MacMousecalls
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iPhone

Taking notes on your Mac and iPhone: Notes in Mail

While adding notes to calendar events and people in your address book are good for many purposes, there are other notes that need to be somewhere else.

Until the release of iPhone OS 3 I used several different note apps on my iPhone. Each had some method of syncing, most involved having another application on my computer. That was one more thing to add to my dock and often one more web site to pay money to each year.

Now that the Notes Application on my iPhone

iPhone_notes


…can sync with the Notes in Mail

Notes_Mail


…I am pretty happy.

Let’s review how this works.

When you open the Notes app on the iPhone, you will see one of the two screens below. If you see this screen, you either have no notes or you are looking at notes you have previously made. To add a note, click the plus icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

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If you see this screen, you are looking at the note you were last using. Click the plus icon in the upper right to add another note. Click the arrow icons at the bottom of the screen to navigate to your other notes. The envelope icon attaches the note to an email so that you can send it to someone. The Trash can icon deletes the note.

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If you want to add a note on your computer, it is done in Mail:

Notes_Mail


Click on the Note icon in the toolbar at the top of the screen to add a new note. Click on the Notes icon in the Mail sidebar to view your notes.

There are many options when making Notes in Mail. It is possible to change fonts and colors, attach files and photos and even to make To Do items in a note:

Screen shot 2010-03-06 at 11.10.58 AM


Syncing notes

While it is possible to sync Mail accounts, Contacts, Calendars and Bookmarks to the iPhone using MobileMe, Notes are not included.

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Instead, synching is set up in iTunes:

Screen shot 2010-03-06 at 11.51.31 AM


This means that in order to see the latest changes you have made on the other device (iPhone or Mac), you must connect your iPhone to the Mac and do a sync.

While there are lots of other applications that can be used for notes, I prefer Apple’s Notes application. Since it is an application made by Apple Inc., I can check my notes at any time. For example, when I am talking on the telephone, playing a game, listening to my podcast or music. For me this availability is not to be missed!

--Pat

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Taking notes on your Mac and iPhone: iCal

While storing notes about people or companies in the Address book on the Mac (or in Contacts on the iPhone) makes perfect sense, some information just doesn't belong there.

For example, I am taking a Frontier Airline flight to Macworld later this week. I received a confirmation email from Frontier after I booked my flight:


Reservation

While I might put the telephone number and URL for Frontier in Address Book, information about my flight to San Francisco would be easier to locate in iCal or the iPhone Calendar. I used copy and paste to put the information into iCal:


Screen shot 2010-02-08 at 12.35.27 PM

Then I waited for MobileMe to sync the information to my iPhone:


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One of the most interesting things is that although the links from the email do not appear in the iCal event, they are visible and available on my iPhone. The links open to Google maps in Safari. Just think of how convenient it could be to have such easy access for maps to hotels, restaurants etc.

Note that I edited the screenshots to remove personal and identifying information from the images above.

Both Bob LeVitus and I will be at Macworld later this week. Look for blog posts, Twitters and updates as we learn about new products for the Mac, iPhone and iPod Touch. I will be traveling with my husband, Ron--if we don’t get snowed in by yet another DC storm.

--Pat

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iPhone and iPod Touch - How to update an application

As a blog writer, I pay attention to Google Analytics. The web site tracks every page of MacMousecalls and lets me know a lot about my readers.

google_analytics

This report tells me that I get lots of visits to an earlier article about updating iPhones and iPod touches. However the article is very out of date, so its time to do a complete update.

Keeping applications up-to-date was a bit buggy when the first article was written, but things have changed.

The iPhone and iPod Touch lets you know, right on App Store icon, when there is a newer version of an application.

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Clicking on the icon may tell a slightly different story:

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In this case, the updates page shows that I have three updates. This happened because I just used my iPhone for the first time today.

You can also check for updates on your computer by using iTunes.

Screen shot 2010-01-08 at 7.51.56 AM


Click on Applications in the Library area of the upper left column. You will be taken to the iTunes store to a special page that tracks your app updates. You can click on the update button for each individual application, or you can click the Download All button in the upper right corner of the window.

Did you notice that there are 4 applications shown here? That is because TweetDeck is not on my iPhone, but it is in my application collection. I have many more applications than I can display on my iPhone.

In the original article I wrote about having to delete earlier versions of applications through the finder. That is no longer necessary. Apple fixed that bug a long time ago!

Happy App shopping!

--Pat

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New gear for my new iPhone

I have to admit it! For the third summer in a row, I found myself in line last Friday to buy the new iPhone 3GS. Since Apple did not change the form between the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS, and since my husband also bought one, we will be needing another external battery pack at our house! Join me as I explore the different type of battery packs and and their features.
Click here to read more...
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Taking iPhone Screenshots

There are lots of iPhone screenshots appearing on the web these days! It seems as though everyone wants to know about the changes coming in the iPhone 3.0 software.

Carl, one of our Dr. Mac Consulting clients sent me a tweet :

Carl Tweet

The ability to make screenshots was added in the iPhone 2.0 software. To make a screenshot: Click here to read more...
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iPhone Battery - Getting the most out of a charge

When I got my new iPhone back in July, I was amazed how quickly I could run the battery down! Just talking to a few people, watching a video, playing a game and checking my calendar left a dent in my battery. A day of heavy use meant I had to go running for my charger.

It was time to get energy smart! Although each successive version of the iPhone software has caused the battery to go longer between charges, I quickly found that some power management techniques would go a long way in assuring I had enough battery life to not worry about my iPhone going dead.

Here are some things you can do to increase the battery life of your iPhone. While doing all of these things will give you the longest running time for your iPhone, just implementing one or two will help. For each technique, I will list all the steps, so some pictures, particularly those of the home screen and settings window will be repeated several times.
Click here to read more...
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