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Posts Tagged ‘Mobileme’

TUAW Tip: Get your animated slideshows to MobileMe

Filed under: iLife, Multimedia, Video, Tips and tricks, MobileMe

For all the things Apple does right, there are some strange decisions in the integration of iPhoto and MobileMe. iPhoto has a wonderful way to create animated slideshows with music and professional looking transitions and you can look at them all day on your Mac, or send them to your iPhone or AppleTV. But things get ugly when you want to post them on the web for family and friends using MobileMe. It’s baffling, but there is no direct way to upload an animation you’ve created to MobileMe, even though you can easily send stills or even iMovie videos to the web.

Well, it can be done, but it’s a non-intuitive work around.

First, create your slide show in an iPhoto folder the usual way. Then hit the “Export” button on the lower right of the iPhoto screen. From there, you can determine the size of the QuickTime movie you want to make. If it’s for the web, I’d suggest the large size.

The movie will render, and then be placed in your iPhoto Slideshows folder inside the Pictures folder. From there, you have a couple of options, none of which are well documented: One way is to open your newly created movie in the latest version of QuickTime. Then from the Share menu, select “MobileMe gallery” from the options presented (you’ll get the screen you can see in the thumbnail above). Another way to go is to is to import the movie into iMovie first, and then export it out to MobileMe from there. You can also drag the movie back into iPhoto (and yes, I know this is nutty) and then click the MobileMe icon to upload it there.

Why can’t you do this directly from iPhoto? Search me. It should be there — maybe we’ll see it in the app’s next version. If you have another method to do this let us know.

TUAWTUAW Tip: Get your animated slideshows to MobileMe originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I have a MobileMe family account with 5GB of storage. I want to separate this into an individual account so I can get more storage. Is it possible to delete my 5GB account username, and sign up with it again in an individual account? Are there any other alternatives or workarounds?

Apple’s MobileMe service conks out for three hours

Update: As of 3:00 PM Pacific time on Sunday, MobileMe is back online for me, but Apple’s MobileMe status page still lists several MobileMe services as being down.

Around 1:00 PM Pacific time on Sunday, Apple’s MobileMe suite of cloud applications stopped working for me. MobileMe syncs customers’ iPhones with their personal computers. It also serves Web-based email, calendar, and address book applications that stay in sync with customers’ computers and phones.

According to one Twitter post, it’s been down for some users for three hours now.The volume of Twitter updates in multiple languages in the past hour suggests this isn’t a small outage.

Apple’s PR hotline sent me an auto-response, “Our offices are closed for the holidays.” But if I hear back, I’ll update this post with any info Apple provides.

MobileMe, for which Apple charges $99 per year, grew from the company’s .Mac (pronounced “dot-mac”) services. Usually it works — I use it daily — but MobileMe got off to a bad start last year with frequent outages. So much so that even Apple fan Walt Mossberg declared it “too flawed to be reliable.”

MobileMe beats the ad-supported Google Apps and Microsoft’s free Windows Live in some ways, most notably its browser-based replications of the familiar mail, calendar and contact apps built into Apple computers. But for a hundred bucks a year in 2010, shouldn’t it be bulletproof?

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Elegant simplicity: the power of SimpleNote for iPhone

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

The iPhone and iPod touch are, in many ways, the replacement for the little spiral-bound notepad that some of us used to carry around to capture reminders and ideas. The build-in Notes application works as a nice notepad, but it doesn’t allow sorting of lists, and syncing to your Mac via MobileMe and Mail can be problematic.

I’ve tried a handful of other notepad apps, but none of them have provided the simplicity of Notes with the power of cloud syncing. SimpleNote [US$1.99, iTunes Link] is an inexpensive app that is a worthy replacement for Notes. Launching the app, you’re greeted with a very simple user interface into which you can type your notes. There’s nothing new and different there, of course. Opening the options for the app indicates that you can set up a free account for the online web app and turn on web syncing.

It’s the ability to sync with the SimpleNote website that provides much of the power of the app. Through that site, you can either paste lists or notes from your Mac and have them appear on the iPhone moments later, or take the notes you’ve created while on the road and move them to your Mac.The iPhone and iPod touch are, in many ways, the replacement for the little spiral-bound notepad that some of us used to carry around to capture reminders and ideas. The build-in Notes application works as a nice notepad, but it doesn’t allow sorting of lists, and syncing to your Mac via MobileMe and Mail can be problematic.

