My list below might seem short, considering there are a multitude of to-do list apps. Since I need access to data previously stored on my Treo, I’ve ruled out apps which allow data entry on only the iPhone. The bulk of such apps are like that, with no way to import, at least when I went through the iTunes store in mid-August.

The three apps I reviewed depend on web services (i.e., network access via wifi or Edge/3G) to view data on the iPhone. I thought this odd until I realized that until mid-July, third-party apps could be only web apps. (Duh, unless jailbroken.) Because the network dependency, all of these require online registration and login.

• Evernote: Handles both notes and lists. Desktop app available for Mac and Windows.
• Jott: Handles notes and lists. Desktop app available for all platforms.
• Zenbe Lists: Handles only lists.

Details follow after the jump.

Evernote for iPhone & Mac Desktop

Of the three apps I’ve reviewed, I ended up using Evernote v1.2 the most. Everything is a note, though I can add checkboxes to emulate checklists. That takes care of my minimal task requirements. But what makes Evernote so handy is that it’s easy to input and access data, as well as a snap to organize and search through my information.

Data are stored on their web servers, as well as the desktop app, should you decide to also use that tool. Evernote offers a premium service as a month-to-month or annual subscription, if you need additional server storage. With all the memos and lists I imported (totaling over 60 items), I barely scratched the quotas for the free account.

The iPhone app itself is simple and straightforward, with four basic tasks: create a New Note, view and search through Notes, view Pending edits to notes, and Account settings. Moreover, Evernote provides a convenient choice of note possibilites: Text Note (plain or with checkboxes to emulate to-do lists), Snapshot Note (ad hoc camera photos), Saved Photo Note (based on photos already stored on iPhone), and Voice Note (voice recordings up to 5 minutes each, which unlike Jott remain audio and are not transcribed).

The Current Search panel (accessed from the Notes view) on the iPhone allows you to search on tags or attributes such as modification time, media content, task completion, and so forth. This is a powerful search tool which doesn’t exist in either Jott or Zenbe Lists.

Regarding network access: According to Evernote’s terms, the connection should remain secure, although I’ve seen the https protocol for only the login screen.

I really do want to like Evernote, but it has a daunting laundry list of shortcomings, especially the first point:

1. No offline access for iPhone. That is, no local data storage or access on the iPhone itself. That means that even though Evernote has both a desktop app and iPhone app, you cannot sync the two with each other. (Kind of deceptive considering the prominent image on the left side of their home page, implying that you can sync between the desktop and iPhone.) At present I’d have to sync the desktop data to the web service, then the web service to my iPhone (or vice versa). Evernote becomes useless with poor or nonexistent network access, such as using airplane mode, or traveling within some rural areas. They state that implementing offline support would be difficult, so they plan an interim solution to allow email as a way of accessing one’s notes. But that’s still requires network access, and as I’ve said before, I’d rather not manage notes, lists or tasks in a mail app.
2. The iPhone app has a major limitation where it cannot handle editing anything other than plain text. If I used any styles on the web UI or desktop, including font changes or checkboxes, I would not be able to change that content on the iPhone. As a compromise, I can append plain text to such rich content notes. This feels half-hearted, though, since other apps (including Jott, Zenbe Lists, and the myriad iPhone-only-editable to-do list apps) have been able to incorporate editable checkbox or to-do list features.
3. Because of point #2, you cannot mark off checkboxes on the iPhone. True, you can add and remove check marks on the web UI or desktop app. But so much for have a mobile to-do list, hunh? Update: Version 1.3 now allows checkbox marking on the iPhone; they’re working on a way to create checkboxes on the iPhone. Good to see the progress, though!
4. You can create notebooks, which contain individual notes like a folder. In the desktop app, notebooks can be set as either synchronized or local (i.e., not synchronized with the web-based server). But you can set this only once. You cannot change your mind and go between synchronized or local, which is very limiting. Especially since you cannot directly synchronize between the desktop app and the iPhone.
5. Desktop app: Why in the world did they hardcode MS-Windows fonts, rather than recognizing and using Macintosh ones? And unlike the web UI, there’s no choice to change content to plain text.
6. Cannot rename, delete or create Notebooks on the iPhone; can do so only in the desktop app or web UI.
7. Bug: While saving a note on the iPhone, the app switches over to the Pending screen. And stays there after saving completes, which is silly because at that point the Pending screen is empty. It should return to either the Notes screen or the editing screen.
8. Cannot sort notes on iPhone or web UI; those listings are based on last modified and recently created, respectively. Although you can do so in the desktop app.
9. It’d be nice to have landscape keyboard or view.
10. At first I though I needed a quicklist of Notebooks on the iPhone. But then I got into the habit of using Evernote’s powerful tag and attribute based searching UI. Not the same as using folders for categorizing, which would be an added plus, but still quite usable!
11. No transcription for voice notes, but that’s okay. A non-trivial service to build, after all.

Jott & Jott Express

Jott v1.0.4 offers voice recognition and transcription services, along with tools for to-do lists, notes, reminders and multi-contact collaboration. Unfortunately, the desktop and iPhone apps are far too frustrating for me to use. (It took me a while to discover the desktop app Jott Express, until a splashscreen advertising it appeared when logging onto the website.) In any case, I limited my review to Jott’s voice and text notes, and to-do lists, so here are the issues:

1. First off, registration on the website never worked: the form kept rejecting my registration info for a free account. Perhaps it expected a promo code? Instead I was able to register from my iPhone.
2. For the longest time, I could not tell the functional differences between notes and lists. That should be obvious, right? Well, Jott makes the horrid mistake of mixing the note and to-do list UIs on the iPhone. Notes are in a note folder, but wait, to-do lists are individually listed in the the button bar. If I have more than one list, I need to scroll through the button bar. How asinine to combine primary tasks with “file” listings in a small navigational region! But wait again, it turns out that lists can be either part of a note, or standalone items. If it takes more than 15 minutes to figure out the messy hierarchy, it’s not worth my time and effort.
3. Jott Express runs via Adobe AIR, which is included in the download. It’s really more of a web shortcut from your desktop. There’s not even an undo command. Also, when something doesn’t seem to do anything (like the Clean Up button), it makes the app feel half-baked. Why bother when I could use the better web UI from a browser?
4. Voice memos are limited to 15 seconds each.
5. No way to categorize, sort or search through notes or to-do lists on the iPhone or desktop. I can search on the web UI, however.

Like Evernote, Jott offers paid services for longer voice memos and additional storage.

I am impressed by Jott’s voice transcription feature: its accuracy for writing out what I spoke is very good and very cool. I might use it occasionally for a quick voice memo I’ll later need in text. But for regular daily use, in its current state of too many choices poorly presented, forget it.

