Competing with incumbents as successful as these two is a challenge even for Google. Therefore, in order to give Buzz some serious momentum right from the start, Google management decided to tie the new service into their popular Gmail infrastructure and started rolling out a pre-populated “friends” list for every user the day the service went live.

The contacts for these “friends” lists were compiled automatically from users’ Gmail and Google Chat contacts, and the lists themselves were made public by default. As a result, Google managed to expose many a Gmail users’ address book for everyone to see.

Excusing Google

In the wake of this privacy fiasco, some journalists managed to provide a level-headed and insightful view of the story and also pointing out just how dire the consequences of this privacy breach may be for some of Google’s users like human rights activists or women hiding from their abusive spouses. Others, however, let Google off the hook much more easily.

Take, for example, Ron Miller’s article, “Cheating Spouses Might Want to Avoid Google“. Attention-grabbing title aside, Ron does point out that Google “probably” is “[u]ltimately responsible”. When you read between the lines, however, Ron’s overall point of view becomes apparent: “Those who complain should have known better than to trust Google!”

And it’s not just a problem specifically with Google, either, as Ron says:

“If you have something to hide, maybe you should think twice about using the internet to conduct your business”

And:

“There is no privacy on the internet, period”.

In an interview with CNBC, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt said something very similar:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

There are many variations on this notion, but it always comes down to the same smug and corrosive attitude: only those people care about privacy who want to get away with inherently illegal and/or immoral behavior.

That notion, of course, is complete and utter nonsense.

What do people have to hide?

Not too long ago, I started compiling a list of questions to ask next time someone tells me they have nothing to hide. Obviously, the easiest way to test someone’s sense of privacy is to ask them questions that are seriously Not Safe For Work. Then again, inquiring about a person’s financial net worth usually is invasive enough to make almost anyone balk at such inquiries.

Fact of the matter is that we all have something, nay a lot to hide: a company’s business plan; an inventor’s blueprints; a person’s medical history; a writer’s manuscript; a journalist’s list of informants; a chef’s recipes; a teenager’s diary; a lover’s Valentine’s Day plans; a jobseeker’s contacts; …

You get the idea.

If these are examples for “something that you don’t want anyone to know”, then, according to Eric Schmidt’s quote above, you shouldn’t be starting a business, invent something, go see a doctor, and so on. Come to think of it, last time I checked, Google did not want anyone outside the company to know how their page rank algorithm works. Good heavens! Why, they should be forced to take their search engine offline immediately!

Freedom and privacy go hand in hand

Admittedly, for some of the examples I gave above, the consequences of the data becoming public isn’t all that dramatic. The reason for that is that we live in a free society: we are free to say what we think; we are free to believe what we want; we are free to travel to whatever places we find interesting. True, depending on what you say, what you believe, where you go, chances are that it will have consequences for you, e.g., when searching for a new job.

For someone living in a state with a suppressive government, however, being able to keep certain things very private may become a matter of life and death. For such brave souls who have the guts to communicate via blogs, email, etc., how their fellow-countrymen are treated by their “sovereign”, having their contacts list exposed due to the Buzz screw-up may very well turn into a nightmare.

If we were expected, or even required, to justify our claim to privacy — which, by the way, is included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (it’s in article 12) — every time we decide not to share certain data with the general public, that would be no less than the end of a truly free society.

The key question, therefore, is not who is entitled to which level of privacy; that question has been answered in December 1948 (see the link in the previous paragraph). Instead, we should ask ourselves whether we are willing to trust a company whose CEO publicly displays such a disregard for his customer’s demands just because all of that company’s products are “free”.

What kind of privacy should we expect from Internet companies?

When I do business with a company, any company, I expect them to do all they can to protect any data I share with them. If they won’t do this, I expect them to openly and honestly tell me so up front. I want to decide what subset of my personal data I make available online by choosing which online services I entrust with my data, and which privacy settings I choose for the respective services.

For some data services, that “setting” is a simple “Never, ever share this stuff with anyone!”, e.g., the statements of my online bank account, the backup I store “in the cloud”, or the address book that I share between multiple machines via an online service.

And this is exactly where Google screwed up big time: Google has so many smart people working for them that it boggles the mind how they could so massively misjudge the effects of the public, pre-populated Buzz “friends” lists.

In the NYT article I link to above, Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail and Google Buzz, is quoted as saying:

Google remains completely committed to freedom of expression and to privacy, and we have a strong track record of protecting both.

The article goes on to say:

Mr. Jackson defended the setup of the Buzz service. He said that Buzz came with a built-in circle of contacts to provide a better experience to users and that many liked that feature. He said that it was very easy for users to edit who they were following on the service and who could follow them. He also said that anyone could hide their list of Buzz contacts with a single click.

Apparently, Mr Jackson does not even understand why people are outraged by Google’s actions, and the combination of his comment and Mr Schmidt’s quote above, does show that users should not trust Google to do the right thing when it comes to protecting their private data.

In defense of in-experienced customers

Ron Miller is absolutely right on this one, of course: do not trust Google to take good care of your personal data.

I do feel, however, that, instead of blaming the users for not being careful enough, he should have pointed his finger squarely at Google for displaying such, well, pick one: naivité/ignorance/stupidity/arrogance/delusion.

What’s more, I don’t see any basis for extrapolating this to mean that none of the Internet services out there can be trusted. I don’t recall that my bank ever published any account data, that Apple publicized their MobileMe customers’ address book data, that Mozy allowed public access to their customers’ backed-up files, etc.

So what now?

While I was working on this article, John C. Welch posted a great comment on the TidBITS Talk mailing list:

Keep this in mind at all times with google: you are never, ever their customer. You are their product. The people buying ads are their customers.