I’ve tried a handful of other notepad apps, but none of them have provided the simplicity of Notes with the power of cloud syncing. SimpleNote [US$1.99, iTunes Link] is an inexpensive app that is a worthy replacement for Notes. Launching the app, you’re greeted with a very simple user interface into which you can type your notes. There’s nothing new and different there, of course. Opening the options for the app indicates that you can set up a free account for the online web app and turn on web syncing.

It’s the ability to sync with the SimpleNote website that provides much of the power of the app. Through that site, you can either paste lists or notes from your Mac and have them appear on the iPhone moments later, or take the notes you’ve created while on the road and move them to your Mac.

TUAWElegant simplicity: the power of SimpleNote for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple updates MobileMe iDisk app for iPhone

Filed under: Internet, Internet Tools, iPhone, MobileMe, App Store

Apple has updated it’s MobileMe iDisk app [iTunes link]. Besides a new (much cooler) icon, version 1.1 features:

• Auto-complete email addresses when choosing recipients for a shared file
• File sharing emails are automatically saved to your Mail account’s Sent folder
• When viewing an image, tap and hold to save it to your photo roll or copy it to another app
• Maximum setting for cache size is now 500MB (up from 200MB)
• Faster downloads
• Various bug fixes
• Localizations for Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish

The MobileMe iDisk app requires iPhone OS 3.0 and a MobileMe membership. When you give the new version a go, let us know what you think and tell us any other things you’ve found different about it in the comments!

TUAWApple updates MobileMe iDisk app for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MobileMe media sync detailed in Apple patent application

What do you know? It looks like Apple’s filed yet another patent application. The company’s newest is named (in the short, pithy way that patents are named) Synchronization of Media State Across Multiple Devices. Combining the ubiquity of MobileMe with the media syncing that goes down when you dock your iPod or iPhone, the application suggests that soon you might find all your Engadget Show episodes automagically picking up where you left ‘em when you switch devices — without any lag time or any pesky cables. As Macworld points out, also included in the paperwork is distance tracking functionality — just the thing for automating sync operations when two devices come within range (it’s unclear whether this will be done via Bluetooth or WiFi). Perhaps this news isn’t exciting to the couch potatoes among us (you know, because they never leave the couch) but all you TV addicts “on the go” must be psyched.

[Via Macworld]

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Laptops, Portable Audio, Portable Video

MobileMe media sync detailed in Apple patent application originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone turns Pittsburgh man into Columbo, helps cops catch robbers

Filed under: Odds and ends, iPhone, MobileMe

The MobileMe Find my iPhone service certainly paid off for a Pittsburgh area man. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that police said the man was robbed at gunpoint in Shadyside (a neigborhood on the east side of Pittsburgh, home to an Apple Store) by two men who asked for his credit cards and the PIN numbers.

Police say he turned over his wallet, PIN numbers, and his iPhone. Later the man used his computer and MobileMe to find the location of the phone, and police located the crooks at a gas station. Officers recovered a pellet gun, stolen ID cards, credit cards and cash.

Three men have been charged in the incident with device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime. 2 of the 3 are also being charged with robbery.

The victim, not identified by the police, is probably a happy guy, and will no doubt renew his MobileMe subscription when it comes up.

One caution. If something similar happens to you, don’t go chasing the thieves by yourself. Confronting criminals is serious police work & nothing for the amateur sleuth to try.

[Via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and thanks to Sean for the tip]

TUAWiPhone turns Pittsburgh man into Columbo, helps cops catch robbers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 30 Aug 2009 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can’t upload pix to MobileMe? Apple has a fix for that

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Internet Tools, MobileMe

If you’ve been trying to upload a picture from your iPhone to a MobileMe gallery, and are getting the message “Unable to connect to MobileMe” message you’re not alone.

The problem appears to be related to a bug in user name recognition. Apple has published a KB article dealing with the issue. The problem seems to be triggered if your member name is in mixed case, or if it is in all caps. MobileMe requires the user name be in all lower case letters, although the same rule does not apply to passwords.

Apple suggests you go to your iPhone settings, and under account info make sure your name is all lowercase. If not, a visit to the KB article would be advised. The fix is simple: just delete and re-enter your account details, getting your member name in a form Apple will like. When the bug is fixed, this workaround won’t be needed.

Apple needs to continue to pay close attention to MobileMe. My perception is it has become generally more reliable since the ugly launch in 2008, but the support page still reports a few new glitches per week. Lately I’ve noticed a few mail outages/slowness and difficulty getting to my iDisk.

TUAWCan’t upload pix to MobileMe? Apple has a fix for that originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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