January 2012
1 post
Google Maps Plugin 2.8 →
My first Google Maps Plugin update in three years. I had to implement a work-around for a bug in Apple’s Address Book Framework in Lion. The same work-around I did for PostCheck 2.0.3. Now the directions window should select the correct address that you clicked on.
November 2011
1 post
PostCheck 2.1.2 →
October 2011
6 posts
PostCheck 2.1.1 →
Steve Jobs.
I could spend a long time writing all the Apple-related stories that have impacted my life. It’s amazing to think about how much would be different if Steve hadn’t accomplished all he has.
PostCheck 2.1 →
Includes a proper (I hope) bug fix for the city name issues. Also includes the previously mentioned new feature where PostCheck will suggest possible matches for your address if there’s more than one possible. I felt this warranted a more noticeable version number.
Please report any bugs, they’re very helpful in tracking down special cases with certain addresses. And thanks to...
PostCheck 2.0.6 Put Back Up
2.0.7 didn’t accomplish what I wanted, I found a copy & paste error that would lead to it’s own problems. Fix coming…
PostCheck 2.0.7 →
PostCheck 2.0.4 didn’t completely fix the issue with “neighborhood” names showing up instead of proper city names. This should take care of that. (Please report if it doesn’t.)
Sorry for the back-to-back bug fixes. I’d rather get the fixes out as soon as possible as they come in.
PostCheck 2.0.6 →
September 2011
8 posts
PostCheck 2.0.5 →
The main fix with this is improving performance for group lookups. Tested successfully with 12,000+ contacts. Before, it was just way too slow to be useful.
The technical reason behind this is that I was using NSCollectionView, which has horrible performance. For this version I’ve replaced it with a classic NSTableView, which performs great.
PostCheck 2.0.4 Universal Binary
I re-uploaded PostCheck 2.0.4 as a universal binary (Power PC, Intel, 32/64-bit).
The problem turned out to be that I upgraded my older Mac to Xcode 3.2.6 yesterday and it wiped out all my PowerPC settings. (Great job there Apple.) I found enough references to the problem through Google to know it wasn’t just my mistake.
Where'd My Universal Binary Go?
If anyone is actually using PostCheck 2+ on a PowerPC Mac, I’m sorry, my Xcode somehow stopped building PowerPC universal binaries. I just realized that the last two updates to PostCheck are Intel-only. This will be fixed as soon as I can figure out what’s going on…
PostCheck 2.0.4 →
I hate to have to put up an update so soon after I already announced another one. But a PostCheck customer brought this to my attention.
In certain cases, PostCheck might apply a “neighborhood” name to an address instead of the city name . For example: “Ohio City” instead of “Cleveland”, which is not a valid USPS address. This update fixes this.
PostCheck 2.0.3 →
Implemented a work-around for a bug in Apple’s Address Book in Mac OS X Lion.
Lion Address Book Bug in Detail
I was able to track down the root of the problem that I reported on yesterday with PostCheck and Mac OS X Lion. (I would imagine it could affect any Address Book plugins.) This bug is only present in Lion (at least as of 10.7.1), all previous versions of OS X behave as expected.
Here’s how to reproduce the problem:
Create an Address Book record with one or more addresses.
Quit Address...
PostCheck & Lion Bug
I’ve run across a reproducible bug with PostCheck 2.0.2 and Lion. If you add a new address to a contact that already has an address and then use PostCheck to check the new address, Address Book will erase the previously existing address for some reason. I cannot reproduce this in older versions of Mac OS X.
If this happens, you can use Address Book’s undo to revert the change. The...
August 2011
1 post
Returning from WebScriptObject evaluateWebScript:
I don’t know if this is common knowledge, but it took me a while to figure out and I didn’t find anything obvious about it online.
I’ve been writing an Objective-C (Cocoa) front end for a Javascript API and it involved a lot of two-way communication and passing WebScriptObjects around. (A WebScriptObject just being an Objective-C instance of a Javascript object.)
Anyway, my...
July 2011
1 post
PostCheck 2 is fully Lion compatible.
June 2011
2 posts
PostCheck 2.0.2 →
Fixed a bug where PostCheck may return Michigan (and corresponding ZIP Code) for addresses in Minnesota. I’m not aware of this bug affecting any other states at this time.
Turns out this bug was reproducible in PostCheck 1.9.2 as well. If ‘Minnesota’ were spelled out as the state - under certain conditions ‘Michigan’ would be returned as the new state. I’m...
PostCheck 2.0.1 →
Fixed a bug where a ZIP Code might not be looked-up on the first try.
May 2011
2 posts
PostCheck 2 is available now!
