TidBITS#775/11-Apr-05
=====================
April 15th is just around the corner, which turns Jeff Carlson's
mind to the financial software necessary to finish his taxes:
not Quicken, but Moneydance. The topic of Internet faxing
continues from last week, with recommendations for other
services and software, and a DealBITS drawing for PDFpenPro,
which lets you eliminate paper from a back-and-forth fax process.
Finally, Geoff Bronner reviews the Monster iCarPlay Wireless
FM transmitter. In the news, Adam and Matt Neuburg pass on
news of upcoming conferences, and Sync Buddy 2.0.1 now backs
up Palm OS handhelds under Mac OS X.
Topics:
MailBITS/11-Apr-05
DealBITS Drawing: SmileOnMyMac's PDFpenPro
Even More Fax, Ma'am
An Unusual Use for Panorama
Moneydance Eases a Tax Burden
An FM Transmitting Monster
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/11-Apr-05
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-775.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2005/TidBITS#775_11-Apr-05.etx>
Copyright 2005 TidBITS: Reuse governed by Creative Commons license
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This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today! <------ NEW!
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MailBITS/11-Apr-05
------------------
**Sync Buddy 2.0.1 Syncs Palms and Mac OS X** -- Back in the early
days of the PalmPilot, Florent Pillet released Palm Buddy (later
renamed Sync Buddy), a Mac OS program for backing up data from a
Palm OS handheld by opening an active connection between the two
machines. Now, Pillet has rewritten Sync Buddy for Mac OS X. Sync
Buddy 2.0.1 can back up handhelds via USB, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi
connections. It also lets you install files and transfer photos,
as well as copy files to removable media such as SD cards. The
utility is compatible with Hot Sync Manager (which Palm Desktop
uses to synchronize data) and Mark/Space's The Missing Sync
software, automatically disabling them while Sync Buddy is
running, and re-enabling them when it's done. Sync Buddy 2.0.1
costs $25, and is available as a 4.3 MB download. [JLC]
<http://www.florentpillet.com/syncbuddy.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04956>
**Scripting by the Bay, Redux** -- For those who need to acquire
or hone AppleScript skills, Shane Stanley and Ray Robertson
will once again be leading their wonderfully intensive AppleScript
Pro sessions, 02-May-05 through 06-May-05, in beautiful Monterey,
California. I'm slated once again to teach my famous "forced march
through AppleScript Studio" class. One source of real excitement
is the question of whether Tiger will have shipped in time; if
it does, we'll be able to talk about the new features, such as
_BLEEEP_ and _BOOOP_ (sorry, censored by the NDA police). [MAN]
<http://www.scriptingmatters.com/aspro>
**ADHOC 2005 Speakers: Hubbard, Doctorow, Ihnatko** -- I'm once
again planning to speak at ADHOC 2005 (previously known as
MacHack), but my interest in attending just went up even more upon
learning that the ADHOC committee has lined up some great people
to speak at the three midnight sessions, including Jordan Hubbard,
Apple's manager of the Darwin core of Mac OS X, and Cory Doctorow,
science fiction author, blogger, and European Affairs Coordinator
for the EFF. The final midnight session is the ADHOC Showcase
programming competition, which will be hosted by the ever-amusing
and effervescent Andy Ihnatko. If you're interested in learning
more about programming from some of the best developers in the
business and hearing from some fascinating speakers, the early
registration deadline is 15-Apr-05. Hope to see you in Dearborn,
Michigan from 26-Jul-05 through 31-Jul-05, and if you need
a better sense of the conference, read my article about last
year's event. [ACE]
<http://www.adhocconference.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07752>
DealBITS Drawing: SmileOnMyMac's PDFpenPro
-------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
About a year ago, in one of our earliest DealBITS drawings,
we gave away a few copies of SmileOnMyMac's PDFpen software,
which enables you to manipulate PDF files in a variety of ways.
SmileOnMyMac has now updated PDFpen to version 2 and released
PDFpenPro, which builds upon PDFpen by enabling you to create
interactive PDF forms. Both programs let you merge PDFs, rearrange
and delete pages, add text (for filling in non-interactive forms)
and graphics (such as signatures), and more. PDFpen 2 improves
the program's performance and adds the extremely useful capability
of searching for, selecting, and copying text from PDF documents.
Macworld gave PDFpen 4 mice in a recent review.
<http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/>
<http://www.macworld.com/2005/03/reviews/pdfpen201/index.php>
For many people, PDFpen will be at its most useful when dealing
with faxes. If you can receive a fax in PDF format from a fax-to-
email service, you can use PDFpen to fill in any necessary text,
add a graphical signature, and return it via fax using either Mac
OS X's built-in fax capabilities or SmileOnMyMac's own pagesender
fax software.