With that in mind, I wish that people would take this away from the Buzz incident:

• Be careful about whom you entrust with your personal data
• Understand a service’s privacy settings before you enter any data
• Avoid Google, because they have proven that they don’t understand their customer’s need for privacy. At all.

And most importantly:

• Don’t feel compelled to justify your desire for privacy. Fact of the matter is, the onus is on the companies to justify their desire for violating it.

After a seriously disappointing and tiresome experience with Vodafone’s customer service department, that slogan has taken on a deeper meaning for me: “If you ever have a serious problem with one of our products, it’ll be your time that we’ll be wasting. And we might not even solve your problem, either!”

Saying Good Bye to Vodafone to Say Hello to iPhone

After having passed on the first two generations of iPhones, I felt it was time to finally give in to the Lure of Steve’s Shiny Phone Thingy when the iPhone 3GS was introduced in June 2009.

I had signed up for a basic, two-year-minimum-term Vodafone contract, which I was using with my previous phone, back in 2007. Hence, it would have made for perfect timing to port my existing phone number to the iPhone, if I had canceled the Vodafone contract effective June 2009. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline for the three-month advance notice by some 15 days, because I hadn’t paid enough attention to the fine print in the contract and assumed that I had to cancel with an advance notice of only one month.

Since a new mobile phone number meant having to inform countless people about the change, editing my letter stationary, having new business cards printed, etc., I wrote to Vodafone customer service to inquire whether there was any way at all to get out of my contract early in order to keep my phone number. In this letter, I explicitly mentioned that the reason for my request was my commitment to purchasing an iPhone which, in Germany, is officially sold exclusively through T-Mobile.

Vodafone Can Offer iPhones, Too!

Instead of the written reply that I had hoped for, I received a phone call from Vodafone’s customer service about a week later. And the story unfolded thusly:

18 August A Vodafone representative calls to offer me an iPhone with a Vodafone contract. The actual device is offered by an “independent reseller” that they partner with. If I’m interested, they will forward my contact details to that reseller, who will get in touch with me.

I agree, but also ask about whether they will let me get out of my Vodafone contract early in case their iPhone offer will not come to pass. He confirms that, yes, I will have this option, and that my case record in their CRM database explicitly says so.

31 August Not having heard anything from the “independent reseller” yet, I call Vodafone and get to choose between waiting a bit longer for the reseller to contact me, or escalating my request for early contract termination. I decide to give them two more weeks.

16 September Still no news. I call Vodafone again and am being offered to get in touch with the reseller myself. I politely decline and ask about the offer to let me out of my contract early. I still do have that option, I am told, but have to send another written request to Vodafone. That’s exactly what I do after hanging up, and I include a reference to their call from October, 18th, in that letter.

30 September Vodafone’s reply is in my mailbox. Date-stamped September, 23rd, it turns out to be a run-of-the-mill form letter, and it lists June 2010 as the effective termination date of my contract.

Yet another call to Vodafone, then: after talking to her supervisor for a few minutes, the hotline rep tells me that said supervisor has agreed to look into this matter personally; that my contract would be terminated on October, 5th.; that there would still be plenty of time to port the phone number to another provider; and that my number would not be tossed back into the number pool.

When I mention that I need a written cancellation confirmation to apply for my new cellphone line, she says she can only confirm the October, 5th, date on the phone, but that she will look into this, and that I am not to worry.

10 October My phone still logs into the Vodafone network and I’ve finally had enough. I decide to call Vodafone one last time.

We’ll be Right Back After This Recap

Let’s quickly recap what happened so far: at this point…

• … it’s been almost eight weeks since I received the call with the iPhone offer, and the reseller has not contacted me even once,

• … on four seperate occasions, different Vodafone customer service representatives have confirmed that I have the option to be released from my contract early,

• … I was given a definitive date on which my Vodafone line would be cut and the number released for porting to T-Mobile,

• … the only written confirmation I have lists the original termination date in June 2010.

Valued Customer? Gotcha!

Let’s pick up the story:

10 October (cont’d) After exchanging greetings, I ask the customer rep to please put me through to one of her supervisors, because I had been dealing with an issue for a while now and, therefore, would like to talk to someone in charge.

Nevertheless, she asks what this is about, so I give her a quick overview of the situation.¹ And then she puts me on hold in that all-too-familiar attempt to talk to one of the higher-ups — for no less than twenty minutes.

And when she comes back on the line she tells me how sorry she is, but that my request for early termination had been denied by the complaints department.

I tell her that now would be a good time to put me through to her supervisor, after all. But shielding hotline supervisors seems to be the only thing that works perfectly at Vodafone, because after another short moment spent on-hold, I am told that the supervisor — the very person she has talked to just moments ago — was now in a meeting that would last another fifteen minutes, or so, and if I would like to be called back.

Although I do request a return call, that call never comes.

Thanks for Calling Vodafone, How May We Screw You Today?

I know what you’re thinking: “If you had sent out your cancellation letter in time, none of this would have happened, so stop whining!” And you’re absolutely right — at least in part.

Because none of this wouldn’t have happened, either, if Vodafone had invested just a little bit of effort into simply responding to my initial letter, telling me that, nope, sorry, can’t do that, you’ll have to stick around and sit this one out.

But it was their decision to call me and offer me an iPhone, instead. And it was their “independent reseller partner” who didn’t bother to get in touch with me in some way or another for almost two months.

The most baffling aspect of this whole ordeal, though, is this one: what does Vodafone gain from not letting me port my phone number to another provider before my contract with them runs out? It can’t be money, because I did offer to pay off any outstanding monthly fees. It can’t be customer retention, because even the most dimwitted CRM executive must, simply must, understand that such pig-headedness is a sure-fire way to lose customers, not retain them. So what is it?

