Moving from WordPress back to Blogger

I originally started this blog on Blogger and decided to move it back specifically because of the ease with which you can post via email and add twitter updates via more simple methods than what I’ve found for wordpress. I found a tool to import my WP exported xml file into Blogger, but it was by no means straightforward. So I thought I’d post some supplementary how to info for those of us with rudimentary command line skills:

• First as I mentioned above, I made an xml export of my entire wordpress blog by going to the “Manage” Dashboard page and clicking on the “Download Export File” button (54 posts = 236kb)

• Then I downloaded the aforementioned blogsync-java tool

• After reading the readme.txt included with the download, I was a little baffled, so I went to the FAQ page for blogsync to see what stupid questions fellow noobs had already asked for me. About all I could gather from this page was that because I was doing this on a Mac, I needed to edit the run.sh file instead of the run.bat file (for Windows users).

• I also figured out how to check which version of jdk (java) I was running by opening the Terminal application on my Mac (Windows users go to Start/Run, type cmd), and typing “java -version” at the “Macbook$” prompt (my home directory is Macbook, yours is whatever you named yours when you set your Mac up). Doing this felt safe and sure enough I discovered I’m running 1.5.0_13 (1.5.0_12 and above are compliant)

Macintosh:~ Macbook$ java -version

java version “1.5.0_13″

Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_13-b05-237)

Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_13-119, mixed mode, sharing)

• Then I attempted to edit the run.sh file (to “set the jdk bin path”)by opening it with textedit (Windows users open run.bat with notepad) pasting precisely what I saw on the blogsync FAQ page where I thought it should go:

export CP=./build/blogsync.jar:./lib/ws-commons-util-1.0.1.jar:./lib/xmlrpc-client-3.0.jar:./lib/gdata-client-1.0.jar:./lib/xmlrpc-common-3.0.jar

# set the parameters below and run now.

export PATH=/path/to/your/java:$PATH

java -cp $CP org.easter.blogsync.BlogSync

• This done, I then tried to figure out how to open the run.sh file from within Terminal. I successfully changed directories until I got to the directory where run.sh was located:

Macintosh:~ Macbook$ cd documents

Macintosh:documents Macbook$ cd blogsync

And then I ran it:

Macintosh:blogsync Macbook$ sh run.sh

• To my surprise a gui appeared and I managed to import my xml file using the “obvious” options (finally some “obviousness”!). Clicked on “Choose Rss” button, selected wordpress.xml export file, then changed my “to” field to 55 (I actually only imported 54 posts), clicked “Read from R…”, then clicked on the “im…” button

• But then I got this error: “cannot login to blogger account: invalid credentials”

• And it occurred to me that I had never spelled out or been given the opportunity to spell out my my blogger account credentials. I thought it would come up after hitting the import button, but instead I wound up in an endless loop of the program attempting to import, getting denied access, giving me the error such that I had to force quit the application.

• So I started digging and found the “settings.properties” file within the blogsync download folder. I opened it with textedit and sure enough this is where I could set my blogger credentials. The one piece I still wasn’t sure about was “bg.blogid=” and so I googled it and found out how to determine what my “new” blog’s ID was.

#settings

#Mon May 26 16:37:51 EDT 2008

optionRecentFrom=0

optionPostidFrom=155

optionRecentTo=6

rssFileName=

wp.password=mypwd

bg.password=yourgooglepassword

optionRecentFromRss=0

wp.username=admin

bg.username=yourusername@gmail.com

isPostidInOption=false

isPostidOption=false

optionPostidTo=160

isImportCommentRss=false

optionRecentToRss=8

isRecentOption=true

wp.url=http\://localhost/wordpress

bg.blogid=yourgoogleblogid

optionPostidIn=154,155,158

• Back to terminal to type sh run.sh and open the blogsync gui again. This time the import worked and worked rapidly and flawlessly, preserving dates and times posted, pictures and everything (except comments which I didn’t even try to import as I had exactly two for the life of my pitiful blog)

If you’ve googled your way to me, I hope this has helped, and of course now you can also find this same blogpost here!

