dedicated GoTasks list, not wishing to introduce any additional software variables until that project is completed.
2/2/13: I eventually upgraded from 1.7.2 directly to 1.7.4. My impression is that 1.7.2's mildly buggy cursor positioning for new items (described below) seems to have been fixed. On the downside, crashes became more frequent, requiring a total quit of the application (forcing it out of the active apps) and restarting it. I have long experienced similar behavior from my usage of the iOS (default) Calendar app, which I also sync with Google, so, while inconvenient, it is not a big deal to me.
3/30/13: The crashes seem to have been largely (entirely?) eliminated with 1.7.5.
11/8/13: Added updates (and a solution) related to significantly worsening performance issues over time using 1.7.5 under iOS 5.1.1.

I used the Errands To-Do List app (my earlier review) for my to-do list for almost 3 months, but was unhappy with the frequent, surprisingly slow startup. I finally looked around a bit more, and found this review of 3 to-do list apps. That led me to this other review of the Zero app, where a comment from "Samlindahl" mentioned GoTasks, which I investigated.

To-do list apps are plentiful in the Apple App Store, and no one wants to try every single one of them in an attempt to find the one that best suits their needs. I am grateful to the other bloggers for providing signposts for such a quest. Although GoTasks was not reviewed by either blog entry, the bloggers provided the ecosystem that spawned the comment that ultimately led me to the (free) GoTasks (version 1.7.2) app.

My to-do list needs are relatively basic. I don't need due dates or reminders for items, I just need a big "bin" into which I can put them, sort (and re-sort) them as I desire, check them off, and delete them. GoTasks meets all my essential requirements and includes several nice additional features.

GoTasks (its website, which has some informative links) can be used with Google Tasks, a Google service of which I had been previously unaware. I'm glad to say Google Tasks has quite a decent web interface at https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas (as of 9/21/12 3/21/14, there is no logout button on the page, so you can and should use https://mail.google.com/tasks/logout to do so, as mentioned on https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/gmail-labs-help-tasks/G1UvgMc_nYU go to https://www.google.com to do so). I used copy-and-paste with it to transfer all my Errands To-Do List items (which I had e-mailed to myself) using that web interface, and plan to eventually do the same thing to transfer other tasks which I currently initially stored rather artificially in the (no-longer-available) Notespark app, and subsequently migrated to the Simplenote app. It's of course much easier to do a lot of copy-and-paste operations on a PC than on an iPod.

For GoTasks, I use a Google account which I had already largely dedicated to managing my contacts and calendar, and now my to-do list as well. I do not use this Google account for much e-mail, so may have avoided some issues (based on a comment from Alex of the above-mentioned http://blog.chillantro.com/appsperience). I had no unread messages in the account's Inbox when I connected to it with GoTasks. I also might have avoided some issues by using only the "Local Account" in my initial testing, and only later connecting my Google account. The Apple App Store has many positive and potentially useful review comments, and I thought I had seen a comment which advised against starting the app right up immediately with a Google account.

It isn't required that one use a Google account, but I like (11/8/13: AND STRONGLY RECOMMEND) the syncing to Google's servers because:

• I can additionally backup (outside of other iPod backups) my to-do list over WiFi to Google's servers at whatever frequency I like.
• I can use a web interface to access/update the Google server's last record of my to-do list, which is convenient at times. Syncing between Google's servers and my iPod (and/or other iOS device) can be done later.
• If you need to reinstall the app (which may be the only way to alleviate performance issues -- see CONS, below), being able to sync data back from Google's servers to your device will likely simplify your task.

If you only use the "Local Account" option (in which the app also stores its Features and Help lists), your data is presumably stored in whatever backups you make of your iPod, probably in iCloud or pc (small p and c, meaning PC or Mac) iTunes.


PROS:

• Allows manual sorting of items, the most useful sorting for me.
• (Only when using manual sorting) Allows indenting of items to group "child" items under a "parent" item. Re-ordering by dragging a parent item moves its children as well. Three (or more, probably) indenting levels are possible, but so far I've never used more than three. There's only so much width to an iPod screen; if you indented too often you'd have little room for the text of an item (and landscape orientation usage is not an option).
• Via Share, can e-mail a single item or a parent+children group of items.
• Uses up to 2 lines for the main text "Name" of an item (unless you turn off the Truncate Name setting, in which case more than 2 lines of "Name" text can be shown), and up to 1 line for "Notes". Does not reserve empty screen space for an item's "Notes" if there are none. (This is more effective use of the screen space than in Errands To-Do List, where 1 line is always used for each of its equivalent fields of "Name" and "Notes", regardless of whether there is any "Notes" text.)
• Drag the + button to the area after any existing item currently visible on the screen (you cannot drag to any position above the top or below the bottom of the screen) to create a new item, or use the "spread" gesture (more correct than "pinch", I feel, although the app's Features say "Pinch to insert new task") between existing items. (If you just tap the + button, a new item will be created at the top of the list.)
• Long-press ("Long Tap") on an item to select from options including "View Details" (e.g., the above-mentioned "Notes") or Delete > Delete Task.
• Long-press ("Long Tap") on a parent item additionally allows you to "View Branch", to see the child items only.
• Has a slider to set Font Size. I used the smallest size, and can fit about 9 items on the screen (One more than I could fit in Errands To-Do List).
• Has Search capability. Handy for those of us with seemingly infinitely long lists of things we may never get around to....
• Manual Sync (instead of automatic sync) to Google is an option, and my preference. I sync when I have WiFi and know I've made enough changes to merit a sync. It would, however, be nice if GoTasks showed a list's last sync date with Google, or even an indicator showing whether or not local changes have been saved on the iPod since the last Google sync operation for a list.
• Multiple lists can be made under a single Google account, which is of some benefit to me.
• Customizable behavior for tap actions (defaults are in parentheses):
  
  • Single Tap (View task)
  • Double Tap (Edit task; enables immediate editing of "Name", not of "Notes")
  • Long Tap (Tasks menu)
  Additional options are Mark As Completed and View Branch, but so far the defaults seem the most useful and natural.
• Multiple Settings options. I changed Ask before deleting to off because you already need a Long-Press plus a tap on Delete, which I consider enough of a confirmation. I also turned off Truncate Name in order to show all of the "Name" text, instead of truncating at 2 lines and showing "..." to indicate that more exists.
  
  
  
  
  Some other settings, including some not shown above, are irrelevant to my use, and I do not discuss them here.
  

