With MobileMe almost live for one week (barring downtime), it is time to take a quick look on how to setup your Mac, PC and iPhone/iPod Touch to all be in sync.

For those of you who subscribed to .Mac, or recently purchased a MobileMe account, you may be already taking advantage of the new powerful “Push” syncing across your many devices. Incase your aren’t, or you don’t already have MobileMe, this is a brief tutorial to setup your different devices to sync with each other.

Mac:

Make sure you are running 10.5.4, go into System Preferences and under “Internet and Sharing”, the first thing you should see is MobileMe. If it still says .Mac, don’t worry- as long as you are connected to the Internet, click on the .Mac preference pane- you should get a message that looks like this:

It should bring you to Software Update, and were you can download the “Mac OS X Update For MobileMe”. Once you have the MobileMe preference pane, you can begin Syncing your Mac to the MobileMe servers. Simply enter your login information, and in a few moments your data will be pulled into System Preferences. Tab over to the “Sync” pane and check the items you would like to sync up to MobileMe. Also, pay close attention to the “Synchronize with MobileMe:” setting.

Apple has falsely advertised MobileMe as being a complete push solution for the Mac. This is not entirely true- while MobileMe does push to the Web and iPhone/iPod Touch devices, new information isn’t pushed to the Mac or PC. Rather, it is automatically pulled every 15 minutes if you have the “Synchronize with MobileMe:” set to Automatic. Once you have successfully synced with MobileMe from your Mac, you are ready to move onto other devices.

Hit the jump to see how to sync with the PC and iPhone/iPod Touch. Read more…

The iPhone 3G and iPhone 2.0 firmware have been out in the wild for over four days now. Since the App Store has opened up its doors, there are over 550 applications available for download.

AppStore, apart of the iPhone OS 2.0

At the center of the iPhone OS 2.0 is the App Store. This is a guide of some of the best free Applications currently available on the App Store, which you can access through iTunes 7.7 or iPhone/ iPod Touch running the 2.0 firmware. Here are 5 free applications that if you should consider:

Remote:

Remote

Developed by Apple Inc, Remote allows you to remotely control your iTunes library on your computer or Apple TV. The interface is almost identical to the standard iPod interface found on the iPhone or iPod Touch however, Remote is controlling another library over Wi-Fi. The application is simple and the execution is great- it proves to be a very handy utility for DJ’ing or for being in control of whatever your home setup may be. A highly recommended download.

4 more after the jump! Read more…

This weekend, members of theiLife.com crew successfully activated one 3G iPhone. Below is our experience.

When we walked into the store, we were greeted with a bunch of friendly Apple employees cheering and giving us high fives. As we walked down the glass stairs, there were even more Apple employees cheering and clapping for us ventured into the store. Once we got to the bottom, we were escorted to the Genius Bar in the back. There, an Apple Employee introduced herself and said that she would get our phone activated for us.

This process took about 20 minutes total, which is on the longer end of a typical activation- Apple estimates each activation to take 15-20 minutes. Our “activator” repeatedly told us that she was a new employee and was still getting used to things, so it might take her a little longer. Luckily we weren’t plagued by the activation issues many began to see shortly after we left the store. After we were approved by AT&T and paid for the iPhone, an Apple Genius helped us un-brick our iPhone and setup an email account and then we were officially 3G’ed.

We then left the store and were greeted by press and lots of other people outside. After doing a couple of brief interviews, we got some breakfast and enjoyed the new 3G iPhone. Then it was back to home base of Montclair, NJ for theiLife.com crew. Videos of the experience are coming soon and will appear below.

You can view us entering the store here:

You can view the entire video of our activation below:

You can view us exiting the store here:

Gallery after the jump! Read more…

Last night, I saw Wall E in theaters with a couple of friends. After reading the great reviews I decided that Wall E might be worth my trip to the theater- and my $10! Indeed it was.

