Mozy has released an incremental update to address the Time Machine conflict and issues that version 1.4 introduced. The update, labeled 1.4.3, was released early today, according to ComputerWorld. I have installed the update and it did immediately fix the problems with my Time Machine backups. My initial backup is running along at a very good speed, starting over from scratch. I unfortunately trashed my sparse disk image on my backup drive, so I don’t have all of that history, but its no big deal. This should backup overnight and be complete by morning.
Category:
Apple
Update: Mozy has released an update to fix this issue.
File this under the “why’s that happening” category… About a week ago, I noticed that my MacBook Pro’s Time Machine stopped working. It has been working flawlessly to an external drive hosted on my iMac at home, but I wanted something to back it up when I was on the road – for an upcoming trip where we’re likely to have lots of photos. (My friends lost a hard drive in their Mac while traveling across the country.)
Today, I found an article in ComputerWorld which links Mozy Backup to problems in Time Machine. On further investigation, it is my problem. As soon as I loaded Mozy on my MacBook Pro, the Time Machine problems began. Unfortunately, I thought I had a corrupt spare image file on the backup volume, so I purged it and tried to start over. Unfortunately, I was unable to start over and successfully backup my Mac using Time Machine. After a couple tries, I did get it to work, only to find the next morning that it too had reported a problem with the disk image and had failed. So, I’m down on my Time Machine, but for anyone else seeing these problems, thought the link above might be useful.
Here is an additional link: the Apple Support Forum discussion on the matter.
Yeah, seems like today is a day of #fail for me. I realize today scanning over my blog content that I’ve all but abandoned my new buddy Moneywell. Its very close to a month since I used it last and although I really like the software, its different and I’m having troubles with that. I am still finding myself relying on Microsoft Money and its darned running balances. Habit is hard to break.
Now, a month later, I have a lot of reconciliation to do to catch up in Moneywell. The thing I am struggling with most in the software are duplicate transactions and how to easily find them. Running balance is how I’ve always been able to check and make sure everything is on track from day to day, and although the daily totals are in Moneywell, I’m finding it hard to find errors.
And, part of this is self-inflicted (see, really sensing a theme here). I like to prepopulate my transactions in my financial program and so there are transactions for up to a month in advance in Moneywell. So when the real transaction downloads and the dollar amounts don’t match from my guestimate transaction, my balances go wonky.
The other thing I miss from Microsoft Money is my bill reminders – my recurring transactions in Quickbooks speak. I’ve used these to remind me of annual and quarterly bills, plus my monthly transactions. Its kept me honest with the trash company and even helped me make sure I never overdraw the account on a month-to-month basis.
So, back to the drawing board. I need to carve out some time this week in the evening to get things caught up in Moneywell. I really believe the software has a lot of promise for me and for my family’s finances. I need to give it an honest try!
So, I have been suffering from a self-inflicted visual voicemail problem. Its been going on for a month; but I only discovered it last night. I may have tried the Internet tethering work-around for the iPhone which apparently changed my voicemail network settings on the iPhone. I had to go in and manually enter the APN for the visual voicemail for it to work again. The setting is located in General >> Network >> Cellular Data Network > Voicemail >> APN and should be ” acds.voicemail” to work. DOH! But now its all working. I hate when the problem turns out to be me…
Making the statement that all you need to run today is now online, Google has introduced it own OS – dubbed Chrome OS and largely based around its Chrome web browser. Its a bold statement where thick-clients are still the de-facto standard. But it comes at a time where online applications like GMail and Google Docs are gaining ground on their bulkier, arguably-obese first-cousins.
It is a natural extension of the cloud platform that Google has been developing for years, and an evolutionary step for Google. Until the introduction of Chrome, the browser, Google was largely at the mercy of third-party browser developers. And while it shocked many that Google introduced their own browser, it made sense to control the main interface to their products and to be able to control that experience. Apple has used the same, successful model in their business controlling the end to end of their user experience and its garned them a lot of success.
I’ve been silent for the last week and enjoying my newest toy – the iPhone 3.0 upgrade which dropped last week. I’m very impressed with the release and with the incremental steps that Apple has delivered to all of us customers. In the meantime, I’ve been one-up’d at work by many co-workers who have upgraded to the iPhone 3Gs handsets with video, improved cameras, and more speed (yes, just a wee bit jealous).
I am really enjoying many of the improvements in 3.0, including landscape mode for several applications – including mail and messages. A blogger I follow tweeted this article from CNet which details how to enable tethering on the iPhone… Draw your own conclusions as to its legality, but its one of the features I want most on the iPhone and AT&T is not allowing it at this time.
I’m also enjoying push notifications as of today for Beejive IM – an excellent pay-for IM client for all your different accounts. I installed that app this morning and I’ve had it running at work. Noteworthy features include Facebook chat, a really smooth chat switching method when you’re having mutliple conversations, and push notifications, of course. The service/software keeps you signed into your accounts even after disconnecting and will forward any received messages or statuses to your phone via a push notification which displays on your home screen. This is Apple’s work-around to background processes on the phone, which, they say, kills battery life.
iPhone 3.0 also grants the ability to subscribe to CalDAV calendars and integrate those. I have a friend who needs this setup, so I should be trying that soon. I use MobileMe, personally, for my family and our calendars and it works great – but to give enterprise customers who have invested in OS X Server the ability to leverage iCal Server is a great feature, in my opinion.
And speaking of my MobileMe subscription, a new feature has been added there – Find my iPhone – a locator service and the ability to display a message on-screen and have the phone play a tone. For those of us who lose things, its a nice feature when you’re looking for your phone while its stuck in the couch. At least one person has already used the service to successfully reclaim a stolen iPhone… That story is a very good read.
Moving from MS Money to Moneywell
written by Philip Sellers
I think that I have settled on Moneywell as my software of choice for Mac money management. I really like how this software is setup for an envelope system style of managing your money. I also like that it imported my QIF exports, although there is no way for it to preserve transfer transactions between accounts.
I initially had problems and had dimissed Moneywell because I could not connect to my primary bank. After perusing the Quicken Financial Life forums (I was a beta tester), I found the issue – I was not using the correct username and password. To work with my bank, I needed to provide my member number and PIN to authenticate – not my website username and password. Worked that out, and now automatic updates are all set.
Maybe I’m late to the party, but I found that my Quicken Financial Life beta build had expired. Unfortunately, there is also no newer build to download. So, no more testing of that software. But I’m not crying.
I’ve been a loyal Microsoft Money user since 2004 – well, maybe 2003. My transaction logs go back to mid-2004, but I think I decided to start over with a new data file in 2004. I’d played with MS Money since 2003 sometime, but I seriously approached it in 2004. Yesterday, I learned, Microsoft will be killing the product. It will no longer be for sale at the end of this month and automatic services for the product will go dark in two years.
Microsoft Money was the one product that I haven’t found a suitable alternative for on the Mac. And having years of data in its proprietary format doesn’t help, either. Really, there are great Mac software options, including Quicken for Mac (maybe Quicken Financial Life sometime soon), Moneywell or Moneydance.
I read a Digg for an article over at macworld.com entitled Apple has squandered the gift that was Vista. I’m not sure I agree with the author’s perspective. In fact, I think what Apple did might have been a very smart play. After reading the piece, the author’s view seems to be that because Apple still has less than 10% of the market share and that it didn’t introduce a netbook or business laptop (??) that they somehow failed to capitalize on the opportunity left by Vista. Let me offer a different perspective.
