MobileMe – The iPhone iDisk.app

With MobileMe and the free iPhone iDisk.app files copied to an OS X or XP mounted iDisk (WebDav) share can also be viewed on your iPhone. I know there are other apps that do something similar, such as Air Sharing, but I think this will work for me.

Note that as the “Master” of my family MobileMe account I have 20GB of iDisk storage.

Here’s an illustrative example

1. Work around XP SP2 bugs so you can mount an iDisk as a Windows (WebDav) file share.
2. Drop a PDF into the share. It’s now accessible through all iDisk clients, including my server synchronized iDisk folder.
3. Open iPhone iDisk.app and view PDF. The iPhone PDF viewer is quite impressive.
4. From iPhone PDF viewer you can send an email. The email will contain a link that points to the shared file (doesn’t actually contain the file).

Slick. I assume the iDisk viewable file types are the same as those viewable as email attachments:

Viewable document types: .jpg, .tiff, .gif (images); .doc and .docx (Microsoft Word); .htm and .html (web pages); .key (Keynote); .numbers (Numbers); .pages (Pages); .pdf (Preview and Adobe Acrobat); .ppt and .pptx (Microsoft PowerPoint); .txt (text); .rtf (rich text format); .vcf (contact information); .xls and .xlsx (Microsoft Excel)

See also: Gordon's Tech- The MobileMe Massacre begins.

MobileMe – Getting WebDav (iDisk) support working on XP

No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get my XP machines to mount an iDisk using the WebDav protocol per Apple’s directions:

Connecting to your iDisk from Windows Explorer

1. Click the Start menu and choose Network Connections > My Network Places.
2. In the window that opens, click "Add a network place" to open the Add Network Place wizard.
3. On the next screen, click "Choose another network location."
4. When prompted for the URL for your iDisk, type the following URL address (replace "YourMemberName" with your own member name):
   http://idisk.me.com/YourMemberName/

I thought the problem was that my user name had a dot ‘.’ in the middle of it. MobileMe usernames become webdav directories.

Wrong. Google (praise be) gave me the fix …

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but I found a solution to my problems with XP and Apache2 here: http://blog.pclark.net/2005/03/fun-with-windows-xp-and-webdav.html...

The secret is to add a port number to the URL - for instance, use:
http://my.site.com:80/mydirectory
rather than
http://my.site.com/mydirectory.

When you do this, you'll get the AuthName from your httpd.conf file in the authentication window above the username and password fields, and the username and password should work, without having to have my.site.com\ prepended to the username…

So I tried http://idisk.me.com:80/first.lastname/ (actually, I forgot the terminal ‘/’ but it worked first try. I just had to enter my username and password, telling XP to remember the password.

I suspect this is actually an XP bug. There’s something familiar with it, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn I’ve had to do this before (yep, I solved this one a year ago with DreamHost, it’s known as the /# hack!)

See also

• Gordon's Tech- The MobileMe Massacre begins
• Gordon's Tech- WebDAV, Microsoft, DreamHost and the insane slash and pound hack
• MobileMe- Perspective of a crusty Palm veteran – in which I ran into a similar iDisk problem in July 2008

Update 10/21/09: I tried this on another XP SP2 machine and all I had to do was enter http://idisk.me.com/YourMemberName/ with the trailing forward slash (per directions). I don't know what's really going on here. If you're having problems first try the forward slash, next try entering the port.

Update 10/23/09: An Apple Discussion contributer pointed out that Apple's kb article recommends installation of a May 2007 Microsoft "web folder" update:

• description: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907306
• download: Software Update for Web Folders (KB907306)

I can't tell if this was ever included in any XP service packs, I don't think Microsoft always includes all of their fixes.

MobileMe – Locator Service

To configure the locator service you need to add a MobileMe account in the Mail, Contacts, Calendar Settings domain. I added my phone and, for the moment, turned off all synchronization other than location.

Push support must be enabled on the phone.

Once you’ve enabled this feature you have several features related to finding your phone:

1. You can make it play a sound, even when it’s in silent mode.
2. You can locate it on a map. Currently Apple uses Google maps. Getting the refined location takes a few minutes. When the phone was in a room in my home I could locate it within a 2 block radius. I put it on the window sill where it might get a GPS lock and it centered on a spot between my home and my neighbor’s home – about 30 feet from its actual location.
3. You can display a message to whoever might have your phone, such as “I am looking at your house now ..”
4. You can lock the phone using the remote lock.
5. You can remote wipe the phone, after which it cannot be located.

See: The MobileMe Massacre begins

MobileMe Family Pack activation and account information

The activation procedure I followed was identical to a single user activation. I tried reactivating using my old .Mac username, but MobileMe was unable to connect it to the current password. I wonder if a .Me version of the old account is in limbo with an old password*.

So I have a distinct iTunes/Apple account and MobileMe account. That’s probably a good thing.

The first account you use is the Master account. So I am the Master of my family. That’s nice.

In Settings I configured my Mail to 1GB (it will not be used) and iDisk to 19GB. The Family Pack comes with 20GB of storage and a 200GB monthly data transfer limit.

It turns out that package description is misleading. I thought there were four MobileMe accounts. It appears there’s 1 Master account (20GB) and four minion(?) accounts, each with 5GB of storage. So total storage is 40GB. I don’t know if the 200 GB data transfer limit is for the master account or for all accounts.

I put a reminder in ToodleDo to renew a few weeks ahead of the displayed expiration date.

See: The MobileMe Massacre begins.

* So if you discontinue a MobileMe account, you may wish to keep the last good password around.

