11.27.07
Avery’s visit to Shanghai
More copy to come….
11.19.07
Connecting OS X Address Book.app to LDAP
Up until now, this posting to the openldap-software mailing list by Apple employee Gary La Voy is by far the most complete description I’ve ever seen of the LDAP fields supported by Mail.app. I suppose this is all there is to know about LDAP and Address Book - unless of course more has been added in Leopard.
Just now, I stumbled across this Ethereal dump of Address Book’s query to an LDAP server which is extremely valuable. This O’Reilly page also has a useful summary if you’re just getting started, but it’s really the Ethereal dump that’s going to save you. (You can install Ethereal via MacPorts)
Here’s the complete dump of the LDAP Connection from Address Book:
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
LDAP Message, Search Request
Message Id: 2
Message Type: Search Request (0×03)
Message Length: 291
Response In: 8
Base DN: (null)
Scope: Subtree (0×02)
Dereference: Never (0×00)
Size Limit: 0
Time Limit: 30
Attributes Only: False
Filter: (|(givenname=carmo)(sn=carmo)(cn=carmo)(mail=carmo))
Attribute: givenName
Attribute: sn
Attribute: cn
Attribute: mail
Attribute: telephoneNumber
Attribute: facsimileTelephoneNumber
Attribute: o
Attribute: title
Attribute: ou
Attribute: buildingName
Attribute: street
Attribute: l
Attribute: st
Attribute: postalCode
Attribute: c
Attribute: jpegPhoto
Attribute: mobile
Attribute: co
Attribute: pager
Attribute: destinationIndicator
Attribute: labeledURI
Attribute: IMHandle
I just did some OpenLDAP debugging and got this list of attributes for Leopard 10.5.1:
givenName sn cn mail telephoneNumber facsimileTelephoneNumber o title ou buildingName street l st postalCode c jpegPhoto mobile co pager destinationIndicator labeledURI IMHandle
Once you get all of these popped into an LDAP directory entry, the result is something like this:
Note that IMHandle, buildingName, commonName, pager, ou and co fields do not get displayed on the contact card. Additionally, only one email address will be displayed (the first one) regardless of how many email addresses exist on the contact record. I’ve spent several hours trying to get IMHandle to work (apple-imhandle), but it never seems to populate. Apparently, I’m not the only one with this issue. Save yourself the trouble - don’t bother.
Apparently Mac OS X Server is required if you want to serve up Instant Messenger contact info.
11.17.07
Finally - Ecto doesn’t suck…
Wow. I’ve been using the old “Ecto 2″ for quite a while and was extremely happy to find the new “Ecto 3″ alpha that is now available at infinite-sushi.
If you’re already an Ecto user, hurry up and grab this one. It’s alpha, but it’s at least as ready for prime time as the shakey applescript based mess that is Ecto 2…. I wonder what my upgrade fee will be? 
11.16.07
Leopard address book and LDAP - Mac - Apple
UPDATE: This bug was fixed in the OS X 10.5.1 Software Update. Nice work Apple!
I posted a while back about the difficulty of getting Address Book.app with SSL working on Mac OS X 10.4. Now that 10.5 is out in the wild, of course the situation is worse I’ve tried several times and I just get the infamous:
11/17/07 19:52:49 PM Address Book[3872] [localhost:10389] Binding to server did not complete successfully: ‘-1:Can’t contact LDAP server’
No responses to this issue yet: Leopard address book and LDAP - Mac - Apple:
It works fine if you disable SSL - but seeing as how the only authentication method available is “simple” (meaning your password goes over the wire in plain text), I hardly see that as a sane solution. On the bright side of the Apple Address book issue though, it seems that the genius that runs Address Book X LDAP has managed to get all of the various AddressBook.app attributes to packed into an LDAP server!
http://j2anywhere.com/j2anywhere/downloads/index.jsp
11.15.07
PTHPasteboard - mac software for download at iusethis
PTHPasteboard - mac software for download at iusethis:
A good friend of mine turned me on to Pth Pasteboard and I couldn’t be happier. At first, the idea of multiple pasteboard’s didn’t seem helpful to me, but after I started using it, I started realizing how frequently I was typing the same text over and over.
