Beware the dreaded “Failed writing body” error

December 19, 2011, by No comments yet

It looks like when you receive the following error, “Download failed.: Failed writing body”, WordPress is trying to tell you something very important. What is it? Simple. You hard drive is full. Makes sense doesn’t it? Not at first, but after some Google-Fu, I came up with the following page at WordPress.org: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wired-worpress-error

Thanks to those who (unfortunately) came before me and already solved this problem. Now I have to go and finish removing files so I can update WP.

Proclaim Church Presentation Software

October 11, 2011, by No comments yet

I came across a new piece of software this morning when checking my email. Proclaim software from Logos (Greek for The Word, aka The Bible), the same company that make Bible software. It was actually a Twitter follow notification. (Note: blind Twitter follows do work, I followed them afterward.) It sent me to their website which has a well designed video. While the description of the software was well done, there were precious few screen grabs of the software. I assume they want folks to sign up for the beta in order to try it out. Since my church does not use software like this during our services any longer, I don’t think I will sign up for the beta. However, I thought the community might want to know about it.

The main benefits of Proclaim are:

  • Software that lives in the cloud. Updates are automatically saved and offered to other users.
  • Runs on both Mac and PC.
  • Does not require seat licenses, but based upon total users/month.
  • Looks snazzy!

That’s about all I could glean from the video. Check it out for yourself and maybe even give Proclaim a whirl.

How the Internet Works

March 23, 2011, by 2 comments

To all techs and geeks, this is so true.

[Updated] Setting Up Google Apps Contacts in iPhone/iPad & Mac OS X

February 25, 2011, by 2 comments

As mentioned previously, you can setup Google Apps Mail to sync your Contacts as well. You can do this on your iPhone/iPad and your Mac.

iPhone/iPad

  1. Open the Settings application on your iPhone/iPad.
  2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  3. Tap the account being synced.
  4. Make sure Contacts is ON

Your Contacts will now begin to sync with Google and will eventually show up online. Remember, they will only show up under My Contacts. If you create another group, it will not appear on your iOS device.

Mac OS X

You can also sync your Contacts with a Mac running OS X 10.6 with your Google Apps account. OSXDaily.com has a handy posting that I have recapped below.

  1. On your Mac, launch the Address Book application.
  2. Select Address Book>>Preferences.
  3. Click on the Accounts tab.
  4. From the left side listing, select On My Mac.
  5. Check the Synchronize with Google checkbox.
  6. Click the Configure… button next to it.
  7. Enter your Google Apps username/password.
  8. Click Sync Now from your menu bar. (This is very important as nothing will happen with you manually syncing.)

This is where it might get a little tricky. The process of syncing your Contacts with Google apparently requires iSync, which Apple no longer uses in favor of MobileMe syncing. However, even with MobileMe syncing turned off, you can manually run the sync process. In this case, you will sync with Google and not MobileMe. What is unclear is whether Google sync will continue automatically or require manual intervention from this point moving forward.

At least one response to the OSXDaily.com post mentions that also setting up Yahoo syncing at the same time will result in automatic syncing. According to them, the automated process requires at least two syncing events at the same time as one along (i.e., Google) will not work.

UPDATE – March 10, 2011
I came across another software tool that purports to help manage your Google Contacts better than the default Apple method described above. They mention duplicate entries as a problem with Apple’s Address Book sync and I have in fact experienced some duplicate entries. However, it is unclear since not all my entries have be duplicated. Spurious problem or not, it might be worth your time to check out Spanning Sync as mentioned on TUAW.com. It currently costs $25/year or $65/lifetime. But, you have the option of getting a free copy if you can convince enough of your friends to also purchase it.

Setting up Google Apps Mail for iPhone & iPad

February 24, 2011, by No comments yet

Once you have signed up for Google Apps, the next things most folks are looking to accomplish is setup their email account. As with many things, Google has the information posted on their site, but it may take some quick searching. If you are as fortunate as me, you were sent to a page describing just how to set up Google Mail during your Google Apps registration process. If were not so fortunate, here is a link to that page.

As you can see, the process is rather straight forward and consists of the following steps:

  1. Open the Settings application on your device’s home screen.
  2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  3. Tap Add Account….
  4. Select Microsoft Exchange. OS 4.0+ now allows multiple Exchange accounts.
  5. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address, i.e. me@mydomain.com. If you use an @googlemail.com address, you may see an “Unable to verify certificate” warning when you proceed to the next step.
  6. Leave the Domain field blank. (Important.)
  7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username, i.e. me@mydomain.com.
  8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.
  9. Tap Next at the top of your screen.
  10. Choose Cancel if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears. (I never say this dialog.)
  11. When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.
  12. Press Next at the top of your screen again.
  13. Select the Google services (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts) you want to sync. (I selected them all since I wanted to replace MobileMe.)
  14. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes. (I selected it as you can always choose to only view these items from Google later and ignore your local copy.)
  15. If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the “All Contacts” group instead. If there are no contacts on your phone, the latter will happen — the contents of your All Contacts group will be synced.

Of course, I copied this from the above linked Google help page, but these are the essential bits. I followed this to the letter on both my iPhone and iPad with absolutely no problems. The only thing is you will have to be patient and wait for the Contacts to sync up over time. It is not instantaneous but should be done within a short time. Mine took all of ten (10) minutes to complete.

In addition, you will begin to see another list of Contacts on your iPhone/iPad. This will be under the Groups listing and named after the email address you entered, i.e. me@mydomain.com. If you are looking on your Google Mail account, look for the contacts listed under My Contacts. Any other contacts you create on Google will not be matched up, so make sure you only use those when creating/editing them online.