Switching to WordPress...

... because I can't get HTML to display right.

No new Gmail accounts from Vietnam (and other countries?)

With its new account verification system by SMS, Google is effectively blocking the creation of any new Gmail account in Vietnam -- because Vietnam mobile phones are not supported. This is unfortunate since Gmail is a very popular service in the country.

Safari is much better for news reading than iPhone apps

I have always been a big fan of iPhone news apps, such as: NYTimes, Bloomberg, WSJ, Reuters, AOL, etc. However, I have recently uninstalled all but one, and have read the news almost exclusively on Safari for iPhone -- if the news site is available in a mobile version.

The reasons are several:

• in Safari, most of the screen is used for text display -- and mostly only text -- rather than fixed sections in the news apps for ads and other distracting graphic elements that reduce text area. (To view news photos, I use AOL's Pixcetera app)
  
• it is more convenient, efficient and less disruptive to email articles on Safari by using the toread.cc bookmarklet. No need to jump into the Mail app, and back again to the news app currently in use
• there are fewer iPhone apps to carry around
  

The one news app that remains is Bloomberg, because only an iPhone app can dynamically display charts and graphs.

So, if you prefer text for your news, go Safari. But stick to iPhone apps for graphics and charts.

Workaround for syncing notes on iPhone

One iPhone annoyance is that Notes are not sync'ed.

Here is a free solution that does not require another text editor and/or a directory browser: use the builtin Mail app with a Gmail account.

iPhone's Mail app uses IMAP as the default protocol for accessing Gmail accounts. IMAP allows synchronization of messages on the Gmail account with the iPhone.

Now, if you create a message, and save it in the Drafts folder on the Gmail account, or on the iPhone, then it will always be available for editing on the iPhone. All such messages behave, in effect, just like Notes, but with sync'ing.

This allows you to edit a "note" either through webmail, or on the iPhone itself, with content synchronized whenever the Mail app checks for new messages.

Oops: Same idea mentioned earlier: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070707130648694

good books need good teachers

Unicoding! grouply.com -- Avoid it!

Grouply is a service that overlays your Yahoo!Groups (and Google Groups, RSN) service, in order to provide more control and features for your group messages. All messages to your Y!Group, for instance, now flow through the Grouply server before they reach your mailbox.

However, Unicode messages are turned into gibberish, because Grouply converts UTF-8 bytes into character entities, wrapping these entities into an HTML message. This renders all messages unreadable because there is no way to switch the browser's encoding to correct display the messages.

Grouply gets a Unicoding! for this problem.

Consider also that there is a security risk, because your Yahoo! password would need to be divulged to Grouply.

Avoid Grouply, and do not overlay your Yahoo!Groups with it.

Vietnamese Yahoo! web chat

Yahoo!Messenger Instant Messaging is now available in a web browser as an Adobe Flash Player 9 application. It's available in English, Portuguese, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

Check it out at http://webmessenger.yahoo.com.