Anybody who uses iTunes to acquire “podcast” audio files knows that there are some major perks to using iTunes for this purpose as opposed to simply downloading the mp3 file with NetNewsWire or your web browser. The biggest advantages to me are:

1. New iTunes podcasts are automatically transferred to your iPod
2. Old (already listened to) iTunes podcasts are automatically removed from your iPod.
3. “Legitimate” podcasts show up in a special “Podcasts” section on your iPod.
4. Your iPod and iTunes “remember where you were” when you stop listening midway. (Update: See bottom of entry.)

These relatively modest improvements to the regular “mp3 listening” process don’t exactly make managing and listening to podcasts pain free, but they help. When you are forced to abandon them because your “looks and talks like a podcast” mp3 file doesn’t happen to satisfy iTunes’ idea of what makes a podcast, the absence of these features becomes extremely annoying!

I often come across a “podcast episode” that is packaged as a simple mp3 link on somebody’s web page. Or I decide that a particular episode from a regular feed is intriguing, but I don’t want to subscribe to the whole feed just to get that one episode. Maybe I don’t *want* to listen to all the other episodes in that feed! In these situations, a highly annoying fact of life is that iTunes will not be coerced into treating a plain mp3 file as a podcast episode.

Grr!

A Solution: Typecast 1.0 Beta

These are the types of nuisances that regularly cause my “project ideas” list to expand to such length that few items have any hope of ever being implemented. Usually I just grind my teeth and work around the problem the way everybody else does: with sweat and tears! In this case, however, I found the limitations of iTunes to be a threat to my way of life. I need to have those plain mp3 files treated as Podcast episodes. I will have my way with iTunes.

I am happy to announce Typecast 1.0 Beta a FREE utility for performing one particular feat of daring: slamming arbitrary audio files into a “faked-to-order” Podcast subscription for iTunes. This is surprisingly hard to do, because iTunes doesn’t provide any mechanism (that I could find!) for coercing arbitrary audio files into podcasts. So what’s my secret? Believe it or not, I had to implement a custom HTTP server that, from within Typecast, listens on a high-numbered port. I then compose an RSS-format feed for the user-specified files and URLs, before sending the subscription request for this “fake” podcast directly to iTunes. The number of nasty workarounds this product’s implementation required is really depressing. Fortunately for you, they’re all hidden behind the exceedingly clean and friendly interface of Typecast.

Still don’t get what this is good for? Looking for an example page to try it out on? Check out CIO’s interview with Joel Spolsky. See the link that says “Listen to the Podcast” (replicated here for your convenience)? Now, how do you get that into iTunes as a Podcast episode? You can’t drag anything to the Podcasts playlist. You can’t AppleScript it. You can’t subscribe directly to an mp3 file. You can’t invoke some secret iTunes URL scheme. You can’t do it! Sucks to be you!

Now, download and launch Typecast. Left-Click and drag the mp3 link directly from Safari to Typecast. Tweak the titles and descriptions to your liking (or don’t), and “Send to iTunes.”

Suddenly it’s real easy. And I can cross an item off of my “fix the nuisances” project list.

Quirks and Caveats

This project is sort of on the borderline between “clever hack” and “usable product.” I’d like to think of it as a “clever hack with unusually smoothed-down edges.” Nonetheless, there are some disclaimers to be made.

One feature of this application that may annoy you is that every time you “Send to iTunes” it produces a new subscription in iTunes, instead of updating an existing one. This limitation is the fall out of relatively poor scripting support in iTunes for podcast-specific control. The very limitations that led me to produce this solution also limit my ability to do it perfectly. I have chosen to opt for a philosophy that allows me to at least “do what I do well.” Since updating the “fake podcast” once it is absorbed into iTunes is “difficult to impossible,” I’ve adopted the policy that every Send is a unique “fake feed.”

Although this has the unfortunate effect of causing multiple “subscriptions” to show up in iTunes, they will all be merged into a single “show” on your iPod. For instance, I publish wayward podcasts to iTunes under the podcast name “My Rescued Podcasts.” When I’m listening through my iPod, all the various podcasts I might have added with that fake subscription get unified into one choice on the iPod.

Typecast is the server! This is important, because it means that iTunes has to finish downloading everything specified in your pseudo-podcast before you quit Typecast. It also means that every future attempt to “update” a podcast injected in this way will quietly fail. No big deal, but you should know about it.

The Future of Typecast

Do you like this solution? If so, let me know. The future of Typecast is largely dependent on your expression of interest. Possibilities for future enhancements could include AppleScript support, multiple podcast documents, and my delving deeper into the possibility of convincing iTunes to “update” a previously sent Podcast. Heck, someday Typecast might even get an icon! (Like Typecast and have a knack for graphic design? How about contributing an icon? Leave a comment or contact me directly if interested).

Update: One of the cited benefits of having iTunes treat an arbitrary audio file as a podcast, that the iPod and iTunes share a memory of when you stopped listening last, is actually easy to apply to any iTunes file track. Just use AppleScript to set the “bookmarkable” attribute of any tracks you want to behave in this way. Good to know!

