akselvoll.net

Pac-man

2012-01-30T16:18:00.000+01:00

For details on how I made this photo, see my Google+ post.

Syncronize Lightroom presets across computers (PC and Mac) using SpiderOak

2011-12-29T19:25:00.001+01:00

Disclaimer: This post uses an affiliate link to SpiderOak. If you sign up to a free account using any link in this post, both of us will receive one additional gigabyte of free space. If you prefer not to use this link, go directly to spideroak.com.

Disclaimer 2: I accept no responsibility for lost or cluttered presets if you follow this procedure. It worked well for me but I do not charge you for my advice and you do not yell at me if they don’t work for you. Please post a comment if you encounter problems and I will try to update the guide.

Why should I?

If you own a license to Adobe Lightroom you are entitled to use it on two computers, for example your main workstation and your laptop, as long as the software is only used on one computer at a time (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/faq/). This can be useful to e.g. process photos while traveling. Also note that these computers may use different operating systems, Windows or OS X, as is my case. Other web sites will teach you how to conveniently move photos and meta data back and forth between computers.

However, if you have invested any time in making or acquiring Lightroom presets, you will probably miss some of those presets when not working on your main computer. This blog post explains an automated and free way to always have your presets synchronized between two or more computers. You set it up once and, hopefully, forget about it.

SpiderOak

So, my take on this is to use SpiderOak. This is a free program and service that allows you to automatically back up files on your computer to the cloud (SpiderOak’s servers) whenever they are edited. In this manner it is similar to e.g. Mozy or Carbonite. However, SpiderOak also offers a very flexible sync feature. After two folders from different computers have been backed up to the cloud, you can set up a sync relationship between them, meaning that the contents from each computer will be merged and any changes in the future will be mirrored. This is similar to yet much more feature rich (and less user friendly) than DropBox.

Also note that SpiderOak has very strong security compared to most cloud services, where your data will at no point be available to the company hosting it, not even if supenad etc. I say this being a computer engineer, having read carefully their documentation.

So, if you haven’t already, sign up to SpiderOak and set it up on your computers.

Where are my Lightroom presets stored?

Lightroom presets are individual files stored on disk. You can actually open a preset file in a text editor to get a pretty clear view of what it does. More on that in other corners on the web. To see where any preset is stored, right click it and select Show in Explorer (or Show in Finder on a Mac) and a file browser will open.

Go up two directories, and you will get to a directory looking like this:

Windows: C:\Users\Magnus\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom
OS X: /Users/magnus/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

(where Magnus will of course be your own username)

I will now explain how to synchronize those folders between two computers and, in effect, synchronize all your Lightroom presets.

Back up presets

Now, open the SpiderOak application and go to the Back up tab. Click the check box next to the directory shown in the last paragraph and click Save.

Note that if on Windows, you probably have to click the button Hide/Show Hidden Folders/Files.

When you have finished setting up the backup, go to the Status tab and wait for the initial backup to finish. This should usually just take a couple of minutes as you won’t have much data in there.

Now, repeat the process on your other computer.

Set up synchronization

Now, if you have managed to back up the preset folders from both computers, you are ready to configure synchronization. Go to the Sync tab in SpiderOak and click New. Give the sync relationship a suitable name such as lightroom-presets and click Next. In this window you are now prompted to select two already backed up folders that you want to synchronize. Please browse to the two folders as shown in the screenshot.

Note that this example shows a cross-platform setup. Now click Next in the next two screens, accepting the default choices and finally click Start Sync. Go to the tab Status and wait till the sync finishes.

Shortly the sync should also run on the other computer and, given that you have setup SpiderOak to automatically launch on OS startup (available under Preferences), your presets will now automatically be synchronized.

Using synchronized presets

This is the easy part. You should now, after restarting Lightroom, see a complete set of presets on both computers. If you edit, add or delete presets on any of the two, the changes will be quickly replicated on the others.

Questions or comments?

If you have anything to add, please use the comment field below. Thank you for your attention.

