I wrote earlier what I believed to be a personal fix to the iTunes sync-crashing issue that has plagued thousands of iPod and iPhone users in the last four days. Today, Apple sent me an email detailing the issue and their suggestion on how to fix it, and it looks very similar to what I posted two days ago:

Dear Customer,

Recently, we uncovered an issue which was causing iTunes to unexpectedly quit when synced with an iPod or an iPhone. This issue impacted a small number of users, and we have identified your account as potentially being affected.

If you have experienced this issue, please follow these steps in order to sync your iPod or iPhone with iTunes:

1. Launch iTunes
2. Select “Deauthorize Computer” from the Store menu
3. Enter your iTunes Store Account ID and Password, then click the Deauthorize button
4. Next, choose “Authorize Computer” from the Store menu
5. Enter your iTunes Store Account ID and Password, then click the Authorize button

Once you have successfully deauthorized and reauthorized your computer, you should be able to sync your iPod or iPhone to iTunes.

I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced as a result of this issue.

Thank you for being an iTunes Store customer.

iTunes Store Team
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/ww/

So, as you can see from my previous post, I was having a heck of a time fixing my RSS feed. I consider a RSS feed very vital and if there’s something wrong with mine, I needed it fixed ASAP. I could not find anything after googling “Wordpress RSS feed issues”.

So what I finally realized, after looking at my feed’s XML source file and validating it with Feed Validator, I noticed the error was part of a plugin I use called Wassup. Wassup is a plugin for Wordpress blogs that allows you to see your visitors.

I deactivated the Wassup plugin and miraculously everything worked in my RSS feed. It began updating again, I could view my RSS feed on IE 7, FF 2 and 3 and Safari! It was amazing.

So, my fellow bloggers who used Wordpress, when in doubt, deactivate your plugins.

There’s a saying in the tech world that says something like this: “If something doesn’t work, wait till tomorrow and it’ll be fixed.” Well, I’m not sure who said that, but it’s true.

As you read in my very frustrated post yesterday, I upgraded Leopard 10.5 to the latest upgrade, 10.5.3. Whenever I did that, my Time Machine stopped backing up wirelessly to my external HD connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station. There was no reason why, to my knowledge. It just wouldn’t work. I tried everything, read every forum and even wrote several frustrating posts on TUAW, Macworld and even Apple.

Earlier this afternoon, I decided to literally unplug my WD Book external HD from my AEBS. I then plugged my WD Book via firewire directly to my Macbook and did a complete format (erasing every backup I’ve done for 4 months) and then I repaired all of my permissions on my Macbook HD (not my external HD, but my Macbook HD). I then went into Airport Setup and re-created my entire wireless network (simply started from the beginning). I reset my Airport Extreme Base Station, re-connected my WD Book to it and then rebooted my Mac.

Low and behold I went into Time Machine and hit “BackUp Now.” It still gave me the error “The backup volume could not be mounted.” Ugh, I was SO frustrated. So I then went into Finder, disconnected my WD Book HD (ejected it) and then went back to Time Machine and hit “BackUp Now.” IT WORKED! It began backing up wirelessly! What in the heck???

So I waited for about 2 hours for it to backup my entire Macbook. I then restarted my Macbook thinking it would surely not work again. And as I type, I’m on my third backup via Time Machine (wirelessly to my WD Book!) Woo hoo! It’s back to working again.

So what’s the fix? I have no idea… truly. But for those thousands of you frustrated with the same issue, try to do exactly what I did and see if it works.

Please leave a comment letting me know!

For weeks now, I’ve been wishing and hoping I could find a way to get the Woopra desktop client installed on my Macbook. As most of you know, you have to have version 1.6 Java Virtual Machine to run Woopra. Well, last night, I figured it out!

For those who don’t know what Woopra is, feel free to click here to learn more.

While I was researching other websites that explained how to install Woopra on a Mac, everything that I was reading was still not allowing it to work on mine. I then came across a wonderful website that provided an additional step and voila: it works!

From my understanding, this only works on Intel Macs running Tiger or Leopard!!!

Please feel free to add a comment or email me if these instructions do not make sense.

(1) Download the Woopra Desktop Client here. Once you’ve downloaded it, COPY THE INSTALL IMAGE TO YOUR DESKTOP (in other words, copy the .dmg file to your computer). After you’ve copied this to your desktop, right-click your mouse on the Woopra Install image. You will then click on “Show Package Contents”. Open the file under the contents folder titled Info.plist. In your text-editor, you will need to change the following:

Under the line <key>JVMVersion</key> change “<string>1.3+</string>” to “<string>1.6+</string>” (w/o the parenthesis)

Once you’ve changed this key, save the Info.plist and you’re done with that (for now). DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INSTALL WOOPRA JUST YET. THERE’S MORE TO DO.

(2) As of yesterday, you can download the correct Java version directly from Apple – it’s super easy. Go here to download the file. (I was just informed of this today, after I already installed Woopra. I guess Apple just released the version of Java that we’ve been needing for Woopra yesterday.)

(4) Install the new Java software. After you install, though, there’s one more step (this is where I kept getting caught up). You have to tell your Mac to begin using this version of Java rather than the other, previously installed versions of Java OR Woopra will not install correctly and you’ll get errors. To do this, on your Mac, go to Applications->Utilities->Java->Java Preferences.

(5) On the General tab, under Java Applet Runtime Settings, select “Java SE 6″. You will then re-arrange the list of Java versions so that Java SE 6 is the top item. Click Save. I PERSONALLY REBOOTED MY MACBOOK BEFORE I COMPLETED STEP #6!!!

(6) Now, you should be able to install Woopra on your Mac. It worked just fine for me! I’d love to hear your comments and let me know if this helped you!

Feel free to leave a comment below if you need help or email me here.