Get Teenage Dream at Amazon.com now:

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You can go create your own TED talk using Sebastian’s tedPAD.

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I quickly signed up and converted a few of the user accounts to test things out. The transition site said that no data would be lost, and that I would have the option of allowing users to migrate the information from their personal accounts to the Google Apps accounts. After I chose a few accounts to convert, I looked for the option to allow or disallow content migration. I couldn’t find it. I also looked for the option to add more of the apps, like Reader and Blogger, to the list of apps available to my users. I couldn’t find that, either. This was already not going well. My anguishing tale continues after the jump.

Update: There are four updates to my tale at the end of the post. Google is starting to redeem itself.

It turns out that it was good that I didn’t convert all of them. In addition to the above problems, I could not log into Google with either my Google Apps account or my Google account. They both used identical e-mail addresses, so Google renamed the Google account by adding “+personal” before the ‘@’ in the e-mail address. That was supposed to allow me to access both of my accounts using the same Google login pages, but it didn’t.

I was only able to log into my Google Apps account (just the e-mail address) if I accessed my Google Apps login page. The standard Google login pages kept giving me a vague error message. I don’t even remember how I was able to log into my Google account (the “plus address”), because I tried a whole bunch of different ways to get in. I did eventually get into both accounts. I thought that was fine for now, and that Google would figure it out by September 30, the deadline for transitioning accounts before Google automatically does it for you.

I was wrong. When I try to use Google Voice, Google Reader, or any other Google app, either I get prompted to login (with an endless loop of prompts or the vague error message), or I get in, but it always chooses the wrong account. My accounts have not been merged, as I was initially led to believe. I continue to have two distinct accounts, it’s just that one of them has a new username.

To make matters worse, I tried to revert the change and undo the damage that had already been done. That only made life worse. I was able to log into my Google Apps account, but only if I was accessing an app other than Gmail. When I tried to access my e-mail, I was sent into an endless redirection loop. Thankfully, Chrome caught the loop and ended it. Not so thankfully, it gave me yet another vague error message.

I have put my account back into a transitioned state. That lets me back into my e-mail, finally, but it is accompanied with the other problems above. I guess this is the lesser of the two evils at the moment. I hope Google will get this figured out. What’s the point of “unifying” Google apps and Google Apps if nothing is actually unified?

Update 1: Apparently, the idea of migrating information between a personal Google account and a Google Apps account is merely an export/import of data. I was hoping to be able to transfer all of the account data from one account to another. For example, I can only transfer my subscriptions and their tags between my personal and Google Apps accounts. I have a bunch of items in my Shared Items, Starred Items and to-read tag lists in Google Reader, and they will stay with my personal account until I delete the account. Google account management = total mess.

Update 2: Google is slowly redeeming itself. I filled out a Google form yesterday to transfer my Google Voice number from my personal Google account to my Google Apps account. I just received confirmation that the account has been transferred to my Google Apps account, along with my call and sms history. Now I just have to re-record my greeting. Finally, a win for Google!

Update 3: Well, it looks like most of my issues with my multiple Google accounts are sorted out. I can finally get into my e-mail accounts without any issues. When I try to open Google Docs from either of my Gmail accounts, it sometimes prompts me to select a logged in Google account before proceeding, despite my using a link from within a Google Apps app assigned to a specific username. Then, when I try to open a document, I am sometimes told that I do not have rights to access the doc. whiskey-tango-foxtrot?

Update 4: I forgot one thing – Google Reader is still chapping my ass. I still cannot comment on shared items from people who follow me. What the fuck, Google? Head in your ass much lately? This has been happening to people for at least 9 months! Oh, and your post in May was pretty much wrong – I certainly can’t comment on these items that I can plainly see.

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When I get home, I’m going to spend a bit of time syncing the phone with my computer, and installing all of those apps that I had previously found useless on the iPod touch. After the jump I’m including a short recap of my iPhone saga from the past couple of weeks. If you’ve followed it on Twitter or Facebook, you can probably just ignore it.
Last week, I tried to pre-order the iPhone 4. It was a total failure. First I had problems with the Apple website because I was trying to add a new line to our AT&T account. It kept trying to send me to AT&T’s website, which was already starting to crumble under the immense pre-order traffic. Then work got in the way of me continuing the process. By the time I came back to it in the afternoon, it looked like Apple and AT&T just stopped taking pre-orders. Everyone is asking, “How could they have not foreseen the demand?”

The day before the release, I thought that I could get in line early in the morning at Woodfield and buy the new iPhone as a walk-in customer without a pre-order. The morning of release day, I discovered that there were more than 100 people in line before 4 am! I did not feel good about that at all. Even so, Chris and I went to Woodfield to try our luck. When we got to the mall, the mall doors were open. We were directed to the two lines, one for pre-order customers and the other for walk-ins, both extending to Lord & Taylor from the Apple Store. We stood in the walk-in line for about an hour, only to leave with no phone after hearing that there were only 60 handsets for walk-ins (thanks for the heads up, @kristn).

I went back after work. My sister heard from Apple employees who had stopped by the tea shop that a couple of shipments had come in during the day. After thinking about it a while, I decided to step in line again. Only a couple of minutes went by before I was told that there probably weren’t enough phones to get through all of the walk-ins at that point. I left the mall, iPhone-less.