Puerto de Málaga #1

2011-07-25T10:17:00.002+02:00

Puerto de Málaga #1, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

I love reflections. This shot of La Malagueta was taken from the new promenade in the Málaga port. Next time I will bring a tripod.

My friend the monster

2011-06-24T17:26:00.001+02:00

My friend the monster, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

Bells on blue

2011-06-02T13:52:00.001+02:00

Bells on blue, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

Cliché

2011-05-20T17:32:00.001+02:00

Cliché, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

Stolen

2011-05-18T16:11:00.001+02:00

Stolen, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

Who is evil?

2011-03-23T08:28:00.002+01:00

Poster for the SMS service

EMT, the public company running the buses in Málaga, has a nice SMS service for knowing when the next bus will arrive at a given stop (this is important since there is no time table). I think each SMS costs 0,30 €. However, the same service is available for free on their (next to unusable) web page. I have deep links to this web page on my phone for the stops I frequent, thus eliminating the cost since I have a flat rate Internet plan.

Sadly, this is no longer working. For about a month or two, any request to www.emtmalaga.es over the 3G network time out. The same urls, from the same iPhone but over wifi work perfectly.

So, is this an error or is someone doing evil to protect their premium SMS service? Movistar? EMT? Look straight into my eyes and tell me you didn't do it!

Hello CrashPlan+

2011-03-02T22:50:00.001+01:00

As I mentioned in a previous blog post I was forced to change provider for my online backup due to the hideous price increases Mozy recently announced. I spent some time in the original blog post to summarize some of the alternatives for customers leaving Mozy. My migration has now ended and I figured I should share my conclusions.

My initial favorite was Backblaze, due to their straight forward explanation to how they can profit on selling unlimited backup as well as recommendations from some people I trust. I signed up for their trial and decided that they were not for me. The reason for this was that their software is very focused towards backing up everything on your computer. They have some built in folder exceptions (like the OS and programs folders) and allow you to add more folders to this “blacklist” but don’t show clearly how much space each folder (or exception) represents. I have a fairly poor quality internet line (realistically 0.5 Mbit upload) and therefore want to be quite strict with what I back up online or not. Had I been on a better line I might have stayed with Backblaze but for now I will put them on my watch list for next year to see if their software develop in the direction I would like.

My second alternative was CrashPlan+. They attracted me due to their combination of cloud and local backup (a feature I really liked in Mozy). I bought their one year plan (trusting their money back guarantee) and have been quite happy. It probably took around three weeks to get my 90GB up in the cloud (RAW images are big), but now it is all there. CrashPlan+ has a nice software client that lets you specifically choose what to back up. In addition I like the option to add exceptions to this, to be able to eliminate cache and temp folders etc. I think Mozy was better at suggesting a default backup set than CrashPlan+, but after some tweaking I have managed to make it work fine.

In the midst of my CrashPlan+ testing, another contender presented itself. I was lucky enough to win a free year of backup from LiveDrive after having tweeted about them. I installed their software on a virtual machine to test it out (to not interfere with my current CrashPlan upload) and found their software ok. However, LiveDrive does not offer encryption with a custom key, making it a no go for me. It is not that I don’t trust LiveDrive nor have data of special importance, but I don’t want to become an offer for future data leaks due to bad standards, rough employees etc. So I ended up using my free year on a secondary system and stuck with CrashPlan+ as my final choice for the next year.

I hope that it continues to be worthwhile for online backup providers to back up my sub 100GB data for around $ 50 per year and that Mozy’s fall will not be the start of a Domino effect. And specifically I hope that CrashPlan+ offers a service they can profit on and continue to develop, as I generally am happy with them. (I tested them a few years ago and lots has improved.) Feel free to use the comment field or twitter to share your views on the general situation or any of the providers in specific.

Oh, and as to Mozy? They paid back the proportional part of the time I had left when telling them I wanted to cancel. No questions asked.

