Ok, here goes..

I have a MacBook Pro, with a few desktop publishing clients, and these are called Blogo, Qumana, and MarsEdit, which are all basically editors, which allows me to write offline, and upload whenever I wish, however I have run into a few issues.

I can add images to my posts within the Blogo editor from flickr, and Picasa, using html, but these errors only show up when I try to insert an image from my Mac desktop (images stored on my computer).

When the error occurs, Blogo reports the following..

MarsEdit reports the following….

And finally, Qumana, which also fails, gives the following error….

I can write, and successfully post this post, as the above images are from flickr html, I can also publish a post from all clients if only text is inserted, and no images.

The really strange thing is, all my permissions on my server side of things are correct, so too are my wordpress settings allowing atom, and remote publishing.

Now, this is where it gets even more strange. When I write a blogpost using any of these three clients, and add an image from my Mac desktop, each client fails with the above errors, HOWEVER, the images are showing up in my server folder wp-content/uploads/2010/04, but post fails completely, no post is published at all when the above errors are shown.

I can successfully upload images from my Windows laptop using Windows Liver Writer, from Symbian via my N97 WordPress App, and Maemo5 via N900, just not from Mac.

Can anyone help me, as I have almost exhausted all avenues trying to fix this problem. Its my 40th Birthday today too, so would love to get to the bottom of this, and then I can finally celebrate.!

Also, unsure if its related or not, but thought I would add it here.  Whilst uploading this post, Blogo published the post, however, it continued to show the uploading screen, as see highlighted in yellow below.

Update, I cannot upload a desktop image from my Mac using the WordPress browser editor either. Here is a screenshot of what happens when I try.

The above was with Flash enabled, so when I tried with the simple, non flashed based uploader, it just hangs after showing me the upload worked. It hangs, and shows a white window after hitting “save all changes”.

Here are my Mac desktop folder permissions in case this helps narrow it down. All images in this post were used via adding url from flickr.

First up, and couple of images from flickr, added by browsing the individual images in my browser, then clicking on the Bookmarket to add into my Blogo desktop client post.

I have no idea what size the above image will render in my blog with Blogo, but hopefully it’s optimized for my blog’s particular column size. The above photo in flickr is my own, and features the Nokia X6 (above, and N86 below), being held in a new Tripod Phone holder which I will be reviewing soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the coming days.

Ok, that’s two photos inserted into Blogo straight from flickr, but lets see if Blogo supports Picasa too. I will attempt to insert a photo below from my Picasa Albums using the Boomarklet.

That appeared to go well, as you can see in the screenshot below, you can differentiate each image’s source, which I really like. Below the text window you also get a list of each embedded photos RAW information to, which in the above images cases, the flickr photos are showing as .jpg, and the Picasa as a .swf file. I will now attempt to publish this post to my blog, so if all goes will, you will see not only this post, but fingers crossed, correctly rendered embedded flickr, and Picasa images above. My next test with Blogo will be using the advanced feature, that specifically allows you to simply drag, and drop images from your desktop files into the Drop Bin in the Blogo Editor.

Reason I was importing my free WordPress blog posts into NokiaDNA.com was because the last few days have been quite a learning curve for me with regards to Blogging, and how important it is to make sure you back up your Blog completely, correctly, and securely.

Whilst experimenting with several Mac desktop clients which work with WordPress, enabling Offline functionality, I was experiencing some issues with attached images to my blog posts, so I thought, ok, it has to be something to do with permissions in my host, and CPanel. I set about changing permissions on certain folders I assumed would fix the issue (you know what they say about assumption lol), but sadly, in doing so, I really made a fatal error, and in changing the permissions to my htaccess file, it completely crashed my Blogs database.

So I posted out an update on twitter asking for advice, and help in resolving the problem I had caused, and the response I got back was quite overwhelming. The true power of twitter, and social networking really showed it’s true power, with many people offering to help.

One of these helpful guys, was David Gilson from Hull, in the United Kingdom, who offered to investigate the issue I had caused in my database. David has his own Blog here.

I gave him access to my blog backend, and he spent quite a while looking through my site, checking each, and every file, but sadly couldn’t resolve the issue, and was really sorry that he could not offer me a solution. I wish to thank David for trying at least, it was really appreciated that you took the time to try and resolve the problem I had caused, and it has not gone un-noticed my friend, thank you.!