Whatever the reasoning behind that decision is, Vodafone did have a chance of keeping me on as customer if their iPhone supplier had bothered to contact me at least once. When I requested early contract termination, they did have a chance to see me leave with sufficient goodwill to consider becoming a Vodafone customer again in the future. When they were unable, or unwilling, to keep their own promise, they did have a chance to at least limit my disappointment by calling me back, listening to my complaints, and explaining to me what went wrong. And they wasted every single one of these opportunities.

The bottom line: Vodafone customer(!) service(!!) managed to botch up so many details in this case that I have simply taken them off my shortlist of “connectivity companies”. A company whose customer-facing organisation is managed so poorly is simply not worth my time. Because, you know, this is my time, and I’d rather invest it in doing business with more competent suppliers.

Epilogue: Hey, Look What I Got!

As I finish writing this blog post, my iPhone is lying around here somewhere, loaded with useful apps, all my contacts, hours of great music — and a T-Mobile SIM card. What a fantastic little device and what a surprisingly pleasant buying experience at the local T-Mobile outlet, which, ironically, is right across the street from a Vodafone store.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go write some emails to inform my friends, family, and colleagues about my new phone number…

Bad photo, but there are people with “Honk for straight marriage” signs in Clifton Park. #intolerance http://yfrog.com/57t7vj

To this, I replied:

@techcommdood I’m all for straight marriage, as I am convinced that it can co-exist with gay marriage just fine.

I feel that this needs some clarification.

I am very fortunate to call a large group of very diverse people my friends. Knowing that some of them are homosexuals feels as normal to me as knowing that some come from far-away countries or have black skin.

Among these friends are two gay guys from San Francisco who have gotten married about a year ago after having been a couple for almost two decades. Whenever we meet, I can be sure that it’s going to be a grand time filled with great conversations and lots of laughter, as both are wonderful people: they are intelligent, funny, witty, caring, cheerful… Why are they all that?

Because they are intelligent, funny, witty, caring, and cheerful… Those traits reflect their character — it’s who they are. It is not, however, “because they are gay”, let alone “although they are gay”.

There just is no correlation at all between their being gay and their being wonderful people. In fact, I cannot see a correlation between a person’s sexual orientation and any of their personal traits. Much rather, sexual orientation is a stand-alone characteristic. If you will, it is merely a straight fact¹ that doesn’t say anything about what that person is like, what makes that person tick, or what their core values are.

To put it bluntly, bastard are bastards because they are bastards, and great people are great people because they are great people, and in no way is this determined by their sexual orientation, color of skin/eyes/hair, height, weight, or what have you.

And while we’re at it, the same holds true for dangerous people, too. The notion that a person will pose a threat to the morals of the neighborhood just because they’re gay just makes me shake my head, but I honestly worry about the overall worldview of those who go so far as to claim that a homosexual person can “make” other people (usually the kids next door) homosexual.

“But homosexuality is a choice!”, I sometimes hear people say. But is it? Think back to your puberty and ask yourself when you made your conscious(!) choice in this matter: did you really have to wonder about whether you feel attracted to the opposite or the same sex and then freely pick one? I can’t answer that for you, of course, but I know for sure that, in my case, my body answered that question for me by giving me some perfectly non-ambiguous signs of which gender got me excited…

So, let’s go back to that tweet about straight marriage and gay marriage co-existing peacefully, shall we? In hindsight, and without this bit of context I have provided here, my tweet may appear as an attempt to ridicule the whole topic. That is definitely not the case.

This is a very serious human rights issue, and I do support the view that nations that claim to honor civil liberties must let both straight and gay couples marry and grant to them equal rights. In both cases, the marriage certificate is just an officialized piece of paper, documenting the bond between two people, which bond is an expression of their love, affection, and respect for each other. Nothing more, and nothing less; straight or not.

As for religious marriage ceremonies, I don’t have any reservations about leaving the decision for or against gay marriage up to the religious organizations themselves, and I honestly do respect those decisions. That’s because I believe in the separation of state and church, and it is the state that must guarantee equal rights for all, whereas religions are not obliged to.²

To put it another way, while most religions make judgements about who is a true believer, and who isn’t, that powerful, revolutionary-at-the-time phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” does not define any exceptions. Not one.

So what about the question in the title of this post? Nope, gay marriage really isn’t a big deal at all. Well, OK: at least in an ideal world, it wouldn’t be.

So when I developed a craving for pasta tonight, I did the old-fashioned and often risky thing of asking the front-desk staff of my hotel for advice about which neighborhood restaurant to honor with my patronage. “There is a nice place near by, and it’s a staff favorite: the Nob Hill Cafe.”

Apart from the fact that all restaurants that have been suggested to me so far turned were “staff favorites”, I was willing to give this place a try, even more so since, during a walk a few days ago, I had seen a little tempting Italian place in just the spot where the friendly guest relations expert had made a little cross on the map that she handed me.

When I arrived, I realized that, indeed, it was the place I had seen earlier. And I also realized that the place was popular, as it was just packed with people, and a few groups were waiting outside to be admitted.

After a quick chat with a waitress (I don’t think a place as small as this has a maitre d’…), my name was added to the waiting list and I decided to go for a quick stroll, before I returned to the restaurant to join the queues.

As a nice touch, I was asked if I wanted to have a drink while waiting, so I opted for a glass of Valpolicella. Which immediately drew the comment from another guest-in-waiting that that was a good choice, as the Chianti wasn’t all that grand. Well, the Valpolicella was OK, if not spectacular. Part of the reason surely was it’s temperature: it was too warm. It’s irritating how many people in the hospitality business think that “room temperature” means “cozy and warm like a place in front of an open fire on a Winter’s night”. Instead, replace “room temperature” with “somewhere around 16..18°C,” and you’d be surprised by the result.