Zenbe Lists

Zenbe Lists v1.2.1 allows only textual lists, not memos, not pictures, nor audio notes. You have the choice to collaborate (i.e., share lists), although that’s not a feature I currently need.

On the surface, Zenbe’s interface is clean and simple. However, when I scratched a bit more, I found I had to rule it out as a useable tool:

1. Cannot easily import from a spreadsheet, which is where my many exported checklists reside. I must paste one row at time into a single checklist item, which is way too inefficient and tedious.
2. No desktop tool to access or modify data at all.
3. There are no categories or tags, or folders, as a means of organizing lists. It doesn’t look like they’ll be implementing tags any time soon.
4. There’s no way (AFAICT) to search through lists. Perhaps due to limitations in #3?
5. Zenbe’s login apparently goes over a secure connection, although the URL bar never seems to display the https protocol.

Overall

Sadly, none of the choices here fill me with an eagerness to jump in and use them fulltime, or at least longterm. Nonetheless, it hasn’t been two months since iPhone 2.0 came out, so I definitely need patience. It’ll be interesting to see what ships over the next several months, whether updates to the ones here, or spankin’ new applications. All likely subject to another entry, of course!

I had thought that I wouldn’t mind either an app which handles both notes and lists, or a tool that did a single type of task. But after spending time with several apps, I believe that a multi-tasking one might better suit me after all. That is, if it’s implemented well, and not overcomplicated. Evernote certainly has an edge over Jott and Zenbe Lists, in both features and interface, so I’ll continue to use that because I need to use something now for notes and lists. Until something significantly better comes out.

For notes, I want something like Stickies, but with a bit more oomph, i.e., the ability to categorize notes, at the least. For checklists, I’ve been a longtime user of HandyShopper (HS wiki). HS categorizes lists and allows marks like a to-do list. But due to lack of cycles and interest, the HandyShopper developer won’t make an iPhone version.

Both tasks could be separate apps, or a single one; doesn’t matter too much to me. But what’s critical is that they must allow editing on the Macintosh as well as the iPhone. As with the calendar, I need to transfer the current data to the iPhone! After a lot of skimming, I found that the vast majority simply don’t do that. “How absurd! No way I’m gonna retype all that stuff on the iPhone.” Data transfer aside, the actual issue isn’t so unreasonable: The developers would have to create yet another application for the desktop (or laptop) computer, in addition to the iPhone app, in order to view and modify data. Indeed, they’d have to do it twice, if they want to support both Macintoshes and Windows PCs. Keep in mind that mail, music, schedules and web browsing are already taken care of for Mac users, since Mail.app, iTunes, iCal and Safari exist on the desktop. And those were not developed overnight.

I often see the phrase “no syncing” to describe the lack of desktop editing, but that’s misleading. The data are backed up whenever you sync, in ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/. But, as with Palm, these aren’t mere text files; even though there are a few .plist files, most are in some not-quite-readble format (.mdbackup). So a desktop app must be able to cope with manipulating them. (On a sidenote, there are two open source command-line tools which will inspect and backup these files, MobileSync Inspect and iPhone Backup Decoder, respectively. I have not yet tried them.)

Anyhow, here’s an initial round of list and note applications to investigate further. If you have experience with these, or recommendations for others, I certainly welcome your thoughts!

• Evernote (iPhone and Mac desktop apps are free): The paid Premium Evernote web service provides secure connections, more storage and ad-free public notebooks.
• Jott (free). Web-based transcription of audio notes and to-do lists.
• SplashShopper ($9.99 for the iPhone app, and $19.99 for the desktop app; 30-day free demo for the latter). Is it useful, or a just thrown-together port?
• Things ($9.99). Looks complex, GTD, but has desktop editing.
• YouNote (free). Looks potentially useful for both notes and lists, but perhaps no desktop editing?
• Zenbe Lists (free). Just does lists, not notes. Web service for syncing.
• (later) Chores ($4.99). Will offer a separate Chores for the Mac OS X desktop, supposedly this month.
• (later) My Lists ($1.99). Might implement a desktop app in a future version.

Rant: More Palm suckage

My indignation at so many iPhone apps lacking desktop support quickly simmered down after realizing the development requirements. But it boiled over (and over!) at the cruddy tools to convert Palm files to text. (No, sadly, tools to specifically convert Palm files for the iPhone are, at present, utterly nonexistent.)

PorDiBle v3.4 claims to convert Palm .pdb files to text. Nope. Opening or dropping a .pdb onto PorDiBle always crashes it. Its development ceased over two years ago, and its website is a dead link.

Then I reinstalled the Palm Desktop v4.2.1revD (unmodified for nearly three years) in hopes that it could import .pdb files then export them as text. Ha ha ha. Not even. The importer didn’t recognize .pdb as a readable Palm format. Also, opening it under the All File Type filter resulted in the “unrecognized file format” error. This reminds me why I had removed this suite from my computer in the first place.

Then I tried Missing Sync’s MemoPad application. More disappointment erupts as I discover there’s no importing or exporting function whatsoever. Useless.

Finally, I viewed MemosDB-PMem.pdb in a text editor, and it turned out to be somewhat readable. I guess I’m stuck with doing the copy-paste thang. But, still.

In addition to the Memos from my old Treo, I have a bunch of lists from HandyShopper. Unlike the MemosDB-PMem.pdb, though, the HS files are barely legible in an text editor. On the other hand, HandyShopper does provide a couple of Excel macros for editing and converting HandyShopper databases, HS2Edit and HS2Convert, respectively. They are part of the HandyShopper package, including instructions which you should read carefully beforehand. Although they are .xls files, they don’t work in NeoOffice because they run macros which add a new HS2Edit item to the menubar. So I fired up Excel 2004, opened HS2Edit.xls, and figured out how to import my HS2_blah_Lists.pdb file. Success! A more readable spreadsheet in copyable text.

Nevertheless, as with Memos, I don’t have a way of automatically transferring the checklists. Two sets of manual dogwork to get through. Rapture! I think I’ll take a break and go investigate those iPhone apps; after all, I’ll need something to paste into…

Since I keep all too many calendar entries (a habit developed with my old Palm V in the late 1990s), I checked the entries in iCal. They had transferred over, after some brief redundancy, removal and restoration dances (i.e., import recent calendar-name.ics as a New Calendar, verify data, then remove older version of calendar). But, I confess I hadn’t bothered to check the entry details like time, repetition and notes.

Well, well, well. Those entry notes. If I had written a note, it was there. But whether or not I did, nearly all calendar entries had nonsensical strings inserted into the note field.

~Oh, joy~. Who was to blame? Palm? DateBk5? Or Missing Sync? Garden gnomes?

But there was a definite pattern: some variation of DESCRIPTION:##@@X@@@@@@@@@@@@@@, where X is a letter, followed by a carriage return. This covered the vast majority of those superfluous strings. An excellent candidate for cleanup with regular expressions!