I recently had the opportunity to give Apple’s Mighty Mouse a good test-drive. I was really excited when this mouse was announced. What a perfect compromise: a two-button mouse that can masquerade as a single-clicker for the frightened masses! My excitement turned to slight concern as the informal reviews started appearing on the web.

People were discovering a cheezy implementation detail that required the user to completely remove their finger from the left side of the mouse before attempting to click the right side. It was hard to gauge how problematic this issue actually was. The reviewers were either completely appalled by the problem or absurdly nonplussed: “It’s no big deal, you just lift your left finger every time you click.” No big deal!?

Earlier this month I was working in New York for a week on-site with a client. They had bought an awesome new PowerMac G5 for this work, and I was delighted (but a little scared) to see that it came with a Mighty Mouse. To Apple’s credit, the computer ships with the mouse in “one button” mode. This is how they should continue shipping computers. In fact, they should remove the software that allows two-button mode to be enabled. This “feature” of the mouse is a total piece of poop. With the Mighty Mouse, essentially every click becomes a Russian roulette gamble. Did I click on the right side or the left side? Well, I know what side I clicked, but what side has the mouse decided I clicked?

I battled with the mouse for a few hours, trying to master the art of right clicking. Not only did the mouse fail to register my right clicks half of the time, the monstrosity managed to on occasion turn my left clicks into right clicks! I could swear it even swallowed clicks sometimes!

Just how bad is the Mighty Mouse? I have been using a two-button mouse on the Mac for about 5 years. I am completely accustomed to right-clicking everything in sight. I depend on the right mouse button, and I disabled it for my week with the Mighty Mouse. I became a control-clicker for the week!

It depresses me that this is the new “Standard Mouse” for Macs. It could have been so good. In my opinion it would be false advertising to call this a two-button mouse. I guess that’s why they just say it has “multibutton charm.”

For those of you who are concerned that the right clicking with the Mighty Mouse might be a problem, but are considering a purchase anyway: save yourself! I’m back at home with my utterly unstylish Wacom mouse, and loving every damned predictable right click I make.

At the very bottom of a long list of sobering lessons to be learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is one having to do with the security of digital data.

Katrina Lesson #1432: Backups are Useless

I don’t have precise statistics, but I’d venture to say that most people don’t make regular backups. Between the dearth of reliable, easy to use software, and the relative technical naivete of the computer-using public, backups are simply not on the radar in most folks’ lives. So when the unexpected happens, most people are simply left to start over without the benefit of their accumulated data. All those pictures of the kids at Little League, gone. All the ambitious spreadsheet plans that show you might actually afford to own a home, gone. All the email you exchanged with your sweetheart before you had a clue that you’d one day be married, gone.

That’s sad.

But what’s really sad is that the small percentage of people who do make the heroic effort of backing up are kidding themselves if they think they’re much better protected. There are many, many ways a person can lose data. Too many to count, yet the backup strategies typically employed by “plain folks” protect against only two: hard drive failure and careless erasure. In a world where hard drive reliability is at an all time high, and most data sits in the “Trash Can” or “Recycle Bin” for some time before being permanently deleted, these particular dangers may be much less probable than other risks that are obliviously under-addressed.

Are you backing up your important data? Where does your backup live? If your house erupts into flames while you’re out shopping, will the smoke from your backups mingle with the smoke of your originals? The proximity that most backed up data keep with their originals is an extremely risky component of most backup strategies.

Many people have taken to using redundant hard drives as their main backup strategy. One problem with this solution is that your data, which is probably by itself unattractive to a thief, suddenly has implicit street value. If a burglar enters your house and, God forbid, steals your computer with all of your original data on it, will they also be stealing your backup? If you’re using a redundant internal drive, you’ve just lost both in one fell swoop. If you’re using an external drive, you may not be much luckier. A glimmering FireWire enclosure screams “take me” much louder than a stack of anonymous DVD discs in a filing cabinet. Your family photos may be protected from mold and oxidation in their digital format, but the chances of a thief stealing your dusty old photo album are about a billion times lower than their walking away with your shiny new iPod.

Another risk of the “redundant hard drive” strategy is that, at any given time, both your backup and originals are hooked up to an extremely powerful, unpredictable power source that could cause havoc at any moment. Surge protectors assuage some of the fear, but my completely unscientific and paranoid assessment is that “there are still no guarantees.” The problem is, whatever your computer is plugged into, your backup is probably plugged into the same thing. This means that when the freak bolt of lightening crawls up through the wires and obliterates your computer, your backup hard drive has just melted as well.

Depressing. Isn’t it? Backups are useless!