For someone who goes to the movies maybe once a year, going out to see Wall E was definitely worth it. Wall E tells the story of a robot who has survived for over 700 years cleaning up garbage on the Earth but has developed a personality. Wall E is an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class. Once joined with a large fleet, the protagonist Wall E is the last robot surviving from the failed cleanup efforts.

Like other Pixar movies, Wall E is very light on the surface, but touches many larger issues about humanity all while appealing to virtually every demographic. The movie deeply roots itself with issues of consumerism. All the humans have been controlled by a huge corporation named Big N’ Large and have since trashed the Earth. The humans have since evolved to become large, lazy, materialistic creatures that do nothing but watch video screens.

Wall E proves how far Pixar has come with animation- you know this when you see an ‘animated’ movie and it never once occurs to you that it is animated. Everything in Wall E, from Space scenes to the apocalyptic Earth look incredible, and aren’t devoid of other unique Pixar characters. In short, Wall E is a typical Pixar production taken to the next level. If you can, go see it right now- you will enjoy Wall E. Bonus points for anyone who can catch all the Apple references!!

Guest poster Dan Foy from Macsimum News gives us an overview of Growl. You can read his original post here on Macsiumum News!

You’re working on a project at work, and you hear the “bing” of Mail, telling you there’s a new e-mail. You are confronted with the question, “Do I stop what I’m doing and see if the e-mail is important, or do I take a chance and keep working on my project?”

What if you didn’t have to? What if a little box popped up on the side of your screen with a summary of the e-mail, giving you a short-term look at the e-mail so you can decide if it’s important or not?
Believe it or not, the software that does that is already here. And it’s free (donations are accepted).
It’s called Growl. Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications (took the description right off their web site because I couldn’t have said it better myself).

I had heard of Growl, but didn’t see much use for it until I accidentally installed it. Yes, I accidentally installed Growl. I don’t even know what program installed it for me (which I don’t like, but I seem to recall an installer asking me if I wanted to install Growl, so I must have said “yes.”)
Anyway, all of a sudden, I started seeing notifications when my RSS reader, the open-source Vienna, downloaded new articles. Thought that was pretty handy. I could tell when there were new articles without bumping down to the bottom of the screen and making the dock appear (Vienna has a number notifier in its dock icon and I keep my dock hidden). Saves time.
So I started investigating and found Growl in my System Preferences (in the Other category at the bottom). After some exploration, I found that there is a plugin for Apple’s Mail program that allows Growl to notify you of new e-mail.

And there are a whole bunch of other programs that are either written to work with Growl, and for some others there are plugins.

But the one that really helps me is the Mail plugin. My day job is at a newspaper. I do page design for my home paper and tech support for several other papers. As part of that, I get an enormous amount of e-mail from the Associated Press. Most of if deals with their web-based video network, and for some reason, they can’t just send me the important stuff, they send me an email every time they post a new video.

I have them whisked off to a folder in Mail, but it “bing”s every time one of those e-mails come in and I don’t always have time to see whether or not it’s important. But I want to know immediately if someone is having a problem related to their deadlines.
Growl shows me who the email is from and allows me to more-easily ignore the AP stuff.
And that’s just one example. I also use Semulov, which unmounts volumes. Now when a volume unmounts, I see it in a Growl notification.
I’m sure you can come up with many other uses, but I just wanted to introduce you to this cool little program.

This article is a brief look into the latest version of the messaging program Adium.

If you aren’t already familiar with Adium, and you are running OS X- please download it now. Adium is basically the VLC of Instant Messaging applications- the swiss army knife that does it all, and with style. Completely Cocca based, licensed under a GNU General Public License, Adium is free and even highly customizable.

The Adium team, headed by Evan Schoenberg (Lead Developer) and Eric Richie (Project Manager) has been rapidly developing the latest version of Adium- version 1.3. Still in beta form, Adium 1.3 features a number of improvements over the current 1.2.5 build. Some of the best are highlighted below:

Complete redesign of the Contact Inspector (formerly the Get Info Window)

The contact inspector and integration with Address Book has been greatly improved in Adium 1.3.

