The tagline on CNBC’s Options Action show on Friday was something like Get Paid to Buy Apple Stock. Sound too good to be true? Take a look:

The show outlined a plan where you could buy an aapl call option that expires in December for about $2500 and simultaneously sell two call option contracts for about $2600. Specifically, the contracts looked like this at the close on Friday:

Buy this for $2520 ($25.20×100):
Strike Symbol Last Chg Bid Ask
380.00 AAPL111217C00380000 25.20 3.60 25.40 25.80

Sell two of these for $2690($26.90×100):
Strike Symbol Last Chg Bid Ask
410.00 AAPL111217C00410000 13.45 1.35 13.15 13.65

You immediately pocket the $100 and hope Apple climbs - but not too far. Why ?

Because the two contracts you sell in their transaction are for a strike price of $410. The one you buy is for a strike price of $380. So the contract you bought will gain value as it rises above $380, but your gains will be capped when the underlying stock price reaches $410. And there’s more:

You sold TWO contracts. For each of those sales you’re obligated to sell 100 shares for $410 each if the contract is executed. That’s 200 shares. The good news is that 100 of those shares are provided by the call option you bought. Hopefully you were holding 100 shares of aapl outright when you entered into this transaction so you can deliver the other 100 shares. They do mention on the show that this example is for current stock-holders looking to tweak their position. If you find a way to exit the position by buying back your call you can keep your shares. But keep in mind the price of the contracts you sold will rise with the underlying shares.

Like they say on the show, you make your profit above the strike price of the option you bought, but your profits are capped because of the contract you sold. Essentially, you want aapl to rise to $410 but no further. As aapl goes past $410 the 100 shares you held outright aren’t going for the ride - because the option you sold called them away.

You can watch the show here, they start talking about this some time past the 8 minute mark. So - what about their claim? Are you getting paid to buy Apple? Maybe you could look at it that way, but the caveats are quite substantial.

Regardless, I have little interest in this play at this time of year. Apple has the potential to make a decent run between now and the end of the calendar year. Look at what’s coming up: new iPhone launch, iOS5, iCloud, Earnings in October, Christmas shoppers waiting in line, China… The last thing I want right now is a cap on my holdings. It’s not Apple that might hurt the share price between now and January. It’s everything else in the economy that I’m worried about.

Past performance is no indication of future results, but take a look at the last two years and how aapl has done between September and January. But add a reality check by looking at 2008.

If you email portrait (vertically) - oriented photos from your iPhone your recipient is likely to view them sideways, especially if they open them using a browser-based mail service like Gmail.

The solution I was actually using: Email the files to myself first. My Mac would receive the photos and run an AppleScript triggered by the email subject. The script rotated the files, stripped out the exif tag that caused the problem, and mailed them back to me. I could then use that copy for sending to other people. It was relatively painless as I could email the photo right from the Camera app which kept the number of steps reasonable.

But a couple things aren’t working with Lion. The part of my AppleScript that pulls the attachments out and saves them to a folder in the Finder isn’t working. Others have the same problem. Further, the Automator action that sent the email back out isn’t working either. I’m not alone on that one either.

So, I looked at alternate solutions. Like uploading to Dropbox. Dropbox uploads a full res version of your photo. So I created a folder action script that handles the rotating and exif tweaking as soon as my Mac sees the file. That works fine. The problem is that the Dropbox app on my iPhone doesn’t download the full res version, it pulls down a version I consider too small.

I didn’t give up right away. The iOS Safari Dropbox DOES open a nice big version of the photo. From there I can save the photo to my camera roll and email it out. Recipients get a correctly oriented version of the photo, big enough to see.

So now the problem is the number of steps and apps involved. I could use something like Instagram but sometimes I just want to send a photo in an email, straight-up.

I don’t understand why Apple has made this an issue. iOS used to rotate a different way. Their own browser on the Mac isn’t going to display the photo correctly because of the way they’re handling the rotation, with a tag. Why browsers can’t read the tag - I don’t know.

