iPhone Day Light Savings Bug strikes again November 2011

If you have your phone's date and time settings set to "automatic", meaning it will automatically determine your time zone, you would be one hour early to your appointments today! For some reason, if you set your timezone yourself then the phone gets the day light savings change correctly. See the two screenshots I took flipping the automatic switch back and forth.

Jabra Supreme Bluetooth Headset Review

I have been eagerly awaiting the Jabra Supreme bluetooth headset. I always find boom based headset sounds better. While the Jabra is a bit larger then, say the Jawbone, I find that it is still small and comfortable to wear. I like the flip boom design, where it switches on and off as you flip the boom open and close. Very natural. When the boom is folded in, the headset is smaller but still pretty thick. I wish for $99, Jabra ship the headset with a case.

Out of the Box Experience

The out of the box experience is pretty good, with the standard exception of needing to charge the unit up before first use. It is very nice that it comes with both a charger with a fixed cable, and an additoinal USB to micro USB cable so that you can use your computer to charge it up. It took just over an hour to get the headset fully charge.

Initial Pairing

Because the Supreme has "Voice Guidance", it will literally talk you thru the initial pairing. You can see this video of the voice guidance in action. I suppose you are expected to wear the headset to listen to the instruction, but I thought (wrongly) that I have to press some buttons, so I had the headset off. The voice guidance is loud enough that I can hear it anyway.

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg3KirLo3fI[/embed]

Comfort

The headset is really light. To be fair most of the new generation headsets are light. 18 grams. You really would not notice it. I wear eyeglasses, and it still fit over my very thin eyeglasses frame without problem. If anything I find that it is a little lose. I don't think I can jog in it.

Sound Quality

I say the sound quality is fair, which is good for a bluetooth headset. The noise cancelling works very well. I place a test call with the radio blasting in the office and much of that is muted out.

Voice Control and Guidance

Of course the Jabra is no Siri! But the voice system works surprisingly well. In fact if I do not have an iPhone with Siri, I would be really impressed. You can say "what can I say" and the headset will read you a list of available commands. One that is particularly useful is "phone commands". When you say "phone commands" it passes you thru to the phone. Since I have Siri activated on the iPhone, it starts Siri up for me. However, currently the Jabra Supreme firmware does not work with Siri. I can hear Siri, but Siri cannot hear me. Jabra promised a fix really soon.

Pros

• boom design for initiative on/off
• long battery life (5+ hours)
• comes with a charger and an extra cable for computer charging
• voice guidance and commands

Cons

• Does not work with IOS5, no SIRI, no Skype. Jabra promise a fix real soon, check their support page to see when it is available.
• Does not come with a case

Links

• Main product page at Jabra
• More Pictures of the package

How to use siri and Reminder effectively

We all love Siri, and scheduling reminders verbally, right? But you are not getting the most out of it unless you do the following, if you are a iCloud user with other devices and macs:

1. Delete your local Reminder list in Reminder, leaving the iCloud reminder list
2. On your Mac(s) calendar program, go to View / Show Reminders
3. (optionally) on your iPhone change Settings/Sound for reminders so that you know a reminder has gone off as oppose to other events.

Now when you schedule a reminder with siri, it will automatically synced to your macs and ipads, and it will show up on all devices!

siri is amazing

There, I said it. Siri really is amazing. People who think it is just voice recognition software need to try it before passing judgement. This is BETA according to Apple, learning a trick from Google. That just means they are going to tweak it with user data. Some of these things are not working (yet):

1. It does not work with third party app. "Play Norah Jones" only work if you have her music on your music library. We need it to work with Rdio or Spotify, like Dragon Go does.
2. It does not take multiple calendars into account. I have 25 appointments next week according to "check my schedule", what I really want is "check my work schedule"
3. You would think you can send tweets from siri, with all the twitter integration, but you cannot. You can say "text twitter" if you have twitter setup as an account with code 40404, the standard twitter SMS interface. You will be using your SMS credits though.
4. It will be nice if it interface with either the calculator app or something more streamlined for basic calculation, and then read back the result instead of showing me a wolfram alpha page.

iPhone 4s preordered

iPhone 4s preordered, a photo by pkshiu on Flickr.

