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Some hints about using the Google Sync for iPhone. These will probably also apply to the Windows Mobile sync – but I’ve not used that, so I’m not sure. I’m going to say “iPhone” consistently – but the same will apply to an iPod touch as well (modulo the things that involve a 3G connection, of course).

• BACK UP YOUR DATA. Really can’t stress this enough. The process of setting up the sync WILL WIPE ALL YOUR CONTACTS AND CALENDARS. Back up first.
• You can choose up to 5 calendars (not including your primary calendar) to sync.
  • If you have a gmail/googlemail account, visit m.google.com/sync on your iPhone, follow the prompts, and you’ll be able to choose up to 5 additional calendars to sync.
  • If you have a Google Apps account, visit http://google.com/m/a/<<domain.com>>, then click “More” and then “Sync”. For this to work, your domain administrator will have to have enabled Google Sync for your domain first.
  • [update]It’s been pointed out to me that Apps users can actually access the sync settings from m.google.com/sync. Click on “Google Mobile” on the bottom left-hand corner of the page, and you’ll be taken to a page  with lots of icons for different Google services. Scroll down and make sure there’s a link that says “Not in United States?”. If it lists another country, click it and change your contry to the United States – this won’t work in any other country. Once you’ve changed that and you’re back at the page with service icons, find the “Google Apps user?” button, and enter your domain into the popup. You’ll now have icons for your Apps domain – including a Sync icon. Click it, and once again just follow the directions from there.[/update].
• I have one Google Apps account for work and one personal Google Apps account. However, the iPhone only allows me to set up one Exchange account, so I have to pick which of the two I’m going to sync, right? Wrong! I’ve shared my personal calendar with my work account, giving it “Make changes to events” permissions. I’ve then set up my work account to sync with my iPhone, and chosen my personal calendar as one of the additional calendars to sync.
• If you go with the default setup, it will sync both Calendars and Contacts. This is almost certainly not what you want. It does have the benefit of pushing changes to contacts straight into the cloud – but it also has the effect of breaking the sync between your Google contacts and your Address Book. That is – assuming you used to sync the two – which a lot of people did not, due to Google’s contacts manager being rather broken. However, it’s easy enough to set the sync to Calendar only. If you look at step 13 of the official instructions, you’ll see both Calendar and Contacts selected. If you choose to sync only Calendar, Contacts will still be synced with Address Book by iTunes whenever you sync your iPhone. If you’ve chosen to sync Address Book with Google Contacts as well, that will still happen too.
• You can sync calendars with both an Exchange and MobileMe cloud at the same time; but as soon as you enable one of them, you can’t sync calendars with iTunes any more. You can only have one MobleMe account and one Exchange account.

I used to have a messy messy setup involving Spanning Sync pulling all my Google Calendars into iCal; then using Mobile Me to push them into the cloud; then using the iPhone’s Mobile Me sync to pull them onto the phone. Many moving parts, 3 different sync stages for something to go wrong. Only works if you have a permanently online machine that can be doing the translation between the Google cloud and the Apple cloud. I’m much happier with this direct sync.

[update]About the contact sync thing. See, you only get the option to sync your Address Book and your Google Contacts visible in iTunes if you’re syncing contacts with your iPhone. If you’re syncing contacts with the cloud, you’re not syncing with your iPhone, so you don’t get the option. If you do use Google Contacts, that means that the cloud and your iPhone are both up-to-date – but your desktop is not.

If you really want instant syncing between your phone and your desktop, turn on cloud-syncing of your contacts. If you’d prefer to keep your phone, desktop, and the cloud all in sync, turn off cloud-syncing, and let iTunes handle the sync instead. [/update]

[update 2009-09-09] As of Snow Leopard, it’s no longer necessary to have an iPhone/iPod in order to get Address Book <-> Gmail Contacts syncing. So, it’s now perfectly possible to have your iPhone cloud-syncing your contacts AND have your Mac also cloud-syncing. To turn it on on your Mac, just go into the Address Book’s preferences and look under the Accounts tab.[/update]

[update]Facebook Events? Magically pushed into your iPhone calendar? Easy!

Go to your Facebook Events page. On the top left (below the blue Facebook bar; above the big word “Events”) you’ll see “Export Events”. Click on that link, and you’ll get a popup with a long URL. Copy this URL.

Next, go to your Google Calendar. Click “Settings”, “Calendars”, “Import Calendar”, “Add By URL”, and paste that URL into the box.

Now visit the Sync Settings page, and choose your new Facebook calendar as one of the 5 to import. Now if you RSVP to any events in Facebook, that event will appear in your Google Calendar and your iPhone.[/update]

At first glance, I assumed that this was related to the horrible fires in Victoria. Nope, just advertising. Well done SMH!

Stilgherrian takes weekly nominations for “Cnut of the Week“. Traditionally the gong goes to Stephen Conroy, for his increasingly futile attempts to hold back the (largely imaginary) tide of paedophiles sweeping over the internet.

Unfortunately I believe this week’s spot has already been claimed. However, I’d like to make an early nomination for next week.