CONS:

• No "Focus" as in Errands To-Do List, to mark items as deserving a different type of attention than other tasks (However, I eventually concluded that Errands To-Do List's badge showing the count of "Focus" items was not of use to me.).
• When doing multiple operations while in Airplane Mode, the end result after subsequent syncing to Google's servers may not be exactly what you expect. When I used both Clear Completed and Empty List to totally delete items while in Airplane Mode, only the first operation was subsequently synced to Google (so to resolve that, I just used Empty List again).
• I ran into two non-critical (GoTasks continued to function) errors to date, though I don't remember what I was doing at the time: "(null)" action failed with message "0 ". That error is mentioned on the support page.
• GoTasks crashed on me 4 times through 10/9/12, likely enough because I was running low on available RAM on my 4th generation iPod Touch running iOS 5.1.1.
• Apparent bug: In early October 2012, after adding about half a dozen items, then manually syncing, GoTasks deleted an older, lower item (which I subsequently found in the Deleted folder, an item which I knew I hadn't yet gotten around to doing) and had oddly moved another (an item I knew I had JUST put closer to the top). I was cued into these changes by seeing a change in the display caused by slight line positioning changes at the time of syncing (because different items had different numbers of visible lines, so the inter-item line positioning changed). I searched the Trash and found a dupe of my not-yet-done item there. Of course, other apps that sync with Google Tasks might have made the same strange errors.
• After some period of usage with 1.7.2-1.7.5 under iOS 5.1.1, which for me was approximately 9 months, the app may begin suffering from extensive delays for operations that were previously close to instantaneous. In 10/2013, the developer confirmed that he was aware of this issue, and had tried to address it in later versions, but they are only available for iOS 6/7. I am sticking with iOS 5 as long as possible (see here for why), but in 11/2013 I have an acceptable solution in deleting the app from my iPod, then reinstalling it from PC iTunes (In 2/2014, I was also able to get 1.7.5 directly from the App Store back onto my iPod running iOS 5.1.1) and adjusting configuration settings. Since I sync to Google Tasks, I can reload my data from Google, then manually reorder my lists as desired (the previous order is not preserved). The developer pointed out that you can backup tasks prior to deleting the app by using Long-press (tap-hold) on a list (or "All Lists") and choosing "Email". Time will tell how often I will need to reinstall to fix performance delays, but once in 9 months is not a big deal to me. (12/3/13: However, twice in 10 months is a negative trend that bears watching.)
• If you have more than a screen's worth of lists, and you want to reorder one, you cannot move it beyond the current screen's lists (there is no automatic scrolling beyond that point). You would have to first move it to the lowest position possible, then manually scroll the screen so that list is at the top, then repeat that procedure as often as needed until you are able to place it where you want it within your lists.
• On 3/3/14, I was walking through areas with intermittent wifi connectivity and made the mistake of making some changes and, more critically, making multiple attempts to sync (avoid doing this!). The GoTasks data on my iPod got so out of sync with the Google server data that GoTasks could not be used. I'm writing this up rather after-the-fact, but I believe it displayed some information about the insurmountable sync problem, then crashed when I tried to use it regardless of that problem. I deleted the app, reinstalled it from the App Store, synced my data from Google's servers, and reordered lists as desired, a process with which I was already familiar, from seeking performance improvement in 11/2013, as noted above.

OTHER COMMENTS:

• When you create a new item, or move an existing item elsewhere, it inherits the indentation level of the item directly above it.
• To cancel blank (e.g., unintentional) new, never-saved item creation, tap Done button (not particularly intuitive, but it does the trick).
• (Only when using manual sorting)
  
  • Marking the only child item of a parent item as complete will also mark the parent item as complete.
  • If you delete the only child of a parent (at least with Ask before deleting turned off in settings), the parent does not automatically change from a downward pointing triangle to a checkbox, although it will update upon assorted other actions (e.g., tap the triangle, refresh the list, edit that item, switch to another app and back to GoTasks).
• I keep a lengthy list of items, so use the following workaround:
  If I locate an item using Search and want to move it to the top of the list, I move it temporarily to a normally empty "Move-to-top placeholder" list, then move it back to its original list, which puts it in the topmost position.
• The Clear button at the top used to delete text in a "Name" or "Notes" text box is perhaps efficient, since it does the same function for either text box while taking up only one space on screen. However, it takes some mild getting used to, vs the typical Select All and delete, or perhaps X button to delete, methods I've used more often.
• Marking an item as complete doesn't move it out of its list (unlike in Errands To-Do List). One potential benefit of this could be for a group of items, where you don't want to lose sight of the completed items while others remain unfinished.
• Occasionally when starting or switching to the app, creation of a new item starts with the text input position (cursor) higher on the line than it should be. That doesn't interfere with functionality, and the alignment is corrected when your text extends to the second line or when you tap Done. (2/2/13: Seemingly fixed in 1.7.4.)
• If using automatic sync (which I tried briefly), after creating a new empty item, wait for the Google "throbber" to finish rotating before using Clear Completed or performing other actions, or you might experience odd behavior.
• As someone who does only manual syncing, I don't recommend delaying too long between syncs. Many accumulated changes would seem to run a higher risk of confusing Google's servers.
• Because I use manual syncing, making "more complex" (e.g., involving re-ordering and grouping) changes from two or more devices can invite trouble. If using manual syncing, you may wish to stick to using GoTasks on a single device, or, always sync such that the local and remote states will match prior to any session during which you change any to-do list items. Supplemental use of the Google Tasks canvas web interface described above must be done similarly carefully (only after a GoTasks sync, and, as already noted, a GoTasks sync must again be done after any canvas changes). GoTasks syncing is apparently based on "new" transactions recorded in the GoTasks app data, not on the total state of to-do list item data on both client and server. That differs from the syncing of an app like Notespark (which I first blogged about here), which provides you a chance to reconcile discrepancies found.
• Within the Google app, Apps > Tasks can also be used to access Google Tasks items, but GoTasks is more streamlined for pure to-do list management, and performs more smoothly as well.
• In-app purchases are simply varying-level appreciations of the developer's product, and are under Settings > Donate. The frequency of each is visible in the App Store. It was well worth $4.99 to me. In two (total) very reasonable and reasonably spaced out (timewise) pop-ups, the app asks you about making a donation. Those pop-ups apparently come up whether or not you made a donation (the second prompt came up some time after I had made my donation).
• I would also like a Truncate Notes option so that just like for "Name", I could always show the entirety of "Notes" text. The developer replied that he may consider adding that.
• As usual on this blog, my comments refer to usage on the iPod. I have observed that some of the functionality differs on the iPad.

French to English automated translation issues

For the French sentence:

Les pièces sont, sinon moins froides, du moins plus tranquilles.

Google Translate returns:

The parts are, if not warmer, at least quieter.

A more natural, and in this case correct, translation is:

The rooms are, if not warmer, at least quieter.

as I theorized that it ought to be, and which I subsequently confirmed with a native French speaker.  Of course, having translated the original French sentence (which did involve checking a dictionary) from my own original thought in English, I can be certain of what the translation (back) into English should be.  I was simply curious about an automated translation result.


Google Translate is likely hampered by the fact that "piece" (Google Translate used "part", which has an equivalent meaning) is the first definition of "pièce" in a dictionary.  At least that is the case in the Larousse French/English dictionary app, wherein "room" ranks fourth in the eleven definition possibilities for "pièce".

Beyond "The parts are", Google Translate offers the following additional translation options of the first clause ("Les pièces sont"), but those minor variations are wrong for this particular sentence as well:

• The pieces are
• Pieces are
• Parts are
• The coins are

Looking up "room" in French, the Larousse dictionary app gives different definitions depending on the context:

• in building or public place:  salle
• in house:  pièce
• in hotel:  chambre

Even those rules are not cast in stone, in my experience, but they're probably reasonable general rules.

In any case, the above peripheral perspective is not so easily incorporated into automated translation.  However, my French sentence's reference to "rooms" would seem to be relatively easily inferred from the rest of the content by a native or reasonably experienced (human!) French speaker.

Transposing the two Japanese/Chinese characters for "Japan"

 In the picture above (apparently taken in Japan), I found it interesting to see the two characters for "Japan", 日本, transposed (to 本日), and consequently conveying a wholly different meaning. It is a little bit like seeing "States United" instead of "United States", and that caught my eye.  The meaning of those two characters in the transposed order is, I'm confident, the same in Japanese as in Chinese.