Anyway, I’ve got a solution for when I need it, but I don’t see myself using it much. Too many steps.

11/2011 Update:  I have this working again.  My Automator workflow fails at the step where it sends the email.  So I’ve updated the AppleScript with a command to send it.  I’ll post the updated script shortly.

Try this: Switch to Finder and hit Command-Option-H. That hides all applications except Finder. Once they're hidden try hitting Command-H to hide the Finder itself. It doesn't work.

So here’s a workaround that’s acceptable to me: Our Applescript will hide the windows of all applications except the Finder. Then it will CLOSE all the Finder windows. The end result is a clean desktop with application windows that stay out of sight until you summon them back into view.
Optionally, you could include the 3 lines of the script after the line “Close every window” (commented out with dashes in the image below) to open up a single Finder window to a specified folder and use that as your starting point.

Once you’ve created the script you need a way to kick it off. I use TextExpander for a lot of these things. TexExpander is a fantastic text replacement utility that can also run Applescripts when you type certain characters. For example, Murphy might type dsktp or ddesk to make TextExpander run our script and display the clean desktop. There’s a lot more to TextExpander than running Applescripts, but I find it very handy in that capacity. Instead of memorizing somewhat arbitrary key combinations you can make up a code - so your shortcuts are more like keywords with meaning than shortcuts that generally only carry one letter. Murphy covered TexExpander here.
As an alternate check out FastScripts from Red Sweater Software. FastScripts lets you assign a script to a keyboard shortcut. And it has powerful features for helping you manage your script library. If you’re a heavy Applescripter you probably already know about it. If not, take a look at the features.

If you’re looking for more information on Applescript and Airfoil they’ve got some examples on their site.
Interesting: Initially I made a script that opened a Spotify playlist and didn’t include the line to commence playback. It stopped working after a day, I don’t know why. It would play the one track and then stop. The day before it jumped to whatever playlist had been set as the current playlist in the Spotify application and continued playback. Not sure what happened there.

If you go into your account in iTunes and look at your purchase history there’s a link to Report a Problem. If you know what month you made your purchase you’re all set. Otherwise prepare for frustration.

The interface lets you search by month and year. I can’t tell you the month and year when I purchased most of my music. That leaves you to page through the transactions a page at a time, eleven transactions per page. The worst part is the noticeable delay every time you click ‘Next’ and wait for the next page to populate. No exaggeration, 5-10 seconds per click. Further, every time you update an app you’re building more line items, creating page after page to sift through.

Customer service departments have been setting up obstacle courses in their phone systems for years. Now Apple is doing the same thing with their application’s interface. Amazon offers a search field that makes finding an order near instantaneous. They even let me run customized order reports.

I’m not naive, I know Amazon has something to gain by letting me search my orders: re-orders. But Apple doesn’t. I’m not going to buy a song or an app again, so why should Apple make it easy to find my order?

Apple is renowned for its expertise in interface design - making it obvious this lack of customer service is intentional. There’s no excuse for wasting people’s time intentionally.

Want to see for yourself? Visit the store in iTunes. Under your account name at the top right click Account. Then next to Purchases click on See All. You’ll see a button to report a problem.

Now we’ll show you how to do it in Automator, with enhancements.  First, the file name(s) of the attachments get added to your email’s subject line automatically.  Second, the sent files are placed in a Finder folder of sent items.  Murphy provided an Automator solution for this task before, but the email subject feature and the filing are new features.

Here’s a screencast that shows how it works.    When you want to send a file simply drag it to the folder and it’s sent.  No additional clicks.  You might create different versions of the Automator application.  For example, one might mail to a Flickr account and another might be used for sending a photo to four grandparents at once.

Feel free to suggest enhancements to the Automator workflow in the comments.  There’s a third party Automator action that can easily get file names without the full path name if that’s what you prefer.

