The easiest way I came up with was to use Vista’s “Windows Contacts” as a gateway.

• Sync your Treo with the Palm Desktop.
• Export contacts from the Palm Desktop as a CSV file, keeping track of the exported columns and names (yuck).
  • After exporting, I had to open the CSV file and remove all question marks in the contact names before the next step would work (doh).
  • After discovering that most carriers require you to dial 10 digits these days, I did a regex replace to add my area code to all 7-digit phone numbers.
• Import into Windows Contacts, adjusting the mapping using the list of fields from the export (yuck).
• Open iTunes and connect your iPhone.
• Click on the Device, and select the Info tab.
• Scroll down to the Contacts section, and select [x] Sync contacts with Windows Contacts.
• Sync up! iTunes will warn you if you’re trying to import a lot of contacts.
• I turned off the Windows Contacts sync after the import, I won’t be using it.

Wow, now I have a whole bunch of crappy old contacts in my iPhone, yay! :> At least Windows Contacts managed to remove duplicates, something I could never accomplish with my Palm/kpilot/etc. syncing.

The WordPress iPhone app is, as are all things Automattic, a beautiful elegant thing. Posts can now fly like pigs with wings (as soon as I learn to type). And my iPhone apps are on the way…

I now have a shiny new RoundCube 0.3 install, thanks gentoo! And I bumped up the server with an [emerge -Davu world] as well. A glorious new day. :>

The gory details follow. (continued…)

Ordered and received…

• Macbook Pro 17″ with 3.08GHz, 500GB-7200RPM, anti-glare-screen
• iPod Touch 8GB
• OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

Next I’ll get…

• iPhone 3GS

Here are all the notes on setting these puppy dogs up… (continued…)

There is only one way I know of to get free functional legitimate SSL encryption for your web server, and that’s through StartCom’s StartSSL service. You can get a free “class 1” certificate that will work out of the box in Firefox and Safari. Microsoft hasn’t added StartCom to IE, so people browsing to your site will have to specifically add StartCom’s authority certificate (instructions) (or ignore security warnings).

UPDATE: I am told as of Sept ’09, IE will include StartCom, yay! See comments for more…

Every year I have to renew my websites’ certificates, and the process is a bit clunky. Here’s a summary for next time around…

• Sign up at the site; they will issue an [S/MIME client certificate] and “install it into your browser”; make sure you keep the stupid thing backed up, it’s the ONLY WAY BACK IN to your account! Here are backup instructions from their FAQ:

  Firefox: Select "Preferences" -> "Advanced" -> "Encryption" -> "View Certificates -> Your Certificates" and locate your certificate from the list. The certificate will be listed under StartCom Ltd. with "StartCom Free Certificate Member" as its name if this is your first one. Select the certificate and click on "Backup", choose a name for this backup file, provide a password and save it at a known location. Now you should either burn this file to a CD ROM or save it on a USB stick or smart card. Thereafter delete this file from your computer.

• Every year, request to renew your S/MIME client certificate, as it expires; back it up to a safe place
• Request to renew your domain certificate; provide a password; an ssl.key is generated
• Use openssl to create a no-password key:
  openssl rsa -in ssl.key.passphrase -out ssl.key.nopassphrase
• Grab the official StartCom certificates from https://www.startssl.com/certs/
  sub.class1.server.ca.pem
  ca.pem
• WAIT for confirmation of your certificate (you’ll get an email)
• Return to the website, log in, go to Tool Box -> Retrieve Certificate, save as ssl.crt
• Set up apache to use ’em!

  
      SSLEngine on
      SSLCertificateFile /path_to_certs/2009-2010/ssl.crt
      SSLCertificateKeyFile /path_to_certs/2009-2010/ssl.key
      SSLCertificateChainFile /path_to_certs/2009-2010/sub.class1.server.ca.pem
      SSLCACertificateFile /path_to_certs/2009-2010/ca.pem
  

That’s the basics but it should be enough to help me through annual renewal. *sigh*…