(1) 本 is often used in official (or at least "semi-formal") Chinese (and, I suspect, Japanese) print to mean "This", although to my knowledge it is never used in Chinese speech that way.  日 is a character commonly used for "day", so here 本日 means "today".
(2) The Japanese possessive character (like apostrophe s in English, e.g., in Grant's Tomb).
(3) 動 is a character meaning "move" in Chinese, and seemingly in Japanese as well.
(4) き is a Japanese hiragana, about which I am not qualified to say much. However, for (3) and (4) together (動き), Google Translate gives movement (or:  move, trend, activity, development, change).

So the characters I've pointed out with the arrows labeled 1-2-3-4 almost certainly mean "Today's change", particularly given the financial display for which they are a heading. For the whole phrase (本日の動き), Google Translate gives "Today's movement". That English phrasing is a little stilted, which is no surprise, coming from an automated translation source as it does.

Sometimes Chinese language background can shed some perspective on Japanese writing, and vice versa.

Apps useful for my trip to London

Recently I traveled to London. I am not much of a photographer, neither in frequency of shots taken, nor, as many will rightly say, in quality of shots, but having the 4th generation iPod Touch with its camera led me to take some shots, like this one of the Big Ben Clock Tower.

In preparation for the trip, I created a (free) Google Voice account which would be able to call U.S. (and Canada, I believe) numbers for free until the end of 2012 (I believe that was extended from its original end of 2011 cut-off date) 2013 (http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/free-calling-within-us-and-canada.html). A knowledgeable friend had advised me that such an account could be used by the (free) Talkatone app to turn the iPod into a phone (1/3/14: That capability is ending on 5/5/14 due to changes by Google; see, for instance, the 10/31/13 post on https://www.facebook.com/talkatone.). I installed Talkatone, and despite a few hiccups during stateside testing, it worked quite well from London, allowing me to retrieve some messages from my answering machine. After returning from London I did a little more testing and, on one occasion, I was surprised that I could call a landline but could not reach a cell phone. Anyway, the combination of these two things served me well across the pond, even if the sound quality is not great.

I loaded up some additional free apps for the trip, listed below in approximate order of usefulness. Some of them would have been more useful, except I had alternate, more helpful, resources, which I will also mention.

• London: Travel Guide - Time Out has assorted information about London.  I did browse this a bit, but it was of minimal use to me because I had the good luck to borrow from the library the (more useful) 2010 Kindle e-book of Time Out London, which I consulted instead.  I also had several similarly recent, printed London travel materials on loan from a friend.
• Brighton Museums was good for £1 off entry to the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (about an hour by train from London).  It has photos and brief information about the Royal Pavilion and other attractions, but its primary benefit to me was the discount.
• Tube Map has, in addition to a map of the London Underground ("the Tube"), a Lines button which shows up-to-date information by subway line, e.g., "Good service", "Planned closure", "Part closure", "Line issue" (all of which I am seeing as I write this entry).  A small popup window may show periodically on the map with Tube alert-type information; I'm not sure if that overlaps with the Lines information.  The Tube Map app's buttons, advertising, and alerts naturally take up part of the iPod's precious screen space.  With hindsight I should have checked the Lines status each day before leaving the hotel (or leaving anywhere else I had WiFi), but I did not run into any meaningful Tube schedule disruptions (and at various stations I did learn in person of some minor scheduled service changes which were part of preparation for the coming Summer Olympics).  I had also loaded a PDF of the London Tube map (which I'd found using Google) onto the Dropbox app and saved it as a Favorite therein so that it would be available without WiFi access.  That was my real Tube resource, and was extremely useful both for scoping out trips in advance and while on a train.  In the most extreme situations, when riding with only one hand free, it was still easy to use spread-to-zoom and swipe motions to confirm that I was on the proper train, which easily beat doing so using a clumsy folding map with tiny print.
  (3/21/12: With their 4.1 update, the makers of this app have added integration with their Bus London app, of which I just learned, and could have been handy for the Tate Britain museum, which is a bit of a walk from the nearest Tube station. Supposedly within the Tube Map app, you can now find bus departures around a Tube station.)
• Hidden London contains photos and information about some less well-known attractions.  Although I had mentally noted some of those attractions before the trip, in the end it was only by accident that I happened to walk by one (the Cartoon Museum) and actually went to one (the Cafe at Tate Britain).  Regarding the latter, I had gotten confused about museums and went to the Tate Britain instead of the Tate Modern, but as this app notes, this "little know[n] excellent cafe hides in the basement of this grand art gallery.  Open daily, the cafe serves amazing cakes, snacks and a range of tea and coffee."  The cafe truly was excellent!
• ExCel London provides some general information, including food availability, about the convention site, which would presumably only be of interest if you are attending an event there.
• i-Shop has some information about possible discounts or tax refunds from selected shops.  I did see the Global Blue symbol (Global Blue is either the producer or somehow related to this app) inside the Tower of London gift shop, but I did not buy enough stuff to make serious investigation of this app worthwhile.

In addition to the Time Out London e-book mentioned above, I also borrowed a recreational reading e-book from the library before the trip.  Library e-books "return" themselves, so you never need to worry about them (unlike the half-read physical book which I had to return to the library on my last night in the U.S. during last minute trip preparations!).  I also bought an e-book for the Kindle app, so was well stocked with reading material.

The Notespark app, which I originally wrote about here, facilitated organizing London topics and a daily schedule.  I used a particular Tag for all London notes, and starred all of those notes.  Most of the time I would just work with the group of Starred notes.  I also dedicated a single note for each day's potential agenda, an agenda which often went through revisions.  When the contents of any note were no longer relevant for the remaining days of my trip (although I expected to revisit all London notes after the trip), I unstarred that note so that it would no longer be visual clutter.  I could use Notespark to search through whichever group of notes was more relevant, the Starred ones, or the group associated with the Tag which I used for this London trip.

When I had WiFi access both before and during the trip, I saved static copies of a number of London-related web pages, e.g., for various tourist attractions and travel tips, using the Opera Mini browser (about which I wrote most recently here).  I'll admit that despite getting a bunch of information in advance about Oyster Cards and Travel Cards (both of which are options, pointedly not mutually exclusive, for using the Tube and some other transportation systems), it wasn't until pretty late in the trip that I felt I really got a fuller understanding of them.

iPod: from 3rd to 4th generation under iOS 5.0.1

A while back, my 3rd generation iPod crashed so hard under iOS 4.3.5 that it "lost its mind". I used PC iTunes 10.5.0.142 to load iOS 5.0.1 onto its wiped-clean "mind", but its longstanding port hardware problem soon thereafter became so serious that I could no longer charge it without precariously holding the cable just right (for the entire charging period, something I wasn't about to do).

I got a 4th generation iPod which was initially at iOS 4.3.3, and got errors when trying to reload it with iOS 5.0.1. The Apple error message's first recommendation was to update PC iTunes, which I did, bringing it to 10.5.1. It seems logical enough that Apple might require the latest version of iTunes for such operations. I was then able to bring the iPod up to iOS 5.0.1.

In PC iTunes, I then attempted to Restore from Backup. There were two backups, one from my initial activation of the 4th generation device (and therefore not useful), and another of the 3rd generation one from 6 days earlier. Attempts to restore from the second (chronologically earlier) backup failed, reporting that the backup session failed.

