I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Gmail was behaving strangely on my iPhone - it wasn’t loading new mail and ultimately timed out with a Gmail server error. Frustrated, I remembered the local database. Here’s what I did to fix it.

NOTE: The usual warnings apply - technically, there should be no issues if you do this since Gmail stores all your mail in the cloud. That said, PERFORM THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

On the iPhone, go to your Settings screen and select Safari.

In the Safari settings, select Databases.

In the Databases settings, find and tap the Gmail database for the problem email address. It will be under the mail.google.com domain.

On the Databases settings screen, tap Edit in the upper right corner, then tap the red minus sign to remove the database. When you’re finished, tap Done in the upper right corner.

Reload Gmail in Mobile Safari and it should refresh the database and all should be back to normal.

Have another tip? Let us know.

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As part of my weekly podcast, I want to do a live streaming episode, somewhere on-location. It can’t be a lengthy interview because the phone doesn’t have a tripod mount. (Note to self…hmmm…)

I need you to help me decide! I’ll post a poll later in the week but in the interim, post your ideas in the comments.

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So, when I saw the oh-so-creatively-named InstallerApp from RipDev pop up on Gizmodo and Engadget, I jumped on it. (After all, they are “The iPhone Authority.” Ahem…)

I was interested in this app because it appeared that I didn’t have to hack my Mac’s USB kernel extensions to “fix DFU mode” in OS X Leopard 10.5.6. (Update: There’s now a bona fide User Manual and it indicates the need to fix DFU mode.)

I also liked InstallerApp’s iTunes-like…

“…native Mac OS X application that allows you easily download applications from Installer and Cydia directly onto your computer, and install them to the iPhone connected with USB cable.”

InstallerApp interface

I was drawn to the fact that I could manage everything from my desktop.

Other (self-proclaimed) attractive features included improved stability…

Safer Cydia Applications Some applications may require dpkg for functioning — package management system utilized by Cydia, and Pusher can install it too, but only much more effectively and without making a mess of your iPhone file system. We’ve completely rebuilt dpkg by optimizing it and throwing away superfluous libraries and other stuff that is not required, so it won’t cause any instability in iPhone OS. And it for sure won’t replace any system libraries as Cydia does.

…performance and battery life:

“Light” Daemon To install applications and to let InstallerApp know which packages are installed on the iPhone, a special background application is installed on the device. Not only it takes very little of precious disk space but it also is only being launched on demand instead of always running in the background (and it exits as soon as the task it was invoked for is done). This saves on your phone battery, CPU cycles and memory.

So, with my trusty credit card in hand, I sent $7 to a couple of guys in Russia and hoped for the best.

I downloaded and installed the app, then purchased a license key through eSellerate.

After launching and entering my license key, I began the process of setting up my iPhone. After numerous attempts and restarts of the iPhone (which I thought I’d bricked each time) I realized it would probably help to turn off “Auto-Sync on Connect” in iTunes as it launched and attempted to sync each time the iPhone was mounted.

After almost an hour, I still had no success.

At this point, I was so determined to accomplish my goal that I decided to try it the “regular way” following Rachel Baker’s great tutorial. (While trying to use InstallerApp, I even received responses to my frustrated tweets from Rachel, prompting me to use her tutorial.)

First, I had to fix DFU mode. I downloaded the Automator script found here and ran it numerous times without success. After a total of 90 minutes trying to jailbreak the phone, I gave up and went to bed.

When I returned to my desk the following morning, I had every intention of just giving up on jailbreaking my iPhone. I then realized that the DFU script had backed up my kernel extensions to a folder on my desktop. What I thought occurred was the script had installed the modified kernel extensions and just unexpectedly quit during the process. Wanting to keep my machine in order, I decide to replace the kernel extensions manually.

Bad idea.

After my MacBook cleared its boot caches and restarted, none of my input devices worked. That included my external mouse and keyboard and the trackpad and built-in keyboard.

Crap on toast! I had real work to do and this wasn’t helping.

I booted the machine with extensions off (safe mode), retrieved the correct kernel extensions from my son’s MacBook and attempted to copy them to the appropriate location in the System folder…without success.

Apparently, kernel extensions need to have permissions set for “System” and a user called “Wheel”:

I guess I could have launched Terminal and set the owner and permissions accordingly using chown and chmod, but I didn’t feel like messing around with that if I didn’t have to - it is the System folder, after all.