In honor of Steve Jobs.

This is an example post

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Life, Taste and Personal Conviction

2011-10-05 is a special day for me personally, *before* I learned of Steve Job's death. I also spent the day in court. In fact I spent every workday of the last two weeks in court, as a juror. Life and death has been on my mind for two weeks. My own birthday is around this time, so I celebrated a birthday with 11 new found friends in a locked room, discussion the lives and death of other individuals is a sobering experience that not many people will have. One saving grace was the thought of next week, I will head down to the Apple store early in the morning, and line up to pick up a new iPhone 4S, as I did two years ago, at a whim, for my then new iPhone 3GS. I always thought Apple, because of Steve Jobs, was a great company building great products. I remember my old boss, when I was quitting my job to become a freelancer back in 1988, asked me who were my heros. I named Steve Jobs as one of them. I followed his career. I attended the NeXT computer launch in Boston's Symphony Hall. I guess that was the closest I got to Mr. Jobs. I debated to try to get an autograph from him on the NeXT poster that we received. In kept that poster for almost 20 years even without a signature. You could say that I was a fan, even though in the corporate world and the software world I was working with Microsoft products and PCs.

During my first start-up in 2000, I had his creativity and connection quote printed and pined up on my office wall. Most people think Apple is irrelevant. I purchased Apple stocks. That was my best investments ever made, probably never to be repeated in my lifetime.

Borrowing Kindle Books from the Boston Public Library

Amazon now offer books to borrow at many public library systems, including the Boston Public Library. The user experience needs some fine tuning, mostly due to the BPL website being a bit clunky. But it works great. You will need a Kindle, and/or Kindle reader applications on your iPad or Mac or PC. I use a first generation Kindle as well as the Kindle reader on my iPad2. NOTE: When you click on one of the images below, you are seeing just a picture of the example. Click the back button to get back to this article!

1. Log into the Boston Public Library Website

But surprise? There is no digital content on this website. That is correct. The current site only shows physical books and other materials. You need to click on the download menu to go over to the digital content side.

2. Use the digital site to search for Books

This is the no so nice part. The BPL search screens are not as friendly as the Amazon screens, for example. You can also use the Advanced Search feature to help locate only Kindle books.

3. See What Format is Available

Once you click down to a book's page, you can see the different formats available. Assuming we want a Kindle book, click on the "Add to Cart" link. In the screen shot, because I already borrowed this book, the "add to cart" link now shows "Place a Hold", but you get the idea.

4. Download Book from Amazon

When you click on the Add to Cart link, you first gets to the "Cart" page. Then if you click on the "Get for Kindle" button, you will be sent to Amazon to download the book.

If you have a Kindle that has wi-fi (the newer ones do) you can have it send to your Kindle automatically. I have a first generation kindle so it requires an extra step. Or if you want to also send the book to your iPad, click on the "Manage your Kindle" link.

5. Send the book to multiple Devices

On this screen, you can send the book to your iPad Kindle reader, or your PC/Mac reader! Click on the "Action" button and you will get a manage devices choice. Then just click on send to Kindle and pick your device(s).

Enjoy Reading!

That is it. Quite a few steps, but it works well.

Of course, if you do not have a Kindle, now you have a reason to get one.

How to Change Colors for ls command in xterm

I like to us a dark background on my ssh terminal. On WebFaction, their terminal environment is setup to output colors on commands like "ls". That is great except the default directory names ended up in blue, which is impossible to read on a black background.

