When the iPhone 3.0 software was announced earlier this year I was excited to hear about the Find My iPhone feature. I've been a MobileMe subscriber since it launched alongside the original iPhone and the prospect of finding my iPhone if it were lost was intriguing.

In order to use the feature you first turn enable it on your iPhone, which must be running iPhone software version 3.0. To do this, go to the Settings screen and tap Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Ensure Fetch New Data is set to Push. Next, access your MobileMe account in the same settings screen and make sure Find My iPhone is turned on.

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I'm not sure if I've discovered a hidden feature on the iPhone but as of this morning dot wav files embedded in iPhone Mail can be played. I currently use Vonage for my home phone service and anytime someone leaves a voicemail Vonage sends my wife and I an e-mail with their message embedded as a dot wave file.

We've had this set up ever since moving to Vonage over a year ago. Until today I would listen to the wav files in Apple Mail on my Macbook Pro. Always the optimist I'd click the wav file in all voicemail e-mails but would consistently be met with the message: "This audio type is not supported."

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I upgraded my Grand Central account to Google Voice this week and I've been playing with the new features. Here are a few of my favorites.

The interface (not a favorite but thought I'd mention it)



The Google Voice interface will feel right at home if you're a Gmail user. There's an inbox, a history menu, trash, and a filter to show starred items, all of which are present in Gmail. The SMS view (more on this later) shows in threaded format which is one of the strongest features of Gmail. Overall, it's nice to see Google finally do something with the interface. The Grand Central UI was quite bad and while Google doesn't have the best user experience folks on staff they do a better job than most.

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I'm pretty much addicted to my iPhone but I believe I would've sold it for $50 the other day. It'd been several days since I updated my installed applications so I visited the app store to see what was new. I had 10 updates. Thinking nothing of it I began downloading all 10 applications updates. After the updates were ready I connected my iPhone and started a sync. Halfway through the sync iTunes crashed.

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If you're a commandline cowboy like me you probably spend a fair amount of time jockeying your keyboard over an SSH connection. I have two different VPS setups, one with VivioTech and one with my super favorite Linode. Most of the time I can get done what I need to right from my Macbook Pro. But on occasion I'm out and about and my only connection with the networked world is via my iPhone. Fortunately, there are several SSH applications for the iPhone.

Today I'm going to talk about TouchTerm (iTunes link) and show off a few screenshots.

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As much as I like and enjoy my Apple TV it has a tendency to frustrate the crap outta me. I've experienced two recent situations that made me wanna remove the thing from my closet and chuck it out the window (where it would probably land softly on the grass outside).

Blue screen? No, white screen!
I typically rent movies from Netflix but sometimes it's nice to rent something from iTunes. So after renting Hit Man and waiting a few minutes for the HD movie to queue up I was pretty surprised to be greeted by a glaring white screen. Audio was working fine but the video was a big mess of white nothing. I tried the immediately obvious things like fast forwarding, rewinding, and stopping and restarting the movie. I also adjusted the video display settings on the Apple TV to ensure it wasn't some funky HD setting. After none of that worked I used my MRF850 system remote to shutdown my entire home theatre system which basically amounts to power cycling equipment that is turned on (except for the Apple TV). The movie continued to display only white. It wasn't until I unplugged the power cable for the Apple TV (there's no on/off switch) and plugged it back in that the movie actually showed video. Lesson learned: reboots aren't just for Windows devices anymore. =(

Apple TV 2.3 iTunes 8.0.2 Syncing Issue
Apple released an update for Apple TV (version 2.3) that promised new features like AirTunes Streaming, additional third party remote support, better playlists compatibility with iTunes and enhanced music volume control (they didn't mention the Remote app on iPhone getting this feature but it does. And it's cool). What they didn't tell you was that a number of people were going to have some significant problems with the update. I was one of them.

After upgrading my Apple TV it no longer showed up in iTunes. I wasn't able to sync any new music, movies, or photos but I could still play all the content that was already on Apple TV. What was puzzling was my Apple TV continued to show up in iTunes Apple TV list which seemed to indicate my computer and Apple TV were able to see each other. To further add to the frustration my iPhone Remote app wasn't able to see the Apple TV and control content playback. After doing some searching I tried several of the solutions other sufferers had success with. I even wiped the entire thing and attempted to start over and resync all my music, movies, and photos. I was able to perform the factory settings reset but iTunes still wouldn't see my Apple TV.