Abandoned

2011-02-25T18:51:00.001+01:00

Abandoned, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

Found on a plot of land next to a hospital. Was he a gift not appreciated or was he never delivered?

Bye bye Mozy

2011-02-02T09:05:00.006+01:00

Update 2011-03-02: I have chosen my substitute for Mozy.

Disclaimer: I have no personal interest in any of the sites listed below, nor am I using any personal referral links etc. to gain personal advantages.

Mozy just announced that they will discontinue their unlimited backup plan in favor of tiered plans. The big failure here is that it will be more expensive for everyone (except for some multi-computer plans). Even the lowest tier will be 20% more expensive than the current plan.
For me the price increase would be 100%. I say would, because like many users I will cancel my Mozy account before ever paying what they want me to pay.
Luckily, Mozy has competitors, and a few of these are taking advantage of the situation and making special offers for Mozy users that wish to migrate. In the table below I list some of the alternatives to Mozy, their prices and any special coupons you may use. I don’t have direct experience with all of these, but will keep you posted when I finally migrate to one.

	Storage	Price per year	Coupons	Comments
Backblaze	Unlimited	$ 50	10% by using coupon: byemozy
Carbonite	Unlimited	$ 54.95	Several podcasts offer 2 free months	Bandwidth is reduced for customers backing up more than 200 GB. I have personally tried Carbonite and do not like their software client.
CrashPlan+ Unlimited	Unlimited	$ 49.99	15% Mozy Switcher Discount	Additional savings signing up for multiple years. Offers local backup and backup to other computers at no cost.
DropBox	100 GB	$ 239.88		Complete sync platform (not just backup). Other tiers available. I love DropBox but find it a bit expensive to use for my backup.
JungleDisk	100 GB	$ 207		Priced per GB actually used, i.e. after compression. The price is just an example. I use JungleDisk at work and consider it to be of very high quality.
LiveDrive	Unlimited	$ 45.20	25% lifetime off for Mozy users
SafeCopy	200 GB	$ 50	10 % off using coupon: switch	300 GB available for $ 70
SugarSync	100 GB	$ 149.99	33% off first year	Complete sync platform (not just backup). Other tiers available.

I will probably try either Backblaze or CrashPlan+ as soon as I get around to it. According to Mozy “Refunds on multi-period plans (i.e. annual and biennial plans) may be granted” so I will probably not wait until my year ends in June to do this migration. I feel like telling Mozy how I feel about their new price plans as soon as possible.
Please use the comments if you have anything to add.
Edit 2011-02-02 13:23: Added LiveDrive
Edit 2011-02-02 16:52: Added SafeCopy

Blackbird

2010-12-09T09:06:00.001+01:00

Blackbird, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

Flashy me

2010-08-11T18:12:00.001+02:00

Flashy me, originally uploaded by Magnus A..

Puzzled path

2010-06-28T09:18:00.002+02:00

This morning, just by my house on my way to work, I walked by this puzzle, shattered all over a crosswalk.

The photos have been taken and edited with the application Camera+ on an iPhone 3GS. Scenes: Auto. Borders: Grit.

My experience with Fon.com

2010-02-25T23:52:00.005+01:00

After joining late in a discussion with Martin Varsavsky about the quality of the router Fonera2.0n from Fon.com I have decided to sum up my experiences with the company here. This is not flaming, I am trying to respond to specific questions from Mr. Varsavsky.

1st gen Fonera
My experience started when I bought a 1st gen Fonera with an external antenna from the company because I needed a WLAN router at home (the one from my ISP was crap) and there was a big discount on the Fonera at the time. I was mostly disappointed, for three reasons:

Nobody ever connected to my router, which was kind of demotivating
I never found any Fon networks in the streets to use
It had serious incompatibility problems with my Nokia phone, reputedly because it muxed to SSIDs over the same radio (and because Nokia phones while popular are crap)

Fonera 2.0n

When one day my Fonera stopped working (power light blinking), I contacted customer support and described the problem. They said the problem was unknown and kindly agreed to my suggestion to give me a discount on the newly released 2.0n version.