<http://www.smileonmymac.com/pagesender/>
In this week's DealBITS drawing, you can enter to win a copy of
PDFpenPro 2.1, worth $94.95. Entrants who aren't among our lucky
winners will receive a discount on PDFpen and PDFpenPro, so if
you ever need to manipulate PDF files, be sure to enter at the
DealBITS page linked below. All information gathered is covered
by our comprehensive privacy policy. Be careful with your spam
filters, since you must be able to receive email from my address
to learn if you've won.
<http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/smileonmymac4/>
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/privacy.html>
Lastly, remember our new way of increasing your chances of
receiving a prize. On the confirmation Web page and in the email
confirmation message entrants receive, you'll see a custom URL
that you can send to friends and colleagues so they can enter
the drawing, too. If one of our randomly chosen winners entered
using your referral URL, you'll receive exactly the same prize.
The more people you refer, the more likely it is that you'll
receive a prize, so feel free to distribute your referral URL
widely (without spamming, of course!)
Even More Fax, Ma'am
--------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
My article last week about setting up an account with MaxEmail
to receive faxes in email (see "Replacing eFax with MaxEmail"
in TidBITS-774_) generated a number of suggestions from readers
for other services.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08049>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/404/>
**Faxaway** -- Hudson Barton, who wrote about Internet faxing
for us a number of years ago, recommended Faxaway, which charges
$1 per month for an account and a per-minute fee that varies by
country for outgoing faxes, but provides unlimited incoming faxes
for no additional charge. That makes Faxaway slightly cheaper than
MaxEmail for receiving faxes ($12 per year versus $15 per year;
both charge a $10 activation fee that I forgot to mention last
week). In terms of sending faxes, the rates vary by country,
but in my spot check, MaxEmail's rates were cheaper. Overall,
the two services seem quite comparable, though my impression
is that MaxEmail's Web interface is more sophisticated and easier
to use.
<http://www.faxaway.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05428>
**K7** -- Oddly, the same company that operates Faxaway also runs
K7, which offers truly free fax reception. The numbers are all
in the 206 area code (Seattle), and K7 delivers all faxes only in
TIFF-F format. You must use the account at least once per month or
it will be cancelled, although you can sign up again, perhaps with
a different number. If your incoming fax needs are modest, K7 may
be just the ticket. Thanks to Sebastian Rueckert for turning us
on to K7.
<http://www.k7.net/>
**Innoport** -- Trisha Miller suggested another similar service
from Innoport, which, while not free, has served her well.
Innoport offers a variety of plans from $4 per month to $8
per month; the highest end plan lets you pick your area code
(which is also true of MaxEmail's more expensive plan). There
are no setup fees, and with the least expensive account, you can
use up to 350 minutes of inbound call time per month, which is
likely more than sufficient for anyone who needs only incoming
fax capabilities. At $48 to $96 per year (there's no activation
fee, and the first month is free), Innoport is more expensive
than MaxEmail, but potentially worth a look.
<http://www.innoport.com/>
**Fax Service List** -- Edward Reid passed along a link to the
Internet Fax Service Reviews and Discussions site, which brings
together links to a vast number of Internet fax-related services
and anecdotal information from users about them. It's a good
resource if you're still researching fax services.
<http://www.faxbeep.com/>
**J2 and International Area Codes** -- One potential problem with
MaxEmail and many of the other services mentioned so far is that
they provide incoming fax numbers primarily in the U.S. (MaxEmail
also offers numbers in Japan.) If you need a fax number elsewhere
in the world, Przemyslaw Jablonski recommends jConnect from j2
Communications, which also runs eFax. jConnect costs $15 per
month with a $15 activation charge. Receiving faxes is free;
sending them costs $0.10 per page in the U.S. and varying rates
to international destinations.
<http://www.j2.com/>
**Roll Your Own** -- Greg Scown of SmileOnMyMac couldn't resist
noting that his company's fax sending and receiving software,
the $30 pagesender, could serve as the front end for sending
faxes through MaxEmail (or any other service that lets you fax
via email). In essence, you print to pagesender, which images
the printout in TIFF-F format, creates and addresses a new email
message, and sends it to the fax service using your email program.
Greg noted that imaging the fax locally sometimes provided better
results than other email-to-fax services when working with two-
byte characters and esoteric fonts. And of course, SmileOnMyMac's
$50 PDFpen, which appears in this week's DealBITS drawing,
will help you fill in and sign received faxes (without printing)
before returning them via pagesender; pagesender can also send
and receive faxes directly via your modem,
<http://www.smileonmymac.com/pagesender/>
<http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/>
If you're rolling your own, remember that Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
has built-in fax capabilities, too. You'll need a modem and a
phone line, and you'll pay normal phone charges for your faxes.
