jpreardon.com

Simon Willison has launched idproxy.net which allows one to use their Yahoo Account as an OpenID. The list of sites that support OpenID is growing, but one needs a place to host their OpenID. That list of sites is growing too, but who wants to create yet another account? Many, many people have accounts on Yahoo already, but Yahoo isn’t an OpenID provider. idproxy.net essentially makes Yahoo an OpenID provider. Setup is minimal and you don’t need to create another password.

This works so well, I decided to change my OpenID server from phpMyID to idproxy.net. By the way, I am using my URL as my OpenID so my “public” OpenID remains the same even though I’ve changed providers. This means that on sites where I use my OpenID, my login remains unchanged. Sweet.

Tired of having messages sent on behalf of me from gmail, I recently set up Google Apps for Your Domain. This gives me that sweet gmail interface on my own domain. Everything is great but for the two years worth of archived mail is left behind on my old account. Sure, if I am looking for something, I can just log onto the old account. That is only a little inconvenient and the need for accessing old stuff should diminish over time, but I really want all my mail in one spot.

So, I set off to find a way to transfer all of this archived mail over to the new account. I threw out the most obvious choice immediately: Forward everything. That screws up the dates on all of the forwarded messages and makes it look like I sent all of them. The other method involves a few steps:

1. Enable POP access on the old account
2. Download all of the messages to your PC with some mail client
3. Use some utility to upload everything to the new gmail account. There are a few utilities freely available that will handle this job:
   • mailredirect* is a plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird that will redirect all mail to another account with the original mail headers intact.
   • Mark Lyon’s Google Gmail Loader (GML) will load up a gmail account keeping the original “from” addresses.
   • gExodus will accomplish the same thing as GML
4. Organize all of the newly imported email. There does not seem to be a way to get around this step. gExodus allows one to add some prefixes to the subject lines of the imported email that should help in the organizational task. It would be nice to get the all of gmail’s labels to carry over to the new account, but that does not seem possible at this time.

* mailredirect is not built especially for importing to gmail like the other two utilities are. So, if one was to use mailredirect, they might want to get that set up and working before downloading all the messages from the old account.

There is another alternative that might prove to be easier than the above mentioned steps. Google has added a feature that allows one to check mail from other accounts in gmail. This could be used to eliminate steps 2 & 3 above. Unfortunately, this feature is only enabled on a few gmail accounts; mine is not one of them.

After about 30 seconds of thought, I decided to wait for Google to enable this new feature on my account rather than go through the download/upload routine. If for some reason the 100% gmail method doesn’t work. I’ll probably try mailredirect.

lifehacker pointed to this post on how to store an iTunes library on Amazon S3. Basically, this tells you how to use Jungle Disk and Amazon S3 as a network file store for a music library. I really have no need to do this, but I thought it could be a fairly effortless and inexpensive way to backup my laptop.

Both Jungle Disk and Amazon S3 work as advertised. It took me less than 10 minutes to activate S3 and get Jungle Disk working. Once it is set up, Jungle Disk looks like a network server. It handles network file transfers in the background, so writing files to the disk is quite snappy. Very nice, plus the storage and bandwidth costs at Amazon make this a pretty low cost solution ($0.15 per GB per month and $0.20 per GB in bandwidth).

Unfortunately (for me), Jungle Disk does not work very well with rsync, my backup utility of choice. Since Jungle Disk transfers files asynchronously, rsync transfers files even if they already exist at S3. To make matters worse, the files actually get transfered twice. This is due to the way rsync names the files during transfer.

Amazon S3, Jungle Disk, and rsync are all great. But, taken together, mmmm, not so great. There are other backup utilities out there that would probably work just dandy with Jungle Disk. In fact, Jungle Disk includes its own simple backup function. There’s also s3sync, written in Ruby, that mimics rsync functionality.

So, Jungle Disk is worth taking a look at if you need some simple, cheap network storage. But, don’t bother trying rsync. Did I mention it runs on Mac, Windows and linux?

Update 2007-02-19: According to This thread in Jungle Disk’s forum, Jungle Disk and rsync can play nicely if the right options are used with rsync.

Update 2007-08-02: The server at www.longtimelost.com is no longer responding. I’ll assume they are no longer around. The link has been removed from this page. Sorry

Long Time Lost helps reconnect people through the internet. Basically, you enter some information about the people you are looking for at Long Time Lost which is then put on a web page that will be indexed by search engines. Then, when one of the people you are looking for does a vanity search, they should find the Long Time Lost page, and you!