Added Facebook Chat service to Adium

The new Facebook Chat protocol is now supported in Adium version 1.3.

Added a search field to the Standard Contact List window

Alike the new Contact search in the upcoming iPhone 2.0 firmware, Adium now supports searching your contacts, both online and off. Simply click in the Buddy List window and start typing- your results will be instantly filtered.

Major performance improvements, most notable when signing on multiple accounts simultaneously and when chatting while other applications are making heavy use of your hard drive.

Adium 1.3 has indeed been improved and most notably on older machines where system resources are tight.

If you would like to update to Adium 1.3 now, download Adium 1.2.5; and in Adium>Preferences>General check “Update to Beta Versions when Available”. This will allow you to run the latest betas of Adium, and the final release when it comes out.

Geoffrey is a new writer to theiLife.com and will be occasionally posting about various Apple related news. Today he is writing about the recent iMac Speed Bump.

The iMac has been herald the most innovative computer of its time. It was the first truly successful computer to integrate both the monitor and the actual CPU in one unit. While the original iMac was big, bulky, and came in a wide variety of translucent colors, it has been refined over the years. The iMac is by no means an antiquated computer. Over the years, it has grown to become stronger, thinner, faster and sexier. Last month, Apple has continued this trend with the latest refinement.

While some might call the recent iMac upgrade just a speed bump, its really perfection to the already perfect desktop. The new iMac comes with either a 20” screen or a 24” screen, the standard two options since 2007. The 20” model comes with a 250 GB Serial ATA 7200-rpm hard drive that is upgradeable to either a 500 GB hard drive or a 750 GB hard drive. This model also comes with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor that can be upgraded to a 2.66 GHz.

The 24” model is all the new rave in Apples line of computers. The 24” model comes standard with a 2.8 GHz processor and a 320 GB hard drive. But the new 24” iMac can be upgraded to have a 500 GB hard drive, 750 GB hard drive, or even a 1 TB hard drive! It can even have its processor upgraded to 3.06 GHz!

So what does all this mean? This means Apple has once again upgraded the computer of our generation, the computer that set the standards for other manufactures, the computer that more people associate with Apple then any other computer in Apple’s line. Once again Apple has stepped up the standard for all computers to come and the reviews (Macworld/PCMag) agree.

Continuing a series of reviews on how to save space, today we are looking at another valuable piece of software for Mac OS X. Today’s review is about Xslimmer from LateNiteSoft.

The Xslimmer Main Interface

When Steve Jobs announced the transition to Intel Processors at WWDC in 2005, the Universal Binary was born. Applications that were Universal Binary were natively compatible with both Intel and PowerPC architectures, and any application that wasn’t Universal Binary could be translated on the fly using Rosetta (like Classic; for Mac OS 9) on the new Intel architecture. So depending on the complexity of the application, by being a Universal Binary, the file size is increased; hence the nickname of ‘Fat Binaries’- a term left over from Apple’s transition from 68K to PowerPC.

Xslimmer is an application that scans through the code of your Universal Binary applications and determines, based on your computers architecture (be it Intel or PowerPC), what is unnecessary, and removing it. The unnecessary code Xslimmer removes would otherwise do nothing but take up space on your computer! By going through all your applications and removing the Universal Binary code, you will start seeing a significant amount of space coming back. For example:

Logic Pro 8: 335MB
Slimmed to: 95MB
Garage Band 3: 179MB
Slimmed to: 60MB

However, Xslimmer does more than just removing the unnecessary binary code- it can also remove unnecessary languages. Applications like Adium can have up to 20 differnt languages bundled within. This takes your applications on a strict diet- and for someone who has upwards of 300 applications, the difference can be very noticeable- especially if space is tight.

