Fixed a bug where a ZIP Code might not be looked-up on the first try.
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 Website.
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 systems.) Many improvements: particularly a lot of time has been spent cleaning up the Group Lookup feature. You can pause long jobs, there’s better error handling and progress indicators. Version 2 will also be more forgiving of some misspellings in street names. (Also support for adding “United States” or “US” to addresses - one of the more requested options.)
Right now I’m doing some more testing and also going back and reading through old comments and suggestions left by PostCheck customers. So, if you have any PostCheck feedback, now would be a good time! =)
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 isn’t flopping around at the bottom my pocket) or on my messenger bag. I also like not having to fumble with removing the clip in order to answer or make a phone call.
After I got my original iPhone, it took a while to hunt down a good holster for it that wouldn’t break. The Seidio Spring Clip Holster (SCH from here on) was nearly perfect. The rubberized coating felt great (and looked much better than smooth, cheap plastic), the clip was ultra-durable and it had a felt lining on the inside. This original version could be used either face in, or face out. I preferred face out since I could just leave the clip attached while answering phone calls, and the clip provided something to grip onto while using the phone.
For the iPhone 3G, the Seidio SCH was designed solely for face-in use. I remember writing to Seidio about this, but figured that it was just easier to design a holster that didn’t need to fit the curve of the 3G’s backside. Luckily, I stumbled across a Griffin Elan Clip. This wasn’t perfect, but the concept was exactly what I wanted: face-out design, hole for the camera, low-profile belt clip and designed to be left on at all times (with the bare minimum of a clip at the top). Things I didn’t care for: the fake-leather look and the fragile clip (I had to replace it twice).
Then comes the iPhone 4. I figured with its flat shape that it would be the easiest iPhone to design a holster for. It took a while after the iPhone was new for Seidio to design a new SCH for it. Griffin still hasn’t made a new Elan Clip (and probably never will). When the SCH was finally available, it said that it was again designed only for face-in use. I found this odd considering that the phone was just a rectangle.
For the past nine months, I’ve been carrying around the iPhone 4 bare. Mostly this isn’t a problem, but depending on the pants I’m wearing, there have been days I wished for another holster. This week I broke down and ordered the current SCH. It arrived today.
As is, it’s 90% what I’m looking for. It does work face out, but the top clip is offset and covers the power button. With pressure, it can turn the phone off. (I think the original did sometimes as well.) There’s also a new design to the top clip, where the hinge sticks out more and gets in the way of releasing the belt clip a bit.
I would absolutely love to have a face-out version of this holster. I would even pay more for it if it’s such a niche product. Anything that makes my work easier (and I spend a lot of time on the phone) is worth it to me…
The simplest way: readjust the top clip (maybe make it a bit narrower) so that it won’t hit the power button when the face is out. I’m guessing Seidio uses the same clip for all their cases, but perhaps there’s a way this could be done.
The ideal way: adjust the clip so it doesn’t hit the power button. Remove the pointy edge of the top clip so that it doesn’t poke my ear when talking on the phone. The case could sit a bit more flush with the phone (right now the felt doesn’t even touch the phone). And finally, an optional camera hole (which I could do without).
Even though it’s not exactly right for how I use my phone, I don’t regret the purchase and would definitely continue recommending them to other iPhone users.
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 apologize for the inconvenience.
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 from my OS X 10.6 DVD and did the restore from my latest backup. I let it run overnight, but it estimated it was going to take about 4.5 hours. This was for about 470GB of data.
Everything seems to be OK. iDefrag’s display shows that my data is 100% defragmented and everything is nicely compacted together. However, the Finder is showing that I now have 14GB more free space on my drive! I realize that Time Machine doesn’t backup logs and caches and other hidden Unix files I probably won’t miss. Also, defragmenting can increase free space… but 14GB!? I’m afraid I’ll find out one day were all that data went, and I won’t be happy.
If anyone has an explanation for this, please contact me or send me message on Twitter (@briantoth), I’d like to know what’s going on.
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.
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 at least tried to link to the corresponding day or month of the post you’re looking for.
For those readers that might be trying to make the same move I did, I’ll be documenting my steps to make the transition. Writing the code to transfer the posts was actually fun and if I felt there was a market for it, I would probably clean up the code and make it much more functional.
… 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 only necessary if you use Address Book in 32-bit mode in Snow Leopard. It does not add any new features or fixes.
For the Plugin users coming from MacUpdate or VersionTracker: I don’t read those sites at all. I don’t update the content on those sites, they post the updates themselves (whether I’d like them to or not). Please don’t leave comments on MacUpdate and VersionTracker with support questions, I will not answer them there. Thanks.
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 don’t run Address Book in 32-bit mode in Snow Leopard, you don’t need to upgrade, nothing else is new.
