IPhone news, updates and Iphone information

Like most people, the iPhoneWriter.com team hates spam in all it's forms and permeations. Electronic mail, snail mail, Boy Scouts selling popcorn, and unsolicited telephone calls all qualify as "spam" in our book and they're all obnoxious. We find unsolicited telephone calls to be particularly irritating. How many times have you been in a meeting or driving or whatever, and had your Apple iPhone ring only to find a "phone spammer" on the other end? Ugh.

Well, after one too many calls wondering if we were interested in having our carpets steam cleaned, enough was finally enough and we decided to stop the madness once and for all. The end result is a simple (and dare we say elegant) way to silence telephone spammers forever. Ah, the sweet sound of silence. Here's how you can silence the telephone spammers on your Apple iPhone:

1. Download our Silent Running ringtone (...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I often use my iPhone as music player, travelling around the city with my headphones and answering calls by clicking the microphone. I was looking for a way to announce Caller ID, and was surprised there's only this hint here and it doesn't use built in speech technology.

This process could be scripted somehow, but as I didn't need hundreds of contacts, I just created them one by one. The described process is, however, optimized, taking only about 20 seconds per person.

First, open GarageBand and create a loop of desired length. I chose just about six bars. Then place your favorite ringtone sound (I used one from GarageBand's Library, found in Sound Effects » Work/Home » Cell Phone Ringing, and boosted its volume a bit) and place it at the second bar.

1. Copy the person's name in Address Book.
2. Paste it to Terminal as part of this command: say -o ~/Desktop/Output.aiff [p...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

Sometimes it's annoying to have to use Mail on my iPhone to review a PDF, Word or Excel file I received a couple of days before. I wanted to have permanent access to some of my inportant files (roadmaps, notes, lists etc.) even when I can't go online. All you need is a jailbroken 1.1.3 (or newer) iPhone, an FTP client on your Mac, and the "Safari 1.1.3 Patch" for your iPhone (see the Big Boss' repository: "Adds file:// support for local files viewing to Safari.")

For PDF: Use your FTP client to create a new folder on your iPhone in /var/mobile/Media/. Name it PDF and drag your PDF files into it. Some of them have to be renamed to meet the usual URL naming conventions. This means: no spaces, no umlauts, etc. I dragged a file named regex.pdf in there. Now I only have to type in the following URL in Safari on the iPhone:

file:///var/mobile/Media/PDF/regex.pdf

Safari can display PDF, Word, Excel, and any HTML file you put in the Media folder (...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

If you set up groups before transferring contacts to the iPhone, you can then show only a certain group (or all groups) when browsing contacts. I set up several groups in Address Book, but noticed that you can't change which group a contact is in on the iPhone itself. Nor can you add new groups on the phone, either. However, if you want to add a new contact to a group that is already on the iPhone, first go to the Phone Application, then tap "Contacts" and then tap the "Groups" button at the top left of the screen to select the group to which you want to add the new contact. It will return you to the Contacts screen with the group name at the top. Now tap the "+" button to add a new contact that will be associated with that group. If I get a call or email from someone not in my contact list that I know I want in a particular group (like "Work" contacts), I go through the above steps to create the new contact in that group, then go back to th...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

The 'Find Me' location feature in Google Maps on the iPhone and iPod touch is great, but if you are in an area with wireless access points that have yet to be mapped by Skyhook (the company that provides the location-acces point data for Apple), your shown location will rely upon cellphone tower position alone and so be far less accurate.

Recently, Jazzdogg on the Australian MacTalk forum contacted Skyhook with regard to manually submitting the longitude/latitude of his own access point to improve the location feature. In response, Skyhook created a form that allows anyone to do exactly that. Whether to improve the accuracy of your iPhone's pseudo-GPS when at work or home, or to map out access points about town, you can now supplement Skyhook's database manually without having to wait for Skyhook to map your community...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

For some hobbies and businesses, it's necessary to use Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, which is similar to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The iPhone World Clock can display several separate clocks, so I thought it might work to add London as a substitute for Greenwich, which was not listed. But on a lark I typed utc in the search for city dialog, and it came up! Once selected, I had a clock dedicated to UTC. This is better than using a nearby city, as it should avoid problems with daylight saving time changes.

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I am an avid Google Mail user, and recently purchased an iPhone (how couldn't I, after seeing the SDK demo). I configured the iPhone Mail app to use my Google Map IMAP account. Works like a charm, but, a lot of times I want to send reminders home from the iPhone. Obviously I'd see those mail on the iPhone as well. Too much information. So here is what I did:

1. Set up a new Google Mail account -- username.iphone@gmail.com.
2. In my main Google Mail account (username@gmail.com), I set up a filter like so ... in the 'Doesn't have:' field, I listed subject: -iphone, OR, from: -username@gmail.com. On the next page, enable Forward it to: username.iphone@gmail.com.
3. On the iPhone, I created a new Mail account, but used the username.iphone@gmail.com as my main account. (I can still access the other gmail accounts through Google Mobile, just in case.)
4. On the iPhone, I changed the outgoing SMTP server to username@google.com. Th...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

I was really sick of POP GMail and the iPhone not just working. I found several types of hints online, and none would really work for my situation. I use POP on GMail so that I can get mail on my Mac and leave a copy on GMail's server for archive and search purposes, which I do endlessly. The subtle implication here is that I have about 2,500 messsages in there.

So I set up the iPhone and was all excited when it just took my accounts from iTunes and set them up. But I noticed one thing: even if I had Recent on, for some reason, my Mac and my iPhone would race to download a message and if one got it, sometimes the other did, and sometimes it didn't. I confirmed this to happen to other people via many furious and frazzled searches waaaay past my bedtime.

Another thing I found was that I'm not a super great typer on the iPhone yet, and there were some messages I'd want to read on the iPhone but respond to on my Mac. In short, for a lot of reasons, it wouldn't...

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

You probably know already that you can hold down a key on the iPhone keyboard to select international versions of a character (eg. Accented characters) I have just found that this also works for the .com button on the Safari version of the keyboard.

Hold down the .com button, and you will be able to quickly select the regional domain suffix for whatever international language keyboard you are using. Eg .co.uk for the UK keyboard, .de for German, etc.

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips

You can simulate the 'pinch to zoom' gesture of the iPhone in Apple's Aspen Simulator by holding down the Option key while clicking the mouse in the area you wish to pinch. This brings up a pair of dots that represent your fingertips.

written by macosxhints iPhone Tips