Receiving faxes requires that your Mac be turned on and awake.
Search for "fax" in Mac Help (from the Help menu) to learn more.
An Unusual Use for Panorama
---------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I'm in the process of cleaning up some LetterRip Pro-based mailing
lists in preparation for moving them to Web Crossing, and in
doing so, I was faced with the age-old problem of determining
which bouncing addresses to remove. After all, if an address
bounces a few times, it's probably bad, but if it bounces only
a single time, the problem is probably temporary. LetterRip Pro
automatically generates lists of addresses that bounced after
the last list message went out; the trick is figuring out which
addresses appeared more than once. I pondered the problem briefly
before realizing that ProVUE's Panorama database was just the
ticket. (See "When You Need a Panoramic View" in TidBITS-770_.)
After all, what were these email addresses but records in a
very simple database?
<http://www.provue.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08018>
I started the process in Eudora by selecting some recent bounce
list messages and dragging them to the Finder. That action created
a text file with all the messages in it. I then opened the text
file in Nisus Writer Classic, whipped up a simple macro that found
each line containing a bouncing address, copied all those lines to
a new file, and then stripped everything but the email addresses.
Next, I opened the text file in Panorama, which created a new
database containing a single field with a record for each address.
I chose Group Up from the Sort menu to collect identical addresses
into groups. Then I changed the outline level so I saw only the
summaries, and I chose Count from the Math menu to count the
number of records within each summary (that caused the summary
record to show the count instead of the email address). Choosing
Sort Up from the Sort menu sorted the records such that I could
easily delete those addresses that appeared only once (I deleted
them manually; it wasn't worth the effort to write a procedure
to automate anything). Next, I removed my count summaries and did
another Group Up to collect the addresses into groups again, and
again I reduced the outline level so I was looking only at the
summary records (which now showed the email address of the
summarized records). This time, instead of counting the records,
I used the Remove Detail command from the Sort menu to delete all
my raw data, since it held all the duplicates. That left just the
summary records - one per set of email addresses - which Panorama
automatically converted into normal data. Finally, I made a quick
trip to Panorama's Text Export Wizard to create a text file that
I could reformat in Nisus Writer Classic with the email commands
LetterRip Pro needed to unsubscribe the addresses.
I'm sure there are many other ways to accomplish this task,
and someone who was sufficiently skilled with grep could perhaps
do it all in BBEdit with a text factory, but since this was a
task I don't anticipate performing again, I didn't want to put
any effort into learning something new and debugging a complex
process. By using Panorama's built-in capabilities, all accessible
from obvious menus, I was able to do some surprisingly complex
text processing in very little time. Of course, now that I'm
contemplating what I did, it strikes me that with some
programming, Panorama could probably automate all the necessary
actions from start to finish, even tracking bouncing addresses
over time. But I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.
Moneydance Eases a Tax Burden
-----------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Like many people in the United States right now, I'm putting
together my taxes. My wife and I have a few investments and
a shared money market account through Morgan Stanley. I needed
some information from the money market account (how much we paid
for health insurance last year). Although we have lots of paper
statements at home, I figured it was time I put all of it into
Quicken, where I keep track of my checking, savings, and credit
card accounts. I've been lax about digitizing that information,
because most of the time it's all taken care of by our financial
planner at Morgan Stanley. The company offers online access to
my account, so I thought I would download my data, import it
into Quicken, and run a report that would spit out the figures
I needed.
<http://www.morganstanley.com/>
<http://www.quicken.com/>
But I'm using a Mac, which almost - but not quite - derailed me.
**Write Once, Run Nowhere** -- First off, Morgan Stanley's
ClientServ Web site uses a Java applet for its navigation
interface within the site, which doesn't work in any browser
on my computer. As far as I can tell, that navigation could
easily be replicated using CSS or even plain HTML. Not only is
this useless technology, it's not even implemented well, because
there are no alternate links to get to the same information -
Morgan Stanley's help files instruct me to click the Download
Activity link, which doesn't exist on my machine. So the first
step, simply getting to the page that allows me to download my
statement, is a brick wall for Mac users.
I headed to my office to access the site using a Dell laptop
I bought a couple of years ago for testing purposes. Not
surprisingly, the navigation works just fine in Firefox
under Windows XP, but then I hit another problem.