The recipe involves exporting each calendar from iCal, editing them in either TextWrangler or Smultron for the regex support, then doing the reimport dance. (Although in my case, I had too many calendars from the multiple categories from DateBk5, so initially had to do some calendar merging.)

I made three different types of regular expressions, in the following order below, to find the troublesome strings. Then in three passes per calendar file, I replaced strings with nothing (empty string). The first one gets rid of notes containing only the extraneous string, whereas the third regex (which needs to be the last pass) doesn’t erase the entire note field if a legitimate one exists (because it still begins with DESCRIPTION:), but only removes the junk and preserves the real note. The second regex is similar to the first one (an entirely junk string), with an additional string of [Link-blah].

^DESCRIPTION:##.+@@@.+@\\n$\r

^DESCRIPTION:##.+@@@.+@\\n\[Link.+\]\\n$\r

##.+@@@.+@\\n

The caret (^) looks for DESCRIPTION:## at the beginning of the first two regexen. Then, since every instance of the extraneous string contains ## followed by one or two letters, plus at least three @-signs followed by \n, the phrase ##.+@@@.+@\\n neatly takes care of that portion! This Basic Syntax Reference sums up what each of those regex special characters do.

Now I need to somehow transfer my memos and lists, which means something better than the iPhone’s default Notes application. That’s gonna be a royal pain, since there’s currently no clear way to transfer Palm databases over to the iPhone.

Alas, confusion cropped up with a few of ‘em: CyStats, Filosofo Comments Preview (vs. WP-OpenID), Redirection, Search Everything, and Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP).

CyStats

Upon upgrading to WordPress 2.6, CyStats v0.9 started to generate warnings on every page, whether or not I was logged in. Disabling that version of the plugin avoids publicly displaying the PHP warnings. According to Michael Weingärtner, CyStats’s developer, the cause is partially due to changes in WP 2.6. As a workaround, v0.9.2 no longer allows filtering of IP addresses, user-agents or page IDs. Regrettably for me, those filters aid in removing extraneous data. So for now StatPress, which has some filters, will supply my primary web statistics. It’s a shame, since CyStats provides such rich statistical information. (Developer’s site for CyStats.)

Update (13 Aug 2008): Thanks to Michael for fixing the warning display and options issues in version 0.9.4!

Filosofo Comments Preview vs. WP-OpenID

Newer versions of WP-OpenID since version 2.2.0 (now v2.2.2) no longer work with Comments Preview: authentication works, but somehow Filosofo’s plugin inhibits comments from being submitted. Since I depend more on previewing comments, I’ve decided to stick with 2.1.9 of WP-OpenID until Comments Preview is fixed. (Developer’s site for Comments Preview.)

Update (15 Aug 2008): Thanks to kasparsd for posting a workaround in the WordPress support forum. The fix tests for the existence of the WordPressOpenID class (from WP-OpenID) in the Comments Preview code before checking whether comments textarea is empty.

Redirection

The Redirection plugin is great for redirecting URLs from my old, static site —so much better than editing .htaccess all the damn time! Version 2.0.4 is a big change from 1.7.26, which I had previously used: more tweakability, but more complex. My main tasks with it include tracking 404 errors for which I lack redirects, and logging how often redirections occur. The latter are displayed when initially viewing the plugin management page. But the complexity added yet another step to accessing the former. Sigh. I wish the 404 log would be the first to display when I use this tool. (Developer’s site for Redirection.)

Search Everything

At least since version 4.6.2 (now v4.7.1), Search Everything has failed to display search results in Manage Posts. Turning it off allows article searching in the admin pages. WordPress now searches through posts and pages, but the beauty of Search Everything is that it offers search-ability for comments, metadata and attachments. (Developer’s site for Search Everything.)

YARPP

Version 2.0.4 of Yet Another Related Posts Plugin now includes tags and categories in calculating the “relatedness” of articles —among several other highly useful features, like sorting the list of related posts. It has become a vital aspect of my WordPress installation. Unfortunately, this new version introduced (or exposed) an issue with the related_posts_exist() function, which, as its name implies, checks for existing articles. So when I use it in single.php to customize the location of the related posts section, they fail to display and instead I get a big SQL error.

After some email discussion with the developer, it turns out that related_posts_exist() is itself broken (not due to Mitcho’s own work). He was debating whether or not to remove this function, but I haven’t heard if he’s decided to expunge or fix it in a future version of YARPP. To use it in the past was, admittedly, somewhat hacky since it involved removing the_post() from The Loop. Even though I’ve found a way to work with the YARPP settings to display related posts, it’s not in the location or style I’d prefer. (Developer’s site for YARPP.)

WordPress 2.6 smoothiness

During all this, I upgraded to WordPress v2.6, a process remaining as easy as cake. (Since I prefer cake over pie. And, because tracking diffs and version control are close to my heart, I love the new post revisions tool. Did I mention it also works with changes made from MarsEdit? I’m also interested to see how the new theme previewing will work when I make theme modifications.

Seeing the projected WordPress v2.7 to-do list makes me eager for the next version. They’ll integrate features from popular plugins such as threaded comments (finally!). But I do wish they’d add some features that other blog systems provide, such as:

• Previewing comments (proposed Idea). I love Filosofo’s Comments Preview, especially since it doesn’t depend on JavaScript. Moveable Type, LiveJournal, TypePad and Blogspot also provide a means of seeing your comment before posting. So, why not WordPress?
• OpenID (proposed Idea). A non-trivial feature, but WordPress.com, LiveJournal, MySpace and Blogspot (Blogger) have it. These days you need to install the WP-OpenID plugin to add this kind of commenter authentication.
• Response via email in addition to blog comment response (proposed Idea). Owen Cutajar’s Comment Email Responder plugin does this. Otherwise, it’s annoying to copy, paste then send an email to a commenter as an additional task. Again, I’ve seen at least one other blog system (LiveJournal) implement this.
• Commenter-editable comments (proposed Idea). Isn’t it frustrating to see a typo in a comment you’ve just submitted, whether or not you previewed it beforehand? Yes, it still happens. A decent (read: thoughtful) blogging system should let the user to change her/his comment within a reasonable period of time. Unlike the above Wish Items, this is more a feature of forum software (e.g., bbPress, punBB, phpBB) than blogs.

