Ah Apple, you jerks!  With all of your smug commercials about how much better your products are than Microsoft, you would think iTunes would be less annoying!  Nope!  Just when you thought you had a workable solution to an annoying problem, Apple goes and makes it even more annoying, all over again.  Doht!  Don't worry, thanks to the rockstar nerds of the world, there will always be new workable solutions.

*This is  a follow up to the previous article  addressing the same problem (1st gen iphone or ipod devices):
(http://www.onegiantmedia.com/how-to-get-music-off-an-ipod-or-iphone)

Problem:

How to get your music off your iPhone or iPod so that you may take the music to another computer- this may be necessary if you have an existing iPhone/iPod that was synced with one computer, and then:

• You get a new computer and want your music from your iPod / iPhone
• You have to reformat your hard drive and your only copy of your music is on the iPhone/iPod
• You want to bring your music to another computer via iPhone/iPod
• You want to merge your iTunes library from home with your iTunes library at work (new computer)
• You want to back up your entire device

The problem is, on the 2nd or new computer (not the original synced computer) iTunes will want to erase the device to sync up.  Lame!

Solution 1:  Copy all music off iPhone / iPod manually, reimport wherever you want

1)  Use alternate software (options listed below) to copy all of your music from your iPhone down onto your computer safely (see links below)
2) Let iTunes do it's annoying business (connect your device, activate your acct, sync/erase all of your music off the device)
3) Import all of your music that you manually saved to your computer back into itunes
4) Re-sync now that your entire library is in iTunes, getting it all back onto the device

Software Options:

There are many new software packages for purchase around $20, but there are still some free options too.

Wikipedia's list of Software - most can copy music off your iPod / iPhone:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_managers

Free software recommended (in wiki list):

• http://www.getsharepod.com/

Free software recommended (not in wiki list):

• http://i-funbox.com/

Pay software recommended (in wiki):

• http://www.copytrans.net/ (PC)
• http://www.podtopc.com/ (PC)
• http://www.podtomac.com/ (MAC)

Solution 2:  Hack itunes so that it will sync with both computers

You will need the original sync'd computer with itunes still on it to pull your registration key, then insert it manually into the new computer's itunes via hex editor.  It's easier than it sounds, just follow the instructions carefully.

Great article / instructions here:  

http://www.andrewgrant.org/2008/03/30/how-to-sync-an-iphone-with-two-or-more-computers.html

Note:  This is only if you want to use the same account on multiple computers, don't do this to a friend's computer or their itunes will be permanently on your account.  If you want to just share your whole library use steps 1 and 2 from Solution 1.

If you seem to have everything set up correctly with a Loader class instance, but there's just nothing happening... You probably made the same mistake I've made a number of times when coding a little too quickly:  attaching the event listeners to the Loader object itself, rather than your loader's property: .contentLoaderInfo - where all the information and events on loading status actually occur.

For example...

 The Common Wrong Way:

var myLoader:Loader = new Loader();
myLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoadComplete);
myLoader.load( new URLRequest("externalExampleImage.jpg") );

...and then you wonder why the event never fires, there is no error, and you know your image is there... doht!

The Right Way:

var myLoader:Loader = new Loader();
myLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onLoadComplete);
myLoader.load( new URLRequest("externalExampleImage.jpg") );

... works every time!

Adobe Documentation Reference:

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/display/LoaderInfo.html

This really, really annoying bug started popping up for me not too long ago when a co-worker created some reoccurring  event in outlook that I accepted as attending, and at some point she must have removed it incorrectly or something, because it would always come up as "Canceled:" but when I would try to dismiss or OK it... I would always get this error message prompt (every freakin' day!):

"Cannot turn off the reminder.  You may be reminded again.  Cannot locate recurrence information for this appointment"

Solutions:

1)  /cleanreminders

First, try launching Outlook.exe with the “/cleanreminders” command line argument:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE /cleanreminders

2) Use Microsoft utility MFCMAPI manually remove the entry (not hard at all)

If solution 1 does not work
Download MFCMAPI tool from http://support.microsoft.com/?ID=291794

1. Run MFCMAPI on the desktop

2. Go to Session->Logon and Display Store Table

3. Select your profile by name

4. Right click Mailbox and choose “Open Store”

5. Expand “Root Container”

6. Find & Right click “Reminders” and select “Open Contents Table”

7. New Window Launches with list of Reminders

8. Select only the reminder items that you want to remove, Right click and select “Delete Message”

9. Close MFCMAPI

Restart outlook- you should not have those annoying reminders any more.

This took forever to google for some reason...

Issue:

You want an input textbox to highlight everything in it when the user clicks it (on focus). Problem is, when the user clicks the text box places the carat, thus un-highlighting the text. I could be wrong, but the second problem seems to be that if you use the FocusEvent.FOCUS_IN event setting selection doesn't work, so you're forced to use MouseEvent.CLICK event... but if you highlight the entire box every time the user clicks, the user can't select any text because it always just highlights the entire box... also, once the box has been highlighted once, you want the user to be able to place the carat without re-selecting the entire box again.

Solution:

What you want to do is check if the user is highlighting or if the box was already highlighted since last focus, and if not, stop flash player from putting the carat at the location clicked with event.preventDefault() function, and then set selection from beginning to end. Event.preventDefault() is a sneaky little function you call right on the event object in your event handler, and it prevents whatever the default actions would be for that event (in this case, clear selected text and place carat)

as3 code example:

// assuming you have a textbox input called _myTextInputBox

import flash.events.FocusEvent;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.text.TextField;

_myTextInputBox.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onClickTextBox);
_myTextInputBox.addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_OUT, onTextBoxLoseFocus);

var _highlightTextOnClick:Boolean = true;

function onClickTextBox(e:Event):void {

  var didUserHighlight:Boolean = Boolean(e.target.selectionBeginIndex != e.target.selectionEndIndex);
			
  if ( _highlightTextOnClick && !didUserHighlight)  {
    e.preventDefault();
    e.target.setSelection(0, e.target.text.length);
    _highlightTextOnClick = false;
  }

}

function onTextBoxLoseFocus(e:FocusEvent):void 
{
  _highlightTextOnClick = true;
}