Another invaluable feature of Pth Pasteboard is Pasteboard Persistence - copying to your pasteboard becomes the same as saving! Unfortunately my 17″ MBP has never been as stable as my trusty old 12″ PowerBook was - every few weeks I’ll get a crash, but it’s amazing how frequently the data that I was so worried about loosing pops up on the pasteboard on the side of my screen!
Once you’ve been using Pasteboard for a while, you’ll also find the text filters to be quite useful - especially for fixing up junk text that you copied from an email and need to forward on. Note, Pasteboard used to look a bit fugly, but the author recently added Anti-Aliasing - blends into the system quite well.
Give it a shot - I think you’ll really enjoy this one!
11.04.07
Adium support for Skype - with UTF-8 support!
Early this morning, Eion Robb, the author of the Skype plugin for Adium fixed the UTF-8 encoding issue. I think the Skype for Adium plugin is ready for prime time!
Get Skype in your Adium! Download the plugin here.
Installation is as simple as double clicking on the file once downloaded, then go to File / Add Account / Skype API. Click “Yes” a few times and you’re good to go!
Check out the Skype API Plugin page at: http://myjobspace.co.nz/images/pidgin/
And send Eion Robb a donation, or at least some thanks for getting this excellent plugin put together!
Online Project Management…
I’ve been using the infamous Basecamp for a few months and I’m moderately satisfied. Business applications are notoriously difficult to do well since everyone’s needs are so different. If you were to develop a Project Management app that had all of the functionality that was wanted by everyone, you would have the equivalent of an ERP system - something that does everything, but requires a never-ending stream of customization, consultants, and training. Moreover, the result isn’t something that anyone loves to use.
Throwing that caution to the wind, I’ve gone ahead and investigated a few other project management solutions:
- Basecamp - BasecampHQ.com
- Go Plan - goplan.info
- Wrike - www.wrike.com
Unfortunately, neither GoPlan or Wrike quite do it for me… I jotted the following note to the Wrike team as I prepared to return to my Basecamp task list.
During signup, I was not aware that you do not support Safari, which is the primary browser for myself and my team.
During signup, I noticed that you wrote several times about “Time Tracking”, but I was very disappointed to see that at the actual Task level, there was no support for logging the hours spent by a given employee on a given task, and then download that information into a CSV file to create billing documents and status reports.
The use of the “Rich Text” input in the description area is interesting, but that Javascript control does not support Input Methods such for Chinese or Japanese, while a simple text box works just fine. I would personally greatly prefer the use of Textile or Markup.
I tried. I’m a basecamp client and I’m quite frustrated with the lack of email support and the relatively week project management ability of basecamp. I have a GoPlan paid account in case they ever get it right, but their current lack of support for “Time Tracking” (log hours per task by employee, download to .csv file for reporting) it’s a no-go.
Overall, I think the WRIKE site still needs quite a bit of polishing. I like some of the functionality, but Basecamp and GoPlan are both way ahead in terms of Usability and the overall Look & Feel. Everything about WRIKE feels a bit homespun. The color scheme. The typography. Layout design. This textbox is needlessly small, and the one on your Contact Us page is ridiculously so. Last up, you’ve got to replace that Introductory video, the voiceover, the photos selected, the example content, and the horribly pixelated logo at the end is just wrong… Anti-aliasing has been around since the 80’s.
Please don’t take the above the wrong way - I’m only pointing these things out because I care and would like to see somebody create a better tool than Basecamp. Knock ‘em dead!
Best-
-Ryan Erwin
11.03.07
Adium and Skype - Getting to know each other…
If you’re like me, you’ve been waiting a long time for this - Skype and Adium together - in one.
Skype and Adium are still a long way from fully integrated, but if you download the Skype Plugin for Adium, you can take your first steps in that direction. The result, one less window on your desktop! The only downside, is that it still doesn’t support chinese input. You can display chinese messages and the names of Chinese contacts, but if you type anything in chinese into the Adium Skype window, you’ll see yet another example of not-quite-UTF-8 compliant software in action 
I guess my hobby of that Internationalization book is even more in need than I though…
