MobileMe: Managing Your Web 2.0 Calendar on Me.com

21 07 2008

At the front end of the new MobileMe launch, Me.com consists of a slick Web 2.0 interface for your Calendars, Contacts, Photos and Mail. This is an in depth look into the online Calendar portion of the suite.

Once you have MobileMe synchronized with your computers and mobile devices, you can make changes online at Me.com and your other computers or devices will be automatically updated. This means that virtually anywhere you have access to the internet, regardless of what computer or mobile device you may (or may not) have access to; you can make changes to and access your data.

For those who have become accustomed to using iCal, the Me.com calendar carries over almost every feature- with the exception of an alarm function to the web. This powerful web application is based on the latest Web 2.0 technologies, and allows for a near desktop application replication.

To create a new calendar appointment, simply click on the calendar at the appropriate time, much like you would in iCal. The familiar event bubble will pop up corresponding to what color calendar you’re in. You can then enter text for the name of the event, drag it to correctly represent the time or double click on it to see even more options. If necessary, you can even drag the appointment across your calendar to change the date.

The MobileMe application even allows for Keyboard Shortcuts, for example, if you would like to delete an event, you simply press the delete key.

To create a new To-Do, press Control and “K” and your To-Do list will appear with a new event.

Read more after the jump! Read more…



A Brief Look into MobileMe: How to Configure and Setup Syncing between your Mac, PC and Mobile Device (iPhone/iPod Touch)

16 07 2008

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…