As an aside: have you ever seen someone in a restaurant slooooooowly picking at their food and munching away at the odd morsel of food, taking an occasional sip from their beverage of choice, and indulge in the pleasure of reading a book, all the while the queue of hungry guests outside the door gets longer and longer? And have you felt really angry at this selfish, egomaniacal bastard? Thanks, I feel better now that I know that I’m not alone, then.

After a few more minutes’ wait, I was led to my table, which was tiny, but definitely big enough for one. The place being absolutely packed with guests made for a great atmosphere which bordered on authentically Italian, if it hadn’t been for the “wrong” language being spoken at the vast majority of tables.

As I had strategically read the menu while still in the queue, I had already made a choice for a starter and a main course, but I had missed the enticing items on the daily specials. Anyway, I eventually settled on a carrot-ginger soup and Penne Bettola, which promised to “vodka & garlic in a spicy tomato cream sauce.”

Although I had ordered only a cup of soup, the first course arrived in a huge bowl: nice orange color and creamy texture. A first spoon and: “ahhh, ginger!” Tiny flakes of ginger were immersed in this big orange liquid and added a wonderful fresh edge to the flavor of the soup. Unfortunately, that very flavor — carrot, I mean — was a bit bland. The texture was very nice, if somewhat too smooth for my taste, but what I was really missing was a more intense carrot flavor.

The soup was soon followed by the main course, the Penne dish, served in a similar, i.e., darn huge, bowl as its predecessing course. And it also shared a bit of the same problems as the soup: there was definitely a lot of delicious garlic in the sauce, as was tomato. The vodka, though, I could barely detect, which, however, is no big surprise, as you’d have to add a lot of it to make it really stand out tastewise, and I’m thankful — having had my second glass of red wine — that the chef erred on the side of adding less of this ingredient.

And yet, the sauce not being too spicy either, it was, again, a pleasant dish, but somehow lacking character and soul that I would expect from such elegantly and delightful simple Italian cuisine.

To sum up, two nice, if not eye-opening dishes, prepared with self-assured routine, I am sure, but without that bit of extra “amore” that makes all the difference in Italian cuisine. The check came to around $40 bucks, which is reasonable considering the location and — judging from the buzz — popularity of the place. Well worth a visit if you stay in the area and are looking for a pleasant dinner spot, but, then again, not a major loss, if you have the option to visit one of the restaurants deeper in North Beach, instead.

Food: 3/5
Atmosphere: 4/5
Service: 4/5
Value: 3/5
Overall: 3.5/5

Nob Hill Cafe
1152 Taylor St, San Francisco

Website

Today, it was Sal Soghoian’s turn to lift that proverbial curtain somewhat by telling us about “The Early Days at Apple,” and more specifically, about his early days at the company. The problem with such talks obviously is that it is difficult to gauge what is being told on-the-record, and what part of it should not be published, even if only in a humble blog post such as this one.

So, I will just write about how Sal got to work for Apple, and leave it at that. But that one paragraph should suffice to give you an indication of just how interesting this session was.

In the nineties, Sal worked as a bar manager in the Pocono Mountains, and his first Mac was a machine that had been repossessed by one of his friends from a drug dealer that owed this friend some money. When he got into working with layout software on that Macintosh, Sal decided that that business would probably provide him with better living than life as a bar manager. Having started to dig into AppleScript in ‘92, he eventually joined Apple on 13 January 1997, and has stayed with them since.

♦

Ten fantastic cruise days are behind us and, as with every great vacation, the moment has come to wonder how time could fly so fast and how many new sights and sounds you have taken in, and to muse about the many new friendships you have found.

And as if it, too, wanted to say goodbye, the sun is also back after those few gray days.

So, what better way to round off the cruise is there than to celebrate this gorgeous — and our final — Caribbean sunset by joining with a few good friends at the aft Pool Bar, sharing cruise stories, a few beers, and many a hearty laugh before tomorrow’s farewells.

It’s been a grand ride. Thanks for coming along.

1. Expanded Open/Save File dialog Similar to the windows in the Finder, the standard Open/Save File dialogs in Leopard feature a sidebar and three different views (icons, list, columns). Additionally, the Open File dialog also has a new “Media” section in that sidebar for accessing photos in your iPhoto or Aperture libraries, etc.

Here’s Sal’s recipe for quickly creating a photo browser that is available system-wide: create an Automator workflow and add the “Ask for Photos” action. Save it as a plug-in for the Script Menu, naming it “Photo Browser”. By launching this workflow from the Script Menu in the menu bar, you can now access, and search for, all the photos in your iPhoto and Aperture libraries without having to launch either application first.

2. Multiple Partition Dismounts When unmounting (aka “ejecting”) a volume from a hard drive that contains multiple volumes, OS X will now ask whether you would like to eject just the selected volume, or all volumes on that drive.

3. Text to Image To convert text or special characters into an image with a transparent background, choose Print in the respective application (TextEdit, for example), and select “Open PDF in Preview” from the PDF menu, which will create a PDF file of the phrase or character(s) and open it in the Preview application.

In Preview, crop the text as needed by selecting (part of) it with the selection tool and choosing Crop from the Tools menu, and save the PDF as a PNG image file, after which Preview will reload the fresh PNG file.

