Everything I need to know about Keepass

In addition to having, it turns out, an amazing generic CSV file import tool, Keepass and its little cousins are gorgeously well documented. It will never fully replace (the buggy) Quick Password for ease of use, but it has a future beyond iOS4 so I'll learn to love it. Here is all the documentation I needed to get started:

Getting Started Guide: https://keepass.info/extensions/v2/docs/KeePass2-GS.pdf

How to import from CSV files: https://keepass.info/help/base/importexport.html

Where to download the desktop app from: https://keepass.info/download.html

Somebody trying to do a database import into MiniKeePass from github: https://github.com/MiniKeePass/MiniKeePass/issues/446

No actual answers to the question here but a fun discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/KeePass/comments/818ii1/best_keepass_app_for_iphone/

Verizon Wireless data usage check

I found out that there are several ways to check how much of my monthly data I've used up for my Verizon Wireless phone.

It turns out that the easiest way is to dial #DATA

Source: http://www.verizonwireless.com/news/article/2011/07/pr2011-07-01d.html

Online bookmarks

Looking for a way to drag all my bookmarks, mostly diversions, across many machines into some kind of central location that can be archived. Has to be able to work with IE, would be nice if I could save my Safari bookmarks from the iPhone, but an alternative would be to have some kind of online service that I could simply access via Safari. Needless to day, this concept is terribly unreasonable and I probably won't find what I am looking for, if for no other reason than because manufacturers of different browsers hate interoperability.

Here is a weak-ass article that describes how cloud storage for bookmarks works for chrome and firefox separately, nothing about IE (because there probably is nothing):

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2045685/seamlessly-sync-your-data-across-devices.html

According to this, there is a way to synch stuff using Windows 8 and a "Microsoft account," none of which I want to have.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/sync-settings-pcs

This article gives the following options: Use Windows 8, manually shuffle favorites folders around with SkyDrive or another cloud options, or use Xmarks which seems promising. The cloud storage idea is presented with a kinda nice trick; apparently IE lets you define a location other than the default location for the favorites folder, so if you define it as being in a folder that is automatically synched with the cloud, then this option becomes much less manual.

http://www.howtogeek.com/131249/how-to-synchronize-your-internet-explorer-favorites/?showcomments=1#comments

Here is another example of doing the cloud storage option by redefining the location of the favorites folder:

http://desktopdeploy.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/sync-internet-explorer-favorites-with-skydrive/

Here's an article about how agonizingly hard it is to synchronize bookmarks between Firefox and IE:

http://www.pclicious.com/sync-your-bookmarks-synchronize-bookmarks-between-ie-internet-explorer-and-mozilla-firefox/

Some cloud bookmarking services exist as something called "social bookmarking" which is intended on being like tumblr or pinterest or something but just with links. This is clearly not what I want, but there might be one of these that offers sufficient privacy for my purposes. The main thing is that none of these are really oriented towards downloading the links back into Favorites or local bookmarks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

One of these Social Bookmarking services, Delicious, is sufficiently hated that there are several articles about alternatives to it:

http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/03/16/8-better-ways-than-delicious-to-bookmark-content/

Here's another article about online synch services. Xmarks comes up several times, but one commenter points out that Xmarks reserves the right to publish and otherwise mine the information. Another commenter mentions something called BookmarkSync and has a link to a different Wikipedia article comparing online sync tools.

http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/3317/bookmark-sync-tool-between-internet-explorer-firefox-chrome-safari-and-opera

The Wikipedia article in question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_browser_synchronizers

Here's an unsorted pile of ways to synch bookmarks, from IE to Chrome, from Firefox to IE, and some online services:

http://mashable.com/2007/09/20/sync-bookmarks/

Hay Day for Windows

It turns out that while there isn't a Windows "version" of Hay Day, there is an Android emulator for Windows that will run the Android version of Hay Day. The emulator is called Bluestacks.

http://www.bluestacks.com/

There's a ton of hits for "Hay Day for Windows" that all point back to downloading bluestacks. The sheer number of different web pages suggesting this after indirectly promising a windows version of the app is suspicious. Here is review of bluestacks by a reputable site that convinced me that it might not be a scam after all:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/how-to-run-bluestacks,review-1912.html