So, back to square one, I contacted my Host supplier, and his name is Steven Smith, also from the UK, and also on twitter, @stevensmith1990. He agreed to take a look at my site, and see what I had possibly done wrong, and it was Steve’s investigation, which lead to the finding of that htaccess file I had changed its permissions in error.

Once Ste had changed the permissions back, my site was back.! No massive data loss as I had feared, and all was good.

Wrong.

Like a fool, I had also changed many other permissions in my CPanel, which later lead to even more problems. Steve looked again for me, and after giving him FTP access to my site, it turned out that every file in my database was in a sorry state, and he recommended a fresh install, and then restore my backup. (This is the part you really need to ensure you get right, as I didn’t).

Steven proceeded to wipe my database, and restore my Blog from my backup, all went well, and then the keys to my Blog were handed back to me for full control.(surely I can’t break it again?).

Wrong

In an effort to clean up my blog, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to remove the FTP access account Ste had set up in order to work on my site’s backend, so I proceeded to remove this remote account, and then try and establish an FTP access connection for myself(something I was having issues with, as well as that earlier problem I mentioned about uploading images in remote written blog posts).

Oh dear.!

I deleted the FTP account that Steven had setup, and low, and behold, it also deleted every single folder, file, and backup I ever had of my Blog.!

Yes, you guessed it, I contacted Steven Smith once again, and told him what I had done(add sheepish look here), and he was fine about it, and set about fixing the problem, however, there was no easy fix, of course, with everything gone forever, the only thing he could do now for me, was to set me up with a clean slate, and I would have to start my blog all over again.

I wish to take this opportunity to say a massive thanks to Steven for all his efforts, and hard work he put into my site on Easter Sunday, I will certainly be sending you some beer tokens for your efforts, because without you, this blog would not exist today.!

As you can see from looking at the links on NokiaDNA to the right of the page, I spent several hours straight yesterday, re-writting them all again, and that includes added those small favicons you see next to the links, one by one.

Now onto Blogo, I had been previously using a free limited trial version of this great app for Mac’s, and yesterday I entered a competition on twitter to win a full license, and I won.! So happy, as I had planned to purchased the full version, which is just $25USD.

Blogo is to me, the Mac alternative to the ever so popular Windows Live Writer from Microsoft, which is currently the best blogging desktop solution for the Windows Environment. I’m using Blogo to write this post, and with its clean UI, and simple, less cluttered, but rich in functionality layout, its a joy to use, and adding images is as simple as drag-and-drop from desktop files into Blogo.  There is also a Bookmark-let, which you add to your browser toolbar, and when you see the image in Flickr you wish to add in your post, you simple hit “Send to Blogo” and your done, its then a simple case of aligning it where you wish for it to be placed, and your good to go.

I will be carrying out further tests with Blogo today, as you can see, there are no images in this post.  this was intentional.

I thought, great, finally we will be able to install everything to Mass Memory, rather that the large qt libraries being forced installed to phone memory. So this in mind, I set about uninstalling the qt libraries, installer file, and WordPress client from phone memory. I checked my free phone memory afterwards, and I was delighted to see way over 30MB of free phone memory. Downloaded the "Smart Installer" from the WordPress pages, and set about installing it.

I soon began to realise that this installer was not that smart after all, (or rather, I’m not that smart), as it proceeded to self install to phone memory. I thought ok, fine, the file was less than 1MB, so I thought I can cope with losing 1MB of phone Memory(don’t ask). Wrong.! The Smart Installer than connected to the web and continued to download all those files I had recently removed from my phone memory, then to add salt to my fresh wounds, each and every file forced installed to phone memory, leaving me back to square one, with just 22MB of free phone memory.

It should be noted, that I must of completely misunderstood the meaning of "Smart Installer", but nevertheless, this has been a good test of the latest build. Also worth noting, the complete lack of internal hardware of the N97 is not the WordPress Symbian Developer teams fault, nor is it their concern really to achieve a lower sized WordPress Installation package. Roll on for the N97 successor. I love the form-factor of my N97, and adore its qwerty, but each time I see the memory, it reminds me of a comment I read a while ago about the N97 looking like a Ferrari on the outside, but with a Mini Clubman 950cc engine on the inside. If you have read this post, and now reading this, thanks for your time, I will keep you, my readers up to speed on the latest developments of the Official Symbian client of WordPress.