1. Backup the entire Zenphoto site directory. Issuing a cp -pr [zenphoto-dir] [zenphoto-backup] would suffice.
2. Backup the MySQL database. I use phpMyAdmin for this, so here are the steps for that tool:
   1. Select your Zenphoto database, then click the Export tab.
   2. Under the Export section, make sure all the tables are selected.
   3. Under the SQL Options > Structure section, make sure the checkboxes for only Structure, Add DROP TABLE / DROP VIEW, Add AUTO_INCREMENT value, and Enclose table and field names with backquotes are selected.
   4. Select the checkbox for SQL Options > Data, but don’t select any of the sub-choices.
   5. Btw, all the remaining SQL Options should be deselected (unchecked).
   6. Select the Save as file checkbox, otherwise nothing will get backed up. Feel free to chose any of the compression choices, but I typically only use None.
   7. Hit the Go button. A backup [db_name].sql file should happily appear in your computer’s download location (e.g., the desktop).
3. Make sure you have a copy of the .htaccess and robots.txt (just in case) and your previous zp-core/zp-config.php files. You’ll need zp-config.php for step 6.
4. Get the latest version of Zenphoto, but don’t upload it yet!
5. Unzip the new Zenphoto package and if you are upgrading, remove its albums folder. Otherwise, copying it over will clobber your existing albums and photos!
6. You’ll need to edit the new version of the configuration file with your database information. Looking at the old copy, change the following in zp-core/zp-config.php with your own specific settings:
   • $conf['mysql_user'] = “your-mysql-username“;
   • $conf['mysql_pass'] = “your-mysql-passwd“;
   • $conf['mysql_host'] = “your-mysql-host-URL“;
   • $conf['mysql_database'] = “your-zenphoto-db-name“;
   • $conf['mysql_prefix'] = “your-zenphoto-db-prefix“; (If it has no prefix, just use the empty string "")
7. Now you can upload the new Zenphoto files, overwriting the appropriate old ones.
8. To start the upgrade process, load the URL for your.zenphoto.site. But if it doesn’t start properly, just load your.zenphoto.site/zenphoto/zp-core/setup.php, which is where it’d redirect to anyhow.
9. At some point you’ll be prompted to login as the administrator, after which you should get the Go! button. Select your language from the dropdown menu, such as English (US), then hit Go!
10. When you get the following message, it means that everything succeeded.
    

    About to update tables…
    Done with table update!

    You can now View your gallery, or administrate.

Troubleshooting

I get a 403: Forbidden error when I try to just load my Zenphoto site. The .htaccess needs to be readable by everyone in order to view, administrate or upgrade your Zenphoto site. Issuing chmod 644 .htaccess should do the trick. On a side note, I change the permissions for albums and cache directories from 777 to 755, because my hosting service runs the appropriate server processes as me, rather than another administrative user. Likewise, I change the uploaded images to 644, rather than 666.

I got as far as step 8 to run the upgrade script, but I get a blank page. Make sure you have edited zp-core/cp-config.php with your specific database settings (step 6) before you run the automatic upgrade.

I don’t get a login prompt, or the Go! button never appears at step 9 for me. Or, I get weird errors during the “About to update tables…” part of the upgrade. Try reloading your.zenphoto.site/zenphoto/zp-core/setup.php. Strangely, that seems to give it push in the right direction.

I get the page with Go!, but I also get an error that I need to upload the .htaccess which came with the new version. But I don’t want to clobber my special changes! You backed it up, right? (Step 3.) In which case, just upload the newer version per the Zenphoto instructions. After you have finished the upgrade, you can go back and edit .htaccess to further modify it.

Oh noes! Where did my robots.txt file go? Ah, you might’ve copied over the new Zenphoto directory to clobber the entire old one. What I do is select the contents of the new one and copy them over into the old one, so that files missing in the new package still persist. But restoring robots.txt is a snap if you already backed it up at step 3.

Extra. I want more control over hotlinking. How do I prevent everyone but allow a select few? For example, to allow access from your own domain, Google and cached searches, paste the following between the RewriteBase / and RewriteRule ^admin/?$ zp-core/admin.php [R,L] statements in the IfModule mod_rewrite.c section of the .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !mydomain\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$


Don’t forget to use your own domain name. This works when Full image protection uses Protected view with Disable hotlinking selected (located under Options > Image Display of the Zenphoto admin tools).

• Upload my preferred set of /wp-includes/images/smilies/.
• Modify /wp-includes/functions.php to recognize said custom smilies.
• Change /wp-includes/category-template.php to say articles instead of topics for title tips while hovering over tag links, darn it.

I like WordPress’s new admin UI, especially the spiffy blue-grey-orange color scheme. Even though I’m still playing with the interface, tasks remain straightforward.

What’s remaining? Upgrading my theme, but as with the upgrade to WP 2.3, I can work through that separately, at my convenience. In addition, I’ve noticed only one weird plugin issue, so far; can’t do much but wait until an update arrives for that.

Simple Tags v1.5.3: No longer see the long, sortable list of tags under Manage Tags. Being able to sort alphabetically (as well as by use) makes tag management bearable with the gazillion tags I have. I also prefer how Simple Tags allows removal and renaming of tags. Update (14 April 2008): Version 1.5.6, released yesterday, fixes the issue. Yay!

Can’t post for Iwaruna.com because the server reported an error: parse error, not well formed.

Again, searching through a forum helped. The poorly formed content, in this case an unwanted invisible character, prevented MarsEdit from uploading the article. Likely somewhere within the Console messages I had pasted!

Tracking down the sneaky character was a bit tricky, but quick. My usual text editor Smultron wouldn’t show it using View ⇒ Show Invisible Characters. However, Textwrangler’s similar tool did: as a red, upside-down question mark (¿), within one of the Console messages as I had expected.

It turns out that this is a known bug, and that it’s on the MAMP developer list to fix. Even better, there’s a workaround:

1. Start the MAMP application (something I rarely do), located in /Applications/MAMP/MAMP.app. The start page will open a new web browser page, but will fail to connect, which is expected since it’s in an unhappy state.
2. Click the Preferences button.
3. In the resulting Preferences sheet, don’t change anything. Just click the OK button.
4. Results: The Apache and MySQL servers will stop and restart. Correctly, this time, rather than spinning infinitely. To make sure things are working, click the Open Start Page button; the MAMP start page should then load in a new browser page.
5. If the Dashboard widget still continues to spin, just click its Stop Servers button, wait for the servers to stop completely, then click Start Servers.

I still use MAMP v1.7, but I’m guessing that the current version 1.7.1, released sometime late last year, also has this bug.

Before I applied the above workaround, I saw the following in the Console, while tracking systemp.log as I (unsuccessfully) attempted to stop and restart via the MAMP Dashboard widget:

2/18/08 11:11:27 AM authexec[224] executing /bin/sh
2/18/08 11:11:30 AM DashboardClient[141] apache didn’t stop -> kill
2/18/08 11:11:30 AM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[111]
2008-02-18 11:11:30.463 DashboardClient[141:10b] apache didn’t stop -> kill
2/18/08 11:11:30 AM authexec[229] executing /bin/kill
2/18/08 11:11:30 AM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[111] kill: 272: No such process
2/18/08 11:11:35 AM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[111] /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at ‘localhost’ failed
2/18/08 11:11:35 AM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[111] error: ‘Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock’ (61)’
2/18/08 11:11:35 AM [0x0-0xb00b].com.apple.dock[111] Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: ‘/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock’ exists!