There is a easy way to fix this:

1. copy the system default color settings from /etc/DIR_COLORS into your home directory and name it .dir_colors
2. edit your copy of .dir_colors file to change the colors.
3. For example, I change it to white:

[code]

cp /etc/DIR_COLORS ~/.dir_colors

# than change this line from DIR 01;34    to: DIR 01;37       # directory

[/code]

Original Screen:

Modifier keys not working in Lion for External Keyboard

Lion Tip of the Day:

As a emacs user, I always change the caps lock key on my Mac keyboards to "Control". This is in fact a nice built in feature since Leopard. However today I docked my new MacBook Pro for the first time and the Caps Lock key on my external aluminum keyboard (USB) does not send the new modifier key.

Turned out this is a feature. In Lion, you can select different modifier key actions for different keyboards. There is a new dropdown at the top. Select external keyboard and update the modifier key.

Why I Love libraries

Of course I am bias. I am on our local library's friends group board, FOSEL. But on top of that, here we are on vacation in Maine, middle of nowhere. A couple of work emergencies came up via iPhone email running at Edge speed. I have to get online for just an hour. Where should I go? The Bingham public library of course! A little small schoolhouse type library. Friendly librarians. And I got all my work done in an hour.

City of Boston, Do not Trust Us, and No Refund

Update to my property tax overpayment issue. Read the first part here. Here is a quick summary of the situation:

Executive Summary

After some back and forth with the city, I found out that my South End Condo is classified as a mixed residential and commercial property. Therefore I have been paying more property tax for the last 7+ years. The city said:

• - I should have noticed that the little "C" on my tax bill means I have been paying commercial tax (30+% instead of 12+%).
• - I should have applied for reclassification 7 years ago
• - Now they will not, by law, refund all the overpayment over the years, totalling more than  $10,000

In short, Do not trust us, and we do not refund money collected in error

Do not trust Us

Give the city credit, the city people has been nice and helpful in communication. The chairperson of the assessment department review board called me to explain the situation to me after I contacted the Mayor's Hotline on the web.  She even screen printed and emailed me all the documentation. However, during the 30 minutes phone conversation, the following exchange summarized the situation really well:

Me: Nobody would know to look at the "C" on the tax bill and question the property classification.

Chairperson: "You do check your credit card statement each month to see, if a waiter put on a $100 tip would you? You should have checked your tax bills too."

A city official is telling me I should treat my government like a bad waiter, and check everything?

Really? I cannot trust my local government for not doing their job correct? Looking at all the city services that I use, I cannot trust them? It is my job to question everything? This is sounding like a bad episode of the X-Files.

• My children play in city parks. (How ironic, I am even on the board of the Friends of Peters Park). They drink from the water fountain. Should I now have the water quality checked periodically?
• I drive in the city. When I reach a junction, should I get out of the car and make sure the traffic like in the other direction is red before moving forward?
• Should I start shadowing our Mayor to every meeting and question every decisions the city makes? Where does it start? Where does it end? A bit absurd?

No Refund

If I find a problem, do not expect the city to fix it? I wonder, if the tax error was not in the city's favor, but in mine, would they also not come after me, by law? If I run a restaurant assessed at 2 million dolllars for 7 years and I have been paying residential only tax on the property. Once they found out, would they tell me "oh don't worry, we won't ask for the extra, say 2 million dollars assessment times 18% tax difference times 7 years = 252,000.? Really?

How you can Help

• If you have access to news organization, tell them do a story.
• If you are a city official that can help, let me know ( p k @ p k s h i u . c o m )

No Refund for Overpaid Property Tax in Boston?

I have a loft at the South End of Boston. It is a great loft building with almost 100 units. Some of the units are designed artist lofts, with a below market rate price and can only be bought and sold to certified artists.

My property tax problem started a few years ago (or more), but I only realized it this year, 2011. My tax bill is almost 3000 dollars more than what it should be. That means I have probably over paid tens of thousands of dollars over the years. And the city said they will not pay me back.