Click on the Select button in Preview’s toolbar, and a menu should pop up. From this menu, choose “Instant Alpha” and click — and hold down the mouse button — in the area you would like to make transparent. With the mouse button pressed, move the cursor to adjust the sensitivity of the “Instant Alpha” tool. As soon as you let go of the mouse button, that area is now transparent. Don’t forget to also make transparent the areas inside characters, e.g., inside a “D”, etc.

Save the file, et voilà: an image of the text with a transparent background, ready to be used as a sub-title on a photo, a caption for a photo greeting card, etc.

4. One-click User Switching Switching to another account on your Mac is as easy as a single click with the help of the Account Switcher applet.

5. Automatic screen sharing You can remote-control another machine by selecting it in the Shared section in the sidebar of a Finder window, clicking the Share Screen button and logging in. To automatically share another machine, run the “Create Screensharing Link” application (sorry, can’t find the link right now [no pun intended — really!]), create a link on the Desktop and add it to your startup items.

6. Browse Full Screen Place the “Browse Full Screen” AppleScript in the Finder window’s toolbar: click it to maximize the window to full-screen, switch to Cover Flow view, and hide the Dock. Click it again to restore the original window settings. Note that your file selection will be preserved when toggling back and forth between both views.

7. Fast Folder Access The icons for special folders like Applications, Documents, Movies, etc., make it difficult to differentiate between them, what with their subtle new gray-scale design in Leopard vs. the colorful icons in previous versions of Mac OS X. Resort to the Quick Folder widget for a menu of all of those special folders. (Alas, I could not find this widget, but a subset of those special folders is also listed in the Finder’s Go menu.)

8. Hierarchical Replacement for Stacks From the system-wide Scripts Menu, select “Open Scripts Folder” > “Open User Scripts Folder”, and inside that folder, create a new folder “Shortcuts…”. Place aliases to applications etc. in this new folder, so they show up in the Scripts Menu.

9. Automator 2.0 New features in Automator 2.0 include variables, loops, about 50 to 60 new actions, and also an action recorder (welcome back!).

Here’s an idea for a fun screensaver for a party (required Automator actions listed in order with required settings in parentheses):

• Ask for Text (set question to “Enter your name”)
• Set Value of Variable (new variable “Name”)
• Take Video Snapshot (Save as: “Name” variable; Where: new folder “Party” on the Desktop)
• Start Screen Saver
• Loop (Loop automatically; stop after 100 minutes)

Save the workflow as an application to the Desktop. Open the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences, select the “Party” folder via “Choose Folder…” and close the prefs.

Before your party kicks off, place the computer near the door to your house or party hall, launch the workflow, and now, whenever a new guest comes in, make them touch the keyboard, have them enter their name, and add a photo via the Mac’s built-in iSight camera. As a result, you’ll have a cool animated display of every guest’s photo and their names. Makes for great introductions when you have invited guests who haven’t met each other yet.

Another Automator hint: if you often switch your Mac’s startup volume, create a new workflow, and start the Action Recorder by clicking on Automator’s record button. Then, open the Startup Volume preferences panel, select a drive, and click restart. Save the workflow as a self-running application, calling it “Restart from [volume name]” or somesuch, and place it on your Desktop. Once you have created worflows for every startup volume you use, you simply double-click on the respective workflow application whenever you want to change the startup volume, instead of diving into the preferences.

10. Auto-Conversing iChat Create an AppleScript that sends out text messages along these lines:

“Hey there. Just a moment. Will be with you in a sec!”
[short’ish delay]
“Sorry, just got a phone call from The Boss. This might take a while.”
[longer delay]
“Oh man, totally forgot about the marketing meeting. Gotta run. Talk to you soon.”

In iChat’s Alerts preferences, define to run this AppleScript when a Text Invitation comes in. (Think “Eliza’s Evil Twin”.)

♦

After Randal Schwartz presented “Amazingly Cool Utilities” on our first cruise day, I had a little chat with him about Quicksilver, and if it wouldn’t be a neat idea to introduce this eclectic geek utility to the more experienced Mac-heads on our cruise.

So, I nagged him and Neil Bauman long enough to eventually give me the opportunity to teach that introduction myself (nibbling away a chunk from today’s Ingenious Bar session. Sorry, Sal!). So, with Randal as my co, who contributed the occasional insight and tip, I presented a 45 minute overview and intro to Quicksilver with some 25..30 people in attendance.

While there was at least one specimen of the infamous almost-falling-asleep-guy (well, this was right after lunch…), most people in the audience paid close attention to what we demonstrated, and they came up with a bunch of very thoughtful and interesting questions. Of those questions, the most unexpected and amusing one was asked right after I got started: “So, who are you?!” Come to think of it, I guess with Mac luminaries like Jason Snell and David Pogue on board, I shouldn’t really consider that question “unexpected”…

Giving this talk was great fun, and it was especially rewarding that a few of my “students” came up to me afterwards, asking for additional info, and some requesting more entry-level explanations of why they should start using Quicksilver on their Macs. I’m sure this session found a few new friends for this great utility.

♦

Rough seas were still with us all through the day — even in the pool.

But so were the gorgeous dramatic skies.

♦

Ever heard the songs “Don’t cry for my Cupertino”, “The Girl I met by Email”, or “I wrote the Code”? No? Well, make sure you attend one of David Pogue’s spoof song “concerts” if you get the chance, like we did tonight in “Timeout with David Pogue.” Hilarious. (Some of his songs are available on David’s website.)

♦

Tonight will be our farewell dinner (already? we’ve got another full day and night to go! sheesh), so bring on those cheesy songs and that whacky sparkler-spiked Baked Alaska desert already, will ya!

Hence I have canceled the final excursion on this cruise, just like I did last time. That excursion would have been a promising visit to a sloth sanctuary, but I feel as though I need to hit the emergency break now. You know, it’s just what you do when you realize that you are approaching a corner at speeds that would only allow for straight-ahead motion.