The message about failing to connect to localhost caught my attention, and searching for those terms in the MAMP forums yielded the workaround. After things got back into a happier working condition, I skimmed to find the message below, confirming that things (or, at least MySQL) are running:

Feb 18 11:49:36 Macintosh-2 [0x0-0x26026].com.living-e.MAMP[290]: Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /Applications/MAMP/db/mysql

Sure enough, Apache, MySQL and PHP run fine now: I can use WordPress and Zenphoto again, as well as access phpMyAdmin.

• Played with the MacBook Air. Oh, my, it felt thinner than I was expecting! This is the slimmest, lightest computer I’ve held since Akkana’s Vaio. Its specifications aren’t enough for my own needs, but I think the MacBook Air would be perfect for MacBook-level users, or those who already have a primary desktop and need to travel frequently with a lighter secondary machine. The bevel (frame) around the display seems too wide (similar to the MacBook). I wonder what technical limitations prevented Apple from maximizing the monitor area?
• The Time Capsule has a cute, low profile design. I’d prefer more than 1 Terabyte of storage; then again, my crazy storage philosophy is to obtain at least four to ten times capacity than I think I’ll need. It also seems expensive at $500, but I’m confident that capacity will inevitably increase, along with a price decrease. Er, make that hopeful. Wonder if one could backup non-Mac machines, like Linux and Windows? On a related note, Simon visited the Drobo booth, which has a similar networked storage system.
• I acquired a collection of handbag brochures, mostly for friends who might be seeking a briefcase with laptop capacity (Kathleen? Sonya?). My attention to iPod accessories was at a minimum this year, as I’ve found that the iPod shuffle’s clip is the best way to have portable, less obtrusive music as I exercise.
• Kensington had an Expert Mouse (trackball) hooked up to a MacBook Pro running Leopard. It behaved fine, except for weird pointer jumps due to other users playing with nearby wireless mice. I also noticed that they didn’t install (on purpose?) their own MouseWorks software on the computer. I asked the rep if there were plans to update that package for Leopard, and the response was (my paraphrasing), “Yes, sometime soon we’ll upload a new version to the site.” Sadly, I forgot to ask if there were plans to make a wireless version of the Expert Mouse.
• Living-e AG, makers of MAMP, were not present. Not too surprising, as they’re based in Germany, and haven’t released any major upgrades. MAMP 1.7.1, though, was released back in December (or November, or…?), which I haven’t installed yet. The website and forum remain out of date (without RSS) and full of spam, respectively.
• I wish I lingered longer at the MacSpeech booth, which was impressively bigger than in previous years. They have discontinued their speech recognition application iListen and replaced it with Dictate. I bought iListen a few years ago, but gave up because of its long training period, slow performance and just-enough-to-be-disruptive error rate. Dictate, which is based on Dragon Naturally Speaking, is currently in beta, but touts better accuracy and speed. I’d like to give MacSpeech’s product another try! Will need to dig around to see if I could participate in any beta testing. Ars Technica’s Jacqui Cheng wrote a good article describing the new Dictate project, which won Best of Show for Macworld 2008. (Odd for an application that isn’t released yet, hmm?)

Addendum (24-Jan-2008): I don’t mind the MacBook Air’s footprint, especially since I prefer a large display. (Rarely traveling with a laptop influences this opinion, of course.) Thin form and low weight are very important to me —seeing and holding the MacBook Air made me gasp with wonder. Certain features, namely the small hard drive, slower processor, Remote Disc limitations and lack of Firewire port, hold me from wanting one. (I’m usually a slow, late adopter of computing gadgetry, thus my less-than-two-year-old MacBook Pro suffices for now.) But I look forward to (i.e., hope for) future computers, especially in the professional series, that will use the MacBook Air as a model of space and power efficiency. A computer that can be rolled up like a towel: well, I can dream.

I’ll be redirecting gallery.iwaruna.com to zenphoto.iwaruna.com in the next day or three. If you have bookmarked pages in the former, you should recheck and update to their location on the new server. Subscription feed links have also changed; the main feed which grabs recent photos from all albums is now http://zenphoto.iwaruna.com/rss.php. I’ll also eventually add back the sidebar thumbnail here (prolly via Zenshow or ZENpressed).

Mostly for my reference, but here are some “in progress” or “needs fixing” issues with Zenphoto —i.e., when using version 1.1.3 with the Default theme. Some are already known by the Zenphoto developer community. Overall they are minor and don’t adversely affect my usage.

• Clicking an image shouldn’t always download it.
• XHTML and CSS validation errors. Former might be due to invalid markup in both theme and core files.
• Internationalization (and localization) support.
• Random thumbprint for albums.
• More ease in moving, renaming and copying images and albums.

I’ve found a WordPress plugin which has greatly eased the ongoing task of fixing broken links with redirects: Redirection, by John Godley of Urban Giraffe. If you’ve overhauled a website (such as my move from the manual, static old skool to shwizzy WordPress), broken links almost always crop up. In the past, I’ve had edit the .htaccess file. Yech. Now Redirection makes that process smoother, and more organized. I do like quickly viewing my 404 log and (again quickly) adding redirect rules.

Update (6-Jan-2008): Thanks to mitcho’s Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP), individual article pages now contain a list of related entries. This plugin, available at the WordPress plugin repository, compares the actual article content to rank other related articles. I can set the threshold of that ranking, too, wheee, more control! Most other related post plugins just compare the number of tags in common, which is a good start but not intelligent enough, since less relevant posts have a higher chance of being displayed. YARPP doesn’t take tags and categories into consideration, though, but it’s on mitcho’s list for a future release.

If YARPP also used tag and category information, it could become one of the key tools in linking and listing related content on a WordPress-powered site. However, in order to properly summarize and support the content, careful tag and category selection will remain important.

Anyhow, the appearance is still more or less the same, but you’ll see tags now. Yes, I still like this minimalist theme.

Speaking of tags, I’m now in the process of reducing the insane number of categories and adding a bunch o’ tags. As I upgrade the taxonomy for the articles on this site, you might notice the dust swarms busily swirling —most noticeably in the sidebar and archival pages. A few days at minimum, a couple weeks at most. Thanks for your patience. Again, if you notice breakage (except for ongoing taxonomy changes), do let me know!

Update (5-January-2008): The Simple Tags plugin helped the initial, big taxonomy reorganization take only a day. Schweet.