A lot of reviewers on Cnet were convinced that bluestacks introduced viruses to their systems, while others mocked those reviews and indicated that if they declined bundling options (a step which does not seem to exist in the most recent release) that they had no issues:

http://download.cnet.com/BlueStacks-App-Player/3000-18513_4-75593133.html

Alternatives to default Notes app on iPhone part 2

Still trying to find a palatable alternative to Notes on the iPhone. With a galaxy of choices, it is hard to narrow the focus. My needs are:

-- One that can sort by first line alphabetically so that my dated lists don't get rearranged every time I edit one
-- Something that's not a nightmare of bells and whistles. Not even sure if I want note categorization.

Part of the problem has now been solved by finding a list application that will work for keeping some of my lists, which is primarily what I've been using Notes for. That application is List! (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/list!/id377625479?mt=8). This is not one of the big name list apps, but it also is sufficiently simple that it is exactly what I want. Some links for list applications:

http://iphone.appstorm.net/roundups/productivity-roundups/25-fantastic-to-do-list-apps-for-iphone/

http://ipod.about.com/od/bestiphoneapps/tp/Top-To-Do-List-Apps-For-The-Iphone.htm

http://lifehacker.com/the-best-to-do-app-for-iphone-5851313

List! just makes lists, allows for priority levels to be defined, can do plain text import or export, that's it. No skeumorphism, no fancy iOS7 crap, no attachments, no calendar syncing, no mining my contacts (I hope). It doesn't talk to the cloud, so after the Singularity this app won't be one of the ones trying to hunt me down and kill me.

How to prevent Facebook from accessing my iPhone contact list

When I started to install the Facebook app on my iPhone, it promised to do something bad with my contact list so I stopped the install.

Here are some findings so far regarding this problem. The goal is to keep the phone contact list and Facebook completely separate. So far, what I've found is that other people are reporting that the Facebook contact list is being downloaded into the iPhone. I haven't seen any reports yet of the other direction, which is obviously the more troubling scenario. So far what I seem to be finding is that there is no way to prevent the contacts download, but once it has happened it is possible to either hide or delete the downloaded contacts. Also, this seems to be an iOS6 thing.

Here's a nice for dummies way to turn off FB access to contact list (this apparently does hiding). The comments are full of related suggestions, including some deleting ideas:

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57549165-285/how-to-remove-facebook-friends-from-your-iphones-contact-list/

Here's a cheerful page about how to get it to synch the contact lists, as if everybody would want such a thing. This is a good read for understanding how it is supposed to work, to help understand how to turn it off. There is a section on how to turn it off; the FB app apparently has a control panel for regulating FB access to phone features. Also the comments are full of people discussing ways to turn it off.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/apple/3420848/how-sync-facebook-iphone-contacts/

Here it is for droid. This page was notable in that a really novice user needed things really spelled out.

http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/droid-x-help/41709-prevent-facebook-contacts-automatically-downloading-onto-droid-x2-contact-list.html

iPhone sort notes alphabetically

The short answer is no, this is not an option, get a third party app.

This forum thread has a comitragic interplay between nice people and assholes, but an interesting idea (which seems to be to "touch" all the files although it is unclear if this is meant to be done on the host computer between synching) and some recommendations.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2696709?start=0&tstart=0

The recommendations are for NoteMaster and Evernotes. There's some question about whether Evernotes charges a monthly fee or not.

iphone keyboard

Here is my first google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=keyboard+for+iphone+bluetooth&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

The keyboard described in this breathless article seems not to have arrived, but one can always hope for the future.

http://www.appletell.com/apple/comment/a-bluetooth-keyboard-for-the-iphone/

The bottom line is that you have to "jailbreak" the phone to install a keyboard app, Apple will not allow installation of the bluetooth layers for keyboard interfacing. Here is a google search on the most popular hack:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=keyboard+for+iphone+bluetooth+BTStack&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Here is a painstaking tutorial on how to download and install the hack:

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2010/01/how-to-use-a-bluetooth-keyboard-with-your-iphone.html