While trying to remotely connect to my 1TB Time Capsule to check IPv6 settings (one of the suggestions from the previous link) I noticed my computer wasn't able to recognize the Time Capsule. Naturally, I power cycled the Time Capsule by pulling it's power cable. After it came back up I was able to connect via Airport Utility and surprisingly iTunes was now able to see the Apple TV. After all this fuss I was able to set up my Apple TV all fresh and anew and sync all my data (which took over 3 hours). Lesson learned: reboots aren't just for Windows devices anymore. See a pattern here?

I posted earlier today about synchronizing an Entourage calendar to other macs and to my iPhone. Well, I've found what I believe is a better solution though not free. Spanning Sync is software made specifically for synchronizing your calendars and address books across multiple macs. What's nice about this solution is you only need Spanning Sync on your computers and nothing on your iPhone. This solution does assume you're already using MobileMe for calendar syncing. The problems I mentioned earlier, namely Calgoo Connect crashes and calendar changes not filtering back to Entourage, are not present with this setup.

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Let me set the stage. I have two Macbook Pros. One is used at the office and one is my personal machine. They're both laptops so they each see a fair amount of travel. And while one is primarily for work there is some overlap in what I do on the machines. For the most part though having two macs makes it easier for me to separate what I work on and how. Where this separation sucks is when you start looking at my calendar. I use Entourage 2008 on my work laptop (insert long, drawn out rant about Microsoft software. Yes there's OpenOffice and other MS-ish solutions but they all suck when you need serious collaboration with others using Microsoft products) for e-mail and calendaring. I use iCal on my personal laptop and on my iPhone. Up to this point I've somehow managed NOT being able to look at my work calendar unless I was sitting in front of my work laptop. This has halfway worked for a year but it's just not cutting it anymore. So this weekend I set out to do some research on calendar syncing solutions that would ultimately get my Entourage calendar from my work laptop to my personal laptop and iPhone.

The solution I'm laying out below doesn't cost a penny and for a lot of people that's incredibly important. However, there are caveats. In the near future I'll discuss a second option that isn't free but might provide more stability and features for those who need them. Stay tuned. The free solution involves the use of software from Calgoo and Nueva Sync. The first six steps below are done on the computer with Entourage. The rest are either done on an iPhone or other Mac computers.

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Thanks to all those who entered my drawing for a free copy of 1Password from Agile Solutions. I wrote a bit of ColdFusion (code below) to draw the winner and was surprised to learn the folks at 1Password had given me extra copies to giveaway! Congrats to Lance from Ohio and David from all over (David is currently touring with the band Wild Sweet Orange). I hope you two enjoy 1Password as much as I do!

I'm giving away a free copy of 1Password from Agile Solutions. 1Password is a fantastic password management application (awarded four and half mice from Macworld) that works on your Mac and iPhone! I've been using 1Password on my Mac and iPhone for a little over a year and I love it. It allows me to use a different, super strong password on every Web site I visit. I no longer have to remember one set of "rolling passwords" or keep track of passwords in a secure note on my computer. When visiting a site, I simply use the 1Password bookmarklet (Safari and Firefox) in order to quickly log in to the site. To see 1Password in action view this video demo.

So how do you get a free copy? It's easy, just follow me on twitter and send me a direct message saying you want a copy. I'll randomly draw a winner in the next 2 days and notify that person via twitter. You'll also get an e-mail from Agile Solutions notifying you of your free copy and how to download it.

A few moments ago I spent an Audible credit on Al Gore's book Assault on Reason. After confirming my order Audible automatically began downloading part 1 and 2 of Gore's book. That wasn't anything unusual, but I admit I was surprised at the targeted user content displayed on the downloads page designed to guide me through the download process.

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I've been into this productivity thing for quite some time now. Implementing GTD in all aspects of my life has increased not only my productivity but my sanity as well. Add to that my affinity for gadgets and the iPhone and it's easy to see why I was thrilled to learn the fine folks at OmniGroup were releasing OmniFocus for the iPhone. I bought OmniFocus for the mac well over a year ago and found it easy to drop $19.99 on the full-featured iPhone version. Yea it would've been nice to get a returning customer discount; you can blame Apple's AppStore for not building this functionality into the store.