Possibly Audacious Semi-Speculation about 2G/3G iPhone

Apple’s acquisition of P.A. Semi Conductors had the MacBreak Weekly crew people guessing they intend to use these PowerPC based processors in the 3rd or 4th generation of the iPhone, or maybe the 1st version of a handheld Mac.  However, I’m halfway wondering if we’ll see this processor in the 2G/3G iPhone?  

David Ciccone reminded me in his latest Mobility Today podcast of how adamant Steve Jobs had been post 1G/2G release, that from a battery life perspective relative to the mobile device processors available, a HSDPA packing iPhone simply wouldn’t make sense.  Dave also then surmised that something “has to have changed” on this front since all indications point to a 3G iPhone’s release in the next few months.  

How are we to know Apple didn’t guess long before 6/29/2007 that improvements to the Samsung processor in the current iPhone weren’t going to get them there?  How are we to know they haven’t been working with P.A. Semiconductors as a customer all along and were so impressed by their engineering talent they bought it? 

Engadget recently reported the 3G iPhone is already in testing and “only slightly thicker” than the current gen model and will not only have a 3G radio, but also GPS.  That radio combo is a recipe for pitiful battery life unless you also pack in a thick battery, and that doesn’t sound like the strategy Apple took or would take (as they seem to like their designs thin you know).  

I think Ciccone was dead on and I can’t wait to see if we’re right.  However, even if we are right, and the 3G iPhone has fantastic battery life, and even with Exchange Active Sync embedded in the 2G OS, as R.I.M.’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridus recently opined, typing on glass still sucks.

Give Tilt a Chance?

Impatient with waiting for Exchange Active Sync for the iPhone, I put it down recently and moved my SIM card to an AT&T Tilt.  Initially I had issues with the form factor and I was surprised by this as the Tilt’s ancestor, the HTC Wizard/Cingular 8125 was also a qwerty side slider and I loved using it.  But the mini OSX touch interface had spoiled me good, and so I was stuck in Goldilocks land for a time.  

To remedy this I purchased an unlocked RAZR2 V8 with 2G of internal memory and EAS, only to discover it didn’t actually have the EAS option it’s manual said it should.  So I Googled and ultimately found my way to a ROM I could flash to the device that hopefully would have this option and voila I pulled it off (thanks Rasputin007).  The V8 is truly a smartphone disguised as a feature phone and the form factor/build quality is superb.  Call quality was not as good as I expected it to be, but definitely better than Apple’s offering.  EAS worked as I’d hoped (except for a certificate issue that made scheduled sync impossible though it was I think an issue with the certificate and not EAS on the V8) and the native Opera browser was pretty snappy but not persistent.  In other words if you moved to another program on the phone the browser closed completely….not cool.  The other deal breaker was the challenge of text entry.  The iPhone keyboard may suck, but it is definitely better than T9 or multitap on a standard numbered phone pad.

So the tilting qwerty slider was catching my eye again and a few experiments with Opera Mini 4 later (PIE post Mobile Safari renders PIE even more unusable than it already was), the Tilt was back in black, or at least charcoal (which along with the black plastic trim, black rubberized backing, and chrome Dpad makes this device look as a sexy as a PDA can look I think).  I must say I’m rather pleased with it for the moment.  Call quality is actually top notch and I’d forgotten how great multitasking on WM is even if getting around the interface is a challenge.  The biggest complaint I’ve heard about it from other power users is battery life, but I’m not seeing that problem at all.  Here’s what my usage diary looked like today:

• Starting at 100% I pulled the charger from the socket at 720a this morning
• Browsed Google Reader in Opera Mini for 15-20 minutes
• Checked some email (Exchange push on all day long by the way)
• Reset on the way to work because the data connection flaked 
• Browsed the NY times within Opera Mini for another 15-20 minutes
• Bluetooth turned on at 530p and I called my wife and had a couple minutes of conversation via headset
• Called AT&T customer service and stayed connected for 15 minutes while I asked them if I could switch to a Blackberry data plan (more on that later) and let my wife officially inherit the iPhone with the data plan (more on that later too)
• Checked Gmail and had it polling every hour all day

At 1146p I still have 40% juice left.  Now I am running a cooked WM 6.1 ROM from XDA (DCS authored as I tried a couple of Dutty’s and they were quite frankly bug ridden), and maybe the chef optimized battery life in a way the standard Tilt ROM doesn’t?  My 3G signal at work is rock solid, but at home it can be iffy, so you tell me is that poor performance for a moderate day of usage?  Maybe if I made more phone calls I would be complaining, but I can’t based on what I’ve seen from Sir Tilt thus far.

I’ve rarely turned on the Wifi radio because the 3G data speeds are so good, but are they noticeably better in Opera Mini via HSDPA than in Mobile Safari over EDGE? They are but not drastically, though when you combine it with full EAS, I can live without iPretty for a time…..

5 months later I’ve got something else to say

Dell has priced even the most impulsive mobile tech junkies out of their league on this new tablet and effectively killed it off as a platform consequently. Gottabemobile.com finally ponied up the cash for a unit (because Dell wouldn’t send the best tablet PC site on the web a gosh damn review unit) and have given it premier coverage lately, and all things considered it is I think the best tablet PC experience available for now, but what about the enterprise?  I know my IT infrastructure manager isn’t even thinking about sniffing these, and until the tablet capability is just an extra feature on a laptop that all Dell shops would buy anyway, it ain’t happening.  Which means it ain’t happening, and the Gates dream of it happening was ironically, a noble but “crazy one”……Regardless for those of who will continue to make up this niche market, will somebody please make a freaking thin 7- 8.9 inch slate tablet with capacitive touch and sell it for just under a grand to put me out of my misery (I’m looking at you Mr. Fujitsu)……..(because I’m too afraid to stare down Mr. Jobs)

Oh Dell Whatever Nevermind

2500 freaking dollars for their newly released XT Tablet.  Engadget’s hands on with the device makes the new  capacitive touch/active digitizer screen experience sound like it’s butter, but the premium for that butter is much more than anyone even thought about guessing.   Am I feeling stupid and contagious though? I think you know the answer…….

Perfect Storm Makes Landfall

What now Mr. BCS Conference College Presidents?  Ohio St. is the “clear” number one team now by default, not because they are clearly the best team in the country.  And then determining who comes next is a less difficult problem to solve than I wish it was, but it’s still a conundrum.  LSU did win the toughest conference, was twice ranked number one during the season, and had the least convincing LOSSES (both in triple OT to good Bowl bound SEC teams) among all the 2 loss conference champions.  They also beat one of the other 2 loss BCS conference champions (Virginia Tech) very convincingly early in the season.

But, is LSU definitely better than Georgia?  I expect the the computer polls to disagree with the human pollsters on this, as coming out of last weekend they had the Dawgs 3 spots ahead of the Tigers.   They played several common opponents in the SEC and LSU had the better record against them.  But, if they had played in the SEC championship, Georgia very likely would have been favored, and very likely would have won, being widely recognized as one of the two hottest teams in the country at the close of the regular season.

The other hot team is USC, a team that started the season as the consensus number one, and stayed there until LSU passed them with their impressive win over VT.  Then the Trojans lost shockingly to lowly Stanford and later to Oregon.  The loss to Oregon was on par with the losses LSU suffered, but Stanford was uh, not?  However, if LSU and USC were matched up in the Rose bowl, who would bet against the Trojans now?