Instead of going ashore, I have spent an idle day to muse on all the events of the recent days, and to get in shape for the classes still awaiting us during the two sea days on our way back from Costa Rica back to Fort Lauderdale.

On a side note, we have had pretty rough seas ever since leaving Colon. Combined with the grayish skies, today’s weather reminded me of what we are used to from the North Sea during this time of year: strong winds and cool, very “agitated” waters with rolling waves. That stark contrast of familiar sights and sounds — sea, air, skies — vs. unfamiliar ones — vegetation and buildings of Costa Rica — made for yet another (very welcome and enjoyable) surreal moment.

To be frank, seeing a bit of Costa Rica and those unusual creatures would have been interesting, but it was the right decision to remain on board and waste away the day, as it did wonders for recharging my batteries. And that renewed energy came in quite handy for tonight’s party in the Crow’s Nest.

♦

Following that party, we were treated to “an evening with Richard Dreyfus.”

The award-winning actor was our very own Geek Cruise celebrity guest, who said that he came on the cruise because it combined two of his passions: the Macintosh and Shakespeare, and he expressly admitted to being a “crazy nuts-o Apple geek.”

Another of his hobbies is studying history, which, as he phrased it, is the “story of the haves against the have-nots.” In his speech tonight, he made a passionate case for teaching civics and clear thinking in schools.

According to Mr Dreyfus, a major problem of our times is that, in many of our communications and especially the news media, images have largely replaced text. And these images — “primitive, which text is not”, says Dreyfus — are now immediately available all around the world. What’s more, time has been removed from decision making, that is, there is no more rumination, contemplation, thoughtfulness, or thinking things through, before taking a decision that may have wide-ranging consequences.

Relating to the example of the attacks on the World Trade Center Twin Towers, he said: “We see the towers fall, and we react, and if we don’t react, we are called cowards or worse.”

This problem is exacerbated by computer industry, which has “become addicted to speed and can never be fast enough,” while it has done relatively nothing to help rumination and thinking things through, “even though we need those values now more than ever.”

Pointing out his own love for his Mac laptop several times, he hopes for the computer industry to leverage people’s love and passion for such products to enhance their ability to think clearly and to comprehend, stressing again the importance of teaching such abilities as well as the topic of civics to children so they can grasp these concepts at an early age.

To support his endeavors in this area, Richard Dreyfus plans to create a website called Common Senselessness. Let’s hope it’ll go online soon.

When I woke up next, we were already inside the locks, so I got dressed, grabbed my camera, and went out on deck to watch this spectacle.

Pulled along by diesel locomotives, the MS Volendam traversed through all three steps of the Gatun Locks and into Gatun lake. In front and in back of us, other ships made it through the locks, as well, and to take in the sights of these huge vessels from this close — stunning!

Just as stunning was the green color of the lush vegetation surrounding Gatun lake. This being my first trip to the rain forest and my first trip to South America in general, I was amazed by how warm and soft tropical rain was that accompanied us all the time during our maneuver through the locks. And which did not prevent any of my fellow-passengers from getting up, getting out, and getting all excited about the whole thing, as well.

After we made it through the locks, the ship anchored in Gatun Lake next to some other “parked” ships, and we were taken ashare by tender boats — which made for a fun roller-coaster-like experience — to board the buses that would take us on today’s excursions.

♦

Never having seen the rain forest before, my choice for today’s excursion was clear as soon as I saw the words “45-minute treetop gondola ride” in the brochure, and I was delighted to have my newly-found-on-this-cruise friends Chris and Jill, as well Jonathan (a “fellow-Aruba-Jeep-tour-survivor”) share this experience with me.

That gondola ride would take place at the Gamboa Rain Forest Resort, and a “short” ride in a minibus would take us there. This ride turned into a little adventure in its own right: the lush vegetation, the reddish-brown soil, the decrepit lumber trucks on the road, the “typical” Latin American scenes, houses, people. So new and exotic were these sights and sounds that I felt like a kid in a toy store, taking it all in with wide-open eyes and mouth agape. And due to a few roadwork sites on our route, as well as heavy overall traffic, I had ample time to do so.

All during the ride, our guide gave us lots and lots and lots of information on Panama by handing out countless info sheets, showing local animals, fruits, vegetables, flowers, foods, etc. — you name ‘em, those sheets listed ‘em.

Eventually, we arrived at Gamboa which felt as though it was located right in the middle rain forest nowhere. Once we all safely disembarked our little Toyota bus, we got in line for the gondola ride, and having the Pogues directly behind us in the queue added some serious entertainment value.

When I prepared for this excursion, I had decided to leave my camera on the ship, because, first, Chris did bring his high-end SLR, and him being a pro photographer, I’d be able to get the finest photographic memories from him anyway; and second, I often have this urge to take as many photos as I can to make sure I don’t miss anything. Which has the annoying drawback that, just as often, I am not really enough “in the moment,” bothered with taking pictures instead of really letting myself become immersed in the actual experience.

Turns out, I made the right choice, since Jill had also brought an SLR, and I gladly helped her find some interesting motives to capture (while selfishly offloading to her the burden of actually photographing them).

Back to the gondolas: they looked like gondolas from a kids’ ride on the fairgrounds, felt like a kids’s ride on the fairgrounds, and provided the exact same feeling of safety as — a kids’ ride on the fairgrounds. But, man, was this some awesome ride!

Slowly “flying” through the dense foliage of the rain forest canopy towards the peak of a hill, most everyone fell silent with awe, gazing at the trees and brushes and breathing in the humid, even tangy air.