At first I was happy with the router, for it's application support, hoping that this was only the beginning of a rapidly evolving eco system. However, when getting an iPhone my experience with WLAN at home was not very good. Network applications would be slow or time out, but I was sure this was a problem with my internet line.

Then one day I fired up the laptop (which I don't use often) and noticed that it had seriously worse network performance than my wired computer. I ran some ping tests and discovered that it actually lost quite a large amount of packets.

Having recently switched ISP to Jazztel, I activated the WLAN on the router they had given me and got perfect network connectivity both on the iPhone and the laptop.

Since that, my Fonera has not been used for WLAN, and there are still no new applications available for it.

Why did I not contact customer care?

First of all, after poking around on the net I found that the router had had an RC version of new firmware published and pulled. I reckoned that I should try this FW, and decided to wait. I really wanted it for other reasons as well, such as extended app support and VPN.

Later I also saw on the Fon blog that the iPhone 3GS connection issues were known. More reason to wait for the firmware.

Here we are, 3 months later, and there is really no news except a posting on the blog saying nothing but vague statements such as "seing some progress", "plan to get some of you involved" and "stay tuned, we are moving little by little". All this is telling me is that a final version of the software is still far away.

The version of the software that would make the product compatible with some of the worlds most popular WLAN clients...

The bigger problem

My analysis of all of this is that Fon.com has a fundamental problem. The company is all about making a Wifi community and seem truly committed to getting the word out. The charismatic CEO is a great social communicator and deserves credit for engaging with his customers directly on his blog and twitter, allowing and even participating in, at times, very damaging comments regarding his company.

The way I see it, however, is that they have not been able to build a developer community. Word has it that there is only one developer working on the firmware. The Fonera 2.0n promised a lot of apps, but there is nothing new available.

I think the company must staff up on their firmware team and try to partner with open source communities, such as the people behind the Tomato firmware or OpenWrt. Furthermore they must work hard on making it easy for third party developers to build and deploy apps for the device. The way it is now, you need to invest a lot of time in learning the fairly complicated development environment and, until there is new firmware, have no way to get it deployed.

And, if you suspect the product has been abandoned, who would really do that?

I hope you read this far, Mr Varsavsky, if you want any further info, feel free to contact me through twitter, mail or comments.

Take off the UV filter for long night exposures

2010-02-22T00:32:00.002+01:00

When you take long exposure shots at night with a UV filter (or other flat filter) on the lens, strong light sources such as the moon may reflect off some flat glass inside your lens or even off the glass on your sensor inside your camera, bounce back to the backside of your UV filter and reflect back in to the sensor and leave a ghost image in your shot.

This is not one of those faint theories that might affect something no one really sees, this really destroys your shot. Just look at the image below.

After removing the UV filter the shot came out like this. Still not a great shot, but at least that is not the equipment's fault.

Integrate Spotify into Last.fm in Google Chrome

2010-02-22T00:26:00.001+01:00

Some time ago I wrote about how to integrate Spotify into Last.fm in Firefox.

In Google Chrome it is a lot easier, at least if you run a version with extensions enabled (4.0).

Click this link: http://emil.hesslow.se/spotify/spotify__lastfm.user.js

Note the little green notes you now get next to artists, albums etc.

Avajo

2010-01-09T17:07:00.002+01:00

The one thing missing from Photoshop is orthografic correction (abajo is written with a b, not v).

Install EOS software upgrades without CD (32 bit systems)

2009-09-06T13:02:00.001+02:00

I recently posted a recipe for how to install EOS software upgrades without the CD on 64 bit systems. For completeness sake, I will also post the recipe for 32 bit systems. Please note that I haven’t tested this. I would therefore appreciate if you could use the comment feature and let me know whether this works or not.

Paste the following into notepad and save as canon.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\EOS Utility]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\DPP]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX\Settings]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX\Install]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\PhotoStitch
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\EOS Capture]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\EOSViewerUtility]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Canon\ODSK]

Then right click the file and select Merge. You should now be able top install the upgrades on a clean system.