Then I remembered a different method that I’d found for “fixing DFU mode”. According to BlogsDNA, if you were a member of the Apple Developer Connection, you could download a package with the 10.5.5 USB drivers - complete with an installer - and reboot.

Thankfully, that worked, and I had my input devices working again.

But after more than three hours, I still didn’t have a jailbroken iPhone and felt like I’d expended a lot of effort without results.

So, now that I had DFU mode restored, I thought I might try InstallerApp again. Sure enough, InstallerApp worked this time. Finally. (Note to RipDev: you should indicate that DFU mode needs to be restored before using your application.)

Once the installer daemon was on the iPhone, I could use the InstallerApp desktop software to install some packages from Cydia and Installer. I knew immediately that I wanted:

• Search
• Copy and Paste
• PDAnet (so I could tether my MacBook)
• Qik and Ustream.tv for live streaming
• A video recording app (CyCorder or iPhone Video Recorder)
• BossPrefs (so I could easily turn on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc.)
• Cydia and Installer (so I could install apps from the device itself)

The InstallerApp interface is very iTunes-like. Software packages are aggregated from both Cydia and Installer repositories. Available software packages appear in a categorical folder structure on the left. When selected, the category contents appear on the right. When an individual package is selected in the bottom-right pane, the package description appears in the top-right pane. To install, simply click “Install” in the top-right pane. All package dependencies are installed for you. Simple.

(Nit: when you uninstall a package, InstallerApp leaves the package-dependencies on the phone. You can try removing them, but you don’t know if they are in use by another app or not. Kinda reminds me of Windoze…)

I easily found the packages I wanted using the InstallerApp search box, located in the lower right of the application. I selected pdaNet, clicked “Install” and waited for the package to download. I received an “Unexpected Error” message.

Wonderful.

I tried installing a few more apps and was successful, but others repeated the error message. I figured I’d give it a rest since I had work to do. At that point, I had Qik, Ustream, Search and BossPrefs, Cydia and Installer working and was damn happy to have them.

Later in the day, I tried using Cydia and Installer to retrieve the pdaNet package directly to the phone.

Fail.

Apparently, Cydia doesn’t have enough repositories installed and I can’t seem to get it to add more. Installer just didn’t have the app in any of its repositories.

This morning I connected my iPhone to my MacBook and launched InstallerApp, which proceeded to update itself - and it’s repositories. Cool.

iTunes then told me I would have to Restore my iPhone, then InstallerApp instructed me to install the same software on my phone as yesterday. Hmmm.

I went through the install process with InstallerApp (which only takes a minute or two) and proceeded to download pdaNet. It worked! I then proceeded to install CyCorder and iPhone Video Recorder.

Final Thoughts

This was more than just a review of InstallerApp, but a review of the process required to jailbreak an iPhone on a Mac running 10.5.6.

Overall, I like InstallerApp. It provides me with a management interface on my Mac desktop that I wouldn’t otherwise have. Was it worth $7? Yes, I’d say so. I think it’s more convenient to download applications to a desktop then transfer to an iPhone rather than install everything from the device.

It’s still a bit rough around the proverbial edges but will likely improve with time.

I can’t yet determine if it delivers on its promises of stability and performance, but I’ll provide an update as I continue to use it.

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He cites the economy, coupled with the surge in popularity of netbooks, as the impetus for the device.

At $999, the least expensive MacBook is twice or more the cost of the most frugal Windows alternatives, Gottheil says….”It is too much to ask consumers to pay more than twice as much for a PC in these times,” the analyst says.

Sure, Stevie J. insists that the iPhone is “netbook-like” and though it would seem to have the processing power to perform in this way, the device doesn’t have a keyboard or basic productivity applications, making it less than useful as a netbook.

Others would argue that Apple is already in the netbook market with the introduction of the MacBook Air, but the machine is too large and without enough ports (or battery life)  - and too expensive - to really be a competitor in the netbook category.

I use a MacBook as my primary machine and would never go back to a Windows machine. That said, I love my Linux-based netbook for its simplicity and utility - and the fact that it was super cheap.

Would I purchase a Mac netbook? Probably not, but there are too many variables in the equation to rule it out at the moment, the largest of which is whether Jobs & Co. would consider making a netbook in the first place. I’ll consider it when and if it happens.