<http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/>
**Not Intuit-ive** -- One great thing about Morgan Stanley's
site is that you can download statements back to 2002, a marked
contrast to some banks that keep only the last three or six
months of data available. I had committed myself to setting
up new accounts in Quicken to start tracking the activity,
so I wanted to download more than just the most recent month
of activity. This appeared to be a simple process: click the
checkbox saying you want a custom date range, and then change
the range in the boxes provided. But checking the box did nothing;
the fields remained dimmed and uneditable.
Before I could investigate this problem further, however, I ran
into the final nail in this digital coffin: I can't connect to
Morgan Stanley anyway with the Mac version of Quicken, because
(according to Morgan Stanley's FAQ), "Quicken doesn't support OFX
downloads from Macintosh computers, at this time." I'm running
Quicken 2004 and would have gladly upgraded to Quicken 2005 if
it offered that functionality.
Unfortunately, I couldn't simply download some OFX file and
rejigger it using BBEdit, because Morgan Stanley's access is
set up to work directly only from Quicken for Windows.
**Mac Dead End?** So, let's recap: Morgan Stanley doesn't want
to serve all its customers, making the blind assumption that Mac
users are an insignificant statistic. And, Intuit can't make its
Mac software work in parity with its Windows software. Of course,
Intuit has a terrible record of Mac support. The company even
killed Quicken in 1998 - at the time, the market leader on the
Mac - before Steve Jobs allegedly showed them the iMac and made
them reconsider three weeks later.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04830>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04877>
If my wife and I didn't already have a good investment (not just
in dollars, but in time and a great relationship via our financial
adviser), Morgan Stanley would have lost my business. As for
Quicken, it was time to try the competition, Moneydance, which
seemed to support the OFX format.
<http://www.moneydance.com/>
**Doing a Little Jig** -- If ever there was a difficult market to
throw your hat into, it has to be financial management software.
Quicken owns the market, especially on the Mac (where Microsoft
has never developed a Mac version of its Quicken competition,
Money). But that dominance also provides opportunities for niche
players, which is where Moneydance and I intersected.
I downloaded a free trial of Moneydance 2005 (a 3 MB installer),
which provides all of the paid version's features but is
limited to 10 hand-entered transactions. (Moneydance 2005
is also available for Unix variants, Windows, and even OS/2.)
After installing it, I created a new investment account and
stepped through an easy wizard that let me choose Morgan Stanley
ClientServ as the financial institution. After entering my account
number, login, and password, Moneydance connected and displayed
all of the account's transactions (which dated to mid-2003).
<http://www.moneydance.com/download.shtml>
Honestly, I was stunned that it was so easy. The only downside
was that I wasn't able to accept all the transactions into my
Moneydance account at once; I could select them all, but clicking
the Accept button grabbed only the first one in the list. With
a few hundred transactions staring at me, I wasn't thrilled
about clicking the mouse button for each one.
Instead, I put QuicKeys to work and created a short script that
clicked the button for me as many times as I specified. Just
when I had resigned myself to locating the paper statements and
spending hours entering transactions by hand, I was able to store
all of the transactions on my Mac in the space of a few minutes.
I promptly went to the Moneydance Web site and registered my copy,
which at $30 was half of what I was expecting to pay to upgrade
to Quicken 2005.
<http://www.quickeys.com/>
<http://moneydance.com/purchase.shtml>
I haven't used Moneydance enough to determine whether I'll migrate
my existing Quicken data (which encompasses several years), but
for now I'm perfectly happy to use it for these Morgan Stanley
accounts. I was able to run a quick report telling me the figure
I needed for my tax return, printed it out, and sent it on its
way to my accountant.
An FM Transmitting Monster
--------------------------
by Geoffrey V. Bronner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I finally added a third generation 15 GB iPod to my gadget
collection last year. I don't have a long commute but since
my wife and I often drive more than two hours to visit friends
around Boston or New York, I wanted to get an FM transmitter
to use the iPod on road trips. But, I kept procrastinating and
eventually my wife solved the problem with a holiday gift.
Being observant, she knew what would be important to me in terms
of features: it had to be able to work for hours at a time; had
to sit idle in the car for weeks in the winter cold and the summer
heat (i.e., no batteries); had to connect to the iPod while in
its case (a Marware SportSuit Convertible); and had to be a single
item, not several accessories. She found the perfect match,
the Monster iCarPlay Wireless.
<http://www.marware.com/convertible3G.html>
<http://www.monstercable.com/productpage.asp?pin=2084>
**Design** -- Perhaps because it is made by Monster Cable, the
iCarPlay looks like an adapter cable and is very simple. One end
is a plug for a car power adapter, and the other end is an iPod
dock connector. In the middle is an oval-shaped controller and
transmitter with a single button. When plugged in, it turns on
automatically and transmits on one of eight FM frequencies from
88.1 to 89.5. The current frequency is indicated with a red light;
clicking the button switches through the channels in order.