PhotoRescue v3.1: Recommended tool for rescuing Canon RAW files

2009-08-30T14:32:00.004+02:00

I recently managed to delete a folder of very important photos before they were backed up (to Mozy). Believing that the contents was backed up I formatted the card (high-level, camera format) and put it in my camera bag for use. When I discovered the disaster there was no way of undeleting or rescuing the files off the hard drive. In despair I tried rescuing them off the formatted card (which had luckily not been used).

In summary, using PhotoRescue Wizard 3.1 from DataRescue, I managed to rescue all the files (Canon EOS 450D CR2 RAW format) perfectly. The program lets you test if it can recover before you pay (29 USD) and is highly recommended.

I also got to test support since my card transaction was slow and they helped me swiftly. One tip though. DataRescue lets you choose between two e-commerce providers. My anecdotal evidence suggests you should use Kagi.

Install EOS software upgrades without CD (64 bit systems)

2009-08-30T14:22:00.002+02:00

Edit: For 32 bit systems, please go here. If you don’t know what system type you have, please refer to this page.

Note: I own an EOS camera and possess the CD. This is only an easier and cleaner way to install the software after an OS reinstall.

Paste the following into notepad and save as canon.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\EOS Utility]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\DPP]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX\Settings]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\ZoomBrowser EX\Install]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\PhotoStitch
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\EOS Capture]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\EOSViewerUtility]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Canon\ODSK]

Then right click the file and select Merge. You should now be able top install the upgrades on a clean system.

A few more spotify invites

2009-07-01T08:58:00.001+02:00

I might never post to my blog, but at least I post all my spotify invites. :-)

Grab whatever you need:

B2hjaV8ajZhqT7hH
6Bx4F8ekP6Kbbh3P
D77bJWMfZdDH6Kc9
T9aiRVxcNgfxEs4A
XbZCPcx8t5MBhy7q
eC46Hz3Gxxg9nsz2
G6HZP2wfqtMAWUeR
eY5s9sxHU458Tcmf
VX9wS7teuPJ2kNhz

Even more Spotify invites

2009-05-03T19:35:00.005+02:00

The last ten invites I posted for access to the Spotify.com beta have all been used. Should you still need an invite, here go ten more: [Edit: All invites have been taken. More to come]

Successful migration from Wordpress to Blogger and Google Apps

2009-04-19T18:15:00.002+02:00

Introduction

The following path outlines my successful migration from a custom hosted wordpress blog (not on wordpress.com) to a blog on Blogger and E-mail on Google Apps.

The reason to do this migration was that my old hosting was slow and unreliable, and I wanted a maintenance free and cheap hosting solution for both blog and e-mail. Google’s solutions were chosen over e.g. corresponding Microsoft Live products, mostly due to the excellent webmail interface Gmail offers.

The examples below use akselvoll.net, this domain, as example.

Starting point

Domain (akselvoll.net) registered with Godaddy.com
- Generally satisfied
E-mail and webhosting with dream-hosting.co.uk
- Extremely cheap (9,99 GPB / year) but very unreliable (downtime several times per week)
- cPanel based hosting (11.24.4-RELEASE) – very flexible but mostly untouched
- Wordpress (2.7.1)
- Approximately ten e-mail forwards (no hosted e-mail)

Goal

In general, keep current domain registrar and move all other hosting to managed services (SaaS) to minimize configuration and management time, while at the same time increasing security and availability.

All content should be migrated to the new platform (although new URLs for blog entries was expected).

Chosen applications:

Godaddy as domain registrar and for DNS
Blogger for weblog hosting
Google Apps for mail forwarding and optionally (on a user to user basis) as primary mail account.

