Geek Like Me

Google Apps and the Motorola Milestone

I spent some time playing with the Motorola Milestone today. It's a really nice device, but more on that later perhaps.

For now, I just wanted to post a couple of findings with regard to the use of the Milestone with a Google Apps for Domains account, in the hope that someone finds them useful.

Initially the device was configured with a Gmail account (aka a non Google Apps account). This isn't how it needed to be set up, but when initially prompted for a Google account, the Gmail username was entered.

Now: it's worth noting at this point that if another Google account is added, even a Google apps one, the Calendar sync isn't an option; only contacts and mail.

I couldn't get Google Sync working as an Exchange account either, regardless of the settings entered.

In order to set up the correct account, I had to nuke the phone and restore factory defaults. I spent a while trying to get things working without doing this, but I didn't have any success. Having performed a reset, I was able to enter the Google Apps account during setup and calendar, contacts, and mail sync'd up with no problems at all. Contact photos also sync'd from Google to the device, which is a nice touch.

The next complication arose when I tried to recover the previous purchases from the Android marketplace. These had been bought using the Gmail account, not the Google Apps account. So they were unavailable when the Google Apps account was the only one present on the device. Also, with a Google Apps account on there, Marketplace seemed to through you into an infinite loop of "please enter a username". Adding the Gmail account as a second account, but opting only to sync mail, kicked the Marketplace into action, and the device connected successfully. I still couldn't get at the apps purchased with the other account though.

Enter Google's refund policy: you can buy any app, and your card isn't charged for 24 hours. So within that you can ask for a refund, and it's like the transaction never happened. So: nuke the device again, refund all the apps, nuke the device a third time, and set things back up with the Google Apps account again. Repurchase all the refunded apps, and you're good to go.

Hope someone finds this useful. I may post some more thoughts on the Milestone later on.

iPhone 3GS Macro

Brad Sucks, and the Future of Music

Recently, the mighty Atebits posted a preview video of the new Tweetie for Mac Twitter client. I'm beta testing it. It's great. But that's not what this post is about. The preview is here. The music, as noted by Atebits, is Dropping Out of School by Brad Sucks. I like it. But that's not what this post is about either. I thought I'd nip over to the Brad Sucks site and buy the album. What I found was an interesting concept, which just might be the future of music. On the site, you can buy the album for $10. Great price. But then I noticed that you can change the $10 to $5. $2. $1. I felt bad about lowering the price though. I felt like I ought to pay the $10. And then I noticed you can download every track on the album, free, gratis, and for nothing. Below that, there's a block of text that encourages you  to steal the album, give it to all your friends, and do whatever you like with it. But the thing is, I still feel like I should pay those 10 dollars. How many other people would feel like that? How many would cough up a few dollars for the time that's gone into the album. But if you want to get it for free, go ahead. Nothing to stop you. So this, my friends, is potentially how all music will work in the future. Trent Reznor's done something similar with the last few NIN albums: you buy the package you think best suits your tastes and wallet. Some are cheaper than others, but the more you pay the more you get. Josh Freese used a very similar idea to Reznor, but took it to another level. Here's what paying $75,000 for Josh's album will get you. The future of music? Maybe. I'm off to listen to Brad Sucks.

Google Sync with Google Apps Accounts

I thought I'd give Google's new sync service a try on my iPhone, so I carefully backed up all my contacts into a CSV file, uploaded them into my Gmail account, and weeded through duplicates and crappy old entries I didn't need any more. So far so good, I added the Exchange account settings (good guide here) and everything appeared to be going OK. I got no errors, no notifications or anything being a problem, so assumed all was well. And then I opened the contacts app, and the cupboard was bare. I started digging around trying to work out what was going wrong, and immediately assumed that this was a problem with Google Sync + Google Apps. So far we've not had gmail themes rolled out in our neck of the woods, so it wouldn't have shocked me to find that Google hadn't turned sync on. I found a little note on the sync setup page that informed administrators to enable the sync option in their Google Apps dashboard, by clicking on the Mobile service, and ticking the box. Off I went, in search of the fabled check box, but I didn't even have a Mobile service, let along a check box to enable sync. And so, after literally minutes of head scratching, I realised that I needed to have the Next Generation control panel enabled in Domain Settings, before the Mobile option would show up. Flick the switch on that, go back to the dashboard, into Mobile, tick the box, save, and as if by magic my contacts appeared. First impressions are pretty good. But then all Google are doing is using Activesync, and that's pretty well tried and tested. Update: And another thing - in order to tell Google which calendars you'd like to sync to your phone, you need to visit https://m.google.com/sync/settings/a/yourappsdomain.com/ on your iPhone, otherwise there'll only be one calendar sync'd across. Remember the trailing slash, or it won't work.

Welcome, and Why?

A Google search for "geek like me" throws up two prominent sites named the same or similar to this one: A Geek Like Me Dot Com A Geek Like Me Dot Net The Dot Com redirects to Wonderstrucks.com because, it seems, that's the name of a band that recorded a song called Geek Like Me. Now, anyone who knows me will almost definitely describe me as a geek. That's after some variation on the word "fat", but I'm working on that. Yeah, £100 in McDonalds this month says I'm working on it. The gym is calling. But that's a story for another site. So after wrestling with the fact that there are already two well established sites out there that share this name - and one of them has a writer who's making a zombie short film, so is already extremely high in my estimation - I decided to go ahead with it. And so, GeekLike.Me is born. This site will be my geek sandbox. I intend to review iPhone apps, write about Wordpress, and I'm probably going to get myself some sort of VPS hosting at some point, so no doubt that will make for hilarious escapades in Linux world. And I'll probably blog some WPF stuff. The point is this: I want to post stuff that I can refer back to, or that I think won't fit in the film/music/personal posts of Is There Food. So, movie reviews, music, and personal stuff over there, geeky tech-indulgence here. OK? Good.