You can see all the actions in the Automator workflow here.

Arthur S. Brisbane:  ”…my inquiry into it has led to a Times internal review and, as a consequence, Pogue is barred from making any more speeches like this one to public relations professionals.”

I don’t expect much to come of this.  Pogue is an extremely popular piece of New York Times content.  Personally, I find his videos over the top and not as funny or informative as his commenters find them.  Fans jumped to his defense in the July 6 comment thread, with excuses similar to those Pogue made on Leo’s show.  Which was that essentially all tech reporters are cozy with the tech companies.  If Mossberg can collect big paydays for speaking why shouldn’t Pogue?

We all know there will always be certain reporters who get special access.  According to the NYTPicker piece on the subject Pogue actually claims he’s pushed the New York Times to reveal his other endeavors, but failed.

The average New York Times reader and iPad buyer could care less about any of this.  Granted, Pogue isn’t the only one up to these kinds of shenanigans.  But he’s high-profile and with that comes the heat.  Am I turning to Pogue for truth in technology reporting?  No way.  I read him from time to time - but only so I know what everyone else is reading.

Leo Laporte’s interview with Pogue, from the TWiT network.  1:39:20h into the show.

David Pogue’s disclosure, undated, at the New York Times: A Note About Ethics and Disclosure.  You have to click through to his profile to find it, it’s not listed within his columns.

One option is using the Airport Utility to see connections to your Apple wireless access points.  But that’s a lot of clicks, and you can’t easily check it from your iPhone or iPad.   Here’s an alternative:  Use an SNMP command to see what’s going on with your Airport Express.

Murphy found a suitable command on Polydistortion.net, shown below:

snmpget -v 2c -c PASSWORD -M /usr/share/snmp/mibs:$HOME/share/mibs \
-m+AIRPORT-BASESTATION-3-MIB MyAirportExpress.local AIRPORT-BASESTATION-3-MIB::wirelessNumber.0

You can delete that backslash at the end of the top line and enter it all as one line in Terminal.  You also want to enter your router’s password in place of password, and your router’s name in place of MyAirportExpress.   Don’t get confused and enter your wifi password or the name of your wireless network.  It’s the name of the router you’re looking for and the administrative password.

When you enter that in Terminal you should get a response that looks something like this:

AIRPORT-BASESTATION-3-MIB::wirelessNumber.0 = INTEGER: 0

Also of interest, I hadn’t seen or heard anything about this iPhone-formatted page for Apple Investors.  Try http://apple.com/investor on your iPhone. How long has that been around?

The real-time updating is the killer feature - once people see the arrow moving across their screen they’re hooked. And of course, Glympse runs in the background while you’re using other apps - not that you would or should while driving.

Inviting others to view your location - sending a Glympse - is quick and simple.  The app has direct access to your iPhone Contacts and can send the invite via email or sms.  You can drop a group of people into a single Glympse invite and optionally extend its duration as the expiration approaches.

One of my favorite features:  The history page displays a list of contacts with active invitations - along with the last time they checked on your whereabouts.  In seconds!   I got into a “You didn’t know that I know that you know where I am?” with one watcher.   Additionally, many people checked in on my status every few minutes for the better part of eleven hours.  Some said they were mesmerized at the live updating, watching the arrow that represented the girls and myself zoom across their web browser map - as we hurtled down the Interstate.

When you send a Glympse to an iPhone user they can keep tabs on you in Safari, or get additional features by having the Glympse app installed.  The web page has a button offering to display your location in the Glympse app, which will open automatically.

Computer users track you using a Flash web page that live-updates your position.

Glympse provides many useful features.  You can share via Twitter or Facebook.  You can also save a group of people to a favorites list to use again.  A Glympse invite expires after a maximum of four hours but you can extend it any time before it ends.  Of course you can also expire a Glympse invite early.

The Glympse page suggests using the service to let someone know you’re running late or as a social tool.  I can see the running late part - if meeting up with someone as geeky as you.  I’m not inclined to use it for social networking purposes, but that’s probably because I’m old.