Step 1: DNS migration

DNS is probably set to a server controlled by the old web host. First step is to enter Godaddy Domain Manager and choose “Hosting nameservers”. Shortly thereafter (a couple of minutes) “Total DNS Control and MX Records” will be available. Enter the following settings to temporarily replicate the old hosting:

Record type	Host	To	TTL	Comments
A	@	<OLD ID>	1/2 hour	Root of domain (akselvoll.net) to old hosting
CNAME	www	akselvoll.net	1/ 2 hour	Pointing www.akselvoll.net to akselvoll.net
MX (priority 0)	@	akselvoll.net	1/2 hour	Sending mail to old hosting

All other default Godaddy entries should be deleted.

Note that now the DNS server had been switched. The only downtime would be for clients running NSLookup in the timespan from changing DNS servers until the servers are properly configured.

Also note that all TTL’s are set to the minimum value (1/2 hour) to be able to switch over to the new services later as quickly as possible, minimizing DNS propagation time.

Step 2: Blog migration

Create a new blog on Blogger, using default settings for most choices. Then migrate contents from the Wordpress blog using the tool blogsync-java. A couple of tips and remarks regarding this process:

The complete JDK from Sun seems to be necessary to run this tool.
Edit the run.bat file of blogsync to reflect your jdk installation path (the second to last line?)
Important: Settings are not properly saved in blogsync. Enter your wordpress and blogger logins, press save and then exit and reopen the application, before you try to run it.
Blogger seems to limit the number of items you can create automatically per day. In my case I hit this limit when three posts remained, and I simply migrated those (copy/paste) manually.
Wordpress hosted images are not properly migrated. You need to download those and upload to blogger and fix your posts manually.
Comments are not migrated.

Step 3: Taking the new blog live

I took the blog live before Google Apps, because several posts on the internet indicated that the opposite would not work. Most of those posts were rather old, though, so I don’t know if this is still an issue.

When the blog is more or less ready, set it up to be reached through the domain url. This is done by following the instructions in the Publishing settings in Blogger. Important: To work correctly with Godaddy DNS, set up www.akselvoll.net as the publishing URL, not akselvoll.net. This redirect will be set up later. The reason for this is that if you set up a CNAME for the root of your domain in Godaddy (and possibly other DNS servers), this will also redirect your MX lookups, and thus disable your email.

The resulting DNS setting in Godaddy are as follows:

Record type	Host	To	TTL
CNAME	www	ghs.google.com	1/2 hour

Note that a short TTL is used on all DNS settings until the setup is testing and working, to limit the duration of any errors (and yes, I had some, not documented here :)).

The blog is now live on the url www.akselvoll.net. Next step is to set it up to respond on akselvoll.net as well.

Step 4: Setting up redirection from root of domain

To set up proper redirection from akselvoll.net to www.akselvoll.net, Godaddy’s own mechanism is used, to circumvent the above mentioned CNAME / MX problem.

Instructions, as obtained through tech support, are as follows. Set up an A record from the root of your domain to Godaddy’s forwarder IP, “64.202.189.170”. Then use the “Forwarding” options available in the Domain Manager, and forward to http://www.akselvoll.net [Edit: Do not include a trailing slash (/) in the forward URL as this may give you double slashes and HTTP 400 Bad Request errors.] I chose to use “301 Moved Permanently” for desired search engine indexing, convinced by this page.

The DNS setting is as follows:

Record type	Host	To	TTL
A	@	64.202.189.170	1/2 hour

Step 5: Testing before mail migration

Now is a good time to test that your blog is live on www.akselvoll.net and akselvoll.net. You should also test that e-mail is still delivered to the old account.

If you have problem accessing through the new URL, this may be due to DNS propagation. I recommend using http://www.network-tools.com/ for checking the DNS records, and http://www.hidemyass.com/ for accessing your site easily through a proxy.

Step 6: Signing up for Google Apps

Sign up for Google Apps Standard Edition here. Follow the instructions for setting up the domain and e-mail, but choose to set up domain later when asked. The reason for this is that you want to configure any e-mail redirections before you start receiving mail.

When your Google Apps account is working, configure an email account for each user that needs either a mail account or forwarding. Note, though, that you can create several aliases per user, in case you want to forward several addresses to the same destination. (There is no forwarding without an account.)

