The issue, blogger Doug Krahmer explains, is caused by the Facebook app caching all data indefinitely. “The data is never deleted and each cache file is checked/updated every time the app attempts to post.” See Doug’s original post here: http://blog.krahmersoft.com/?p=17

Doug’s solution was to create an auto-running script that cleans the cached Facebook data each morning at 4:00 AM. You’ll need to have SSH and terminal access to your iPhone.

NOTE: If the iPhone’s Terminal application crashes when launched, fix the problem by following the instructions here.

Follow these steps:

1. Find your facebook app GUID by running the following command. The GUID will look something like (B81C7FF4-78B8-4898-8BFC-DA83AFEA8E95):

find /User/Applications/*/Facebook.app/Facebook

2. Create a new file named /usr/bin/fixfacebook.sh and insert the following content. (Note: you must replace each ?????????? with the facebook app GUID from the previous step.)

#!/bin/sh

echo Removing facebook cache files...

rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/0*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/1*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/2*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/3*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/4*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/5*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/6*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/7*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/8*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/9*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/a*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/b*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/c*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/d*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/e*
rm /User/Applications/??????????/Library/Caches/Three20/f*

3. To set up a schedule, create a new file named /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.krahmersoft.fixfacebook.plist with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0? encoding="UTF-8??>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
                "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0?>
       <dict>
               <key>Label</key>
               <string>com.krahmersoft.fixfacebook</string>
               <key>OnDemand</key>
               <true/>
               <key>Program</key>
               <string>/usr/bin/fixfacebook.sh</string>
               <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
               <dict>
                      <key>Hour</key>
                      <integer>4</integer>
                      <key>Minute</key>
                      <integer>0</integer>
               </dict>
       </dict>
</plist>

4. Run the following command to make the script executable. (I prefer to use Cyberduck to make these kind of changes.)

chmod 755 /usr/bin/fixfacebook.sh

5. Run the following command to preform the cleanup immediately (could take several minutes):

/usr/bin/fixfacebook.sh

6. Reboot your phone to activate the schedule.

That’s it! No more lagginess from the Facebook app.

iTunes could not sync contacts to the iPhone because the sync server failed to sync the iPhone

I addition to the above, the process would stall when trying to sync Safari bookmarks.

I was finally able to solve the problem thanks to a find over on Apple’s support forums:

• back up the Apple Address Book
• trash any items in the (user) / Library / ApplicationSupport / SyncServices folder
• restart the computer
• ensure sure that contacts and Safari bookmarks are checked to sync in iTunes
• re-sync

I have my collection organized into folders. Top-level folders are genres, and subfolders hold albums by title and artist. For example, some of my top-level folders are for Big Band, Classical Choral and Instrumental, Classical Vocal, Jazz and Acoustic, etc. etc. The one exception I made was to create a top-level folder for all of my Christmas music with subfolders based on album. Since I listen to that music only at a specific time each year, that seemed to make the most sense.

Camille and I both have 30GB Zunes. As great as my iPhone is, its 8GB can’t compete, and it’s nice to have a device dedicated to music only with lots of storage (though my collection won’t come close to fitting on it… boo-hoo). The Zune software is actually pretty nice once you get used to its quirks, but one thing it just won’t do is to create playlists based on folders. Not too long ago I was going through this insane hoop-jumping exercise to get around the limitation that involved creating Windows Media Player playlists, opening the playlist in a text editor to change the header information, saving the file with a new extension… bleah. It was an aggravating mess. (And an unnecessary one, too… why don’t the brain trusts over at Microsoft solve the problem in the Zune software itself???)

But now… Merry Christmas to me. I just found a very handy tool to get around the Zune software’s limitation. It’s called KritZu, developed by Vishal Joshi. Launch it, make a couple of initial settings, click the Generate button, and KritZu spits out a playlist of all the songs in a given folder and its subfolders. If you like, it’ll even make individual playlists for multiple subfolders.

Mac vs PC: Windows 7 from Derek McKenzie on Vimeo.

The devices involved are these:

• Windows XP desktop upstairs
• iMac in the kitchen
• Home network with wireless
• Network-attached storage device (NAS)
• Macbook with VMWare Fusion (OS X, Windows XP, and Ubuntu)
• iPhone 3G

Macbook

• My trusty little Macbook gets special attention. While all of the devices in the above list are very important to the equation, my go-anywhere, do-anything Macbook is the most amazing gadget in the bunch (with my iPhone running a very close second). NGU purchased my Macbook for me when I started teaching there, and if it ever had to leave my hands, I think I’d probably stroke out.
• I’ve had it dual-booting Windows XP for better than a year thanks to VMWare Fusion. There’s a database that Camille and I designed to track all of the record-keeping I encounter teaching voice, and it runs only in Windows. When hooked up to the extra flat-screen LCD monitor NGU placed on my desk, I can run OS X on one screen and WinXP on the other without a hitch. At the end of the day I pack up my trusty friend and take him home, knowing that anything I might need that evening is within easy reach.
• A side-note: I don’t know why it took me so long to realize I could do it, but just today I hooked my Macbook up to our Samsung LCD TV using the Mac’s Mini DisplayPort and a single 1/8″ stereo audio cable. Coupled with R. P. A. Tech’s Air Mouse Pro on my iPhone, catching up with those few missing minutes of The Amazing Race that TiVo didn’t catch (getting instead Andy Rooney‘s grizzled mug… bah!) will be a much more pleasant experience.