More recently I had been doing backups to iCloud, and two of those backups were there. The first had virtually no data from my activation of the new iPod minutes earlier and was therefore not of interest. The earlier one was from 2 days earlier (from the 3rd generation iPod), and I began restoring from that. Ah, the beauty of the iOS 5 backup over WiFi, which takes place when you are charging at an outlet. You always have to charge; backup is a perfect thing to occur alongside.

The iPod reported that some items could not be downloaded, but that I could restore them if I had them on my (PC) iTunes by doing a sync operation. The following apps were not restored from the iCloud backup because they were no longer available in the App Store (Could there be any other reason why an app wouldn't have been restored?), but I still had them in my PC iTunes:

• CED
• Go To There
• InstaPaper Free

My outgoing 3rd generation iPod still had some battery charge (I had been conserving the remaining charge with Airplane Mode, turning it off, turning the brightness down all the way), so I could visually compare if any other apps were missing after the PC iTunes sync.

PC iTunes lists the device, presumably purely cosmetically, as a 3rd generation iPod.

I did a certain amount of work resetting app configurations and restoring data from servers associated with the apps.

Assorted impressions of the 4th generation iPod:

• Great to have cameras. I had recently been at the scene of an accident with my camera-less 3rd generation iPod, and stayed as one of the witnesses for the police who eventually came. If I had had this back then, I would have snapped pictures which would clearly have shown the policeman that the errant driver was in the wrong lane at the time of the accident. Fortunately I believe enough witnesses corroborated that anyway. You can also use the front-facing camera to use the iPod as a pseudo-mirror.
• The addition of a microphone changed (downgraded) what Apple included as earphones (my blog entry).
• The power button was moved to a more awkward position away from the top edge, making turning it on/off and taking screenshots (press power button + home button) clumsier. Maybe the new placement was needed because of the cameras or other hardware issues.
• Volume buttons were similarly moved to a more awkward position away from the side edge.
• The 3rd generation iPod's screen always looked great to me, but the Retina display of the 4th generation iPod is even sharper. My Opera Mini browser's saved Speed Dial images looked worse than they had on the old iPod, but simply recreating them fixed that. I had the initial impression that I needed the screen brightness to be slightly higher for the new iPod than for the old, but I'm no longer sure about that.

The following links from a Google search for "restore from icloud" were of the most use to me:

http://gigaom.com/apple/ios-101-set-up-and-restore-from-icloud-backup/
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4859
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1766
http://heresthethingblog.com/2011/10/18/restore-iphone-ipad-icloud-backup/
http://heresthethingblog.com/2011/07/21/wipe-iphone-android-phone/

IMDb (Internet Movie Database) app

Like many folks, I have often used Google to search for a bunch of different things, including movies. In some such movie searches I thought (not sure if I can reproduce this now) that the first screen of search results only showed the remaining show times for that day.  In any case, I'm not always looking for just a given day's possibilities -- I might be looking for a show time in the coming days.

It's not always clear that it is worth installing an app for something which is already eminently usable through a web browser. Aside from the space/clutter issue that comes with each additional app, if the app later gets updated (a frequent enough occurrence), you will get the minor nag notification to do that update. That's not such a big deal, but since I don't always want to choose the Update All option, I need to login with my Apple ID for each app's update, and it's kind of annoying to see, e.g., "7 updates" notification. I've been refusing to do a particular app's update for over a month because the update's only listed "improvement" was...to bring ads.

There should be some significant added value in an app over what could be done in a browser, and I was pleasantly surprised that the IMDb app delivers. It does list all show times, but it also (if you gave it a geographical location to search) quite prominently shows movies from local "artsy" and at least some college/university theaters. I don't go out to movie theaters extremely often, but I might just be lured out a tiny bit more by IMDb's app.

Opera Mini 6 web browser vs iOS 4 Safari

12/17/11: This entry is about Opera Mini 6/6.0.1 vs iOS 4 Safari, and is now largely static. See my subsequent blog entry on Opera Mini 6.5.1 vs IOS 5 Safari for a newer evaluation of the two browsers.

This entry gets updates, either unadvertised or advertised-with-dates, over time. I mostly read text while browsing the web on my iPod, which is probably one reason why Opera Mini works so well for me. I have little to say about images and videos in Opera Mini.
10/29/11: Most of the following discussion of Safari's capabilities refer to iOS 4; iOS 5 Safari has different, improved functionality.

I nursed my wounds on my iPod for some time from having upgraded from the excellent version 6 to the more-crash-prone-and-generally-worse-but-usually-still-better-than-iOS-4-Safari version 6.0.1, and was not in a hurry to upgrade further (on the iPod) -- once bitten, twice shy.  I did eventually upgrade to 6.5.1, which I consider is better than 6, though not by a huge margin.

7/15/11: Version 6.0.1 was released in 7/2011. I believe they changed the formerly obligatory single column display into the Single Column View option in Settings. That was likely done to allow the universal binary to display non-mobile websites normally on iPads, which have much larger screens. In any case, I happily use Single Column View on the iPod. However, Single Column View is not the default, which means if Opera ever crashes (7/27/11: ugh, a far more frequent occurrence with 6.0.1, but how much of that is related to 6.0.1 versus Opera server issues is unclear) or is fully closed, as I described here (e.g., to release any RAM it's holding onto), it is necessary to select Single Column View again. I normally keep Opera in RAM all the time.
(7/21/11: If you like 6.0's single column display on the iPod, you would likely be better off not upgrading to 6.0.1.  I have to re-select 6.0.1 Single Column View at least as often as each time Opera Mini crashes, which, sadly, is frequently.)
Upgrading to 6.0.1 displaced one of my existing 9 Speed Dial entries with an Opera page, but I eventually reset that.

The free Opera Mini web browser is an alternative to Apple's Safari browser, with various pluses and minuses. Opera Mini version 6 was released in 5/2011. Wikipedia has a decent article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_mini, which also links to the interesting http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mini-web-content-authoring-guidelines/. A list of technical specifications can be found at: www.opera.com/mobile/specs/. Here is a CNET review.

I use both Safari and Opera Mini regularly, but actively try to make greater use of Opera Mini, which I feel has more advantages for the iPod. An iPod is typically connected to the Internet less often than an iPhone, so some of the following items (e.g., Saved Pages) are more significant for iPod users like myself.