And this ride was even topped by what expected us at the top of the hill: an observation tower whose peak cleared the tree tops, so we could gaze out over the forest and part of the Panama Canal. This was, so far, easily the most moving sight of the whole cruise. And it reminded me of a quote by Albert Einstein:

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

And pause, we did; and stand rapt in awe, we did; and so alive we were, and our eyes so open!

When we returned down the hill, it felt as if we had experienced something big, transcendental. Something that cannot be put into words, so I won’t even attempt it.

During the ride back, it was pretty quiet on the bus. But the sights were just as interesting and exotic as when we came in, so, although I was drained, I couldn’t help stare outside the window and observe all the details of this strange, exciting, different world.

As scheduled, our ship had already left Gatun Lake, going back through the Gatun Locks, and was now docked in Colón. Our departure was late by about 30 minutes, because a landslide had delayed the return of the bus of another excursion. How “exciting” that must have been.

♦

Two-thirds of the cruise are now behind us, and tomorrow’s stop at Puerto Limon in Costa Rica will be the last one before two consecutive sea days that will take us back to Fort Lauderdale. The excursion I have booked will leave at 6:30am tomorrow morning (read: “middle of the night for a geek”). Well, at least we will all gain one hour tonight, as we are moving into yet another new time zone, setting our clocks back one more hour.

Still, I will skip “fine dining” tonight and meet Jill at the bar for a snack, a few brewskies, and for basking in the “sustain” (for you non-musicians out there, feel free to substitute “afterglow”) of this fabulous day.

♦

With most of today’s classes covering iLife, iWork, Lightroom, Aperture, and Photoshop, I decided to skip ‘em all and make it an enjoyably slow day. I did, however, opt to to follow David Pogue’s “Inside Leopard, pt. 2″ session. Same concept as last night’s, same entertaining jokes, and more “do try this at home”-style tips.

But also a little anecdote about how even the attention to detail usually demonstrated by Apple’s developers can’t prevent the odd little mishap. In the Services menu (found under the application menu, e.g., Finder > Services), there is a submenu titled Preview with two items, Open images and Slideshow. David had noticed that, no matter what you do, these two menu items are always disabled.

So, having pretty good access to the powers that be in Cupertino, David asked one of the OS X engineers about why those two menu items were never available. The surprising answer: that submenu was not supposed to be in the Services menu in the released OS. Makes you wonder how many future versions of OS X will, nevertheless, tag along that menu…

It’s true that many experienced Mac users will already have trodden some of the ground that David covers in his presentations, but the way The Pogueman does his thing, and those little anecdotes like the one above that originate from the connections David has, make for some entertaining Mac geekery.

♦

Tonight, we’ll have to set our clocks back as we will be entering another time zone on our way to the the undisputed highlight of this cruise, the Panama Canal. And what sweeter way to be informed about this than via a little greeting card that is accompanied by a piece of chocolate.

And also in time to see another spectacular cloud formation in the sky.

♦

Today’s shore excursion started quite a bit earlier than I had planned: instead of 1:00pm, the “African Heritage” tour departed from the pier at 8:30am, as I was informed last night. The excursion brochure listed both times, and I am sure they were combined into one. We were barely enough people to fill every seat of our minibus — there don’t seem to be too many people eager to learn about the gloomy history of the slave trade while on a cruise in the Caribbean. And a gloomy topic it was, indeed, as witnessed by the exhibits at the Kura Hulanda museum.

Once a neglected and decaying neighborhood of the Otrabanda part of Willemstad, a Dutch entrepreneur started investing in, and rebuilding the area in 1995. Today, dozens of houses in this part of town have been restored to splendid condition, and the cheerful colors, gorgeous architectural details and numerous works of art make for an amazing site, deservedly earning it place Unesco World Heritage Site status.

The central hub of the Kura Hulanda neighborhood, which means “Dutch Courtyard”¹, is a resort hotel and a museum. This museum not only tells the history of the Western Passage slave trade, but also puts into focus the diverse cultural heritage of peoples of the Western Africa, who were abducted to serve as “human resources” in the worst possible sense of that phrase.

The inner courtyard inside the museum grounds is graced by a sculpture of Mother Africa, showing her face when viewed head-on (no pun intended…), and the outline of the African continent when viewed from the side. Just a few steps away from this piece of art, the museum confronts its visitors with the barbaric cruelty that was at the core of the slave trade.

The exhibits encompass old etches, photographs, and documents, as well as original “tools of the trade” like chains, shackles, and whips. The part of the museum I found most disturbing — if you can actually sort such a place’s exhibits by “disturbingness” — was a recreation of the lower decks of a slave ship that you could climb down into, and which demonstrated how their “masters” viewed the black people they had kidnapped: as wares which would have to be stowed away in as little room as possible to maximize the profit of each ship’s load. Never mind that a not-so-small percentage of the product did not make it to the destination in usable condition…

After leaving this section of the museum we went over to some other buildings that housed innumerable art and crafts objects from the Western African nations, and the richness and variety of these objects is a great source of inspiration and admiration. I wish we would have had a bit more time to browse this collection, as you don’t often get a chance to see such a large collection of African artifacts in one place.

The second major destination on this tour was a former plantation-turned-special-education-school called Groot Santa Martha. On our way there, we stopped by a little slave hut, which looked rather idyllic, reminding me a bit of those cozy cottages found in English villages.

And yet, the thought that the former inhabitants were bereft of most every personal freedom we take for granted nowadays, made for an odd contrast between what one saw, and the image in front of one’s inner eye of what it must have been like for those who lived in it a few centuries ago. And yet, it was lightyears away from the miserable “lodgings” we had seen at the Kura Hulanda earlier.

