The address book in Tiger (and earlier IIRC) has this nifty feature. It’s labeled ‘Look for duplicate entries…’
I was cleaning up my address book, and wanted to do just that. So, I click it - and it tells me it found two duplicate entries and asks if I want to merge them? One problem - No where I can see does it tell you exactly what two duplicates it found! And I wasn’t too interested in having my address book mangled blindly.
Here’s the (rather geeky) solution.
- Command - A to select all cards
- File -> Export vCard and save the file in your home folder
- Go to Applications -> Utilities and start Terminal
- Type sort vCards.vcf | uniq -c | grep FN | sort -
Tada ! Found five duplicates and listed them at the end so I can now actually look at those cards and decide if they should be merged, folded, spindled or mutilated….
HTH somebody else…
Now it’s after Christmas, it’s time to make all those gadgets you’ve ended up with actually useful 
I got a Motorola Krazer cell phone for Christmas from my wife. We’d recently bought her one, and I liked it, so she bought me one so I’d quit borrowing hers.
One of the best features is that you can upload and download pictures and music off the phone via USB without going through the cell phone company. My last phone took pictures, but it cost you 50 cents a picture to get them off the phone afterwards!
The software that comes with it for Windows - Motorola Phone Tools - is actually not bad, and lets you do pretty much anything you’d like to do - if you use Windows…. It will sync up to Outlook and Thunderbird (IIRC) which means it works fine for most people. But not me of course
Now I know the odds of finding a phone that will actually sync properly to all three operating systems I use is nil (Palm comes close), but currently my most accurate and up to date info is on my Mac, so I wanted to sync the phone up to that at least once.
If you read the Apple iSync page, you might think at first it works - except for the little footnotes which say ‘GSM versions only’. PC Mobile is a rebranded Bell Cellular service, which uses CDMA not GSM.
Googling around, I read that there were differences between the GSM and CDMA versions of the phones, but not really big ones, so I was hopeful there was a solution.
You could retrace my steps looking at these lengthy, verbose, noise filled links.
Or, download the plist file from this link here and do the following:
- Back up MetaClasses.plist file found by going to the Finder and right (or control) clicking on iSync and hitting “Show Package Contents.” Drill down to Contents -> PlugIns -> ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice -> Contents -> PlugIns -> PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin -> Contents -> Resources
- Replace that file with the file you downloaded.
- Open that new version using Textedit, or MacVim or similar in TEXT ONLY MODE and change <key>supportsCalendarsSync</key> <false /> to <key>supportsCalendarsSync</key> <true /> right after the K1m entry
- Now discover the device normally with iSync using the USB cable and away you go!
It doesn’t work over Bluetooth for me, and I haven’t investigated why further as I don’t really need it. There were hints that seemed to say you need to set it up over Bluetooth after replacing the plist file before you connect it using USB if you want both to work. I haven’t confirmed that.
This is a good example of where open source projects work so well. The number of PC mobile users using a Motorola phone is small, so Apple will likely never get around to supporting us - but in an open source set up it’s so easy to get changes like this made, that one person’s comments can get them done right away and everybody benefits.
Whoops - this was supposed to be published a little while ago.
In the better late than never catagory - I give you - Just a few favourite Christmas quotes….
A three-year-old gave this reaction to her Christmas dinner. “I don’t like the turkey, but I like the bread he ate.”
As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December’s bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same. - Donald E. Westlake
He who has no Christmas in his heart will never find Christmas under a tree. - Sunshine Magazine
There was the little boy who approached Santa in a department store with a long list of requests. He wanted a bicycle and a sled, a chemical set, a cowboy suit, a set of trains, a baseball glove and roller skates. “That’s a pretty long list,” Santa said sternly. “I’ll have to check in my book and see if you were a good boy.” “No, no,” the youngster said quickly. “Never mind checking. I’ll just take the roller skates.”
Oh, and I twiddled the side bar a bit to help you log in and add your own Christmas wishes!
OK, start humming It’s a Small World and click on this link…. Dialup users might not get the full effect….
Boy, I just don’t know what to say about this one.
You’d better just read it yourself….
I’d better say Merry Christmas while I still can!
Although I prefer to use Firefox and it’s built in password retention, lots of our members are still using Safari.
When Safari (or other Apple software) saves passwords, it stores them in your Keychain.
Mac OSX Hints recently posted a handy way to get those passwords back out when you need them, without them appearing on the screen - thus defeating shoulder surfers.
One of our topics at the December meeting was an overview of the ‘microblogging’ phenomenon - specifically Twitter and Identi.ca
I guess the one thing I didn’t explicitly point out is I’m quite often available thru Twitter or Identi.ca (I prefer Identi.ca) as ‘furicle’ - so feel free to add me to your list if you decide to start using either service!
Brian
Incredible…
This is Apple’s last year at MacWorld. Steve Jobs will not be presenting (Phil Schiller will be…)
To quote CrunchGear.com:
There was a bit of rumbling the other day when Steve Jobs was curiously left off the Macworld SF speaker / events list and now it looks like big man himself isn’t going to take the stage at all. That’s right, no jeans and black turtleneck. No “one more thing.” No “boom!”
The power of the web … and retail stores… will knock out MacWorld - probably by next year. Several companies (big ones) have already pulled out this year… the end of an era!
Interestingly - the Mac is 25 years old in 2009. (I bought my first mac in June ‘84 - $3800 for the 128k Macintosh - with an external floppy drive, no hard drive and a dot matrix printer).
Would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting when they decided that Jobs would not address MacWorld - traditionally the time he introduced new products etc…
Well - there you have it. A brave new world!
Tripped over this page this morning. It’s a cool post about someone shopping for new toys to give away, and how much fun it was. I won’t spoil it - go check it out yourself.
I know this isn’t exactly a normal Mac related post, but I couldn’t resist - especially since it let me enter the contest
Merry Christmas everyone!
We gave you good advise at the last meeting. Here’s MacWorld’s advise on the same issue.