1. Backed up to an external firewire drive using Carbon Copy Cloner.
2. Restarted with Leopard disk, and selected Archive and Install.
3. Customized the installation by deselecting X11, most of the languages, and all but the Canon and Lexmark printer drivers. (Sheez, the driver crap took more than 800 megabytes.)
4. Allowed machine to think for less than an hour. Somewhere between 30 and 50 minutes; I didn’t use a stopwatch.
5. Restarted, prompted to install 10.5.1, restarted, et voilà! Happy laptop!

More details…

The cruddy Missing/Sync for Palm no longer runs, but I have a (literal backup) plan in place: We’ve got a Mac with a Tiger partition onto which I now periodically backup my Treo. After transferring the registration, a little setup, and a few syncing cartwheels, that is. (Not too painful.) I want to avoid spending any more money on Missing/Sync, especially since the latest (non-free) release remains broken on Leopard (at present). Sadly, this beloved Palm device will likely be my last.

While on the topic of sad software endings, I’ve migrated over to using Mail.app from Thunderbird. Old RSS articles wouldn’t import; perhaps there’s a scripty I could use to translate the file format to something parse-able by Mail.app. Or not. Still, the setup went smoothly for the most part. SpamSieve’s installation was a bit more complicated than Thunderbird’s, but it hums along smoothly now.

MAMP v1.7 somehow needed more memory allocated for PHP to run properly. I discovered this when MarsEdit couldn’t refresh (sync articles) with my local WordPress installation. class-IXR.php, a core WordPress file controlling XML-RPC kept throwing a fatal error regarding memory allocation. In addition, Spam Karma 2’s options (a WordPress plugin) were blank in the web admin UI; sure enough, SK2 complaints about memory also appeared in php_error.log. I got the hint, changed memory_limit from 8M to 16M in php.ini (for PHP 5), and both MarsEdit and SK2 run well again.

Surfin’ da ‘Net seems pokier, at least with web browsing, grabbing syndicated content (RSS), and signing onto to chat services. DNS resolution in Leopard might be the culprit. Or, rather, Leopard implements DNS resolution in the more compliant IPv6 fashion, but the servers between you and your target might not, hence a possible slow down.

Other observations:

• Vienna has scrollbar weirdness, but is usable.
• Textareas in some applications (like MarsEdit) display text with inconsistent style. Workaround: resize window.
• My laptop handles waking from sleep much better now than under Tiger. My external display no longer goes snowy-bright, the most obvious effect. Also, iTunes no longer crashes on startup after waking up. Yay!
• I’m in the minority who actually don’t mind the transluscent menubar. Oh, shush.
• I’m in the majority who dislike both of the offered Dock styles. Palette doesn’t work for me; I cannot seem to get my chosen colors to appear in the 2D aspect.
• I haven’t played with Spaces, now that Virtué development has stopped.
• I haven’t played with the Leopard version of Zooom, which might not cope well with Spaces.

Heh, so there are still things to investigate (bien sûr!), things that I hope will be fixed soon, but I’m rather pleased with Leopard.

Finally, any major upgrade reminds me how much I need a backup system that’s more reliable than my manual “copy folders to another disk” habit, yet more flexible than Carbon Copy Cloner. Clearly, I need to play with Time Machine, since it is available. Indeed, I’ve turned on TM and it churns happily away making daily and hourly backups to the external firewire drive. Important: Make sure your Mac doesn’t fall asleep during the initial backup; don’t logout or shutdown during the initial backup, either. Problems might ensue. However, I’ve yet to restore anything, or delete a backup, or other customy-kinds of tasks.

• No longer have the fanschy-schmancy archive Ajaxy thingie. Poor Extended Live Archives (ELA), its development has ground to a halt. (Hey, if anyone decides to work on it again, drop me a line. I might be keen to test it. I say “might” because another plugin might exist which does what I want, or because I might create some other archive layout, or or or.) For now we have simple lists by month and category.
• OpenID (for comments) might not work if your provider uses secure (https) URLs. My hosting service needs to update a thingie on their end to get it to work here. (libcurl CA cert something thingie: Or, ahem, I’m not a security maven.) Most use vanilla http, like LiveJournal, so you’re unlikely to encounter this.
• Haven’t made use of the new taxonomy (tags vs. categories). At present I use only categories, but I plan on migrating many to tags. But this will be a later/ongoing step. (Potentially more dust.)
• Random image in the sidebar thingie: It might disappear, reappear, appear odd, and go back and forth as I do the usual gymnastics with Gallery 2 and its WordPress plugin WPG2. But hey! I’ve been playing with ZenPhoto 1.1.2, and am seriously considering moving my gallery to that. Another, later dusty thingie.

So, several minor thingies exist at the mo’, but Things Overall should still work fine. If you have problems subscribing to or reading articles, making comments, or viewing the site, please let me know.

Wikipedia has a photo gallery comparison article. However, it’s not comprehensive since it’s a stub which needs cleanup (e.g., lists only basic features, and doesn’t mention other projects like Phormer and Plogger). Wikipedia also has categories for free image galleries and free photo software, but again, they don’t quite have the information I seek. If you know of better comparison sites, please tell me about them. My search-fu hasn’t had much success. I’d like to read an actual article comparing features and requirements, or hear about your own experiences, rather than spend time sifting through forum threads.

Wishlist

I know there are free services out there, but I should describe what I want in a web-based photo gallery application. Moreover, because I don’t produce huge numbers of photos at a high frequency, I’m more interested in an online gallery rather than a photoblog. AFAIK the first two points below will eliminate choices like Flickr and Picasa. I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen at SmugMug, but it’s not free.

(A numbered list, more for reference than priority.)

1. Can be hosted on my own domains at no additional (monetary) cost.
2. Ability to customize to my heart’s content. Not just open source (ideally), but also well organized markup and code. Ability to easily install, modify and remove plugins, if available.
3. Requirements for the client side must be browser and operating system independent.
4. Easy to install, backup and upgrade.
5. (X)HTML and CSS for included themes should validate out of the box. Duh.
6. Pretty URL structure (permalinks) for human readability and search engine optimization (SEO) should just happen. Fiddling around with URL rewrite settings should be kept to a bare minimum, as well as straightforward. It would be nice to be able to easily prevent (ideally control) hotlinking, too.
7. Reliable responsiveness: It doesn’t have to be lightening fast all the time. Just something that isn’t a memory hog, or has frequent server timeouts.
8. Can dynamically resize images and generate thumbnails. I.e., I want to upload only one version of each image.
9. Clear, concise UI for viewing (users). Choice of themes including simple, accessible designs. (I like minimalist, streamlined designs.)
10. Clear, concise UI for administration. Ease in modifying settings, adding, editing, deleting and rearranging images and albums.
11. Offer syndication (RSS).
12. Support for subalbums.
13. Provide search. Tagging and categories would be an optional perk.
14. Ability to control users and comments by default. For example, from my current gallery usage: To have a single user (me) and turn off comments.
15. Preferred implementation in PHP, with database support for MySQL.
16. WordPress (WP) integration: At the very least, allow a random thumbnail from the gallery in my WP site.
17. While I don’t allow comments or ratings, plugins to control comment spam and spambots, à la Akismet, Bad Behavior or Spam Karma would be nice to see (at least in the future).
18. (Optional perk) Easy support for moblogging.
19. Last but not least, clear, well organized documentation (often an ongoing project, understandably), and an active, responsive development community. Free support forums. News and version notifications through syndication.