If you’ve got parents or grandparents who worry while you’re on the road this might keep their phone call count at reasonable levels.  At one point we stopped at a rest area  in Virginia - barely separated from the Interstate.  We were there a long time (remember - 2 and 4 year old girls)  and Mrs. Murphy thought maybe we’d run off the road - so she called.  Other than that she spent the day hypnotized by the little green arrow.

I would have loved to use Glympse last month in Ireland.  But I’m not paying international data rates !  Future post: Why Isn’t International Roaming Affordable?

Without a doubt I’ll use Glympse to keep people updated on my next road trip.  It’s free on the App Store, so give it a try.  There’s also Glympse for Windows Mobile and Android.

So why charge?

The only logical explanation I see is an App Store try-out for Mac users.   There have to be plenty of Mac users who don’t own iOS devices.  Admittedly I have no idea how many, but a significant number.  Many of these users have probably never tried the App Store and Apple wants them to experience it - thinking it will lead to additional sales.

Those who own iOS devices may not have tried the Mac App Store yet either.  I know I haven’t bought anything.  In fact, I think I opened it once to take a look, and that was it.

I suppose they could have added it to the App Store and made it free.  Or is this some kind of Sarbanes Oxley thing??  Who knows?

When the first VLC Media Player (itunes link) app for iPad came out I tried dropping an EyeTV recording into it - including the container file. No dice - the file wasn’t recognized. I tried an EyeTV container with the new release of VLC for iPad too - but it still wasn’t recognized. But right-clicking on the container and showing its contents allowed me to copy the mpg file residing within onto the iPad. VLC for iPad recognized the mpg and played it. The initial release didn’t work for the EyeTV mpg either.

The .eyetv file is much larger than what you’d get if you encoded it for your i-device. But for a video I plan to watch once and delete I’m happy to skip the encoding.

The VLC app doesn’t use the standard playback components provided in iOS APIs - like the player you’d see in an app such as Dropbox. For example, my Bluetooth keyboard playback controls don’t work in VLC for iPad.

Playback isn’t as tight as m4v files I’ve played back using Dropbox and other apps, but it’s not terrible either. Definitely not as clear as playing back an .eyetv file on my Mac - but again - that’s ok, there’s some value in getting a video onto my iOS device without encoding it - sometimes it’s worth the tradeoff.

That said, I just loaded a short scene from an action movie, recorded in standard definition, to my iPhone 4.  Playback was a bit pixelated.

VLC for iOS does keep track of where you left off watching a video. And it’s free.  The VLC Media Player is nice to have for times when encoding isn’t otherwise necessary.

If I ever knew that I’d forgotten.

My previous solution was to use an alternate camera app.  But I’ve got another approach that requires a Mac running Mail.

When I take a photo with my iPhone - in portrait orientation - I simply email it to myself.  My Mac is configured to watch for email with a particular subject and then automatically grab the attachment, strip the exif rotation information, and rotate the photo without using a tag.  Then my Mac mails the photo back to me.

Here’s the setup:

In Finder

In your home folder create a folder called lab with subfolders in and out.  Like this:

/Users/murphy/lab/in

/Users/murphy/lab/out

AppleScript

Download my AppleScript.  Edit the AppleScript and change all occurrences of ‘murphy” to the name of your home folder.  There are notes in the script to help you.

Automator

Create an Automator workflow.  You’ll need to add 4 actions in the same order they’re listed below.

• Mail: New Mail Message
• Finder: Get Specified Finder Items
• Mail: Add Attachments to Front Message
• Mail: Send Outgoing Messages

Only the first two Automator elements need further configuration.  The first one defines the address your altered photo will be emailed to.  You might add a subject as well.