Speaking again of Virginia Tech, they avenged one of their losses with a convincing win over Boston College today in the ACC championship game, but again no one has forgotten how outclassed they were against LSU (or have they, as VT is actually currently AHEAD of LSU in the BCS rankings folks!).  They will likely play a spiritually wounded West Virginia team in the Orange Bowl, that with a win over Pitt tonight (at home), would have rendered this entire diatribe unnecessary.  Instead, they lost crushingly, just as nearly every other team ranked 2nd in the polls has seemingly done all season.  It seems so fitting then that we will now argue for the next month over who number two is, because literally no team has earned it, and therefore none of them really deserves it.

And that brings me to the Rainbow Warriors from the 50th state.  They are the only Div I team without a loss, and they last week beat the BCS Cinderella of 2006: Boise St.  You might remember that thrilling OT win Boise St. had over Oklahoma in last year’s Fiesta Bowl?  The only way a team like Hawaii will ever even have a shot at a national championship though is with at least an 8 team playoff.  And if we had that playoff how would Hawaii do?  They would likely lose in the first round (probably in the Rose Bowl against the number one seeded/ranked Ohio St. Buckeyes), but the way this season has gone would certainly make people watch it to make sure they didn’t miss yet another historic upset (Alas, Hawaii just went down by 3 touchdowns to Washington as I type, so nix that part of the fantasy).

Taking this hypothetical playoff even further who would Ohio St. play in the second round?  Maybe an Oklahoma team coming off a victory over either USC or Georgia in the Fiesta Bowl.  After watching Oklahoma dominate the number one Missouri Tigers tonight, I’m not sure Ohio St. could make it past the Sooners.  In fact, it’s not hard to imagine the Sooners beating LSU in the Championship game.  For that matter, why aren’t the Sooners being given more serious consideration as the number two team?  Their two losses were sqeakers against BCS conference bowl eligible teams, just like LSU’s were.  I’ll grant you the LSU’s were less worse, but so was their win over Tennessee today less convincing than OK’s was (over the number one team by the way).

So is it Georgia, LSU, USC, or Oklahoma who should be playing the Ohio State University in New Orleans on the night of January 7th?  The only way we can really answer that question is for them to all play each other between now and then, but, of course that isn’t going to happen, this year, or next year when the same thing happens all over again (and probably with the exact same teams).  But, two years from now, the current BCS contract with ABC expires, and 3 years from now, we may finally get our wish: an 8 team playoff or what we can then finally, and mercifully refer to as the real Bowl Championship Series.

And one more thing: I LIKE BIG FONTS

And I cannot lie….. When it comes to how my eye finds reading on the iPhone, I now can’t go back to the itty bitty fonts found on most other smartphones, except mine is no longer technically a smartphone since I ran the 1.1.2 update. The fonts still rock regardless….

After 150 days of the iPhone: what I still like

First and foremost: I still love the iPhone web browsing experience. I generally spend most of my time on the Google Reader, which was recently given  a more iPhone like interface (which I really like).  But, Safari mobile for all of Apple’s “real Internet” bravado essentially reverts to the same mobile version of Greader that any lesser browser would provide with 2 big differences, no 3 actually. First, the 320×480 screen renders the fonts exceptionally, making for a nicer reading experience (especially on the subscription list view). Second, scrolling and touching items of interest, marking items as read, and launching from links of non complete feed items is very efficiently done with the finger. Third, for those stories that require you go to the full blown website instead of the Googleized version, it’s pretty well documented how nicely Safari on the the iPhone handles that task, and with the aforementioned changes implemented by Google, the ability to just skip the Google “formatted for mobile phones” page and go straight to the source is a very nice option (as long as your connected to WiFi) I can truly attest to how won over to this style of web browsing I am by telling you I almost prefer it over the full Safari experience on my Macs. Of course, the supremely pleasing ergonomics of browsing with my fingers on the sleek surface of iPhone has a ton to do with that.  Also, the lack of flash support is much less of deal breaker than it might otherwise be in comparison to its grown up predecessor on the Mac, due to the inclusion of another Google (owned) app: You Tube.