Well, they’re not useless. They’re just highly under-useful. Of all the possible scenarios involving data loss, only these two, hard drive failure and accidental erasure, spring to mind as scenarios that are actually addressed by most strategies. All the infinitely diverse other scenarios fall into the “gosh, I sure hope that doesn’t happen!” category. This means that despite your well-intentioned backup plans, you are either oblivious to the real dangers or else live in constant paranoid anxiety about how you will cope in the absence of your data. All that anxious fear is unhealthy! You need to address this!

Making Backups Useful

So how do we improve our backup strategies? How can we Katrina-proof our data? Unfortunately, there is no sure-fire strategy for preventing data loss. No matter what you do, there is an imaginable scenario that you didn’t account for. Perhaps you lost the data 5 minutes before your regularly scheduled backup would have saved it. Perhaps the Earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic superhighway. You can’t prevent all data loss, but you can take major steps to ensure survival of all but the most catastrophic of scenarios.

The components of a successful backup strategy include regularity and remoteness. Most people make a gallant effort of satisfying the first, but do nothing to satisfy the second. Your data backup is useless if not remote from the original. What does it mean to be remote from the original? This is highly contextual and can mean a number of things. On a very philosophical level it means that the backed-up data should exist in as different a form as possible from the original. If the original is on a hard disk, the backup should not be on a hard disk. If the original is vulnerable to fire and flood, the backup should be safe from fire and flood. If the original is in Atlanta, the backup should not be in Atlanta! We want to get the backed up data as far away from the original as possible, and we want it to be ideally as different from the original as possible (while still containing the same information). If a hard-drive eating fungus descends upon the earth, you’ll be happy to know that your backups are all on tape. And if a tape-eating fungus should arrive instead, you’ll be glad to know that your hard drive is in fact such a good backup of your backup, that it’s already backed up your future backup! Or something!

Practically speaking, many levels of remoteness can be built-in to your backup strategy. How easy or difficult these levels are to introduce is highly dependent on your personal situation, and how much data you have to back up. If you happen to have a fire-proof safe in your house, you can make your data remote in terms of fire vulnerability by popping the backup into the safe. If you are only backing up a small amount of data, it might make sense to upload it to a server at your ISP or on a friend’s computer. If you’re shopping for a web hosting provider, you might be wise to go out of your way to choose one that is not local. When the ball of flame engulfs your town, your data will be safely stored on your web account halfway around the world.

Remoteness is easier to achieve when the data is stored on inexpensive and lightweight media. If you make regular backups to DVD, why not add a weekly backup that gets mailed off every Monday to your parents house, or somebody else you know on the other side of the country? You can encrypt the data if its sensitive, so you don’t have to worry about your parents’ house-guests getting cozy with your data. Just getting the data into their unread pile of mail gets it “safe.” You want your backup data to live a dramatically different lifestyle than you. While you’re freezing your butt off in Ontario, and the screen of your computer flickers on and off to the rhythm of the power surging, you can think of your backup data living it up on the beach in San Diego.

In the aftermath of a mind-bogglingly catastrophic event like Katrina, many people have been reminded to revise their personal disaster plans. Most plans focus on the preservation of personal safety, and rightly so. Your backed up data will be worthless to you if you and your family don’t survive to enjoy it. But the last thing you’ll want to learn after being successfully pulled to safety from the wreckage of your home and town, is that you’ll be starting your life over sans data. We invest so much into these little ones and zeroes, we owe it to ourselves to protect them as much as we would any other incredibly valuable possession. The overwhelming unlikeliness of such disasters make it easy to “hope for the best,” but doing so is offensively irresponsible.

I am not typing this from a high-horse. Until this blog entry makes its way from my Massachusetts fingers to its California database, it’s as vulnerable as the rest of my data. I take a moment now to look down at my redundant firewire hard-drive. Lazily backed up now more than a week ago. I think of my source code, copied a few days ago to my California server – at least I think I got all of it! I consider the music files I laboriously imported from my CD collection. Not backed up, because I can “always reimport them.”Shudder! I agree: it’s hard to do this right. My strategy as it exists today is unacceptable. It’s time-consuming. It’s difficult. It’s not Katrina-proof.

My strategy is useless. I’m betting yours is, too. It’s time we made them useful.

Something that has been for months on my list of things to “check out” are Cascading Style Sheets. Ever since I woke up one day and noticed that they were no longer that funky innovative technology that no browsers supported, I realized maybe I better get a better grasp of what-all they entailed.

When one of the definitive books on the subject, “Cascading Style Sheets” by H֯åkon Wium Lie & Bert Boson, appeared on my library request available list, I rushed over to check it out. I’ve read it bit my bit over the past couple weeks, and occasionally I learn something about CSS that really surprises me. The dang thing’s got wheels!

I know, I know, that was particularly cruel of me. But the point is, all that disgusting crap you see above was done with inline styles. This means you can select it with your mouse, copy and paste it. You can search on “rainbow” in this post and find the rainbow. In the old days, this kind of junk would have always been done with a custom graphic, meaning no searchability, no selectability, and no readability (without an alt tag) for the blind folks.

Yes indeed, CSS is bringing a bright, colorful, perhaps tasteless future our way.