Update from the WordPress Development for Nokia Blog, and its not good news for all us N97 owners.  It’s not possible to install the Qt libraries to Mass memory.  Read here for more.

 I have given my N97 its fair share of chances too.  Why have I given it so many chances?  I wanted to love it, I really did, I do love its form factor, but its now let me down once too often, and frankly, I’ve had enough now, and thought I would share a spooky experience i had earlier when my N97 started acting up.

Earlier today, I was connected to my White N97-1 with my Nokia BH-604 Bluetooth stereo headset, listening to my favorite tunes, when my N97 started becoming so slow, and laggy through the menu’s, it eventually froze on me, although it had continued to play my music, and this is where it gets real spooky,

Music player set to randomly choose songs as my default setting choice, after the freeze, music play stopped for around 30 seconds, I still kept my headset on, monitoring how long this freeze would take, my N97 decided to play Depeche Mode, "Tainted Love".  If you actually listen to the lyrics of this song, they can pretty well cover my feelings for my once loved N97, so much so, its uncanny.

Then the next song came started to play, a sign maybe? No kidding, the next song was "Forgiven, but not Forgotten" by the Cores. When my own Nokia shows me signs like this, what does one do?  I have already had to remove the battery twice today due freezes, and not wanting to go down the resetting, and formatting route again.  I have lost count at the times I have done this before, and its really once too often for me now.  I have given my N97 a damn good fair share of my patients, but with those running thin over the last few days, today was the final straw, and I have decided to sell it.  What will I get next I hear you ask?  We shall see.

It’s such a crying shame, it really is.  The form-factor of the N97 is amazing, with it’s hinge mechanism being one of beauty, and superb design, but a combination of stretching S60 5th Edition to Touch, an under powered CPU, tied with insufficient Phone Memory, and RAM, the N97 is like a Ferrari on the outside, but with an Austin Mini 950cc engine inside.

I have Forgiven Nokia for the sheer oversight of this flawed Flagship Nokia handset, the N97, but hell, I have not forgotten.  The sad thing is, I’m not alone in this thinking either, as I read almost daily on twitter from N97 owners who feel outdone, robbed, lead down the garden path, being sold something that clearly does not do as promised. (Take the Transitions of the widgets in the Original N97 Promotional video below for example).

Nokia have lost a lot of loyal followers during the N97 transition, with new firmware updates being released for the flagship, trying to fix something that cannot be fixed with no amount of firmware fixes, its flogging a dead horse.! 

This leads me to something that I would love Nokia to implement, and at least show the end uers, consumers, and Nokia fans that they do care about us, and offer some kind of discount on the next Nokia Flagship device, be it a Symbian^4, or MeeGo device, how difficult could it be to offer people a discount?  Not that difficult really in my opinion, all they would have to do, is ask for proof of purchase, which would be simple if purchased from Nokia directly.

Do you own/have owned an N97?  If you do/have, please share your experiences with it, and please let us know if you are/were a normal user, or a power user. 

Tell me what problems you have had with your N97, what lets you down the most with the device, what you love about it too would be useful to know. Please also share your experiences with any hardware related issues you have experienced too, camera lens scratches, poor GPS etc, and if you successfully got these repaired under warranty. 

So glad Nokia has already started to move to only using the MicroUSB on all their new devices now, and its also great news other manufactures following suit, bar a couple. So what will happen to all these redundant tips, connectors, and adapters I hear you ask? Well, don’t throw them away just yet, keep hold of them, as I’m pretty sure that soon there will be some kind of recycle option open for everyone, somewhere we can forward our redundant masses of connectors, and adapters, which will then possibly go onto third world, developing countries, where they will be using older devices for quite some time to come.

The X6 however I was very surprised to see a 2mm Charging socket though, but alas the N97 does have a Charge, and Sync MicroUSB port which was Announced, and in the market place before the X6, so what gives?  The E72, although that also comes with a 2mm Charging port, the E72 can charge via its MicroUSB port, so why the 2mm port too?

What is your opinion on the rollout of MicroUSB ports across all devices, no matter what brand.? Do you have any uses for these masses of adapters that will soon be rendered useless in your household?, will you be happy to recycle them to developing countries? Look forward to hearing from you.