After a quick stop, we continued on our way to Groot Santa Martha. Here’s an excerpt from their info brochure:

In 1696 the Groot Santa Martha Plantation was already famous for its cattle, sugar mill, indigo, distillery and fresh-water wells. Dividivi pods were also exported and in 1797 there was still one working sugar mill.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the sale of fruit and cattle for slaughter turned a handsome profit, while Santa Martha also produced 90% of the island’s salt which was then shipped to the United States and the Netherlands.

The heavy work in and around the landhouse and in the saltpans was done by slaves who lived in huts on the land. At that time, the plantation consisted of 554 hectares, now reduced to only 17 hectares.

Today there is still an orchard, nursery garden, vegetable and herbs garden, and a farm with cows, goats, sheep and horses. In all these departments handicapped people work under supervision.

The plantation’s gorgeous, serene location is embedded in lush green surroundings and close to a saltwater lake, nicely setting off the cheerfully bright-yellow main houses. In some of the buildings on the site, mentally handicapped people were being trained in arts and crafts, e.g., in a furniture restoration workshop, with the aim to prepare them for an independent life once they have completed their education here.

The way the place was presented to us, however, felt somehow awkward and inappropriate, as our group was led to some of the buildings and allowed to freely look around. Although the director of the place, who led us around and explained each building’s purpose and the overall concept behind the Santa Martha foundation, assured us that “meeting” other people this way was part of the training they provided to their students, I couldn’t help but compare the image of watching these people and taking photos of them, to images from circus freak shows from the early 20th century.

And I was glad to find out that I wasn’t the only one who had reservations about this, as I talked to another person from our group, who also shied away from entering every building and basically disrespecting the students’ privacy, and he shared the exact same feelings about this visit.

It’s not that I object to visiting places like Santa Martha per se — far from it. But, generally speaking, if the expression on another person’s face indicates to me that they feel uncomfortable when observed in tactless touron² fashion, I respectfully retreat and leave them alone. Grabbing your camera and taking a close-up shot of that person instead, should not be an option in these situations.

During the drive back to the ship, our guide provided us with some insights into what life on Curaçao is like today, bringing our thoughts back into our modern times: how the housing market develops, what the school system is like, how the island is debating independence from the Netherlands, and many more interesting tidbits.

Before being taken back to the pier, we took a little detour to the Tula memorial. In 1795, a slave named Tula organized a revolt against a plantation owner, and even though the revolt was violently put to an end and Tula executed, he is still revered as a hero, and that reverence is also expressed in the monument which shows Tula breaking the chains of two other slaves with a hammer and chisel.

In a way, today’s excursion was the opposite of yesterday’s fun off-road ride: more serious, deeper, and thought-provoking, and I returned to my cabin tired, mellow, and even a bit emotional. But that’s exactly what makes an excursion worthwhile.

Being shown a close-up of such a disgraceful phenomenon in our “civilized” nations’ history is not a carefree ride, but it can, and should, give us pause to reflect on which values define us as human and humane beings — both through confronting us with events and actions that we don’t want to ever occur again, but also through inspiring and empowering stories like that of the slave Tula who was brave enough to put his own life at stake to stand up against his and his fellow-men’s oppressors.

♦

The Volendam left Curaçao at 6 in the evening, so there was only time for one class today: part one of David Pogue’s two-part mini-series “Inside Mac OS X ‘Leopard’” in the ship’s Wajang Theater, promising to cover all 300 of the new features found in this release of the OS. Well, that didn’t “quite” work out as promised, but, given David’s entertaining presentation style, it was well worth attending despite the “somewhat” less comprehensive coverage.

David’s first topic — after pointing out the “halucinogenic box” that Leopard ships in — was Time Machine. When asked who could rightfully claim to have a complete backup of all the files on their Mac “right now,” only three people in the room raised their hands (thanks to SuperDuper! and a bus-powered Iomega FireWire drive, I could rightfully claim membership in this exclusive club). Which, according to David, was in line with what Apple claimed, namely that only 4% of their user base have a system in place that creates automatic, regular, and complete backups.

To demonstrate the importance of backups, Pogue used the one example that I think is guaranteed to work every time: pictures of your family, especially of your kids. The very idea of losing any photos that document moments in peoples’ lives that they can never ever re-live or re-create usually gets even those to consider implementing a reliable backup system who never cared about backups before. Which makes it all the more surprising that David himself admitted to not backing up!

Despite having three kids, a massive supply of cool camera gear (and not just way-cool review loaners, either, I’m sure), and, thus, tons of media files portraying his children, he says he has not backed up by making backup copies on DVDs, or somesuch. Why not? Because he just does not have enough time to do so. Or, rather, did not have enough time, because, with Time Machine, backing up becomes a no-brainer.

Other topics covered in this session was slightly less important, yet useful faire, including Spaces, QuickLook, Cover Flow, etc. Watching David showing off these new-to-Leopard features was especially fun to me, because I have not yet installed my own copy of Leopard, which I had received just a few days before leaving for the cruise, and now my “Me Want!”-levels are at a new high.

To round off this session, David presented five of his ten “Dave’s Faves:” 1. The “Mosaic”-style photo screen saver; 2. Data detectors in Mail.app; 3. searching for menu commands via the search box in an application’s Help menu. With addressing data detectors for adding events to iCal and addresses to the Address Book, as well as using the Help menu search to also find bookmarks in Safari’s history, that does make five faves total.

The other five will be covered in the second part of “Inside Leopard” tomorrow night. For now, though, I’ll focus my thoughts away from the feature menu Apple has created for their latest Big Cat to the menu that lists what’s for dinner tonight. Aye!