PROS:

• Opera Mini does not automatically reload a page when you tap the back arrow to return to it, at least if you return within some period of time (ever?). Thus, if you are reading a page which has multiple links to other pages, e.g., Google News, then tap to read an article, returning to the original page will not invoke (frequently pointless and time-wasting) reloading, unlike in Safari. Also, if you load pages into different tabs while you have Internet access, but later lose that access, you can still read those pages, even without having stored them as Saved Pages. RAM issues mentioned below will still be applicable.
• Unlike in Safari, you don't have to switch away from the current tab to open new pages, because you can open links in background tabs (tap-hold, then tap on "Open in New Tab"). This is helpful while, e.g., reading through all headlines in Google News, allowing you to open all stories you'd like to read in background tabs. RAM issues mentioned below will still be applicable.
• Unlike Safari, Opera Mini allows saving of static copies of web pages on the iPod, letting you read or reread them later even without wireless Internet access. That can be useful to save pages for recipes, technical reference, humorous articles, or for any other reason, e.g., because you don't have time to read them right away. Although I was once annoyed that I had to make 7 separate Saved Pages for an article (and I've seen articles requiring even more pages), that effort did serve me well since I was imminently losing Internet access, and I was able to read the (interesting) article soon afterward, while waiting in a store.
• At least 15 (someone else can test for the maximum number...) tabs are possible, exceeding Safari's limit of 8. RAM constrains the total number of tabs effectively usable; "The page has been cleared to save memory." message is what you are left with content-wise on a tab when you run low on RAM.
  9/8/11: Bummer, my Opera Mini had a serious problem and lost my saved pages. Rather shocking to discover I no longer had any entries in Saved Pages. However, that did make me realize that I was saving a large number of pages (in these 2 months of using 6.0.1), but only in a relatively small number of instances loading any of them again, so I wasn't too upset. From this Opera Mini forum thread, it looks like saved pages may be lost again upon an eventual upgrade of the iOS Opera Mini
• If you make an account on Opera's servers, you can use Opera Link to determine at what frequency to save both your nine Speed Dial targets and the state of your bookmarks there, for future restore (e.g., in case of a serious crash) or for sharing on another device(s), including on a pc.  Automatic syncing is possible, but I prefer to sync bookmarks manually, which avoids attempts at same when you know (or perhaps, even when you don't know) that you lack wireless Internet access.  Opera Link can also be used at any time on any Opera Mini instance device, so it is not linked inextricably to an Apple ID like iOS 5 Safari's Reading List. Although I didn't test this, it appears that if you use desktop Opera, there is supposed to be an Opera Mini folder for bookmarks, which is the extent of the bookmarks that get synced with Opera Link.

CONS:

• Opera Mini does not provide end-to-end encryption. If you don't trust their company, don't use it for anything requiring credentials or anything to which you're concerned about them having potential access.
• There is a short startup delay as it makes the connection to the Opera proxy servers ("calls home").
• Presumably because of the Opera proxy server, has extreme difficulties using maps.google.com effectively; I strongly advise using Safari for that. Even Safari cannot yield copyable text, though.
• On rare occasions, my initial attempt to bring up a page doesn't succeed, which I imagine is an Opera proxy server issue.
• Opera's proxy servers may lead to this side effect:
  Going to, e.g.:
  http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/26/dumb.doctors.office.ep/
  prompts you with:
  It looks like you are from outside the U.S. Would you like to make International your default edition? Yes | No Close
  which I chose to simply ignore.
• Only Safari can Add to Home Screen, using apple-touch-icon.png  when available (not favicon.ico, as it turns out; according to http://www.webmasterworld.com/html/3560399.htm). I had to remove some such Home Screen icons to prevent inertia from making me mindlessly use Safari. Opera Mini's Speed Dial is a partial substitute.
• The upgrade from 5 to 6 messed up images in previously saved pages from The Onion (and maybe from other websites, I didn't check). Not a big deal, I re-saved some pages to restore the images. However, images are rarely, if ever, crucial for me.  (7/22/11: No obvious similar problems from the 6.0 to 6.0.1 upgrade.)

OTHER OBSERVATIONS:

• Using Single Column View ensures that, because of its size, text will be pleasantly readable in portrait mode, at least for me. http://www.thechessmind.net/ is a chess blog which I have often been reading of late. In Safari, I sometimes feel the need to switch to landscape mode to make the text more legible, but the text has always been fine to read in portrait mode in Opera Mini.
• When using Single Column View, some items which might typically (as viewed, e.g., while not using Single Column View, or in Safari) be unobstrusive on the side of a web page may appear, sometimes as a large clump, at the top or bottom. I have gotten used to that, and simply swipe to get past the clump, if it's at the top, to get to the real content, e.g., on http://www.thechessmind.net/.
• Find in Page: The Done button means done with searching; search happens as you type. Can search repeatedly in a page. Safari can find in page also, although it's probably somewhat less intuitive; see, e.g.: http://www.tipb.com/2010/09/16/ios-42-features-find-text-safari-web-page/
• Only 1 Speed Dial Start Page is possible per tab. So if you start there, then keep going "forward" to additional pages, you'd have to tap the back arrow, potentially many times, to get back to the Speed Dial Start Page again in that tab. I tend to keep common destinations in both the Speed Dial Start Page and in Bookmarks, so in some cases (precisely 9 - the number of possible Speed Dial target pages), I do have the Bookmarks route as an option, but it's more to the point to just open a new tab, which starts on the Speed Dial Start Page.
• In very early June 2011, it seemed that it was sometimes necessary to scroll to the bottom of a page to be able to activate the Opera controls (some Opera proxy server problem?), but this problem seemed to have been fixed by 6/5/11.
• In very early June 2011, the links returned for a Google search for "tornado hurricane difference" could not be opened with taps (some Opera proxy server problem?). I did the same search in Safari to get to those links, then copied the most interesting link to Opera Mini in order to save its content. This "tappability" problem seemed to have been fixed by 6/5/11.
• One day in mid-June 2011, I was unable to reach websites ("Unable to connect. Please review your network settings."). I have many of the same sites bookmarked in both Opera Mini and Safari, so I just switched to using Safari for a time, switching back to a once-again-working Opera Mini later in the day. As long as Opera Mini problems aren't an "overly common" occurrence, I am unlikely to switch to any other browser as my main browser -- the Pros of using Opera Mini are that useful to me.
• To copy lengthy text from a web page (I only tested using Single Column View, my normal mode of operation), it is more effective to select text starting from the bottom and press-dragging up to the top. Selecting text from top to bottom seems fraught with pitfalls which can prematurely stop your selecting, when you'd have to start all over again by going to the top of the web page (press the time at the top center of the iPod screen to do that), then again pressing and holding on non-link text until the Select Text option appears, tapping that, then press-dragging again to select. A reasonably rigorous test page for this, about hiking Mount Washington. Although you could save the entire web page, copying its text elsewhere can be useful in some situations.
• 9/4/11: Power-User settings are available by going to config: in the location bar, as described further on http://www.guruslodge.com/bmobile-phones-tutorial-and-solution-centerb/operamini-secret-codes/, which I just discovered. Changes apparently survive Opera Mini crashes, unlike the Single Column View setting. For my own usage, I turned off the Phonenumber detection, which I suspect is probably only of use if (a) you have an iPhone (which I don't), and want to call such a number immediately, or (b) you normally use iOS assistance to add new contacts (which I don't, for reasons mentioned here).

Podcasts for beginner-intermediate Spanish lessons

In high school, I was fortunate to have a Spanish teacher who seemed to know that I had some proclivity for foreign languages. I had once done a small bit of supplemental work (reading Le Petit Prince [The Little Prince]) beyond the French I took each year, of which she may have been aware, being the Department Chair.

This Miss York (Thank you!!) suggested that I skip 2nd year Spanish, so I ended up taking 1st and 3rd year. I had to hustle to get up to speed in the 3rd year, not having been exposed to the 2nd year material, but it was well worth it to develop a Spanish language foundation that would encourage me in future years to keep at it.