I’m pleased to finally announce that PostCheck 2 is available. You can read about all the major improvements on the Version History page. The new version is a free update for currently registered PostCheck users. (Please keep in mind that PostCheck 2 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later, 10.4 is no longer supported.)
Any feedback is welcome. Download the demo or upgrade today…
Vist the...
PostCheck 2 is coming…
PostCheck 2 is nearing completion (unless I come across some must-have feature that I forgot to implement). There’s only so many things that can be done with a small plugin that standardizes USPS addresses, but PostCheck 2 will be a “big” update.
Version 2 has been rewritten from the ground up for Mac OS X 10.5 and later. (The old version will still be made available for older...
April 2011
2 posts
Seidio's iPhone 4 Spring Clip Holster
A bit of background: I don’t put cases on my iPhones. I prefer to not make the phone heavier or bulkier than it needs to be and, in my experience, they usually interfere with the edges of the screen. I have always liked having some sort of belt-clip holster for all my cell phones though. But I don’t wear them on my belt, I wear them clipped to the inside of my pants pocket (so it...
PayPal Cert Problem
It was brought to my attention tonight that my PayPal certs expired for all purchase and donation links on my site. Apparently, this has been a problem since March 20th or so. The problem has been fixed.
(I had wrongly assumed that PayPal might notify me of the impending expiration.)
If you tried to purchase PostCheck or make a donation to the Google Maps Plugin and ran into the error, I...
August 2010
1 post
My First Time Machine Restore
After failing to get iDefrag to defragment my 500GB hard drive, I tried doing a Time Machine restore to accomplish the same thing. (I wish I had thought of that before spending the $30 on iDefrag.)
First, I made sure that I wasn’t excluding anything from my backups, like my VMWare virtual machines, etc. And then I did two backups, just to be 100% sure that my backups were current.
I booted...
May 2010
1 post
2009 BMW iDrive Log →
I finally got around to converting the log I’ve been recording of problems with my BMW’s iDrive to a website. Figured updating a web-based version was easier than my hard copy. Any feedback is welcome.
March 2010
1 post
Please Update Your Bookmarks
I’m moving my self-hosted Wordpress blog over to Tumblr since I’m trying to lighten my maintenance load. Please update your bookmarks, feed readers, etc. to the new URL: http://blog.briantoth.com.
All of the existing posts have been moved over to the new site, though I didn’t take the time to try to maintain all the permanent links to individual posts. Where possible I’ve...
November 2009
3 posts
If You're Experiencing Problems…
… after installing the latest Google Maps Plugin update, uninstall the old version:
/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/BTGoogleMaps.bundle
/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/BTGoogleEarth.bundle
/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/BTGoogleDirections.bundle
/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/BTGooglePreferences.bundle
/Library/Frameworks/GoogleMapsShared.framework
As per the last news post, this upgrade is...
Google Maps Plugin Updated
Fixed a bug with Snow Leopard users running Address Book in 32-bit mode.
Also, ditched the Apple Installer package for my custom installer that I use with PostCheck. It simply moves the plugins and the required framework to your personal Library folder. If you used the previous installer and installed for All Users… uninstall the previous version first or it won’t work.
If you...
PostCheck 1.9.2
PostCheck 1.9.2 fixes a bug with saving certain preferences. I’ve also whipped up a custom installer. Apple’s installer is too picky about permissions and authorization and not very suitable for a simple install-in-home-folder situation. If you’ve previously installed PostCheck for all users of your computer, you can either manually install the plugin in the Address Book Plug-Ins...
September 2009
3 posts
Apple Installer Problems
I’ve tracked down a few problems since my move to using Apple’s Installer. If you have problems please let me know. I’m currently debating between a compromise with Apple’s Installer vs. going back to my own custom installers for the plugins. Neither is exactly what I want.
Google Maps Plugin 2.7
I just posted my first update to the Google Maps Plugin in over two years! Version 2.7 supports Snow Leopard in 64-bit. Unfortunately, it drops support for 10.3.9, but Panther users can still download the previous 2.6.3 version. I’ve also replaced my home-built installer with a proper Apple installer package. Let me know if something doesn’t work as expected.
PostCheck 1.9.1
PostCheck 1.9.1 is available. It doesn’t add any new features or fix anything. But this version will run OS X 10.4 or higher and is both 32 and 64-bit compatible. Now I don’t need to maintain two separate downloads. I’ve also ditched my custom installer script in favor of using Apple’s PackageMaker to make a proper installer for the plugin. The installer still installs into...