You Tube over EDGE might drive you to the edge, but it’s passable. However, over YT over WiFi shines brilliantly and really utilizes the exceptional hardware in which it performs. I’m finding more and more videos via the web with links that when touched, launch the YT app on the iPhone.  If only searches on the YT iPhone app were sortable in some meaningful way……

Synchronization with Address Book, iCal, iPhoto and of course iTunes via iTunes works very, very reliably and is truly quite fast.  However, it hasn’t been perfect though I must that when it has had hiccups, it has been during my iPhone’s most hacked states.  And, speaking of hackability, for all the complaints of there being no ability to load 3rd party apps, we actually have the perfect ecosystem.  For those who are willing and capable, hacking the iPhone so as to load native applications is very possible and has for the most part been quite easy.  For those who don’t want to bother with it or don’t have a clue how, being forced to wait until next year to be able to legitimately do this is not something they likely even concern themeselves with, especially when new functionality slowly but surely gets rolled out by the other thing I love: updates easily rolled out by the OEM, not the cellphone carrier!

Of those updates and their small functionality adds, I love the double click on the home button feature that either allows you to pause the currently running song or podcast whilst it overlays the wallpaper lock screen, or go directly to your phone favorites.  I also love being able to browse the iTunes music store and purchase songs directly from the device, and I’ve done plenty of it.

Last but not least, I still love how this thing looks.  It is simply a gorgeously designed piece of electronics, and I seemingly never tire of looking at it, but I do find myself daydreaming about actual buttons these days……

IMAP Gmail available and working flawlessly on my iPhone

Having discovered this glorious news via TUAW last night, I immediately linked to the the Google provided directions and had no issues setting up a new IMAP account on iPrecious.  I did find it curious upon reading other news accounts about this, that Matt Miller found his account wasn’t working yet due to how Google must be provisioning this rollout?  Another curious thing is that I skipped enabling IMAP in my gmail settings and yet it downloaded messages to my phone and is syncing my changes without a hiccup.

Another question to ask is this:  why would Google give me less need to actually manage my account from a full web browser where they can throw targeted ads in my field of vision?

Perfect Storm Forming

You didn’t really think South Florida was the 2nd best college football team in the country did you?  But if they weren’t who was/is?   The answer we don’t know now, and we won’t know it by the time the last BCS poll is published either.  Parity among the top 20 teams (and beyond with the App St./ Michigan and Stanford/USC upsets as exhibits A & B) in college football this year has never been so obvious and lead to such unpredictable results.  At this point no one can honestly say they have a clue who the top 10 teams in the final polls will be, much less the top 5, or the top 2!

So, again why must we argue over who is number 2, when a much better argument to have would be over who is number 7 or 8?  This way, we would be much less likely to exclude deserving teams from a shot at the national title.  What would it take to make this happen? Adding two very lucrative games to the current BCS bowl schedule, sandwiched between the the 4 traditional New Year’s Day games (or “around New Year’s Day” at least) and the national title game.

The final BCS poll would finalize college football’s Elite 8, and the 4 NYD bowls would suddenly have huge relevance every year in addition to then having the national title game every 4th year, just like it is now.  Except, 2 “Final Four” games would have to be played to determine the participants in the title game, and I say make them home field advantage games based on final BCS rankings.  In other words if you win in the BCS quarterfinal round and you’re ranked higher than the team you would be slotted to face in the semifinal round, you host it.  How freaking cool would this be if say a Michigan or a Florida hosted this kind of high stakes game.  I mean as great as the “around New Year’s” day quarterfinal round would be, this semifinal round would be as compelling as anything in sports…..ever!  And the end result is you almost can’t not wind up with the two best, or most deserving teams in the country playing for the trophy.

With another unpredictable Saturday of “upsets” bound to occur tomorrow, maybe I should pretend we’re already immersed in the playoffs I can now only dream of happening.  But the kind of storm it would take to make my dream a reality is taking shape, and it looks to get much stronger as it hovers and gains speed above a very warm gulf of convention……