Your iPhone, You're Doing it Wrong: Part 2

It’s true. You depend on one program to manage and sync all of your photos, apps, movies and contacts and then don't know what the hell to do when you want to do it all over again on another computer. Shame on you!

This will be the final part 2 in the series on how to stop doing that. In first part, we covered the set up. In this second part, we will be covering the programs that can replace iTunes, the ones that I use on a regular basis. It isn't just one program, and that's a good thing. When we have one piece of technology that is so intricately involved with probably too many aspects of our lives, we want options. You want the ability to switch programs for one that has more or less features to another without losing any data as painlessly as possible. Options people; get some.

I use four programs on a regular basis with my jail broken iPhone 3gs. One for managing my music, one for migrating files between my iPhone and pc, one for books (yes, I read) one for contacts and calendars. I'll be going over some photo stuff last since its still in the experimental stages.

The easiest is first, and that’s Sharepod. I’ve tried other applications for managing my music and play lists and this one is, by far, the bestest and easiest! However, I am open to suggestions if there is something better out there. Sharepod is free and a stand-alone application, meaning that you don't have to install anything and possibly worry about admin rights to get this up and running. It has drag and drop capability for adding music to your device AND the play lists that are on it! You can also use this as a media player. There is a bit of light photo integration, but it’s just to view them and back them up and not to drag and drop them somewhere or add more photos to the iPhone. Still, Sharepod is an extremely powerful music manager and gets two thumbs up from me!

Like Sharepod, iPhone USB explorer is also awesome! And, also like Sharepod, iPhone USB explorer is free and stand-alone. It’s just like using windows explorer to navigate around your iPhone, only you don't need to worry about SSH or any IP address issues. It is, however, barebones software. I would like the ability to bookmark directories within the program, like I am able to do with current SSH programs out there. But the ease of use outweighs the extras that are missing. Use this if you want to transfer or backup any data quick and painlessly! I use it to back up all my applications I have installed on my iPhone. With using SSH in the past, I ran into some IP address issues at some free Wi-Fi spots. But iPhone USB explorer doesn’t need SSH permissions or IP address information! Its plug and play, and simple.

For books I use the powerful combination of Stanza the iPhone app and Stanza the desktop program. Stanza is an awesome iPhone eBook app and is free; I highly recommend it. With it, you will have the ability to carry around tons of books in one small convenient package; your iPhone. over time functionality has been added as well as removed from this app. back in the day you were able to dump any eBook into a specific folder on your iPhone, via USB transfer, and the app would be able to read that folder when you launched the app from your iPhone and it would add that book to the app's library. They removed this functionality at apple's request, but then they released the desktop program that can transfer the books from your pc right to the iPhone app's library. Very quick and convenient. You can also add other repositories and your own discretion.

Changing phones can be a pain in the butt. The biggest pain is the migration of all contact information from your old phone to your new one. In preparation for losing my phone (knock on wood), getting a new one or just having to restore the thing to its original virgin state, I began using Google sync for contacts and calendar only. I don’t use it for mail, because we’re going to be setting it up for push and I believe that this way will save some battery life. First things first; back up your contacts and calendar. This might be the first time you’re doing this and you might lose some data. What I did was actually make a backup of all my contact info and then wipe all of it off my iPhone, but you might not be comfortable doing that. Anywho, swing by here to follow the directions for setting up Google as an exchange server and turn it on for contacts and calendar and set 'fetch new data,’ in the mail/calendar settings, for push and your half way there! The other half being the setup and addition of contacts and schedules to your Google contacts and calendar. The first sync you do with your new exchange server will push some of the contacts and calendar information to you Google contacts and calendar, it will push over more info if you never messed with the contact groups on your iPhone. This sync method will only grab your contacts from the iPhone’s ‘my contact’ group. Google contacts does have extremely good search functionality! It will blow away any search functionality that is currently on your iPhone, however. Personally I have all contacts and calendar schedules managed with Google and it works great! I also export the contacts on a somewhat regular basis, from Google, for extra backup security.

***experimental!! Warning!! I am not a pro on what you are about to read yet!! I will update when the process is finalized!! Proceed at your own risk!!***

Right, last bit of business: photos/videos. This is the newer territory for me so I probably shouldn't even be posting about it, but I’ll just post what I have done so far. my end goal with photos is to regularly take the photos off of my iPhone, dump them to my computer and upload them to Picasa (yes, I know, more Google stuff. I just wanted to take the free route instead of using Flickr). I will then use Picasa’s newly updated mobile interface to search through the painfully organized pictures using tags and names in order to get to the picture I want. So far, I have used only 1 of 2 programs to get the photos off the phone: Kodak easy share. The other program, which I haven't tested for moving the pics yet, is Picasa 3. The Kodak software did a great job with transferring all my photos and videos from my camera roll as well as the other photo libraries I had. It even kept the rotation info in the image's exif data, which is the biggest pain in the rear thus the most important part of the transfer. Every other program out there, for pc at least, just brings them over and then you are stuck having to rotate all the photos yourself. I am now in the process of using only Picasa 3 to painfully tag all the photos and then will sync it to the cloud. The final step, of what has turned into a photo debacle, is the iPhone app that will essentially be replacing the photo viewing app on my iPhone. I have searched the web in its entirety 3 times over and have come to the conclusion that Google’s own newly designed Picasa web app... it pains me to say... is the only app worthy of stepping up to the plate for this one. It’s the only "app" that is able to search the tags. A native app would, of course, be better, because it would have caching abilities and a quick slick interface designed specifically for the iPhone, but beggars can't be choosers in this world.

And that's it. I hope you found this a little bit helpful, especially since all the programs I described above are free. Please feel free to ask question, voice concern's or provide alternate suggestions for the programs I have chosen above within the comments below. Good luck! :P

ps: here is the lifehacker post that inspired me to do the photo reorganization.