A potential package I’ve played with is Zenphoto. Unfortunately, the current release 1.0.8.2 lacks a few critical features (10 partially, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, and 19 partially). According to the roadmap, most of these would be implemented by version 1.1, but search won’t be available until v2.0, which has no projected date (it’d be no earlier than Spring 2008). For a long time there have been only one or two developers working on Zenphoto, and recent inactivity made me worry that the project had come to a standstill. But after reading a couple of forum threads, the good news is that they’re reorganizing (with more developers), and are earnestly working towards releasing v1.1 in a couple of months.

Update (5 Nov 2007): Yowza, looks like the Zenphoto 1.1 release contains the features mentioned in the previous paragraph. A serious contender! Wonder how tricky it’ll be to migrate my Gallery 2 content…

Update (6 Aug 2008): Another encouraging reason to switch: Travis Wu created a Gallery 2 to Zenphoto migrator.

Rantingly

I’ve used Gallery 2 since last Summer and, I’m sad to say, have become more annoyed with it. Whenever I’ve updated my installations, the process kills my modified theme (overwritten by the unmodified version, which doesn’t even validate out of the box) and horks the .htaccess file. The URL Rewrite plugin is such a friggin’ pain; my Big Wish would be for pretty links (permalinks) to occur automagically. Honestly though, something like the near-effortless permalink setup in WordPress and Zenphoto would be perfectly reasonable and acceptable. Good thing I’ve got file backups.

(Manually and locally speaking, I’d need to set aside server configuration files like the .htaccess for both WordPress and Gallery. However, for my live sites my hosting service provides a quick one-click method for updates which somehow intelligently avoids touching such files for WordPress. But not for Gallery.)

Moreover, I am so tired of erratic, uninformative timeouts which occur with my gallery site. I have no desire to run a production site in debug mode for any extended period of time just to catch unpredictable errors. In addition, I’ve taken a few simple steps for performance optimization, even though there’s less than 1,000 images uploaded. Yet performance remains sluggish, whether viewing pages in a web browser or accessing feeds from a news reader.

Gallery does have a lot going for it. It’s amazingly rich and extensible, including the ability to block hotlinks, various print services (online photo labs) tools, image randomization, password protection, and so much more. While I’m unimpressed by the documentation, I’ve gotten fast and accurate help from the Gallery forums.

I know I said I don’t want a photoblog, but I do want a decent content management system (CMS), where the primary content happens to be images. I wish Gallery were more like WordPress when it comes to maintenance, especially with installation and upgrades. WordPress is such a dream in those respects! There, I said it. The “why can’t you be more like your sibling / coworker / other friends?” complaint.

Many thanks to Jed and Kathleen for helping me out with testing.

How to use OpenID here

1. First of all, you need an OpenID. If you have a blog at LiveJournal, WordPress.com, Vox or TypePad, you already have one: your OpenID is simply the blog’s web address (its URL). Alternatively, you can obtain an OpenID from a vast group of OpenID providers.

2. In the comment form, rather than filling out the Name and Email fields, you need only fill out the Website field. Just enter your OpenID there, then continue on to typing your comment. However, if you do leave the Name field empty, your link will be labeled as Anonymous (though it will still point to your OpenID address).

3. Preview still works as before.

4. Hit the Post button, which will authenticate (when needed) then submit the comment.

That’s it! If you run into strange issues, let me know in the comments. But do read on if you’re curious about more technical details…

Questions & answers

“I don’t want to use OpenID here. May I still leave comments?” Why, yes! You’ll just need to use the “old” method of filling out the Name and Email fields. You can also enter your website URL in the Website field, which will then behave as before.

“How does comment preview work with OpenID authentication?” Even though comment preview still works as before, it is separate from OpenID. In other words, OpenID authentication does not occur when you click the Preview button. The OpenID authentication process takes place once you click the Post button to submit a comment.

“Hey! Why am I seeing a page about comment moderation? I thought I was able to submit comments before…” A known bug, where I’ll need to moderate the comment to make it appear. Fortunately this doesn’t seem to happen all the time.

“How does this relate to the WordPress user registration?” The plugin I use, WP-OpenID+, automatically creates a WordPress user account on this blog, based on your OpenID. Think of it as another way of WordPress user registration.

“Okay, I’ve submitted a comment using my OpenID. What’s this stuff about logging in/out and site administration?” Because a WordPress account is created based on your OpenID. Such an account has Subscriber level role and privileges, which means being able to submit comments to open articles. When logged in, you can submit comments; when logged out, you need to fill out the form fields again (unless your web browser has some sort of form save and autofill). Filling in the Website field with an OpenID then submitting a comment implicitly logs you in.

The Site Admin link you see at the bottom of the sidebar (while logged in) lets you modify your WordPress account profile and OpenIDs (you can have more than one) for this site. You also get the WordPress Dashboard, a panel containing WordPress news and some statistics for my blog. Overall, though, I don’t feel this kind of user administration is a clear or useful feature for commenters; see the issues section for further information.

“So will you still allow the previous way of WordPress user registration?” I had made optional the “previous style” WordPress registration, where you clicked on the Register link in the login screen or sidebar, gave yourself a username and submitted your email for a password. However, very few people used it. So now I’ve decided to turn off registration by that path, which simplifies site administration. Now there are two ways to enter comments here:

• Old non-registration style, not using OpenID: Requires Name and Email. As before, your email will not be published or distributed. This will not create any user account on this site.
• OpenID style: Automatically creates a WordPress user account.

“What should I do if I already have an old style WordPress account at this site?” Ah, the lucky (very) few. Contact me if you also have an OpenID, because I’ll want to delete your “previous style” account here so that you can use OpenID instead. If you don’t, I may leave those accounts around for legacy purposes, since the number is so small.

Minor issues

There a few quirks with how the OpenID plugin behaves. Hopefully these will be resolved eventually, but in the meantime I’ll document them here.

Autogeneration of user accounts

Will Norris, the author of the essential WP-OpenID+ plugin, has thoughtfully made account generation optional in an unreleased version. But for the sake of stability, I’ll stick with the released version for now, r13, so such accounts will be created.

