MacMost: Archives

MacMost Now 123: Extending iPhone Battery Life
8/20/08
Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at some techniques to help you stretch the iPhone battery so it lasts through a long day.
8/18/08

So we’ve had a collection of free iPhone ringtones for a while. The idea is that we think it is ridiculous to have to pay for new and interesting ringtones — they are just ringtones!
We’ve added a feature to that page where you can subscribe to the ringtones as a podcast feed.
There’s a trick to it, though. iTunes doesn’t show .m4r files through its iTunes store listings. So when you look at the subscription page, all you see is the sample .mp3 file. But when you subscribe to the feed in iTunes, you will see all of the .m4r ringtones in your iTunes Library, Podcast, MacMost iPhone Ringtones list.
The great thing there is that you should be able to control which ringtones you download rather easily through your iTunes podcast subscriptions screen. Then, you can automatically get new ringtones when we add them. In addition, if you set up your iTunes/iPhone settings properly, the ringtones will automatically transfer to your iPhone and be available to be used as ringtones.

MacMost Now 122: How To Send Video Email From Your Mac
8/18/08
Gary Rosenzweig looks at using PhotoBooth to send a quick video email using the built-in iSight camera and software included with your Mac.
MacMost Now 121: Video Podcasting Secrets
8/15/08
Gary Rosenzweig shares some of his best tips for creating a video podcast. Advice about green screens, HD, editing, community and motivation.
MacMost Now 120: Favorite Podcasts
8/14/08
Gary Rosenzweig talks about some of his favorite podcasts, including This Week In Tech (TWiT), Geek Brief, Slashdot Review, Tech5, Net@Nite, Grammar Girl, Chillcast, Pop Candy and more.
MacMost Now 119: How to Make a Video Podcast
8/13/08
Gary Rosenzweig briefly looks at what you need to do to make your own video podcast and publish it on iTunes.
8/12/08

We just added two new iPhone Games to the free iPhone games section of the site: Poker Solitaire and Astro-Blobs.
Poker Solitaire is a card game where you place 25 cards in a 5×5 grid to make 10 vertical and horizontal poker hands. You get points based on how good the hands are.
Astro-Blobs is a version of the Flash game at GameScene. The original game dates back to the early days of Flash, but the gameplay is well suited for the tap interface of the iPhone.

MacMost Now 118: How to Create Your Own Podcast
8/11/08
Gary Rosenzweig briefly goes through the steps to create a basic audio podcast. You must first set up a blog, then create the audio content, then link the audio to the blog posts, and then publicize your RSS feed.
MacMost Now 117: How to Connect Your Mac to Your XBox 360
8/8/08
Gary Rosenzweig looks at how you can use your XBox 360 to view video and listen to music that is stored on your Mac using Connect360.
MacMost Now 116: Finding Large Files on Your Hard Drive
8/6/08
Gary Rosenzweig shows you how to find the largest files on your hard drive and clean them up to create more space.
MacMost Now 115: How To Block Unwanted iPhone Text Messages
8/4/08
Gary Rosenzweig shows you how to prevent unwanted text messages by turning off the ability for someone to send you a text message via email. You can also request that text messaging be turned off completely.
MacMost Now 114: How To Use QuickTime Pro To Edit Video
8/1/08
Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at the simple but powerful tool QuickTime Pro and how it can be used to edit and compile video.
MacMost Now 113: Using iChat with a Free AIM Account
7/30/08
Gary Rosenzweig shows you how to sign up for a free AOL Instant Messenger account that you can use with iChat on your Mac.
MacMost Now 112: Create a Browser Home Page with iGoogle
7/28/08
Gary Rosenzweig shows you how to create a special home page for your browser with iGoogle. You can include news and information that you can quickly see at a glance.
MacMost Now 111: Mighty Tab Memory Crossbones
7/25/08
Gary Rosenzweig answers some view questions. How to clean the mighty mouse trackball, using the tab key to navigate through buttons in dialog boxes, where to buy memory and crossbones stickers.
MacMost Now 110: Pandora and Last.fm iPhone Apps
7/23/08
Gary Rosenzweig takes a look at two applications for the iPhone that allow you to create your own radio station with music selected based on your preferences.
MacMost Now 109: How To Make An MP3 CD
7/21/08
Gary Rosenzweig from MacMost.com looks at how to use iTunes to make an MP3 CD that will fit hundreds of songs on to a single CD and play back in most modern CD players.
7/21/08

Setting aside MobileMe’s launch problems, I have to say I’m very disappointed with MobileMe.
Sure, it is push email to the iPhone. But only for me.com email addresses. As a business owner with my own domain(s), I want to use my own email address. There are several ways to do this with MobileMe, such as forwarding all my email to my me.com email address, but none of them allow me to easily reply to an email from my business address. This makes MobileMe email essentially useless to me.
Once email is out of the picture, the other features fall flat. Push calendar and contacts are nice, but they don’t really get me anything that syncing my iPhone doesn’t. iDisk is essentially the same as before, which makes it marginally useful to me. But since I produce media when making the fun games at GameScene.com and other sites, 20gb is not enough for a backup solution.
The most useful feature for me is the photo gallery, which is the same as the old .Mac. The ability to publish photos from iPhoto quickly and easily makes the $100/year cost worth it. But the photo gallery is still not all it could be. I’d love the ability to publish to a gallery directly from my iPhone camera roll. Right now I either have to email a photo, or sync with my Mac and use iPhoto to move an image to the gallery.
So, ways that .Mac could be great:
1. Allow me.com to automatically get email from another account, and also reply to emails using a reply-to of our choice.
2. Increase storage enough to back up a standard drive with system, applications and documents.
3. Allow us to access documents on the iDisk via our iPhone. You can already read Word, Excel, PowerPoint, iWork and PDF files in emails on your iPhone. Why not have a iPhone Documents directory on your iDisk where you can see these documents as well.
4. Instead of emailing photos to a photo gallery, allow iPhone camera roll photos to go directly there.
5. Add a Web-based blogging system, similar to Blogger.com or WordPress.com. Right now, the only option is to use iWeb and it isn’t easy or very functional.
I could go on. I can think of dozens of ways that MobileMe could be better, and none of them should really increase the fixed costs on Apple’s side. In fact, if I was in charge I’d position MobileMe to compete as a social network as well.

MacMost Now 108: Setting Up Mail
7/18/08
Gary Rosenzweig looks at how to set up the Apple Mail application to receive and send email from a standard ISP email account.
7/17/08
Eve Park enlists your help to find a super hero name for a new member of the l33tors. She reviews the Mvix Media Center.