The problem is not due to a wrong valuation of the loft. I understand that valuation is tricky. The problem is that, someone at the tax department has wrongly classified my loft as a part commercial unit. Every year I was taxed, 25% of my property value, at the 31.04% commercial rate instead of the 12.79% residential rate.

For example: The loft currently is valued at about 600,000. The property tax should be roughly 600K x 13% = 7800 dollars. Instead it is: 600K x 75% x 13% + 600K x 25% x 31% = 5850 + 4650 = 10500, 2700 dollars more. That's right. And they city said they will not refund me the difference.

How did the error occur? The tax department mis-interpreted the master deed of the building. The master deed explicitly stated that certain units in the building are artist lofts, and they allow artists to work in them. There are two relevant exhibits to the master deed. Exhibit C is a simply listing of ALL the units in the building, noting the percentage ownership and size. All the units are listed as "studios", as this is a loft building. Lofts have no bedrooms. They are by definition "studios".

A different exhibit, exhibit D lists specific lofts units within the buildings as artist studios. These are the ones that are bought and sold as artists lofts, and allow live work. This is defined by paragraph 6 of the master deed.

See the problem? The tax department read the wrong list of units, mis-interpreted the word "studio" and decided to classify my non artist but a studio (no bedroom) loft as part commercial.

I spoke with the tax department and they have come out on a "site visit" to verify the unit is not an artist loft. Of course that makes no sense since it is a documentation error. Physically seeing the unit will not make any difference. But whatever. They have agreed to change the classification back to pre residential. But they also told me that "under no circumstances they will refund any past paid tax to me".

Does this really make sense? My residential home was mis classified by a mis-interpretation of a legal document by the tax department. This is a clear mistake. They took my money, tens of thousands of dollars worth. Can I get a refund? For the city official looking into this, the parcel ID is 0306395084 .

Update: See part two, the city called.

Boston Food Truck Location

The city of Boston is finally getting several new food trucks and new locations for them serving breakfast lunch and dinner. Our South End locations (three of them) is basically just getting a grill cheese truck... But better than nothing I guess. This PDF list all the sites around the city and the truck and times (Thanks Liz):

boston_food_truck_schedule

Thanks to Netflix, Local DVD Rental shop set for a return?

Big news in the digital content space this week. Netflix is changing their subscription plan, effectively raising the costs for members who want to get DVD and Bluray in the mail from Netflix. There are lots of analysis of their intent and business model. But has anyone think about (re)opening the local DVD rental shop? This could be an example where as services moving to in the cloud / digital distribution, the local brick and mortar businesses can recapture the (small) hardcore audience. Yes there are few people who wants very high quality, large and esoteric selection of movies. But for those people, who used to pay Netflix $25 a month, now will gladly pay the local store that and more!

WebFaction server down for almost a day

Do not get me wrong. I love webfaction. Half of our apps (including our clients) are running there. Over the last few years we have had small outages. But usually be back within the hour. This time, the web194 server has been down for almost a day now. I sincerely hope that:

1. they tell us what happened
2. and more importantly, why it took so long to recover
3. why  they wouldn't just swap in a new machine, especially this is one of the newer server

We lucked out in that our site is still in alpha mode ( Boston Private School Search ), but some much larger site like the bucketlist.org is on the same server. For us, it stopped our design process for a day as we use the alpha site for design testing and we run a virtual team with our designers.

Update 7/13/2011

Site is backup. Seems like the machine was restored from a backup that is more than one day old.

How to clean up your gmail account

I glanced down at the bottom on my gmail account. My mailbox is 30% full, almost 3G. While I have a very long way to go before the account become 100% full, the organized part of me just want to clean things up!

If you want to delete very old emails in GMail, use this search filter:

is:unread before:2011/01/01

This will return all mail that is unread and older than Jan 1st of 2011. I actually add in additional filter, as I organize most of my emails by label. So since I follow a large email list call "python", I can select and delete all the emails from that list by adding label:python to my search criteria. Noting that I created a automatic filter to label all emails from that mailing list with the label "python".