August 2009
4 posts
Google Maps Plugin for 10.6
I’ll be working on an update for the Google Maps Plugin for Snow Leopard soon. It relies on some 3rd-party frameworks that may need to be updated for 64-bit support first. I’ll be looking into it over the next couple days.
PostCheck 1.9 for Snow Leopard
PostCheck 1.9 is now available. It’s compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, both 32 and 64-bit. (It should be compatible with 10.5 as well, but is not yet tested with it.)
PostCheck 1.8.2 will remain available for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard for the time being, until I get things organized and updated to properly support Tiger alongside Snow Leopard. PostCheck 1.9 does not...
64-bit
I’m currently recompiling my software for Snow Leopard and 64-bit support. Just testing a few things, the updates should be up on the website today.
Snow Leopard
I’ve had a few reports of PostCheck not working with Snow Leopard. Hopefully I’ll have my copy of Snow Leopard installed today and I’ll be able to test it for myself and come up with a fix as soon as possible.
January 2009
1 post
Email Problems
I’ve just noticed that all of my PayPal receipts and some random emails where being automatically sent to my Trash instead of my Inbox. I have no idea (yet) how long this has been going on. If you’ve tried to contact me via email and I never replied, please try again: btsoft@speakeasy.net.
Sorry for any support questions (or Thanks Yous!) that may have been missed due to this...
September 2008
3 posts
PostCheck
Occasionally I get an email asking a question about odd abbreviations showing up after using PostCheck to standardize an address. Or possibly an odd word. Today I ran into a similar problem with a couple of my own addresses.
Here’s the problem::
PostCheck uses the USPS Standardization API for standardizing addresses in Address Book. PostChecks send off your address to the USPS servers,...
Subscribed iCal Calendars
I wanted my subscribed calendars to show up on my iPhone when I used MobileMe’s push calendar support. I came up with this way of doing it and it seems to be much more manageable than using Google Calendar and other 3rd-party apps. It’s really much easier than it looks all written-out. Step 1: Setup iCal
Create a new regular calendar in iCal to hold the same events that are in the...
Bombs!
My first iPhone app is now available (after a 10-day wait). It can be found in
July 2008
2 posts
Twitter
I’ve started experimenting with Twitter (mostly because I wanted to play with Twitterific on the iPhone). You can find me at twitter.com/briantoth.
Apple Bluetooth Headset
I was having some problems with my headset after the official 2.0 update yesterday. Finally got the two working together again and I have posted the steps I took
May 2008
1 post
PostCheck 1.8.2
I forgot to mention that I put up a small PostCheck update a couple days ago.
In certain situations, the USPS will return multiple possible correct addresses for the address you’re trying to standardize. This is most common when your address is missing a specific unit number. In some cases, each unit has its own ZIP 4 Code. The USPS returns a default ZIP 4 Code to PostCheck which is...
April 2008
1 post
PostCheck 1.8 is Available
PostCheck 1.8 is now available. I’ve added abbreviation options for cities, street names, units, and common street suffixes. City abbreviations are now disabled by default. Common suffixes are Drive (Dr.), Road (Rd.), Street (St.), Avenue (Ave.) and Boulevard (Blvd.). I’ve found many times I want the main part of the street to not be abbreviated, but I don’t need every...
February 2008
4 posts
PostCheck 1.7.1
A quick bug fix for accented characters and symbols and other UTF-8-related things. I’m not sure how this one slipped through, perhaps because I don’t have any accented characters in my address book. The bug was reported on the 18th and hopefully no one else has been affected by the problem.
As usual, the update can be downloaded from the PostCheck page. Thanks!
Good.
PayPal seems to be working again. =)
If You're Not Getting Your PostCheck Email...
PayPal seemed to have stopped sending out their notifications to my website for successful payments as about 10:15 this morning (EST). So, if you purchased PostCheck since that time I apologize, usually after payment you would immediately receive your link to the full download. I imagine it’ll kick in sometime soon, as I’ve had this happen once before. If you don’t get your...
PostCheck 1.7
It’s been a while since I’ve made any updates. My day job has been very busy lately so this PostCheck update is just a small one. I’ve added an option in the PostCheck Options window to disable the lookup of 4 ZIP Codes. Since I got an iPhone, I’ve noticed that many of my contact’s addresses wrap to another line with the 4 codes. I didn’t care how this...
October 2007
2 posts
Get Ready for Leopard and Google Maps
I’ve known about this for a while now, but today I guess I can publicly mention it. Leopard’s Address Book has replaced MapQuest with Google Maps as it’s built-in mapping service. It doesn’t do directions though, and my Google Maps Plugins are completely compatible with Leopard, so you can continue to use them if you rely on having directions available from the context...