As you know, O2 shut down their legacy MMS service following a newly discovered security hole and I have had to adapt O2mms to work with the new service… why has it taken so long I hear you ask? 

Well first the non-techie explanation;

I’ve taken advantage of the O2 downtime to re-write the O2mms app from the ground up to improve performance and expand it’s capabilities with a view to it becoming a native application… and it’ll be back this week!

The new modular design makes it easier to provide more features in the future - including video support and (hopefully) automatic MMS to eMail.

I could have restored the original service quicker - but with the new version so close, it seemed pointless to waste time hacking the old one to make it work

Now the technical one;

The old application used the excellent iUI library to allow pages to be loaded asynchronously but the underlying application was split between 4 or 5 files, all of which opened connections to the O2 servers every time a message was requested.

The application has been re-written from the ground up and now uses the extremely lightweight JSON protocol to communicate with the client-side app running on your iPhone - the end result is that the application is far faster. This JSON API will also allow other applications (think native!) to communicate with my service.

Additionally caching of messages has been implemented, preventing the need to make multiple calls to O2’s servers within a single session - improving performance for all users and reducing the chances of O2 becoming annoyed at the increasing use of my app!

The new modular design makes it easier to provide more features in the future which will include handling multiple formats (not just JPEG/GIF) and also the potential to integrate with other protocols (think IMAP)

Thanks to all my users for their continued support and patience.

Seriously Apple, you can do better than this.

Having tried to upgrade my .mac account to a MobileMe Family Pack account I noticed this rather unusual error at the top of the page… “Server Error: CreditCard Auth Successful” - how can a Successful auth be an error?

Contacted my bank and sure enough, Apple have taken the payment, but not provided anything in exchange for it - seems that many more people have had the same problem (and have tried repeatedly or with multiple cards without noticing this Auth Successful message at the top)

First the £121 free trial and now this, it’s ridiculous!!

I suppose we should be at least mildly grateful that Apple’s app designers were kind enough to put a sensible error message up (with a status explaination rather than just “Try again later”) as at least it gave me enough information not to try and pay twice!!!!

Apple - It’s bad enough that you broke .mac for everyone in the changeover to MobileMe but the amount of billing errors (and the sheer scale of them!) is unacceptable.

MobileMe is an excellent service, but has been criticised by a few for not implementing true ‘push’ functionality when you make changes on your mac … e.g. if you add a new appointment in iCal, it could take up to 15 mins to update your MobileMe account (and therefore your iPhone)

The following is a (not particularly ideal, just a quick hack) bash script that provides a quick workaround and allows my phone to stay up to date almost instantly

#!/bin/bash

OLD=`ls -laR ~/Library/Calendars/ | md5`;

while [ 1 == 1 ]; do
	COMPARE=`ls -laR ~/Library/Calendars/ | md5`;
	if [ $OLD != $COMPARE ]; then
		/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DotMacSyncManager.framework/Resources/dotmacsyncclient --sync com.apple.DotMacSync --entitynames com.apple.calendars.Attendee,com.apple.calendars.AudioAlarm,com.apple.calendars.CalDAVAccount,com.apple.calendars.Calendar,com.apple.calendars.CalendarOrder,com.apple.calendars.DisplayAlarm,com.apple.calendars.Event,com.apple.calendars.MailAlarm,com.apple.calendars.Organizer,com.apple.calendars.Recurrence,com.apple.calendars.Task,com.apple.contacts.CalendarURI,com.apple.ical.calendars.DotMacPublisher,com.apple.ical.calendars.Invitation,com.apple.ical.calendars.Node,com.apple.ical.calendars.ProcAlarm,com.apple.ical.calendars.RootNode,com.apple.ical.calendars.TaskOrder,com.apple.ical.calendars.URLPublisher;
	OLD=$COMPARE;
	fi;
	sleep 10;
done

Edit: let me stress this is FAR from ideal, calling the md5 function every 10 seconds has to be one of the daftest ways to implement this but it *does* work and for the use i needed it for the additional load is irrelevant

Firstly, sorry for the lack of updates … been busy

Secondly if you normally use my mac.com address to contact me it currently does not work as (a) it has expired, (b) due to Apple’s ‘migration’ to MobileMe I appear to be completely unable to renew it!!!

How did I miss this one - justmac.net was registered on 31st December 2007 - by someone other than me!

