Overseas Chinese Web Guide

Category: Tech

  • iPhone 2.0: Unknown Error Occurred (-9838)

    The mad rush is on. I’ve been clicking on the Check for Update button in iTunes since yesterday in anticipation of the official release of the iPhone 2.0 software. This morning, shortly before 8:00 a.m. PST, iTunes finally changed it tune and stopped telling me that I had the latest version installed. Of course, I immediately told it to begin the installation process…much to my later regret.

    Even though I don’t have an unlocked or jailbroken iPhone, the installation process was NOT smooth. Towards the end of the installation, iTunes attempted to access the iTunes Store, presumably for authentication purposes. However, I’m guessing that too many people are trying to do this at the same time. So, despite months of preparation, Apple cannot “complete [my] iTunes Store request.” And, instead of an upgraded iPhone, I now have a iPhone that can only be used to make emergency calls.

    An unknown error occurred (-9836).
    There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.

    So, if you are eager to get the latest iPhone 2.0 upgrade, I would suggest waiting for a few hours until Apple has resolved this issue. Else, you’ll be toting around a brick that can only be used for emergency calls–which isn’t a bad thing if you’re trying to avoid phone calls on a Friday.

    Update: Now, I’m seeing this error message:

    We could not complete your iTunes Store request.
    An unknown error occurred (-4).

    There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.

    10:13 AM: There’s no magic trick or solution. You have to keep trying. I headed off to work and plugged in the iPhone and it authenticated. So, I no longer have an iBrick. While the iTunes autosync’d all my contacts, photos and videos, I have not been able to move over the new Apps that I downloaded yesterday. I’m still seeing that -4 error.

    strong>10:28 AM: In iTunes, I right-clicked on the iPhone and selected Sync and it brought my apps over. If you are using a one button mouse, that’s control-click.

  • iPhone 3G is Everything That I Wanted…

    Last year. If I didn’t already have an iPhone, I would be heading to the Apple store this Friday to grab an iPhone 3G. However, since I already have one, the excitement level isn’t quite there. Of course, that’s what I said last year until I caved in and bought the greatest cell phone ever.

    The two big features of the iPhone 3G are GPS and 3G speeds. Ordinarily, GPS would be a compelling upgrade. However, since the iPhone 1.0 can already vaguely identify my location by triangulating Wi-Fi signals, I will not by plunking down another $200 for GPS. As for 3G speeds, paying an extra $10/month is worth it for 3G speeds. Paying an extra $200 plus $10/month is an iffy proposition. So that’s how I see it a week before the iPhone 3G launch. If all goes well, I will treat the iPhone as a computer and upgrade in 3-4 years. What I will be doing this Friday is upgrading to the iPhone 2.0 software. Can’t wait to see what’s in store.

  • Negative File Size

    I’ve encountered this problem for the first time today. While using Transmit to upload some files, Transmit reported a read error. Transmit then lists the file that I attempted to upload as having a size of -7,686,868,318,640,340,840, if that is possible. The only recent change I made was upgrading to 10.5.4.

  • Office 2008 and Office 2007 Compatibility Headache

    I don’t know what to think about Microsoft. The Europeans believe that Microsoft is a bad actor that cannot be trusted. When a third-party application encounters compatibility problems with Microsoft software, the Europeans automatically attribute some nefarious monopolist motive to the Redmond behemoth.

    But, what if Microsoft was just incompetent and not ill-mannered? How else can one explain the compatibility problems between the two latest versions of Microsoft Office? I downloaded a Microsoft Word file that was encoded in the new .docx format. I opened the Word document using Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home & Student Edition and I didn’t see any formatting issues. However, when I viewed the same document using Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (Windows), the document was formatted differently. Specifically, spaces that appeared in the Mac version of Office did not appear in the Windows version of Office. How can this be?

    After some testing, this is what I discovered. When I saved an Office 2008 document in the .docx format, Office 2007 stripped out some of the spaces. By some, I mean a lot of spaces, including spaces between words as well as a series of leading spaces used to align text. If I saved the same document using Office 2008 in the .doc format (i.e., Word 97), I had no portability problems between the Mac/Windows versions of Office.

    So, you tell me. Are incompatibility between Office 2008 and Office 2007 due to evilness or incompetence?

  • Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M Rocks

    The ScanSnap S510M Scanner is awesome. In one night of use, I managed to clear most of the documents off my desk that had accumulated over the months and, shamefully, even years! The scanner comes bundled with Fujitsu ScanSnap Manager, Cardiris 3, ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. It also comes with all the necessary cables (i.e., power and USB) as well as a carrier sheet for problematic documents. Basically, the carrier sheet is two transparent pages that may be used for torn or other damaged documents that may jam the automatic document feeder.

    Assembling the scanner was a snap. Next, I installed the ScanSnap and ABBYY FineReader software. I already have Acrobat installed and I don’t have an immediate need to scan business cards. With that completed, I place a document on the feeder, tap the scan button on the scanner, and the scanner scans the document. The ScanSnap application then prompts me on how I would like to process the image. The choices are Scan2Folder, Scan2E-mail, Scan2Print, iPhoto and ABBYY Scan2PDF. I’ve only used Scan2Folder and ABBYY Scan2PDF. The difference is that ABBYY Scan2PDF will OCR the scan and make it searchable. Scan2Folder just saves the scan as an image inside a PDF file without performing any text recognition. I didn’t see any option for scanning to Adobe Acrobat. However, when I checked the “Do not show this menu again” box in the ScanSnap Quick Menu, the scans defaulted to Adobe Acrobat.