Xslimmer makes the process amazingly simple. When you launch it, you simply drag the application (or applications) you would like to slim down and it begins to analyze the amount of space it can save. When you are ready to slim your list of applications, simply press the “Slim!” button in the lower right hand corner; and wait while Xslimmer does the work for you.

Xslimmer can, however disrupt some applications and make them potentially unusable. However, the Xslimmer developers have created and maintain a blacklist of known applications that are effected by slimming. If you end up slimming an application that isn’t on the blacklist, you can simply report the application and reinstall it, which is why you should always back up your computer before slimming your applications (and is generally a good practice)! Or you can use Xslimmers built in backup system that will let you restore an application that you suspect has been damaged by Xslimmer.

i i i i (4/5)
Xslimmer is a very powerful application that will help you save space. Its simplistic design makes it easy to use and a must have for anyone wanting to free up every last megabyte on their hard drive. Xslimmer has recieved 4/5 i’s from theiLife.com; and is worth the $12.95.

Thank you to the Xslimmer team for letting theiLife.com staff try out Xslimmer for free!

When I was traveling in Atlanta, at the Marriott-Atlanta Marquis, the fitness room was equipped with new Life Fitness machines that had iPod integration built into each machine. More details follow below.

The Life Fitness iPod Connection Area

Although it has been known that Life Fitness was including iPod support for over a year now in it’s new machines, this is a small overview of the interface.

Basically, when you walk up to one of these machines, you will see this:

The Life Fitness Interface Splash Screen

To use and charge your iPod, you simply plug in the iPod to the Dock Connector, place it in the storage bin and direct your attention to the screen. The iPod automatically goes into Disk Mode and is ready to use with the machine. If you want to listen to music, you plug your headphones into the jack on the machine.

Once connected, you are presented with a number of different options from TV to your workout and related settings. However, in the bottom right hand corner, there is a button that says “Media Center”. By pressing that (using the touch screen) you are directed to a screen that looks like the one below:

Main iPod User Interface on the Machine

This interface is almost identical to the iPod UI- and you can use the dedicated buttons on the side or touch the titles, which was a nice, (almost) iPod Touch like experience. You can watch both videos and listen to music while working out, however I was unable to test the video feature because my iPod is full (quite literally) of only Music; seeing as I have a collection of Music that is over 60GB and only a 30GB iPod (5th Generation).

While the interface was very good, however it was slightly disappointing that you can’t shuffle playlists. It seems to default to how the playlist was originally laid out in iTunes, so for me, by Artist. The integration into the existing Life Fitness interface was a little disappointing as well, as it seemed a little clunky and not very intuitive. But what can you expect for a product not from Infinite Loop?

The interface with a song playing.

I had the pleasure of seeing a lecture at Columbia University by Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora.com and current Chief Strategy Officer. Pandora.com started in January of 2000 as The Music Genome Project, in an effort to characterize all music by attributing hundreds of musical ‘genes’ to songs. These include things like type of vocalist, guitar sound, rhythm structures, etc. A typical rock song has around 150 ‘genes’, while jazz songs mainly have upwards of 350 tags associated with them. Pandora.com was created to use this system and an additional algorithm to provide its users with a personal radio station.

Basically, a radio station is created when a user searches for a certain song or artist, and Pandora cues up a playlist that is made up of songs that match the musical ‘genes’ of the original query. Then, every time a song comes up, a user has options to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down to tell the algorithm whether he/she wants to listen to the song or songs like it. This type of recommendation system has done the company well, with over 7 million users and over $22 million in venture capital and debt financing. Also according to Compete.com, Pandora has increased the total number of people visiting their website by 126.2%. The lecture was primarily about the business tactics of the company, and how they struggled and fought to finally make it profitable(for two years most employees didn’t even work for a salary). It solidified my ideas that traditional radio and satellite are both dead. My reasoning after the jump!

Read more…