One of my previous posts pre-iPhone, I wrote about how there were ways to work around the iPhone’s limitations, and how you could use email to send your photos to Flickr. Well now, thanks to some hacker/tinkerers, we have a 3rd party native iPhone app that does the job splendidly!

The app is called iFlickr. It can be installed via the Installer.app hack which is really the only (read: easiest) way to install 3rd party apps on your phone. New and improved applications are finding their way to the iPhone every day—from an old-school NES game player to IM applications, a webserver, one-off iPhone-unique games like Lights Off and Tap Tap Revolution, all among many others. No, they’re not all perfect, some in alpha or beta in quality, but these apps are diverse in function and imaginative.

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If you recently upgraded to iLife 08, no doubt you’ve noticed some rather dramatic changes in how the updated applications look and work. One particular change to iPhoto is starting to annoy digital photographers used to diving into the iPhoto Library folder to directly access images imported into iPhoto. The new iLife 08 version of iPhoto’s Library is no longer a standard folder, but is instead a package. This new format prevents users from easily viewing and opening images in the iPhoto Library in the Finder or applications like Adobe Photoshop. But there is a simple solution.

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Even on an 802.11g network you can achieve some pretty fast transfers between your Macs & PC’s, provided one detail: one of the computers you’ll be transferring to or from is hard-wired via Ethernet.

Every wireless network has a threshold of bandwidth available on it which is somewhat in flux, due to the distances the connections are made at; the variety of devices on a network and their respective transfer speeds; and the amount of traffic on the network at the time you make a transfer.

Making a transfer of a 1.18GB video file from my Core2Duo Macbook wirelessly to an Ethernet wired Core2Duo iMac through my 802.11n Airport Extreme, I achieve wireless speeds of around 11.3Mb/sec. In terms of time, that 1.18GB video file took less than a minute to complete.

Making the same transfer with both computers wirelessly connected to the Airport Extreme, the transfer speeds were more than sliced in half. Why?
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While the iPhone is going to be great, there may be a few things that we might find lacking. So here are some hopefully useful shortcuts to get around some of the iPhones “missing features.”

Uploading photos to the Web:

Even though we don’t have a special 3rd party photo uploading tool on the iPhone like we do on the Mac, many web2.0 photo sharing services provide other means of uploads. One of the most popular is Flickr.com. Flickr provides its users a special email address that will receive and post your image. Log into flickr.com and then go here to find your special email address. To provide more detail to your uploaded image, here’s a cheat sheet:

subject line = title

body = description

tags = in the email’s body or subject put “tags:” followed by the tags as you would normally add them to a flickr photo.

limiting who can see your photos = in the prefix (just before the “@”) of your special flickr email, add “+friends” for friends only, add “+family” for family only, “+ff” for friends and family, and lastly, “+private” to make the images only visible to you.

Of course, this isn’t specific to iPhone, so if you want to use this method to post your Flickr photos, it should work just fine.
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In addition to being glossy white, the Nintendo Wii is quite Macintosh friendly from a network perspective. Wii will play nicely with your Mac even at this early juncture in the it’s lifespan, with more (wired and wireless) innovations coming shortly.

Today, there are a few notable applications to get you started playing your iTunes music , watching videos, and showing photos using your Wii and all can be ready in a matter of minutes using your home network.
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Listener Jason pointed me to this video tip he found posted over on lifehacker.com. I figured, since many of you may be new iPod owners, you could find this useful. Personally, I don’t have much love for the iPod earbuds and use a pair of over-the-ear Sony headphones. I do however, carry my original iPod earbuds as backup up, so this tip will help me keep things untangled in my laptop bag. It’s sometimes the simple things that make me smile.

So you just bought your parents or significant other a shiny new iPod for the holidays. Great, but now your ears are burning with questions like, “How do get my CDs on this thing?” or “Why are my favorite playlists not syncing?” or “How can I subscribe to this podast?”. Well don’t worry because we got your back. Our good friend Richard Tanner (writer of the ever popular, “Hitchhikers Guide to the Macintosh” series) has put together a helpful “Beginners Guide to iTunes” (PDF ~2.1MB). This is the perfect companion for any new iPod owner who needs a little help getting started with iTunes 7. The well organized 16 page guide is in a printable PDF format and includes helpful full color screenshots to guide a new user through all aspects of using iTunes. Now, Richard is from the UK so the guide (and some language) does skew slightly toward the other side of the pond, but the concepts taught are all solid and should translate regardless of your geographic location. I hope you find it helpful and a big thanks to Richard for taking the time for sharing this with the community.

Download your free Beginners Guide to iTunes (PDF ~2.1MB) by Richard Tanner

In a series of posts, I’ll be exploring the past, present and future of Apple’s wireless networking strategy, from 1999 to the impact of Apple’s newest Atheros-based Airport cards in the latest Core 2 Duo Macs, and what it means for compatibility and performance in the short and long term.

I’ll also be detailing some Airport tips and tricks, as well as covering security, setups, and troubleshooting strategies.

The Wireless Revolution
After 7 years, Apple’s wireless Internet and networking solution, Airport, has come a long way, as has the rest of the wireless industry when it comes to networking and internet sharing.
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Recently, a hack was developed that finally gives Mac users access to the content stored on their TiVo, a service that TiVo had promised but up to now has only allowed to PC users with TiVo-To-Go. I decided to take a look at the latest developments of this hack, for personal playback on my Mac.

A Quick Lay of the Land

The original hack is a command-line / Terminal tool, credited to Jeremy Drake and a number of other contributors, dubbed “tivodecode.” From there, a good how-to was written by Dave Zatz, and although it was written well, the method isn’t exactly user-friendly. From there, other folks put together some Automator actions, droplets, etc, but there’s only one that I’ve seen so far that actually works like a Mac app, and that’s TiVoDecode Manager, by David Benesch.
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Just in the past few days, the digital protections (or DRM) in which TiVo wrapped its recorded programming were defeated to allow the content to be played on a consumer’s networked device of choice. And I’m sure I’m not the only member of the MacCast community who has been waiting for the TiVoToGo functionality, but I’m excited at the possibility of watching even more recorded content on the go.

What I find interesting is that in the few days since this hack was made available, some previously held DRM hostages are wishing they had never been freed.
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