Steve Turner, assistant secretary of the Public Service Association of NSW, said … the blame did not lie solely with the Government as “any computer system can be hacked … even American defence force computers”.

[update 12/2/2009] Nope, there hadn’t been a Stilgherrian Live for a while. There is now though, so consider this a nomination[/update]

Reading the draft Executive Order ordering Guantánamo Bay detention facilities to be closed, one minor paragraph jumped out at me:

(c) The individuals currently detained at Guantánamo have the constitutional privilege of

the writ of habeas corpus. Most of those individuals have filed petitions for a writ of

habeas corpus in Federal court challenging the lawfulness of their detention.

If that was the entirety of the order, it would be a huge step forward for people still imprisoned there – they’ll be able to force the government to justify their imprisonment, a right that was consistently denied to David Hicks and the other detainees.

You can read the whole order from a link at the bottom of the ACLU’s press release.

You know you’re reading a website targeted at Americans when you see phrases like this:

Firefox is particularly strong in Europe, the area over which the EU has oversight.

I’ve been Hatsbied – I think.

Certainly fits the <adjective>salmon pattern. That Y! IM account is listed on my Livejournal user info page. On the other hand, wikipedia reports salmon bots talking to AIM users, not Y! Messenger users.

*shrug* It amused me for a good 30 seconds. I didn’t bother responding. I did note later in the day that there was a story about memristors on the front page of slashdot, but of course I have no evidence that the two are related.

After my last post, Rich Buggy mentioned his own complaint, something that I remember from my days as a commuter – Cityrail, every year, run a Saturday timetable (with some extra peak-hour services) for around a week, roughly between Christmas and New Years, and usually stretching a few days on at least one side. Despite the reduced level of service, they still insist on charging full peak fares for anyone trying to get to work before 9AM, or buying a weekly ticket. Full details of the reduced services are still on Cityrail’s website.

More interestingly, an anonymous commenter (who I think I’m going to name “Deep Train”) left a comment, which got held for moderation. Rather than letting it through, I’m going to publish it here, as it’s worthy of its own post.

It is worse than you think. If CityRail was in the energy business it would be called Enron. As I understand it, the figures are fudged in various ways, but I only have unsubstantiated rumours to that effect.

So on-time running is measured only at Central at the moment. However, I heard today, confirming unsubstantiated rumours, that on-time running is lower than 25% at some stations.

These performance indicators should be measured by an independent organisation.

Right, so we all know that Optus decided to charge international call rates for some local numbers, to try to claw back some of the money they’re losing as customers choose cheaper options to call home. A more sensible option would be to provide reasonable rates to existing customers – or set up such a VOIP service yourself, and let customers choose between the cheaper lower-quality VOIP service, or paying more for a “premium” connection[1] – and maybe even snagging some customers from other carriers. That woud be hard though – so instead, lets just slug prepaid customers with additional fees to access the VOIP services, and pray that not too many of them port their service to a different provider.

But that’s just stupidity. This is outright theft:

The most recent legal case, decided on November 27, also forced Optus to concede it had stolen 100 numbers from a tiny telecommunications carrier in Vanuatu and then allowed a pair of its pornographer partners, Global Internet Billing in Britain and MDC in Europe, to use the stolen numbers for their business.

Optus then kept the proceeds of these calls, money which would have normally been payable to the Vanuatu carrier.

[1] Of course, the difference would probably be entirely in the marketing and not in the implementation of the service, but that’s nothing new.

Remember when Cityrail decided that trying to get trains to run on time was too hard, so they just redefined “on time” to make things easier?

Remeber how shortly afterwards Cityrail had posters all over the stations with graphs showing the huge increase in on-time running compared to the same time last year – and didn’t mention that the two sets of numbers used different definitions of “on time”?

They’re doing it again. Cityrail has a target of no more than 5% of services running at more than 135% passenger capacity – but over the last two years, the actual figure has been 16%. Rather than trying to fix the problem, they’re redefining the target to be 17%.

Keep in mind that this is not 16% of services at full capacity: this is 16% of services at least 35% *over* the rated capacity of the carriage.

Well done Shittyfail!

From My New Year’s Resolution: Be A Proud Creationist:

The second message was even more bizarre. After the excitement of the first message and the realisation that there was only Australian beer left and the sun hadn’t yet set, we were rapt to see the skywriter trace out the word ‘THE’. We gazed on as he added, ‘CREATOR’. Intrigued, we cooed as the pilot scrawled ‘IS’… and waited for the payoff…

‘JESUS‘.

Fuck. I mean, that’s not even biblically accurate, surely! Jesus doesn’t come in until after the Triwizard Tournament! According to Genesis, Yahwehdidit. He was so clever, he managed to create the world twice in two different orders!

See, I lost interest in this even earlier: when I last saw this bit of drivel it had just turned into “The“, and I got bored and went back inside. For a few moments before that, the sky had proudly been advertising “THC”…

(Side note: I found this past via a pingback on Stilgherrian’s post “Telstra, you goddam bloody idiots!” – you’ll have to read both posts to figure out the connection)