[via AppleInsider]

—

Posted from my Acer Aspire One, 4 GB SSD, 8 GB SD, 1.5 GB RAM, 9-Cell Extended Battery.

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Sure, I’m waiting to receive the 6-cell battery for my Acer Aspire One and I could probably buy a second, high-capacity battery for my MacBook, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a simple, hardware-independent solution for powering my gadgets?

Let me introduce you to my next Christmas present, the snappily named PPS130 - 130Wh Portable Power Station from Battery Geek, Inc.

With the plethora of cable tips that come with it and a special cable for my MacBook, I can use this to get an additional 7-9 hours of use out of my MacBook and possibly up to 15 hours of use from my netbook. That just RAWKS.

And, with the AC power adapter, I can leave my netbook power supply behind and replace it with this unit, so my net weight gain should be minimal.

But wait! There’s more!

I can also use this to charge my iPhone, my iPod, my Aliph Jawbone bluetooth headset and just about any other gadget that uses USB to get some juice.

Ok - admittedly, there are some downsides to this type of solution.

First, the extra weight. Isn’t the reason for a netbook to shed some bulk? Yes, that’s the thinking, anyway. This bad boy weighs in at 2.4 pounds - more than my netbook, which only weighs 2.14 pounds.

Second is cost: $299 for the unit and an additional $19.99 for the MacBook cable. My netbook only cost me $329 to begin with!

Third, it takes 6 - 6.5 hours to charge the battery pack itself. You definitely don’t want to forget to plug this in overnight or you’ll be out of luck when you need it.

Finally, there’s the geek factor. I already carry around more gear than I probably need to and this will just add to the nerd persona. (Though, I can live with that.)

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Image: ladypoop.blogspot.com

During my recent trip to the BlogWell conference in San Jose, I decided to try a little experiment: for the first time ever, I was going to travel without my MacBook and bring only my Acer Aspire One netbook and my iPhone.

All was well until about an hour before my flight was to depart for SFO. I was working on the netbook in the Continental President’s Club lounge (free wifi! free snacks! clean bathrooms!) when I noticed that email was arriving on the netbook, but not on my iPhone. I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was just a hiccup.

By the time I arrived at SFO, I realized that something was definitely amiss. My corporate Exchange email wasn’t working at all and my personal MobileMe account was only pulling email intermittently. I spent the entire trip checking my corporate Exchange email using Outlook Web Access on Mobile Safari and my personal email using my Gmail backup. (For more on that, read this.)

My only solution was to do a complete restore of the iPhone. Did I mention that my MacBook was in New Jersey and I was in San Francisco? Yeah…

When I finally returned to the office yesterday, I attempted a restore without luck - the mail settings in m backup were the same as what was on my iPhone and they were corrupt. The only fix was to start over - doing a complete restore as if it were a new iPhone, then configuring all my settings.

Surprisingly, the iPhone seems generally snappier now. Is the iPhone OS the “Windows of smartphone OS’s”, requiring a clean install a couple of times a year?

Maybe. Just not while you’re traveling.

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I’ve always felt that ThinkFree didn’t get enough credit for creating their office suite waaaay before there was Google Docs, Zoho and even OpenOffice.

From jkOnTheRun:

Add another suite of productivity tools to the list: ThinkFree now has a mobile version of their Office-like suite that’s specific to netbooks. In fact, they have an edition for 4 to 7-inch displays on Mobile Internet Devices as well; both were just announced.

I’ve got the 48.6MB trial version coming down the pipe right now on my MSI Wind and although I mainly use Google Docs for the rare document or spreadsheet these days, I’ll give ThinkFree a fair shake on the Wind. I suspect that ThinkFree will be trying to get their suite bundled onto netbooks by working deals with the manufacturers, which is more likely to get folks to try the toolset.

There’s no pricing information in the official press release, but the product page does have a Buy link so I’m expecting there to be a nominal cost that’s less than a Microsoft Office license. Of course, any cost would be more than the free Google Docs or Zoho Office services but the difference here is that the ThinkFree suite isn’t a cloud application: it’s installed locally and doesn’t require a connection to the web. Of course, that connection certainly helps and ThinkFree has leveraged that: you can collaborate on docs and synchronize them across devices. ThinkFree also provides 1GB of free online document storage when you activate your software.

[via jkOnTheRun]

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