I tried to get that name soo many times when we had JustMac :/

On a more sensible note, I’d like to wish Glyn and his team all the best with their new venture, and commend them for moving their office to Macs - good to see a company called JustMac again (well justMAC in their case)

When I launched O2MMS for iPhone I never expected to get such demand for the service, there are over 1000 unique users now!

Please Apple, O2 etc… TAKE NOTICE - there are at least 1000 people in the UK who WANT to be able to use MMS on their iPhone (think of the lost revenue if nothing else ;)) - provide NATIVE MMS support in version 1.1.3 or 1.1.4!!!

Thanks to those few who have donated to support the O2 MMS application, it’s much appreciated (just think if everyone who used the app donated £1….)

PRIVACY NOTICE: This service does not store your mobile number in any database, for anonymous statistic gathering purposes a unique checksum is generated from your mobile number (using md5) - this cannot be reversed to return the number that it was generated from but since it’s extremely unlikely that two mobile numbers would result in the same checksum it’s possible to check any new registrations against this database to ensure that someone who uses the service from more than one phone, or has tried it out on their desktop, are not counted twice. I value your privacy, and do not log MMS message content, phone numbers, pins, or any other personal information.

I read this today on the Guardian website;

BBC Worldwide chief executive, John Smith, who is leading an ambitious drive to boost profits from the corporation’s commercial arm, said it was a “historic moment” and that a key aim was to avoid the fate of the music industry in losing control of its assets. “In the UK we felt worried about what happened to the music industry,” he said. “[Apple's] iTunes is a disaster for rights holders.”

I would disagree, iTunes has provided a realistically priced alternative to overpriced CDs and a whole new way of buying music (by the track) …

Not to mention the thought of the BBC charging for access to content seems absolutely outrageous - we all pay a TV license, which is what pays for these programs to be made - we shouldn’t have to pay again to watch them (or if we do, the BBC Tax license fee should be abolished)

Last but not least, if it’s anything like BBC iPlayer and C4’s existing offerings it will be Windows only and not be compatible with the iPod - big mistake. What are 90% of the portable media players these days? iPods/iPhone etc… That’s exactly why iTunes Music Store is the huge success it is… it’s all seamlessly integrated.

Unless I can click to instantly download an episode - on my mac, and then copy that to my iPhone, iPod, Apple TV etc without worrying about DRM getting in the way - then I wont use it (in fact unless it works on my Mac, I can’t use it!)

Everyone knows the iPhone doesn’t support MMS, probably because although we use it heavily in Europe - it’s relatively underused in the US, which the iPhone was originally designed for.O2 are kind enough to send a text message to iPhones which get an MMS message (the same as any older mobile that doesnt support MMS) inviting you to visit a website to view the MMS. Sadly the O2 website wasnt designed with EDGE mobile connections or Safari in mind, so it’s rather impractical to use.So I set about building my own, web-based MMS inbox that lets you see all your O2 MMS messages in an iPhone friendly format that would fit right in with applications like Mail on the iPhone.

For more information see:   http://www.iapps.co.uk/

One of the many ‘features’ that annoy me about Mac OS X Leopard is the removal of the SMS features within address book.Imagine my shock to discover this on apple.com, where they’ve taken a great deal of time to replace all the pictures on the apple site with desktops showing Leopard’s background … they’re advertising the SMS features that they’ve stripped from their new OS as a reason to buy a MacBook

Conjecture only, but the removal of the SMS feature might be due to the fact that the iPhone doesn’t support bluetooth for anything other than a headset… I always thought it was odd that Apple allowed every phone I’ve ever owned to work with SMS in this way… until I got my iPhone.

By taking this away from all those who’ve used OS X for years, it’ll soon be forgotten about and people wont think about why the iPhone wont work with it …

Just my guess

Not often do I stumble upon a genuinely useful, but unique application. Lighthouse however is incredibly useful…

Basically it’s a simple client interface to UPnP (and other similar standards) which takes the pain out of struggling with your ADSL or Cable router to forward ports to allow access to your mac remotely. For example; to make Adium’s file transfer work a bit more reliably, or allow someone else access to your mac by ssh or vnc…

Lighthouse lives in your status area, beside the Airport / Volume / Battery icons, and provides options to manually forward ports to your Mac, or to forward them as and when you open certain applications.

More information can be found on the developer’s site;
http://www.codelaide.com/blog/products/lighthouse