Gmail/Gcal

• By far the two most important tools I use day-to-day are Gmail and its trusty sidekick Google Calendar (Gcal for short). Because these two web applications interface directly interface with my iPhone, what appears in one place immediately appears in another. If I add a calendar appointment on a desktop computer, it immediately shows up on my mobile device. If I mark or file an email on my iPhone, I find that action mirrored the next time I open Gmail in my browser. It’s seamless, convergent bliss.
• Gmail’s labels and filters are nothing short of amazing. Automatically labeling emails as they arrive and performing other automated tasks is a sure-fire method for keeping my Inbox tidy and manageable (which works out to be, let me tell you, directly related to my mental health).

Dropbox

• What was my life like before Dropbox came along? I have no recollection. I’m sure it was some awful hair-pulling mess of confusion and teeth-gnashing. Dropbox has fundamentally changed the way I work with files. Knowing that the essentials of my life and work are immediately synchronized across all the computers I use — both Mac and PC — removes a huge amount of worrying over what’s where. Create or open a file, make a change or two, save, and fuhgedaboutit.
• Dropbox even keeps track of your files’ revisions so in case you royally louse something up, you can always fall back to a prior version.
• There’s a new iPhone app for Dropbox, too. Don’t have much experience with it yet, but I’m sure it’ll save my neck before too long.

Online Banking/e-bills

• No small amount of joy springs up in my heart when I am, with just a few mouse clicks, able to pay an e-bill and then sock its corresponding PDF into my Dropbox. Bills are nasty. The less time I can spend futzing with them, the happier I am.
• My bank supports iPhone Mobile Banking app, and so do both of my credit card companies. I can pay bills on my iPhone, check my account balances, transfer funds, and more.

Evernote

• Evernote is one of the ways I keep the clutter of life out of my head. I put just about everything in there: shopping lists, hard-to-remember home maintenance items (types of light bulbs, appliance model numbers, the kind of O-rings the kitchen faucet takes), revisions I intend to make to courses I teach, health insurance policy numbers, my Wii friend code… even a running list of items I have at one time or another forgotten to pack for vacation. If it doesn’t “fit” in some other area of my life, it winds up in Evernote. And everything I put into Evernote is synced to my iPhone, available on the computers where I have the Evernote desktop client installed, and, in fact, on any web-enabled computer. Pictures of business cards and PDFs of Mac shortcut keys all become as easily searchable as text notes I’ve typed in.

Simplify Media / Orb

• Both of these applications serve media from my upstairs computer to any location where I have Internet access — traditional browser or through my iPhone. An MP3 player holds only so many songs, right? Not a problem with these applications. Just fire either one up, browse the media that’s on your home computer, and it starts streaming to you, sounding just as good as if you had the file stored on your local device.
• Both applications allow you to safely share your music with friends; Simplify Media allows your friends to immediately share their music with you.
• Both applications allow you to share pictures.
• Orb even allows you to view documents stored on your home machine (or in Dropbox!).
• Orb also allows you to view movies. So all of my boys’ DVDs that I’ve ripped with Handbrake and stored on my NAS are ready at a moment’s notice if we’re in a situation where “anesthesia by media” is an immediate necessity.

There are some other technologies that loom large in my life that just didn’t seem appropriate for the above list (TiVo, Firefox, Xmarks, Drop.io to name a few). So how about you? What applications do you use on a daily basis that you’re not sure you’d be sane without?

QuickSilver was the first picture in my house of Mac perfection that was a little crooked. It didn’t load at launch, and trying to manually launch it from the Applications folder resulted in… nothing. No dock icon, no menu bar icon… zippo. So I did a google search and found this thread over on Google groups. The solution wasn’t there per se, but it eventually lead me to this fix:

• use AppCleaner to get rid of the old version of QuickSilver and any of its accompanying files and preferences
• download and install version b56a7 of QuickSilver from http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list (it’s a .gz file that will, when double-clicked, extract itself)

After launching QuickSilver and putting my preferences back as they were, everything was fine.

The next thing that had gone awry was the backup process that Time Machine was making to my (admittedly unsupported) NAS. I’d gone through the setup process for unsupported volumes before, but evidently the new Snow Leopard install reverted to Apple-sanctioned backup devices only. Here’s a great article over on Mac OS X Hints on how to backup to a NAS. In short, here’s how I did it:

• in terminal:
  defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
• in terminal:
  hdiutil create -size 390g -fs HFS+J -volname “Backup of Lewis-Kitchen-iMac” Lewis-Kitchen-iMac_00224129a054.sparsebundle
• created a folder on the NAS to which my Mac has full permissions
• moved the sparsebundle file created in the second step above to the appropriate folder on the NAS
• opened time machine’s preferences and indicated the location for the backups to occur

After a short pause, the backup started.

A couple of notes: First, there were at one time some dire warnings being issued about using unsupported volumes with Time Machine. I believe those kinks were resolved by Apple, but it’s still wise to proceed with care. (Which is better, I ask you: a backup process that might be a little wonky, or no backup at all?) Second, I had to completely delete my pre-Snow sparsebundle file on the NAS before I could proceed. I haven’t tried this same process on my Macbook yet, so perhaps it was a glitch I’ll only experience on the kitchen iMac. I’ll edit this post when I have more information.

The last thing that went away with the Snow Leopard update were some of the settings I’ve made to default applications for certain file types. For instance, my text editor of choice is Text Wrangler. Veteran Mac users will already know how to do this, but to change the default application for a particular file type:

• click on an icon for the file type in question and choose File | Get Info
• in the window that appears, make the appropriate changes under Open with

What are your experiences with installing Snow Leopard?

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