Read More......

How To Live a iLife gLife googLife

After browsing through the feeds in my reader, I cam across an article that critiqued a bunch of readers. One of them, Google Reader, was my new one that I have just fallen in love with. So I was going to write an article about how good it was. Then I realized that I use a hell of a lot more Google products than just their reader. I am now living what I dub the googLife.

You can’t just have "g" in the title and expect everyone to know what it is, especially when compared to "iLife". You would just never know that the "g" was for Google. Hence the goog. Plus I like saying goog a lot...goog. So, without further hesitation, the list of things you need to live a googLife.

[Full article after jump]


1) Google Reader, from the Google labs section
I have used a lot of in-browser readers in my time, but none have the functionality that Google reader has.

Pros:
- I used to just read the feeds when I was at work. Now I don't have to. Since this is a Google product, I just need an internet connection and a computer in order to read my feeds where ever I go.
- Say that I still just read the feeds at work. When I get back to work from a weekend, or a long weekend, I would only find 20 new stories/articles in each feed when i was using the in-browser rss reader. Just to put this into perspective, digg's front page is one of my feeds. Now those of you that are not familiar with digg, there are a hell of a lot more articles than 20 that reach the front page over the weekend. With Google reader I get an accurate number up to 100. After 100 i1 just goes to "100+".
- want more articles from your feeds? Just keep scrolling down in Google reader. With the in-browser feed readers, I was only able to get the articles from when I first subscribed to the feed. If I wanted to go back further than that, I would have to go to the feed's website and dig through the archives. If you run out of articles in Google reader, just scroll down a bit more and it will automatically read more of the rss feed and populate them on the screen for you.

Some functions/features that Google reader lacks:
- A simple button to go from the Google reader page to your personalized Google home page. sometimes there are pc's that I’m on (take my work pc for instance that goes to the intranet home page instead of Google), making it difficult to go from the reader page to the Google home page where I have my favorite widgets (gmail, reader, clock, calendar and traffic for my area). So instead of relying on the home button in the browser, there should be a button build into the Google reader page, as well as the other Google items I will be talking about below, to go to Google personalized home page from the reader.
- There is already the ability to share some choice stories that are accessible through a feed. But a small step up would be the ability to share all of your subscribed feeds with other people, instead of just choice stories. I don't mean share all the stories from all your feeds, just what feeds you subscribe to. Sure they can probably get the hint by the handful of stories you share, but do you share stories from all of your feeds? I don't. Perhaps even the ability to visit one's Google reader home. Crazy enough to work? I think it would be cool to go to someone's reader’s page and see if they have anything interesting that I might want to also subscribe to, if not something to poke fun at them for.

2) Google personalized home page as your home page
This is a must have for the googLife. And it is especially necessary to have a handful of Google widgets on your personalized page. Yes, you do have to personalize it a bit. Some suggestions for widgets: weather, clock, traffic. Some necessary widgets to classify you as living the googLife: Google calendar, Google reader and gmail.

This leads me into number 3...

3) A gmail account
More specifically, 2 gmail accounts, because just one account won't do. You need one entirely for spam that you might be interested in the near future and one for regular use. If you have spam that you know is just completely junk and you will never be interested in it at all, feel free to use either dodgeit.com or the tempomail firefox extension.

This should be a bit more enticing these days since Google now has pop functionality. Allowing you to forward a copy of incoming email to a desired separate email address as well as being able to add your gmail account to outlook.

4) A Blogger blog
Gotta love blogs. And with googles new blogger beta, with increased functionality, it’s even better these days. Its cake to do a quick post, tinker with the html in your template to adjust your main blog page or just to double check on your adsence account. It's a bloggers world out there these days, and Google’s Blogger is extremely easy to use.

5) Google's Calendar
This one is not a necessary one for you to use extremely strictly each and every single day. This is just something to lightly use. Going away from work for a week or more? How are you going to remember the meeting you have on the Monday you are coming back? Simple! Just upload your outlook calendar to your Google calendar and check your Google calendar before you go to bed Sunday night. This can be checked in a flash if you have the calendar widget on your Google personalized home page.

6) Google docs/spreadsheets
with Google expanding more and more into the office world, this one is a must for the quick document that you wish to share between computers. Feel free to do up your resume allowing you to not have to hunt and peck for the most up-to-date version of it between your work computer, your home computer, monster.com and careerbuilder.com.

7) Google Earth
I'm talking about the free application, not Google maps here. The application is more flexible than maps. There are user options that you can customize to your needs. There are just a lot more functions in the application version than the Google maps version and I suggest you give it a try.

8) Google Notebook w/firefox extension
take notes one whatever website you are on with the firefox extension. When you start a new note, Google notebook automatically puts in the URL of the current site you are on as part of the note. After saving the note(s) you can use the maximize function of the extension to go to your Google notebook account and take a look at all of your notes on a bigger page. This application is extremely flexible and, like all googLife products, the follow you around the net to whatever pc you are on.

9) Froogle
Whether you are selling something, buying something or just looking for gift ideas froogle is the place to take a look at. And it is incredibly easy to get to as well. Just do your Google search like you normally would (from your personalized googLife home page), click on more at the top center of the page and then froogle.

10) Specialized Searches
And just to keep this list to a nice round number, specialized searches. This is where you would go if you are looking for that special search that has to do with c++ code or Linux commands. I am a programmer and work and this site is very useful.

And that wraps up the googLife list. Be sure to stick to the rules and you'll be living the googLife in no time flat. There are a lot of these products that are still in the beta phase. So I encourage you to frequently visit the Google Labs section of Google to see what is new and what has been updated and to see if there are new things that can help get you closer to living a full googLife.

Read More......