To set up forwarding, log on to each of the accounts, enter Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Enable the forward option, enter the email address to forward to and choose whether you want to leave forwarded mail on the current account or not.

Step 7: Start receiving email on Google Apps

Enter e-mail settings in your Google Apps account, and select the option for activating e-mail. This should be fairly straight forward, and your DNS settings should be similar to the ones shown below:

Record type	Host	To	TTL
MX (priority 10)	@	aspmx.l.google.com.	1/2 hour
MX (priority 20)	@	alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.	1/2 hour
MX (priority 30)	@	alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.	1/2 hour
MX (priority 40)	@	aspmx2.googlemail.com.	1/2 hour
MX (priority 50)	@	aspmx3.googlemail.com.	1/2 hour

I’m unsure to whether the trailing dots are necessary, but this is how Google instructs and it is working. Also note that I still choose to set TTL to 1/2 hour, in case anything is incorrect.

Step 8: Test email

You should now test that email is properly received / forwarded on Google Apps. It is also wise to double check your blog (with and without www) at this time.

Step 9: Increase TTL on DNS records

If you now feel sure that email and blog is correctly set up, you should increase the TTL on all DNS records, to improve caching and performance. I recommend setting all records to 1 Day or 1 Week. If you later plan to do any changes, this is the maximum time that your DNS records will be kept in any cache. Prior to doing any later changes, you should reduce them all to 1/2 hour again, and then wait for a few days, to be able to move quickly.

Step 10: Set up and an SPF record

To ensure that your outgoing Google Apps mail is not marked as spam, you should set up an SPF record. Google Apps provide instructions for this; in short you should set up the following SPF record: “v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all”.

To do this in Godaddy total DNS is easy yet not intuitive.

Click “Add new SPF record” in the total DNS control.
Choose “an ISP or other mail provider” and click OK.
Click the tab “Outsourced” and enter "aspmx.googlemail.com” in the textbox. Leave “Exclude all hosts not specified here ( -all )” unchecked and click OK.

This should give you a DNS record as shown below:

Record type	Host	To	TTL
TXT	@	v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all	1 Day

To test your SPF record, the easiest way is to send an email to check-auth@verifier.port25.com. You should shortly after receive an authorization report to your email, hopefully with SPF: pass. If this does not work, Google for other ways to test SPF.

Step 11: Migrate mail

If you plan on using mail accounts on your domain (not just forwarding), you should look into Settings –> Accounts on your mail account. To migrate from Gmail the procedure is as follows:

Enter your (old) Gmail account, select Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP and enable POP for all mail.
Enter your (new) Google Apps account, select Settings –> Accounts and click “Add a mail account you own”.
Enter your Gmail address, and accept all default values. Enter your password and click ok.
Respond to whether you want to be able to send outgoing mail from that address and, if so, follow the instructions.

The whole migrate process can take a couple of days. When this is done, I recommend disabling the account in your Google Apps, and simply set up forwarding from the Gmail account.

Conclusion

You should now have moved your mail and blog to free Google services, hopefully without much downtime. If you have any questions, please comment to this article or mail me (if you can guess my address :)).

More Spotify invites

2009-04-16T18:25:00.007+02:00

Edit: All invites have been taken. More will be posted soon

I recently posted six Spotify invites. I have now gotten ten more, so here they go.

~~6iJyN7iuumy3CfqK~~

~~Xq2GYFhy4YKAVSUi~~

~~JSBPn9PUpJ6p2xAR~~

~~9wUTSLbMw5MBSn52~~

~~7dNLtfHz6uHNXgUT~~

~~w8mzwtMP3M4hBqtG~~

~~xf7ENKwVb5kGFCzh~~

~~8ukpnqwNMi7PCbH7~~

~~gpzVwRWEhwKG2DEY~~

~~3YBBe2FMw5SYeqMj~~

If the first one doesn’t work, try the second one etc. (And feel free to tell which are taken or even post more in the comments).