For some time, I've thought that if I again had my high school Spanish textbooks (which were loaned to students each year by the school, as I presume is the norm in U.S. public schools), I should be able to, reasonably quickly, refresh some of the grammatical knowledge I once had. However, podcasts remain rather more convenient, and I found one which feels pretty good for my level, although to date I've only listened to a small portion of its content.

iTunes U, DePaul College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Basic Spanish, by Claudia Fernandez, is my choice.  Eventually I hope to again be able to compose meaningful new sentences on my own (too bad you can't split infinitives in Spanish, I'd obviously love to do so). For too long I've been living off of random sentences like:

• El mago hace muchos trucos de mágia. (The magician does many magic tricks. ["does", not "makes", Google Translate!]), and
• Las ardillas buscan nueces en los árboles. (The squirrels look for nuts in the trees. [not "The squirrels in the trees looking for nuts", Google Translate!])

which I've picked up from a Transparent Language RSS feed.

Podcasts for advanced French lessons

7/8/12: Click for my blog entry about (later abandoned) complementary usage of the iOS 5.1 Podcasts app.

Having just been jarred awake about getting podcasts "over the air" onto my iPod using the Music app, here are my candidates for working on improving my French (I may update this list over time):

• French Podcast ("Linguistic 360: News in Slow French". Around 30 minutes each until episode 141 (released 11/8/13), after which free episode content ends after about 7 minutes; within PC iTunes it appears this shortening of free content (perhaps for streaming use) occurred earlier, after episode 136 (released 10/4/13). I normally download (instead of stream) over wifi to my iPod, and episode 142 is my first short one. Probably the slowest speed French of these 3 podcasts, as befits its name. Acknowledging the difficulty in getting used to larger numbers in French, the hosts typically repeat them twice; a grammar and idiomatic expressions [e.g., poser un lapin, to stand someone up, not to give someone a rabbit] segment comes at the end of each program. Text included: summary; outline of news; outline of grammar and idiomatic expression topics.) The primary host Rylan describes the podcast as intermediate in episode 163, and probably in others as well. While it's admittedly News in Slow French, the vast majority of the content is entirely in French, which to me seems fairly categorized as advanced.
• Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com (Around 5 minutes each. Mix of normal and slower speed French, depending on the episode. Words and expressions are routinely repeated to assist listener learning. Spelling tips for words are often given. Occasional dictation exercises, which can be checked at the website. Text included: ~3-4 lines introducing the lesson content, typically ending in "...".)
  8/22/11: I wonder if there is some hidden internal number for each podcast episode, or some other issue at play. I had (have) episodes 835-1212 showing sequentially from top to bottom on my iPod, but subsequent episodes, starting from 1213, are loading (sequentially) at the top (before 835). Not a particular problem, but odd.
  10/24/11: After a sync with my PC, the sorting was corrected for all the episodes I had. However, episodes 1213 and on had their playing times changed to 0:00, and their "album art" was lost. Newly downloaded episodes are coming with the album art and proper playing times, but they are regrettably loading at the top of the list, just like 1213 and on did previously.
  10/29/11: I think it was another subsequent sync with my PC which ended up eliminating the album art from the main listing of episodes in the Music app (which is actually good, since more of each episode's title is now visible in that list), and the sorted the episodes properly again. We'll see what happens after future episode downloads and syncs with PC iTunes....
  9/22/12: Episode 1453 was for a long time sitting incorrectly at the end of the list, out of order. Today I deleted it, then downloaded it again, and Voilà! It (and, I think, all the episodes) are all in the correct order!
• One thing in a French day (Around 3 minutes each. Normal "gentle" speed French. Until 6/4/13, the FULL TEXT, minus standard introduction and closing, of podcast is included!! After that, only the first third of the text is included -- the 6/4/13 episode ["Le podcast évolue"] explaining this format change is how I learned that (le) tiers means "third". The full text is available to paid subscribers of her newsletter. When the full text was available within the iOS 5 Music app, everything was together in one place, available without needing wifi as long as a podcast episode had been downloaded in advance. That's more significant to iPod users, who are less often connected to the Internet, but even subscribers with iPhones may find the separation of the components inconvenient.)

I found the longer News in Slow French nice to listen to during hands-full cooking. Some listeners may object that one of the hosts is not a native French speaker (probably an American, I would guess; don't know if he ever states where he's from), but he has good style and carries on lively dialogue with the other host (hostess, usually; a few different women during the time I've been listening).

I previously listened to my old friend Louis (Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com) on the Zune during quiet lunches, when it was convenient to replay things for review. Louis explains many words and expressions. Dialogues are at normal "unfettered" speed; he explains selected content, and then you hear the dialogue a second time.

I was beaming for quite some time when I accidentally tapped the iPod screen and discovered that text is included with these podcasts (associated text may be available at the websites, too, but I don't normally go to those, I just listen on the iPod). I happened to be listening to One thing in a French day, which, as noted above, included the full text until 6/4/13, so this discovery was particularly exciting. That text gives me an option to just have some French reading practice, if I'm ever in a situation where listening to the podcast is inconvenient or undesirable. Because of its format, One thing in a French day lends itself well to (potentially) including the entire text (swipe up and down to scroll). The other two podcasts have lengthier content, so it's perhaps less practical for those creators to include the full text.

All of these podcasts are wonderful, and in just a couple of days of listening, I feel I have already learned good stuff. Did you know the (or at least some) French say arobase for the @ in e-mail addresses? Laetitia (One thing in a French day) includes that in each episode's closing, so I looked up what I incorrectly imagined was a robase. Common name for a cell phone? That's portable, which I know now from Rylan (French Podcast). Louis (Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com) taught me that I had the wrong impression of how to pronounced suggérer (to suggest) -- I didn't think there was a (brief) hard g sound in it at all.

There may be other similarly wonderful advanced French podcasts, but these showed up first on iTunes in my search (real estate's "Location, location, location!" is analogous to the value assigned by Google's Page Rank), but I doubt I'll look further as long as these creators continue to produce more, similar quality episodes.

Occasional episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com (e.g., 1270 - Real Life French: un attroupement) and from One thing in a French day (e.g., Le parc de Couzieu) report that they "cannot be played on this iPod" when I try to download them. I'm not sure why, but it is not a big deal if I miss an episode here or there.

While some podcasts have little value after having been listened to, I always wished that I could mark a podcast series as one whose episodes should not be deleted by Zune sync-with-PC operations. I never found an option in the PC Zune software to do that.

I am so pleased that retention of podcasts on an iPod is totally under the user's control (some info from Apple discussions). I no longer have to fear that my French (or other) podcasts will be deleted against my wishes during such synchronization.

Previously, on my 3rd generation iPod Touch running iOS 4.3.5 (10/18/12: I've actually been on a 4th generation iPod Touch running iOS 5.1.1 for some time now), processing a long list of podcast episodes does take a significant amount of time:

• When the Music app displays the list of my ~300 and growing episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com.
• Directly switching from the Music app to the podcast source in the iTunes app as I describe here is also slow. On 10/29/11, that podcast lists 293 episodes.

In the iTunes app on 10/29/11, Linguistic 360: News in Slow French has 35 total (lifetime) episodes, and One thing in a French day has 20, which Laetitia has presumably chosen as the maximum to show there at one time.

After syncing to a PC, in the left panel under Devices > (your device name) > Podcasts, you can see how many times you've listened to a particular episode, which may be of interest.

Although I often use the White Noise app to help drown out external noise when trying to sleep, on quieter (too quiet?) nights, I have sometimes found it helpful to fall asleep to some One thing in a French day episodes (perhaps excluding those involving excited children ;-) ), though I doubt that is greatly strengthening my French....