I've had some time to take the OmniFocus iPhone application for a test drive and here are my favorite features.

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For the past 8 days I have tirelessly attempted to get MobileMe working on my personal Macbook Pro (Leopard). I have followed several threads on Apple's forums where many others were experiencing the same issues. I've been active on this thread and this one as I attempted various things and worked with other users on the problem.

Within the last 15 minutes I was successful syncing to MobileMe. This is what worked for me.

According to others on the threads, Apple has recommended folks try and sync from a fresh user account. Well, I have a second Macbook Pro (office computer) so I decided to sync from it. I went into System Preferences, selected .Mac and waited for a minute. When the MobileMe update showed up I installed it. I then quit System Preferences, then immediately relaunched it. I entered my MobileMe username (without the @me.com) and typed my password. I noticed something odd, that my password seemed shorter than what I had entered on my personal Macbook Pro. Nevertheless I signed in, checked the box for "Synchronize with MobileMe" and it in fact worked. I was able to select a syncing interval (I chose Automatic) as well as Calendars, Contacts, and Bookmarks. I then switched over to my main (personal) Macbook Pro and went through the same steps, manually typing my MobileMe password, choosing sync preferences, and then doing an initial sync.

Within one to two minutes I was logging into me.com and verifying my Calendars and Contacts were online. Oddly, I don't see a place where Bookmarks show online. I then set up my iPhone and configured Calendars, Contacts and Bookmarks for push syncing. This caused all three types of data to be overwritten with data from MobileMe. It all seemed to work very well.

So what was the problem? I use an /excellent/ password storage program called 1Password. It makes it super super easy to use really strong passwords on every site. Since 1Password also stores a bookmarklet in Safari on the iPhone I'm able to easily log-in to all my Web sites without having to remember nearly 100 passwords. Sidenote: 1Password has released a new native iPhone app that will be available in a week or so from the App Store. What I realized, is that every time I was trying to sign-in to and sync with MobileMe from my main (personal) Macbook Pro, I was copying the password from the 1Password OS X app using a little "Copy" button the software provides. I was then pasting the clipboard contents into the MobileMe sign-in screen. While I have verified the 1Password copy button was not adding characters to my password (by pasting into TextEdit), it does not work with the MobileMe sign-in screen. After typing in my MobileMe password by hand I was in business on my personal Macbook Pro.

I'm confused as to whether the MobileMe sign-in screen was actually signing me in correctly, or just allowing me to see my account info and then passing an invalid password when I attempted to synchronize (as this was the error that showed up in the OS X Console). Regardless, I FINALLY have everything working now.

I would be VERY interested to hear from any other users that may be using 1Password and performing the same steps I was. If you fall into this category, reply to this post and let me know.

The proclamation from Steve Jobs that the iPhone will not support the Flash Player, either in it's full desktop player form or Flash Lite, has led many to examine the motivations behind Apple's stance.

Personally, I think this is all just saber-rattling. The most compelling argument I've seen thus far - on why Apple doesn't want Flash on the iPhone - has nothing to do with the security of the Flash player or it's robustness on a mobile platform. Apple wants to control and protect the development channels on the iPhone. They want a say in who builds applications and what those applications are. Furthermore, they have no interest in proliferating the Flash Player's reach within the mobile and devices space. That wouldn't help the advancement of Silverlight at all now would it?

For more on this topic see the links below (posted in no particular order).

CNN's coverage (w/ comment from Ryan Stewart):
http://tinyurl.com/2nxrap

Marketwatch's coverage:
http://tinyurl.com/2zhuwk

Robert Scoble on Apple/Job's declaration of no Flash on iPhone:
http://scobleizer.com/2008/03/05/apple-stabs-adobe-in-the-back/

John Gruber on this topic (more detail on Apple protecting the iPhone dev environment):
http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/flash_iphone_calculus

Ryan Stewart says the Flash Player is coming to iPhone (background info only):
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=241

Larry Dignan on Apple vs. Adobe iPhone Spat (background info only):
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8061