IPhone news, updates and Iphone information

I know a few people who have had Hotmail address for a long time and don't want to change. They also have bought iPhones and now have no way to use the built-in client on the iPhone to read mail. This solutions lets them read Hotmail on their iPhone. (Actually, the same setup can apply for Apple Mail, too.) One catch here is that your Hotmail account must support Forwarding. You can see it is does under the Hotmail Options.

Basically these instructions help you set up forwarding in Hotmail so that incoming messages are forwarded from Hotmail to a Gmail account. This also sets up Gmail and the iPhone to make replies and new messages look like they come from Hotmail. When complete, you can read, reply, and send messages in Gmail and the iPhone as if you were on Hotmail.

With this solution in place:

• Email people send to your Hotmail address will be visible on your iPhone in the built-in iPhone Mail software.
• If you reply to a message on the iPhone or in Gma...

written by iPhone Fan

Searching and selecting recipients for SMS on iPhone can be a bit tedious if you regularly text certain people. You can create a sort of SMS favourites list by pressing Clear when viewing a message from your favorite recipients. This button doesn't (as I assumed) delete the whole SMS (like deleting in the inbox does), but rather clears the only the conversation. The 'person' remains in your SMS inbox easily accessible.

Admittedly this is not much better than leaving the conversation but looks a lot neater and helps you see there is no outstanding action associated with a message. Perhaps of some use to neat freaks and productivity nuts.

written by iPhone Fan

Now with the ability to create new ringtones in GarageBand, just record yourself saying the names of the people calling you most, then create ringtones with you saying that name, and add a ringtone following that in GarageBand. Share that as ringtone, and then assign the ringtones to the respective people on your iPhone. And voila, suddenly the iPhone will audibly announce the boss is calling or it's mommy!.

written by iPhone Fan

I have a server that I use for, among other things, downloading files with bittorrent. I usually start these torrents by downloading them on my primary computer and then dropping them onto an alias to my server's torrents folder, which my bittorrent client (Transmission) monitors so that it can start the torrents automatically. I occasionally wanted to use my iPod Touch to start these torrents, but Mobile Safari refuses to download torrent files.

My solution was to use Javascript to alter the torrent link to send its URL to my server for download rather than trying to open it. A PHP script on the server could then download that URL to the torrents folder. With both scripts in place, and the permissions of the torrents folder modified to allow Apache to write files, all I have to do is run the Javascript as a bookmarklet before clicking the torrent link, and click the link to download the torrent file. The modified link will pas...

written by iPhone Fan

In Safari on OS X, you can view all RSS feeds from a folder together in one feed. Sadly, this feature is missing from Safari on the iPhone. If you want to regain this functionality, all you have to do is open Safari on your desktop, open all the feeds together, and then add that newly-created page to your bookmarks, then sync. Now you can view all your feeds in one go!

written by iPhone Fan

I think it's a real shame that the iPhone doesn't have an Exchange Rate widget. Perhaps someday there will be, now that Apple is opening up the platform. In the meantime, I looked for a Exchange Rate web-app for the iPhone at the Apple site. I could only find one, which isn't too bad, but I was hoping for something with charts, etc., a la the Stock widget.

Then it struck me: since the Stock widget is getting its feeds from Yahoo!, I should be able to use their special codes for the FX market. Voil� ! Here are the ones I use:

• GBPUSD=X $US / £UK
• GBPEUR=X �?�EU / £UK
• EURUSD=X $US / �?�EU
• GBPINR=X Indian Rupees / £UK

There's loads more if your needs are different.

[robg adds: You can find more codes using Yahoo's currency page. You can also use these codes in the Stocks widget -- as of 10.4.11, it's now using Yahoo as well.]

written by iPhone Fan

According to some posts on tuaw.com (here and here), it's now (once again) easy to add your own 30 to 40 second (maximum) ringtones to the iPhone.

Just trim down a song or sound (using iTunes, GarageBand, Audacity, etc.), save an AAC-encoded version, change the .m4a suffix to .m4r, and drag the file into the Ringtones folder of the iTunes library (you may have to delete the original .m4a file from the library if it's already in iTunes).

Y ou can add songs longer than 40 or so seconds to the iTunes ringtone section of the library, but they won't sync to the iPhone or show up in ringtones tab of the iPhone sync page in iTunes.

written by iPhone Fan

I'm not sure how long this has been around; I'm expecting since 1.1.2 released. If your iPhone locks (sleeps) when it's inside of any application, you can quickly return to the home screen without extra button pushes:

1. Lock your phone while in an app, like the iPod.
2. Press the Home button to wake it.
3. Immediately swipe to unlock. Speed is key; usually the swipe has to be started before the screen lights up.
4. When the iPhone unlocks, the iPhone returns to Home screen instead of the iPod. (Some apps seem to be tougher to do this with than others.)

This doesn't happen when the phone is awakened with the Lock button, and it's clear that the application isn't crashing, because you can occasionally grab glimpses of the retreating application's animation and the Home screen's animation.

A quick poll of my two iPhone-owning coworkers think it's a bug, but it's a slightly useful one.

written by iPhone Fan

I use a another provider for international calls from my mobile: OneTel (although, this hint should work great with others). This service allows me to dial a local number, then, when prompted, enter the international number I wish to connect to and it connects me as usual. This works fine on the iPhone, in that I can use this plan as described. But my previous mobiles allowed me to set-up 'calling cards' which, when turned on, allowed me to dial the international number directly. The phone would then intercept this and dial the local number for me, then enter my destination number. This is, to me, indispensable on a mobile phone, because without it, you have to either memorize the destination number (or write it down again) so you can enter it after the prompt -- a cumbersome task while you're on the go.

Until Apple starts to more properly support calling cards, I improvised by writing an AppleScript which will create 'onetel' versions of the numbers I am interested in. I f...

written by iPhone Fan

If you, like me and others on the Apple discussion boards, find POP3 email on your iPhone touch and go at best (unread but unavailable messages anyone?), try this!

1. Register a new Gmail account, via the web.
2. In the Gmail account, go to Settings » accounts » Get mail from other accounts.
3. Add your POP3 account to Gmail, thus allowing it to regularly check your POP3 messages. Authorize as instructed. Ensure you set the option to leave messages on the server -- this means that your email program can still function as previously, getting all messages from POP3 directly.
4. Set up the Gmail account on the iPhone as an IMAP server, but when you enter your email address, use your POP3 address instead!

The above allows you to shadow your POP3 email account via the much more reliable IMAP service, without affecting or moving the messages from your POP3 email, which will still be available to your Mac/PC when you n...

written by iPhone Fan