11/26/11: Under iOS 5.0.1 (I used iOS 4 when I first wrote this entry), I recently noticed that after tapping the FREE button for an episode, it turns into DOWNLOAD for some podcasts, but into GET EPISODE for others (only Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com of the above three podcasts). DOWNLOAD doesn't get redrawn on the iPod when tapped, which speeds up the process of queuing for download, particularly helpful when you're downloading many episodes. Maybe the GET EPISODE button has some benefit for podcast producers?

10/18/12: Under iOS 5.1.1 on my 4th generation iPod Touch, which is now loaded with over 800 French podcast episodes, I try to quit all other apps before loading new episodes. For Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com, of which I have 512 episodes, I try not to queue up more than one at a time for downloading, to minimize the risk of iTunes crashing, based on unpleasant experience.

4/27/13: I rarely use Spotlight Search for anything, but I just realized that if you allow it to search Podcasts (in Settings > General > Spotlight Search), you can search podcast episode titles, which could help you do word(s)-focused review. I just did such a search for Grève (strike), and 5 episodes from Learn French with Dailyfrenchpod.com came up. Spotlight Search is apparently a case-insensitive "and" search, so if you enter "soleil du" or "du soleil" you will only get episode titles having both of those words (anywhere), and not those having only one of those words.

Converting Palm Calendar to iPod

4/8/11: Stop the blog presses, I eventually concluded there were too many problems and other issues with the data conversion I tried (some details below). I exported the partially messed-up data I had from Google Calendar, then imported that into a different Google account. Next I deleted the (original) linked iPod-Google Calendar from each end, and remade my Google Calendar from scratch, using selective Windows Copy and Paste operations between the two Google Calendar accounts using different browsers (and occasionally copying text from Palm Desktop), doing various modifications along the way. The result is a much cleaner set of events, without historical event record baggage (and any associated performance hit when syncing).

If you have a need to keep your historical events and/or you sync more than just your own calendar, good luck -- based on my experience, you are going to need it, if you hope to have your data "properly" converted.
5/20/11: It turns out you may need good luck even to sync your own calendar (see below), although my problem with deleting events may have been fixed with my upgrade from iOS 4.2.1 to 4.3.5. Some pre-4.3.5 version higher than 4.2.1 may have fixed it, but I have no idea which one, if so.

I UNDID WHAT I COULD FROM THE ***DATA CONVERSION*** DESCRIBED BELOW:

After reviewing this thread http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=2952265980c1b13d&hl=en (82 replies to original query as of 4/3/11) and http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740 (read all tabs on that page, currently Setup/Sync Calendars/Known Issues), I used PdbConverter (http://www.shredzone.org/projects/pdbconverter/wiki), whose author kindly made it available for free. The process involves converting your Palm DateBook.mdb file to an iCalendar file, then uploading that to a Google Calendar account and synching that with your iPod's Calendar app.

Years ago I synched my Palm Calendar with PC MeetingMaker, but after multiple instances of data corruption (some apparently related to Daylight Saving Time), I gave up that synching. My Palm Calendar data has long been maintained and accessed solely by me, manually. I hope I encounter few, if any, data glitches from the synching that I'll now be doing with Google Calendar. (4/8/11: So much for that hope.)

I generally don't keep or care about historical records on my Palm Calendar. According to my recollection, I had deleted many (all?) of the non-repeating historical ones on the Palm prior to this conversion, intending to reduce unimportant data baggage. However, when I made one last pre-conversion backup of my Palm data to my PC using Palm's HotSync Manager, I think I forgot to change the settings to Handheld overwrites Desktop, so the default of Synchronize the files applied, horribly effectively undoing my deletion of historical records.

I never had any need to use Palm Categories (e.g., Business, Personal) for Calendar records, so that simplified my data conversion.

In some of my other app research, someone suggested simply using Google's free calendar app. I want as much of my iPod functionality to be available even when I'm not online, so I rejected that option.

IPOD/GOOGLE CALENDAR OBSERVATIONS:

• Calendar search is available at the top of the List view. Both the List view entries and search results are limited to records going back one year (as I see from repeating events); see http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2667000. I largely use the Calendar for future events, so that search limitation probably won't hamper my usage.
• Google Calendar apparently defaulted all my converted events to send me e-mail 10 minutes beforehand. I quickly changed my settings to put a stop to that, and to other unwanted e-mail notifications.
• When logging into this gmail account using the Google app, I was asked whether to allow the app to use 10 more MB on my iPod, to which I agreed. That was presumably related to the calendar conversion.
• If you turn off the iPod when Calendar is running as the foreground application, when you turn the iPod back on, regardless of whether you are in the List/Day/Month view, you will be taken to today's date (and the current time) (4/9/11: This behavior does not seem consistent; I don't know what the deal is.). That does not happen if you close the Calendar and reopen it later, even if you turn the iPod off in between. If I am looking at a future (or past) date, that unstoppable go-to-today behavior is counterintuitive and undesirable -- it means I have to do more work to get back to that date, which I may not have finished dealing with when I turned the iPod off. There is already a Today button which can accomplish the same thing but only at the user's request (tap). The obvious workaround is to always close the Calendar before turning off the iPod, but we shouldn't have to do or remember that.
• To keep data cleaner (e.g., to avoid spurious results in searches), delete repeating events through Google Calendar, which allows deletion of All events in the series. The iPod Calendar can only Delete This Event Only ( = Google's Only this instance) or Delete All Future Events ( = Google's All following). I had tried to limit repeating events to one month in the past on the iPod in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Calendars > Sync, but that doesn't seem to have applied to the initial retrieval of calendar data from Google. Depending on your intended change, you might also want to modify repeating events through Google Calendar.
• Although on the iPod, you cannot enter an Xth Y-day of the month repeating event, e.g., the first Friday of the month, you can do so in Google Calendar and let that sync with your iPod
  (5/7/11: Some subsequent iPod modification of such an event apparently caused it to later show on the iPod under Repeat > Custom as "Every month on the (null) Friday", which in practice meant EVERY Friday, so this workaround isn't perfect. I almost never use my Google Calendar except for the add/delete "tricks" I write about in this blog entry, so I'm pretty certain the problem originated from iPod event modification(s). I can't reproduce this problem now with a new event and a few simple test modifications, though. I'll likely keep using this technique, since the apparent potential downside is limited.).
  Don't overlook using Google Calendar's strengths; the iPod can "understand" more options than it allows you to use natively. Perhaps more options will be available in future iOS versions.
• 5/16/11: Ugh, that makes twice (!) today that about a month's worth of past events (back to 4/11/11) which I had previously deleted from the iPod abruptly reappeared, and had to be deleted for a second and third time. This bad behavior might be reproduced by flicking backwards in the List view too quickly (?) -- I know I have a tendency to do that. The associated Google Calendar account showed a 4/12/11 instance of a repeating event, which was apparently resurrected each time.  The 2nd time the iPod calendar went wacko on me I also found two more instances of a different repeating event on 4/22/11 and 4/23/11 in Google Calendar. Anyway, I delete the bad events wherever they are found, and hope for better behavior in the future. When I get more time I will search to see if others have experienced similar problems, and if there is a recommended solution. I switched Calendars > Sync to the minimum of 2 weeks back instead of the 1 Month Back which it had been set on. I also got rid of a rarely-used Google Mail account which I had recently added for Mail only -- maybe that was interfering with the other Google account which I am using via Exchange for Contacts and Calendar? Perhaps not allowing "over the air" syncing to finish before exiting Calendar causes problems?
  5/20/11: Argh, once again, many of the same events have returned on the iPod from the land of the already-deleted, dating from 4/12/11. Four events similarly returned on the Google Calendar side, dating from 4/12/11.
  (Man, I miss my Palm Calendar!)
  6/2/11: Yet again, events dating from 4/12/11 which I'd previously deleted have reappeared. I was just deleting events from 6/2/11 and 6/3/11 when the event List temporarily displayed only those two days, I got this bad sinking feeling, and bam, long-deleted events were back again, yet again.
  8/27/11: I am cautiously optimistic that my earlier deleted events are finally staying deleted. I deleted them on the iPod very patiently (i.e., I waited for the "throbber" icon to stop rotating after every delete operation before starting the next one, to avoid possible data processing "race condition" errors), and they actually seem to be truly gone now. Perhaps it was a bug in iOS 4.2.1? I was only able to upgrade to 4.3.5 earlier this month; maybe that fixed this problem.
  10/7/11: Ugh, cautiously was the right adverb for optimistic. Quite a number of my previously deleted events from as far back as 4/2011 are back again. Maybe iOS 5 will fix this, but I am not sanguine about such prospects.