    If you want all your documents to be searchable, then running them through ABBYY or Adobe Acrobat makes sense. However, character recognition takes time. So, at first, I routed a few documents through ABBYY FineReader. However, in the end, I used Scan2Folder because the OCR was taking too long and I had too many documents to process.

    Speed. The ScanSnap S510M is an extremely fast scanner. It also scans in duplex in one pass; i.e., it can scan both sides of a sheet of paper at once. Simply amazing.

    Settings. If you right-click or control-click on the ScanSnap Manager icon in the dock and select Settings, you can change the default save folder for the files. You also would want to change the Paper Size setting by clicking on the “Scan mixed paper size” box. This allows you to place a stack of different sized papers into the feeder and have them all come out as one document. Not sure why this setting is not the default.

    Auto Straighten. Don’t worry if your document wasn’t feed in perfectly straight. I ran a receipt through the scanner that got pulled through slightly askew and the software straightened it out without any user intervention.

    Quite simply and absolutely amazing product. If you use a PC instead of a Mac, the PC version of the product is Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 Instant PDF Sheet-Fed Scanner.

    Usually, Amazon.com will tell you about available rebates at the time of purchase. In this case, I had to find the info on the Fujitsu website myself. The current Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M rebates include a $50 mail-in rebate and a free copy of Readiris Pro.

  • Buried Alive

    I already have an Epson Perfection 2450. The scanner works admirably when scanning an isolated document here and there. However, I’m finding stacks of receipts, statements and invoices cluttering my desk. To avoid getting boxed in or even buried alive in paperwork, I need a scanner with an automatic document feeder. I’ve been reading reviews for the ScanSnap S510M, and so far so good. However, for $400, can’t they at least make the scanner look presentable? It reminds me too much of my fax machine that always read “Paper Jam.”

  • Microsoft Hearts Yahoo

    microsoft.jpgMicrosoft made a bid for Yahoo last Friday. This move should prove beneficial for Yahoo if it can escape from the clutches of the Redmond behemoth. Yahoo has been wandering for a few years now, and it really needs to focus and execute again. Hopefully, this will accelerate their turn-around plans.

    Yahoo used to be my #1 destination for news, e-mail and maps. Now, Google and Yahoo divide my attention equally for news and e-mail, and Google has completely taken over for maps. For me, the turning point for maps was Google’s introduction of draggable maps. That was when I switched over to using Google exclusively, even though Yahoo now offers something similar.

    I still prefer My Yahoo over iGoogle, though it took me forever to switch over to the My Yahoo beta. I kept switching back-and-forth between the classic My Yahoo and the My Yahoo beta for the longest time. I simply didn’t feel that the beta was an improvement, hence the back-and-forth.

    As bad as Yahoo is struggling right now, I think Microsoft is faring even worse. I still keep a hotmail account, but I really don’t check it all that often. I don’t visit any of Microsoft’s online properties, and I don’t know anyone else that does. If Microsoft took over Yahoo and imposed their kludginess on Yahoo, I might have to switch to Google exclusively.

  • FireFox Drop-Down Menus Broken After Leopard Upgrade

    I upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard last week and have been struggling with various “issues” that have come up. The latest involves Firefox. I’ve already come across two web sites that use drop-down menus; however, the menus don’t drop. Who wants to browse through a menu by hitting the up arrow / down arrow and viewing one item at a time? Back to Safari for those sites.

    The Firefox release notes said, “On OS X 10.5 (Leopard), drop-down selection widgets on some websites may not function.”

  • iPhone Phone Book

    So I just received my first wireless phone bill book from AT&T. Talk about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. Despite all the time AT&T spent working with Apple, none of Apple’s minimalist design philosophy rubbed off. I mean a 35 page bill? I’m waiting for Greenpeace to ding Apple again for selecting such an environmentally unfriendly partner. A big chunk of the bill was the itemized list of all data transfers over the (lagging) EDGE network. Since the iPhone plan provides unlimited domestic data transfers, why itemize it? 8:41 AM – 1 KB. 8:49 AM – 24 KB. 9:08 AM – 23 KB. 9:23 AM – 49 KB. 9:42 AM – 23 KB. 10:00 AM – 31 KB. Talk about worthless information. Save a tree.

  • Wal-Mart Offers Online Reviews

    Yahoo! News / Reuters: Walmart.com to Let Customers Review Merchandise. Shoppers will be able to review and rate the merchandise sold on Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Web site beginning on Thursday, as the retailer works to expand its online capabilities.

    Finally. My two main sources of online reviews are Consumer Reports and Amazon.com. Consumer Reports offers authoritative, independent reviews based on objective product testing. Great for comparing across brands or product lines. Amazon.com offers more anecdotal reviews.

    The weakness of online reviews is that they are online. Before I bought my Apple iPhone, if I spotted a product I was interested in at a retail store, I had to go home and look it up. Now, I can read the review while I am still inside the store. If only Wal-Mart will publish their online reviews INSIDE their retail stores, then all shoppers can benefit from our collective experience. That’s an idea!