Then specify this file path in the Finder element:

/Users/murphy/lab/out/outbound.jpg

Make sure you replace “murphy” with your home folder name.  The path points to the photo Automator will mail back to you. Save as a workflow. The AppleScript expects the workflow to be in a folder called _applescripts in your Documents folder. Edit the AppleScript if your workflow will be stored somewhere else.

Mail

In Mail you need a rule to kick off the AppleScript when a message arrives meeting certain criteria.  My rule looks like this screenshot.  The script runs when an email arrives with the subject “rotate”.  You might select a different word or phrase.  Make sure you set the script path to the location where you saved your AppleScript. More on Mail rules.

jhead

The AppleScript relies on a command line utility called jhead to strip the exif rotation tag, which I found in this TUAW post.  My script expects jhead to be in the /Users/murphy/lab/in folder.  After downloading jhead you’ll need to make it executable.  In the Terminal:

chmod +x path/to/jhead

In my case I entered chmod +x /Users/murphy/lab/in/jhead

That’s about it.  My script pulls the photo from the email, rotates it, strips the exif rotation information, copies it to another folder, and kicks off an Automator workflow to mail the photo back to me.

When I receive the altered photo on my iPhone I can simply forward it to someone.  If they view it in web Gmail they’ll see the photo inline-style within the email.  I prefer to save the photo to my camera roll and send it from there.  That way I’m prompted to select a size and recipients using web-based gmail get a thumbnail with a choice to view or download.

Notes

You might want to place jhead somewhere other than where I did.  If you move it you’ll need to edit the AppleScript.

Mail needs to be running on your Mac for this to work.

I used an Automator workflow to send the return email.  You can do it in AppleScript if you prefer, but I’ve had mixed results down that road.  Decided to try Automator.

You could use Automator to extract the attachment.  I’d already written a script to extract an attachment from Mail so it seemed like the way to go.

You could alter the AppleScript so everything happens in one folder.  I used two folders only to help me with troubleshooting the script the first time through.

Don’t forget to make jhead executable.

Dropbox Alternative

Here’s another alternate solution:  Dropbox

You could upload your images to Dropbox from your iPhone - then mark them as a favorite.  From there you copy the image to the clipboard to paste into a mail or save it down to your camera roll.   They won’t be full-size though.  And if you paste and mail it’ll be sent as a png.  But the orientation will be correct.  If you simply upload and send the link the orientation will be wrong.

OR

You could use something like my script above to place a full-size copy of your file in your Mac Dropbox.  Then you can access the photo from the Dropbox app on your iPhone.  You’ll still need to copy and paste or save it to the roll to get the rotation right.

Yeah - it’s a lot to set up and you need a Mac running to use it. I can wake my Mac up from my phone so that’s not a big deal. And I find mail-based workarounds like this convenient to use. Still - maybe Apple should switch back to the old way until the browsers catch up.

Here’s what I expect:  An iLife application for creating rich iPad “MediaBooks” - virtual photobook presentations you swipe your way through.  A page contains some combination of photos, videos, maps, and text.  Music tracks are assigned to a range of pages.  The layout might be very similar to the books you create and purchase as printed copies through iPhoto.  But they’re multimedia, instant and free. Click the photo above for an ultracrude-mockup.

The format would replace what many people would have done with iDVD.  Until now, iDVD has been the way to distribute and present (minimally) interactive content.  But DVD menus aren’t the most inviting interface.  Given a choice between navigating a DVD or flicking through pages on an iPad which do you think Steve Jobs would pick?

The flipbook model better reflects Apple’s direction.  Does Jobs want you gathering people around the TV to watch a DVD, or would he prefer passing an iPad around - immersing people in a mediabook of your summer?  The same gestures used in the iPad’s native photo app are a crowd-pleaser - pinching and expanding a virtual pile of photos. Expand a video to play full screen. View included maps in the Maps application. It’s an application that sells iPads.

Throw in some slick page turn animations and the people still using iDVD will forget about it.  Best of all - it’s a reason for iPad-owning Windows users to consider a Mac.