Since you can log in and out, you can also modify your profile and OpenIDs. The problem is that several of these features don’t really apply with OpenID, hence are potentially confusing:

• Email should not be needed for OpenID commenting. But if you modify anything in Your Profile, you need to enter an email addy. It still won’t be shared or published, but it shouldn’t be necessary.
• A password is not needed, either, since authentication (”logging in”) is based on the OpenID, not a username / password combination. For now just make both password fields in this section empty.
• The visual editor is meaningless to Subscribers, since it’s used for writing articles, a privilege deliberately unavailable to this role.
• And how useful is the Dashboard panel for you as a Subscriber? My gut tells me, “No, it’s not really useful.”

I tried hiding the Subscriber admin panels by hacking around by changing bits in the core menu.php file. But such tweaks remained just that: unsatisfactory hacks that still need tweaking elsewhere, perhaps in theme files. More of a code maintenance headache, without making the user experience significantly better. Optional account autogeneration in the plugin could work around these issues in a smarter fashion. Especially since using an OpenID should avoid creating yet another account to keep track of!

Anonymous labels

As noted earlier, if you leave the Name field blank when using your OpenID, your comment will be labeled as by Anonymous. The link will still point to the OpenID address (such as a blog site), so it’d be more sensible to reuse the OpenID URL as the label text when Name is empty.

Redirection to WordPress login screen

If you decide to respond “No” at your OpenID provider’s authentication page, what should happen? This task currently redirects to the WordPress login screen with a OpenID Verification Cancelled message. Kinda confusing. Instead, it would be much more useful to direct you back to the article you were just viewing. Adding a message about canceling authentication would be nicely informative, too. This still happens even though the Login Stayput plugin is active.

When I’ve tested the “Yes, always” and “Yes, only once” responses, I haven’t encountered this unwanted redirection. Except for in the next case, using a delegation plugin…

Problems with delegation using WP-Yadis

I encountered a minor hiccup while playing with both WP-Open+ (which allows readers to enter comments using their OpenIDs) and the very handy WP-Yadis plugin, also written by Will Norris. WP-Yadis is the complement to WP-OpenID+; the former allows you to use your WordPress blog URL as your OpenID: It does this by delegating the WordPress blog URL through an OpenID you got from a third party provider. So you still need to get an OpenID from somewhere, but as I mentioned earlier, there are a scad of providers to choose from.

The problem: Let’s say I’ve got a WordPress blog called fooey123.org, where I’ve installed both WP-OpenID+ and WP-Yadis. I try to leave a comment using fooey123.org as the OpenID. It doesn’t work; I get an error, OpenID Authentication Failed: Server denied check_authentication. I’m not sure if this is merely an edge-case bug (i.e., it should still work) in the plugin(s), or if it’s actually expected behavior (in which case, it needs better error handling, a clearer “You cannot do that” message displayed, at least).

In any case, I can still leave a comment in fooey123.org using non-delegated OpenID (e.g., a LiveJournal URL), or while logged in as the blog owner. This is just a small annoyance with a workaround, but it would be useful to know what the expected behavior should be.

Conflicts with WordPress 2.2 and WP-OpenID+, other known issues

Several of these issues might be due to differences between WordPress version 2.1 and 2.2, as noted by Michael Gracie. His article helpfully links to a list of open WP-OpenID+ bugs.

Thoughtful ruminations: I wonder if the delegation oddity has same underlying cause as ticket #671? Could the fix for ticket #639 resolve the wacky Anonymous label? Depending on how ticket #644 is fixed, I might need to readjust my user registration policy again; or perhaps it might be more simplified (easier) when account autogeneration could be disabled?

A simple explanation of OpenID: A distributed identity system based on a web address. The web address is technically known as a URI, also commonly referred to as a URL.

You might not realize that you could already have an OpenID to use. Some of the many OpenID providers host blogs, like LiveJournal, WordPress.com and Vox.com. Just enter your blog URL to authenticate a comment. Simple! (Okay, well, more detailed instructions at the test entry.)

Why bother? It’s easier than having to register, entering a username and password, or remembering multiple whatevers —every time you want to submit a comment in a blog, in a discussion forum, or any other website or online service which accepts OpenID authentication. The OpenID is something unique and memorable for you, as it’s an address which belongs to you.

Gentle reminder for clarity: I have not (yet) implemented OpenID authentication here at Iwaruna.com.

The change that might make a difference to you, dear readers, is that this site now has an Atom 1.0 feed for all articles (http://iwaruna.com/feed/atom/), which you may use as an alternative to the usual RSS 2.0 feed (http://iwaruna.com/feed/).

Notes on this upgrade, mostly for my own reference:

A. For articles with zero comments, closed comments and closed trackbacks, the font for the “Comments Off” label (e.g., in the home page) appeared too small. In WP 2.2, that label appears within an “extra” span element without and class or id. This was due to a change in function comments_popup_link() in /wp-includes/comment-template.php, described in ticket 2180. I guess the gist of this was to allow styling when that label occurs. But since my theme doesn’t utilize it (i.e., the unnamed span), I added a CSS hack to both accommodate the code change and workaround the font size issue.

B. Updated the function smilies_init() in /wp-includes/functions.php (previously vars.php in WP 2.1) to refer to custom smilies. (For the curious: Borrowed from a freely available Adium emoticon set.) Also updated the folder containing the smiley image files.

C. Added the Atom 1.0 subscription link to the Subscribe section in the sidebar. I haven’t added Atom feeds for comments (seen in single post pages) and categories (seen in Archives). Need to poke around the Codex and WP forums to see how others have implemented those kinds of feeds.

D. Update the WordPress / Gallery 2 Integration plugin (WPG2) to the latest version, 2.12. Once again, I ran into the broken image issue, so had to re-modify my gallery’s .htaccess so that they’d display again. Seems to happen every time I upgrade WPG2, and Gallery’s fussy URL Rewrite plugin is to blame. Documenting my steps here, in case I encounter this again.

1. To begin with, I’ve already turned off hotlinks in Gallery, to prevent other sites from hotlinking to content there. This was done under Site Admin ⇒ URL Rewrite ⇒ Rules: Near the bottom of the page, select the checkboxes (turn on) for “Block hotlinked items” and “Send HTML for hotlinked items.” No URL pattern or keywords are needed for either setting.
2. Upgrade WPG2. Notice that images are broken. So I need to re-allow hotlinking specifically from this site.
3. Modify the .htaccess for the Gallery server. Fire up vim (or your editor of choice), and go to the section of this file called # BEGIN Url Rewrite section
4. Locate this line: RewriteCond %{HTTP:Referer} !^$
5. Right underneath this line, add this one: RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?mysite.dom [NC] where mysite.dom is the site you want to allow hotlinks from.
6. Repeat for other instances of line 4 in the specified section, which in my case occurred twice.