Update 10/21/09: See MobileMe- Perspective of a crusty Palm veteran, a review I wrote in July 2009. Back then I was able to get my original .Mac username and convert it to me.com, so I should have tried to claim my un with a .me extension.

Update 10/21/09b: You can remove family member accounts and thus recycle them. It's in the Account Options menu.

The MobileMe Massacre begins

After several years of watching with vague disgust, I purchased a MobileMe 4 5 person family pack (via Macintouch referral link) from Amazon for $123. It took 12 days to arrive, which is about 3 times as long as I’d expected.

I’ll be using it for Emily, my mother (remote maintenance) and me. The sum of services that I think will make it worthwhile include:

• iPhone locator, send message, lock and remote wipe services
• Outlook 2003/2007 synchronization to MobileMe contacts, as used in my Contacts project. (The SyncWiz failure persuaded me to seek the only Outlook AddIn Contacts Sync solution I’ve had success with).
• Webdav (iDisk) shares and large file messaging
• Remote maintenance/access (esp... for my mother)

I don’t think I have any use for the Calendaring, bookmarks, email, or photo gallery services. I certainly don’t want to commit my data to MobileMe; Apple is to Data Freedom as the Birthers are to Obama.

I will have more to say about each of the features I use, which is best done in stages because MobileMe is a fairly amorphous and fluid set of services. Some of the capabilities are OS X specific, and some are probably 10.6 specific (or less buggy on 10.6). Some are iPhone specific (locator), some are iLife specific (albums, iWeb) and a few work with a PC (which I actually need).

In general the more Apple products you use, the more MobileMe becomes a reasonable purchase.

I’ll add links below to the next few weeks of reviews.

• 10/20/09: MobileMe Family Pack activation and account information
• 10/20/09: MobileMe – Locator Service
• 10/21/09: MobileMe – Getting Webdav support working on XP
• 10/21/09: MobileMe – The iPhone iDisk.app
• 10/21/09: Mobile Me back to my Mac for remote maintenance – a complete fail
• 10/21/09: MobileMe - Sharing Contacts and Calendars in a Family account (doesn't work)
• 10/23/09: MobileMe: Integrating Work and Personal Contacts

See also:

• MobileMe- Perspective of a crusty Palm veteran. I wrote this in July 2009.
• We won’t see a fixed MobileMe until 10.6 is out: Well, 10.6 is out, and I'm not so sure MobileMe is fixed.

Update 11/7/09: I've discovered that even iCal is synchronizing even when it's disabled in MobileMe preferences. Obnoxious bug.

Update 2/27/2010: MobileMe file sync disappoints.

Update 10/5/2010: MobileMe iDisk kills my mother's network

Update 10/11/2010: MobileMe and Snow Leopard kill the "connect as" feature

Firefox: Please fix your darned URL drag and drop behavior

This is what you get when you drag and drop a location field URL onto a rich text editing field from four different browsers (all on XP):

Chrome*: Gordon's Tech- The best feature in Safari 3.1- drag and drop urls

Safari: Gordon's Tech Blogger BlogThis! Drag and drop URLs

IE 8: Gordon's Tech Firefox One thing IE does far better -- and FF could do it to

Firefox: http://tech.kateva.org/2007/07/firefox-one-thing-ie-does-far-better.html

IE has had this behavior since at least IE 3 (was there an earlier version?). Safari (webkit) added it in 3.1, and Chrome has always had it.

I love the fact that these 3 browsers display the page title field. It’s annoying that Firefox doesn’t.

Now, this isn’t the biggest problem with Firefox today. Still, it’s symptomatic.

I used to use Firefox everywhere. I now use Chrome on XP, Safari on OS X, and Camino on our 10.3 iBook.

Firefox, please get better!

* Chrome is the only one to put the hyphen after the name of the blog. Nice touch.

More of me: My Google Reader Shared Item Feed

Google Reader has been my primary feed reader on my iPhone and desktop since I left Bloglines in 2007.

It’s a great reader, but I especially I love the ability to search my read, starred and shared posts, and to incorporate my GR feeds and my blogs and legacy pages into one custom search.

Since May of 2008 I’ve also been sharing my annotations on posts, and using Google Reader as a micro-blogging platform. Unlike Twitter posts, these GR micro-posts work with my memory management strategy [1].

My GR micro-blogging has changed what I right here. Many of the small frequent posts I used to do are now simply shared items in Google Reader.

So if you’re not getting enough here, you might consider subscribing to my Google Reader shared items feed:

feed://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/06457543619879090746/state/com.google/broadcast

This feed currently does not work in IE 8 or Bloglines and probably doesn’t work in Outlook 2007 (does anyone still use Bloglines or IE?). It works in Google Reader (of course), Firefox, Safari and OS X Mail.app.

Be warned that my GR feed includes everything I’m interested in, so it’s high volume and undifferentiated. It mixes geeky stuff with politics, science, etc.

I’m going to be including a link to my “Google Reader Shared Item Feed” at the bottom of most posts from this blog and Gordon’s Notes, so you can pick up or drop the feed at any time. I should be easy to find.

--

[1] I’d prefer to be able to reflect these microblog posts back into my blog. For one thing the blogs are exportable (thank you Google Data Liberation Front!)

Related posts:

• About the FLH: DejaNews, FrontPage, Google Reader, feeds, iframes and more
• Loving Google Reader - Shared post feed
• Google doing weird stuff with GR Shared Item feed
• Using Bloggers undocumented label (category) feeds and Yahoo Pipes to create a tech opinion feed out of Gordon's Notes
• How do I share my Google Reader Shared Items Feed and process it via Yahoo Pipes?

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)