In practice this simple design works well. The dock connector
plugs into the iPod through a hole in the bottom of my Marware
case, avoiding the need to unplug the remote and headphones.
While in use, the iCarPlay charges the iPod's battery. If I get
radio interference and need to change the frequency, I can hit
the button and then tune the car radio one station higher without
having to take my eyes off the road. I can also tuck the iPod
away and use the iPod remote to pause and change tracks by touch.
When not in use, the iCarPlay can be rolled up and stuffed into
the glove compartment or some other spot in the car.
The power plug on the iCarPlay has a large cap on it with a
glowing red Monster logo. In my car this is not a problem, but
the plug can be a tight fit in some cars with recessed power
outlets. It would have been better if Monster had made it longer
and narrower. Likewise, the dock connector on the iCarPlay is
thicker than Apple's cables, so it can be a snug fit when using
it with an iPod case.
The iCarPlay is done in Monster's signature black/silver/red
colors so if you like all your iPod accessories in matching
white plastic this might be annoying.
**Performance** -- This product seems to avoid the some of the
inconsistent performance that Travis Butler describes in his
TidBITS reviews of other FM transmitters (see "Getting Better
AirPlay" in TidBITS-771_ and "Taking an iTrip: Three FM
Transmitters" in TidBITS-681_). The signal is steady once you
select an open frequency. The location in the car doesn't seem
to matter much; some transmitters exhibit poor performance
if the radio antenna is at the rear of the car, for example.
The volume level is fixed since it uses the dock connector, but
the level that is broadcast is a bit soft and I have to turn
up the volume on the radio higher than I do with a normal radio
station. A truck next to me in traffic with an FM transmitter
on the same channel stepped on the signal once, and my Depeche
Mode was replaced with country and western music until the light
changed.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08027>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07191>
Like other transmitters that have a fixed number of frequencies,
the iCarPlay might not be able to find a clear frequency in a
major city, but this has not been a problem for me so far in the
heart of Boston. Having eight channels to choose from may help,
as compared to products like Belkin's TuneCast which feature only
four. But if you are worried about this limitation, Monster now
also sells the iCarPlay Wireless Plus, which tunes digitally
to almost any frequency and has three preset buttons.
<http://www.monstercable.com/productPage.asp?pin=2660>
**Pros and Cons** -- The radio stations where I live are all
terrible, so I have started using the iCarPlay even on short
trips. It works well in the semi-rural area we live in, as well
as in built-up urban areas in which we travel. I especially like
the fact that I can drive for several hours while using it, and
then get out of the car - at the airport, perhaps - with a fully
charged iPod.
That convenience comes at a price: the iCarPlay Wireless has a
recommended price of $70 and the iCarPlay Wireless Plus is $10
more. This is double or even triple the cost of many competing
products, but if you consider the cost of a transmitter and
an iPod power adapter for your car, the price starts to look
a little more reasonable. I consider the all-in-one design worth
the additional cost.
The iCarPlay is purposely built for use in a car; if you want
to use an FM transmitter in other places, this is not the right
product to buy. It also requires a newer third or fourth
generation iPod or iPod Mini with a dock connector. If you have
an older iPod or another MP3 player, you can buy the RadioPlay
version of this product and plug it into the headphone jack
of any device.
<http://monstercable.com/productpage.asp?pin=2436>
The iCarPlay is simple and just works... like the iPod. The price
could be more competitive, but I was certainly happy to receive
it as a gift.
[Geoff Bronner is webmaster for the Tuck School of Business at
Dartmouth College. He listens to a lot of 80s music and The Hour
of Slack on his iPod.]
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/11-Apr-05
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The second URL below each thread description points to the
discussion on our Web Crossing server, which will be faster.
**Guest PC** -- A reader solicits opinions on using the PC
emulator Guest PC. (3 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2538>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/397>
**PowerBook-using cats** -- Matt Neuburg's April Fools article
about a cat accidentally downloading the next version of Mac OS X
prompts other cat owners to relate tales (tails?) of cat-inspired
Web browsing. (2 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2543>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/403>
**iPod double-shuffle** -- Holy duplication, Batman! Our April
Fools announcement of the iPod double-shuffle (which has a
Wrigley's Doublemint gum design) is one thing, but you can
actually order gum-themed decals for the iPod shuffle. (1 message)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2542>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/402>
**DVD Jon vs Apple** -- This active discussion about copy
protection evolves into a look at copyright laws and how extended
copyright periods affect works. (50 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2528>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/387>
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