"Converting" Palm Contacts to iPod

In my Palm Contacts, I generally only kept basic information on a small set of people and organizations with whom I connected more frequently. I transferred that data to my iPod primarily by using the iPod's Exchange account capabilities in its Mail, Contacts, Calendars area, using a gmail account as a contacts conduit. I don't actually use that gmail account to e-mail anyone; its primary utility to me is to provide a web interface into, and to serve as a backup repository for, my iPod contacts.

As I had done with my Palm Tasks, I used my PC to transfer some data using copy and paste between Palm Desktop and gmail's web interface. I entered some data on the iPod, through which I could enter, e.g., a person's Chinese character name as "Nickname" using "Add Field". Gmail's Add dropdown list allows you to add a nickname (or other fields, e.g., Title and Company), but I couldn't conveniently add Chinese characters from my PC.

Google now provides the capability of restoring contact data from within the past 30 days, which could certainly be useful if, e.g., you mistakenly delete some:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1069522&hl=en
Thanks, Google! You're an even better backup buddy now!

Miscellaneous notes about the process follow.  Any item here may no longer be relevant in the future, and it's always possible I misremembered or misrecorded something, but maybe these will be helpful. I only rechecked some of these before adding them here.

• "Google Sync for iOS devices is still in beta" (as of 4/2/11), per Google's note under the "Known Issues" tab on http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=139635 (same link as given above). Prospective users of this method should read
• Do not double-click on a Windows .vcf file (a Contacts transfer avenue out of Palm Desktop that I investigated, but in the end did not use) that contains lots of records, as you will be forced to manually close each one of them.
• The order of phones entered in gmail is significant. The iPod's order is work/work/home/mobile/pager; the default type for input is mobile.
• "Other" or "Main" as a phone type from gmail will not sync to the iPod as phone.
• 3 different phones and 2 different e-mails seemed to be the most that would come over from gmail for a given contact via a sync operation.
• iPod entry does not allow for 2+ home phone numbers or 3+ generic work numbers.
• Gmail defaults to sorting by first name, but you can change that to last name (which would match the iPod).
• Gmail data entry work/home distinction of e-mail gets lost in the sync to the iPod.
• It doesn't seem possible to turn off synching (with the idea of only periodically re-enabling such temporarily) without losing all contacts stored on the iPod, so there will be ongoing synching and concurrent battery-draining (except when in Airplane Mode). Even though I quite rarely update my iPod Contacts, at least I'm protected from forgetting to sync, and consequently finding my iPod and gmail contacts out of sync (but see important 7/31/11 note below).

4/3/11: jmcrsb wrote "from palm desktop v6.2.1 exporting all the contacts as Vcard format allowed nearly perfect import into gmail contacts" in this Google discussion thread, but I'm already done with my Contacts "conversion".

7/31/11:
I misunderstood exactly which iPod contacts get synced to Google. I have occasionally entered new contacts from scratch on the iPod. I mistakenly thought that that contact data was syncing to Google, but it wasn't. The reason I was confused is because if I had originally entered a contact on Google, then iPod updates to that contact's data would get synced to Google. However, totally new entries on the iPod get no link to the Google account, UNLESS they are entered under the Exchange group under Contacts, which I didn't do.
(8/28/11: If you press and hold on, e.g., a phone number in an e-mail message, you are prompted with a choice to Create New Contact or Add to Existing Contact. Following along with what I wrote above, Create New Contact will only add the entry on the iPod, not on Google. So for my purposes for new contacts, it's better to copy the phone number text and paste it in while manually creating the new contact under the Exchange group.)

As I have mentioned in other blog entries, my iPod has a hardware problem; I have no regularly reliable way of backing up my iPod's contact data through my PC's iTunes connection, so instead rely on Google for such backup. To correct this just-discovered data problem, I manually created duplicates of these iPod-entered contacts, some in my Google account, and some on the iPod but this time under the Exchange group under Contacts. That gave me the Google backup that I mistakenly thought I was already getting.

Then I deleted the original data for each of those contacts, data which was only on my iPod. In some cases, I no longer needed a contact's data to be on the iPod, so those I simply deleted without first duplicating them on Google. I had one contact entry which is merely one of my own e-mail accounts, which I don't need or want synced elsewhere, and it serves as a little reminder to me about where to enter new contacts on the iPod when I want them backed up to Google.

8/21/11:
Presuming you sync your iPod Contacts to Google as I describe above, then when you lack WiFi access to the Internet, I strongly recommend you switch the iPod to Airplane Mode before accessing Contacts. Twice when away from home (and consequently away from my usual WiFi) I failed to do that, and my iPod seemed to have gone into continuous overdrive trying to find WiFi access, presumably in order to synchronize my Contacts data with Google's. The iPod got hotter than I remember it ever getting on any other occasion (8/22/11: Hmm, queueing up multiple podcasts to load at one time also heats the iPod up significantly.). In one case, I completely powered down the iPod until I could get it to WiFi access again, although other solutions might also have been able to get it to cool down.

Free PDF reader apps: iPDF

Parent blog entry: http://kenamored.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-pdf-reader-apps.html

PROS:

• Has capability like Safari to tap twice to either zoom in or zoom out on a column of text, a "natural" part of functionality for an iPod.
• Simple ("naive") search capability to find PDFs on the web might be useful for a casual search for a focused topic or title (e.g., "Pride and Prejudice").

CONS:

• Very basic functionality.
• Number of potential search results seems to be artificially limited.  When searching for PDFs associated with "chess", the "View More Results" button no longer appeared after I tapped it 7 times. I find it very unlikely such PDFs on the web are exhausted after 8 screens' worth of results. For more complete results, try Google's Advanced Search, specifying File Type as "Adobe Acrobat PDF (.pdf)", after which you'll have to transfer the file to some other PDF reader, like PDF Reader Lite (which I discuss here).
• Ads.

TIPS:

• To rename a file: get into the Reader, tap Menu, Rename File.  A name like CH_2009_04-06.pdf (for the April-June 2009 issue of Chess Horizons) of a series is typically more helpful than having the first few words of the PDF content showing as the title (the apparent default).  For a magazine, those words could easily be the same from issue to issue.