Perhaps the Long Time Lost pages will get better PageRanks than such lists on individual sites. Even so, I’ve opted to use my own site for these purposes rather than someone else’s. There is now a short list of names tacked to the end of the about page. We’ll see if anyone finds it.

via lifehacker

Blast from the past: Julia Child’s answers to Esquire’s “What I’ve Learned” column. This ran back in 2000, but it’s new to me. Here are a few key quotes:

I’m awfully sorry for people who are taken in by all of today’s dietary mumbo jumbo. They are not getting any enjoyment out of their food.

Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health.

Always remember: If you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?

Right on!

via MetaFilter :: The Amateur Gourmet

Dave points out that there should be a better way to cite multiple sources in a blog post. I agree, but I don’t want to add a sentence describing the trail of blogs that ultimately led to mine in each applicable post.

Instead, I’ll start including the chain at the bottom of the post. Items I lift directly from somewhere else without directly citing the source in the post get a “via” link anyway. Now I’ll click back to find the source–which is probably a good idea anyway. I can’t promise extensive research, but the sorts of things I am writing about here are probably no more than two or three posts away from the originator.

Here is an example of what the “via” link would look like on a recent post where I originally cited only lifehacker:

via A Whole Lotta Nothing :: lifehacker

In this case, it only lists one additional site, but you get the idea. The first link listed is first reference I found and the last link is the place that I first read about it. In some cases, there could be a few sites in between. This effort won’t take much more time on my part and it will give some credit where credit is due.

Did you know that you can get a Metrocard that automatically refills itself? Neither did I.

MTA’s EasyPay Xpress Program allows one to link a credit card to a Metrocard so that it will automatically recharge when the balance is low. This means no more stops at the Metrocard vending machine as your train is pulling out of the station and no more insufficient fare messages at the turnstile. This program, originally designed for express bus users, works on all MTA subway and buses. Unfortunately, it does not work for unlimited Metrocards, but one still gets the 20% bonus when their pay per ride card is replenished.

It could be easier to get one of these Metrocards; it appears that they are only available after filling out an application. Of course, there is no online application, but one can download an EasyPay Xpress Program application from the MTA’s web site. I’m mailing mine in today!

via Gothamist

Update 2007-05-10: I’ve received several inquiries from people regarding the status of their EasyPay applications or accounts. Please note that this site is in no way affiliated with the MTA or the EasyPay program. If you have questions or concerns about the program, contact the MTA. Whatever you do, please don’t leave your credit card number and expiration date in the comments here. I’ve also been asked by a few people to send them an application. If you are in need of an application, please download the application from the MTA’s site.

Excel is used for all sorts of things, even Pac-Man. But, normally it is used to analyze and present data. It is also seriously underused by many people, especially when one considers how long it has been around and that it is installed on most corporate desktops. Many people just don’t know the power they have in Excel.

The Juice Analytics weblog–a great source for Excel tips and tricks–has just posted an Excel Training Worksheet. These training exercises start by taking one through some common, time saving keyboard shortcuts. Then they go through some basics that will help the casual Excel user become more familiar and proficient with this powerful application. Nicely done!

A couple weeks ago, I was trying to decide if it was worthwhile to leave deleted files in the Google Desktop Search index. After all, if the file is gone, do I really care to know that I deleted that thing I am now looking for? Today, I got my answer. Since Desktop Search caches the text in its index, it can be quite useful to retrieve things that are no longer around. In my case, I was looking for an Outlook Note that I had inadvertently deleted some time ago, so long ago that it was not present in the deleted items folder either. Google still had the text in the index, so I was able to recreate what I had previously hosed. So, long story short, it is probably a good idea to leave the Remove Deleted Items option unchecked.

I’m just back from a week in the sun where I was pretty well disconnected. Today, I spent a bit of time getting caught up on what’s been going on. Here are a handful of things I might have posted individually if they had not surfaced during a week of vacation:

• Rising ocean levels reclaimed an island near India. Also, an ice shelf has broken off an island in the Canadian artic. These are pretty scary events and we can expect more news like this in the coming years. By the way, if you have not seen it already, check out An Inconvenient Truth.
• The MTA has launched a new travel planner and Gothamist has a review.
• This printable, compact calendar will come in handy all year. Print it out and stick it in your notebook for quick reference.
• The city might turn the temporary FDR roadway into a park. The narrow park would include a much needed bike lane. This is a great idea and utilizes (re-utilizes?) something that is slated to be to be torn down anyway.
• New Year’s Eve panoramic photos from around the world.

Happy New Year!