I checked the MacRumors: Forums one last time late last night. I was delighted to see this post that said the Apple Store still had stock at the end of the night. This morning, I headed to the Apple Store and found a short line of five or six people right outside of the store by the pre-order line, and one guy in the walk-in line. I took my spot in the walk-in line. Just shy of an hour later, I was walking out of the mall with a new iPhone 4 in hand. And you can read my initial impressions above (recursion!).

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If you’re so inclined, you can watch a stream of the ceremony at mccormick.northwestern.edu/videostream (go figure that an engineering school would be streaming its graduation ceremony on the web). If you’re looking to hire an IT manager, let me know

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Our initial research only revealed solutions that required Gmail Notifier or Google Talk to be installed. Those are pretty much non-solutions for us, because we don’t want to install yet another client on these machines. What’s worse is that these clients tend to want to remember your username and password; that’s a “no go” for our many multi-user computers. Digging a little deeper finally brought me to a solution involving only Windows XP Registry changes.

If you want to setup your default e-mail client in Windows XP, use these registry entries as a guide:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\shell\open\command]
@="rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler https://mail.google.com/"

And if you have Google Apps for Your Domain, you can use the following registry edits as a guide. Replace “[[domain]]” with your domain (e.g. “ask-mark.com”). You can also replace “[[GFYD]]” with a better descriptor (e.g. “Gmail for ask-mark.com”), or replace it with simply “Gmail”.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\[[GFYD]]\shell\open\command]
@="rundll32.exe url.dll,FileProtocolHandler https://mail.google.com/a/[[domain]]/"

Just copy and paste one of these sets of registry entries into a blank text file. Then save it with a .reg extension. Right-click on the file and choose Merge from the menu. Confirm that you want to add the information to the registry. You may have to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Once it does go into effect, the E-mail icon in your Start menu should change and reflect that Gmail or Gmail for Your Domain is the default e-mail application. When you click on a mailto: link in a web browser, it should open a Gmail Compose Mail page in a new tab or window, with the e-mail address already in the To field.

Like I said, we are still testing this in our organization. This appears to work in Windows XP, but I do not know about other versions of Windows. Let me know what kind of success you have with it.

Update: I had to make a change to the last URL. I removed the ?extsrc=mailto&url=%1 at the end of the (Default) value for HKLM\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Gmail\shell\open\command. That should let the E-mail shortcut in the Start menu open to your Inbox, instead of to a Compose Mail page.

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So, if you really are a blogger at Harvard, and you want to leave a comment here, shoot me a separate e-mail at mark [at] ask-mark [dot] com.

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I haven’t yet had a chance to watch this week’s episode of Chuck, so I can’t do much right now to comment and talk about Hannah. Rest assured that I’ll have more soon. Sorry for the delay!

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• Does Jack look older than he did in the pilot episode on purpose? Or is that just a continuity issue with Matthew Fox, the actor, aging six years since this all began?
• The intro sequence under water reminds me of the credits sequence for Star Trek.
• Oh, the eye!
• Sawyer’s hair is longer than in the pilot. Interesting!
• Juliet? wtf? Shouldn’t she be covered in earth?
• I love that Dominic Monaghan and Sonya Walger are doing double duty for ABC on LOST and FlashForward.
• It is striking to me that their experiences on the island are worth sacrificing just to return to lives that they weren’t necessarily happy about living in the first place. They’re always trying to go back.
• Oh yeah, smoke monster!
• See what I mean? They’re all so unhappy getting off that plane, except for Bernard and Rose.
• Oh, Jack, why would you run through the tunnels?
• Miles, are you going to tell him something?
• Really? An ankh?
• Jacob, the good god?
• Oooh, and the Christ symbolism with Syid  laid out like a cross when they took him out of the water…interesting. Just give him three days in a cave. He’ll be OK.
• Is this whole series just about the ups and downs of Jack?
• I <3 Emilie de Ravin.
• Terry O’Quinn is pretty awesome.
• What  happened to Desmond?

Final thoughts on this premiere: I know there is almost an entire season of LOST yet to come, but I feel disappointed in the premiere. I came into the episode with a lot of questions, chief of which was, “wtf?”. I am leaving this episode with even more questions now.

What’s the story with Richard? What’s the story with the smoke monster? Has this temple existed on the island the whole time? How the hell did these people stay hidden? What’s the story with the magic water and the hour glass? Where the hell is Desmond and how did he get on the friggin’ plane? What happened to the elder Shephard? What’s Claire’s, Shannon’s, Michael’s, Walt’s, Anna Lucia’s, Boone’s, Mr. Eko’s, and Libby’s stories this season?

Oh, and finally, is ABC losing so badly to CBS and NCIS on Tuesdays that they had to bring the big guns to Tuesday night?

I can’t wait to see how this season is going to play out. They had better not screw it up.

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I really want to put the T1i to good use, and I think this is a great way to do it. I hope to develop my photography skills throughout the year. I was inspired to do self portraits, rather than just general photographs, by Lauren Randolph and her 365 in 2009.

I have wanted to do Project 365 for the past couple of years, and I have failed miserably at each attempt (like this one). My failures were mostly rooted in forgetfulness and a lack of creativity. We’ll see how this goes. I think I have a much better chance at succeeding, needing to only come up with about 1/7 of the photos needed for Project 365.

Wish me luck!

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