Maps uses the power of Google in a convenient package for some useful searches. Instead of just returning information, it returns geography. You can search the following:
Though Google Docs are not fully functional with iPhone, you can create them from a standard email message. On a desktop browser, those you share with can open them, edit them and download them in various file formats. From your desktop, sign up for Google Docs, log in and press the Upload button. At the bottom of the screen you'll see a lengthy email address. Copy and paste this in your Contacts and sync it with your iPhone. Anything you email to this address becomes a Google doc. The Subject is the title of the doc and the body becomes the content.
A cool feature is that you can add emphasis to your doc with standard html tags in your email:
For italic use <i>emphasized text</i>
For bold use <b>emphasized text</b>
For links use <a href="http://iphonesmarts.com/">shown text</a>
For email links use <a href="mailto:me@myselfandi.com">shown text</a>
These are the basics. Many other html tags also work.
View your docs online at Google Mobile. This becomes a convenient place online to store any doc that you commonly need to view.
Want of photo of your loved one(s) on your Home screen? (It makes them think you care.) If you have Web space you can create a Web clip for your desktop that turns the image into a thumbnail.
Web clips allow you to bookmark sites with an icon on your Home screen. This is very useful for those who use their iPhone for a dozen sites they regularly visit, since 16 will fit on their own page of your Home Screen. While this in itself is cool, the best function of these is that you can zoom in on a portion of a page. When you launch your Web clip from the Home screen it's pre-zoomed so you don't have to resize the page to read it. This trick works extremely well with Apple's discussion sites. If you zoom in on the top of the list of posts, they're legible without having to manually zoom or tap each time you go to the page. When you page back to this page, they remain zoomed in.
Yes: you can from your iPhone. No: it's not pretty.
The basic Web authoring offered by MobileMe's Homepage works with your iPhone. Homepage only creates simple pages, but if that's all you need, it works. Use landscape view and tap fields to navigate to them. You can use images and media, provided they're stored on the Web somewhere. Your iDisk is the logical place.
While searching with Google on Safari over Wifi is blazingingly fast, the experience over Edge or 3G takes a lot longer. When you're switching between pages a lot, like when Google searching, that 20 seconds or more between pages can really be frustrating. Fortunately Google has made this process much faster by offering a special mobile site that strips out unnecessary code, so the pages run much faster. It also formats content for your mobile phone. It looks so nice, you might find yourself using this all the time instead of the standard Google search built into Safari.
Google has become such a fundamental part of our lives that we take it for granted. But for most of us, many of its powerful features are seldom tapped. And more search super powers are being added to all the time. The cool thing is that Google is so integrated into your iPhone that you can improve your search vocabulary without leaving this page.
Try a few. If your address bar is not showing across the top of this page, tap the time at the top. Now tap the address bar. Your Google search bar will pop up. Let's start with the weather. Type (or tap the link for convenience sake):
weather 10001
You can use your zip code or city. I just used the zip of Jessica Alba's high-power NY attorney. When it's raining there I have the satisfaction of knowing that he can't have the top down on the Porshe convertible she's unfortunately financing for him. If you want to search Google Images, try:
image: rocky squirrel
I give Rocky as an example to deter you from searching out scantily-clad images of Jessica Alba. (Hasn't that poor woman suffered enough?) Leave her alone.
If you wanted to search a specific site put:
site:usatoday.com hillary clinton
before your search words. This will search out only usatoday.com. Or if you want to look up a word, one method is:
define zygote
If the word zygote brings up bad memories of your childhood at Manticore, feel free to replace it. Google has some remarkable genetically-enhanced super powers. Try this:
10 miles to kilometers
Yup. Google is a converter and calculator. You also can search out specific filetypes:
filetype:pdf irs 1040
before your search words will net you only pdfs that match your search. There are a lot of other features. Google Guide has an incomplete list. For more, Google:
'google syntax'
Anything in quotes or apostrophes will limit the search to that specific term. And narrowing is search is simple on Google too. Just put minus in front of a word you'd like to exclude. This can eliminating an element from the the logical returns. So if you want to find pages that mention Picasso but not Pablo use:
picasso -pablo
Google can do a lot more. The Google team is ecouraged to add new abilities that are experimental and not offically documented. Just try logical search and see what happens.
Safari over WiFi generally runs fairly fast. Over 3G it can be 40% and over Edge, it's about 80% slower. For fastest data movement with either, make sure you're optimizing your connection.
You can sync bookmarks between desktop Safari and iPhone Safari. I use entirely different bookmarks on each, so this seems to make no sense at first, cluttering up your iPhone will bookmarks you'll never use. But the real value is that most of us do more browsing on the desktop and if you find an iPhone site you can bookmark it easily. If you want to use bookmarklets, this is an absolute necessity for smoothly getting bookmarklets to your iPhone. To Sync bookmarks, plug in your iPhone and go to iTunes>iPhone in your Library list>Info>check Sync Safari Bookmarks. If you fail to do this when you first get the iPhone, you might erase some bookmarks later on either the iPhone or desktop.
With Blogger.com you can blog by email. You can even include a photo from your iPhone when you post your entry. This makes blogging while rolling easy. You need to set this up first inside of Blogger. Once you've created a blog, go to Settings>Email. Set a secret word for your blogger address. You might want to put this email address in your Contacts.
To blog, send your entry to this address. The subject line will become the title and the body of the email will become the entry. That's it.
To send a photo with your entry, just pick a photo from the camera roll or from your iPhone's photo library. At the bottom left of the screen tap the Share button. (The one with the arrow coming out of the image. If there's no button, tap your screen and it will appear.) Tap Email Photo. Put your entry title in the subject line. Put your entry text in the body of the email above the photo. (Blogger seems to cut off all text after the photo.) Mail it. About two minutes later your entry is up. Notes that Blogger will put your text after the image.
Advanced notes: You can delete you signature or ads if your mail providers adds them by typing #end at the end of your email. Your iPhone composes with only plain text mail so html tags don't work.
Your Contacts application, whether on Mac or PC, allows you to enter URLs. If this isn't an option when you edit a contact, you probably just need to enable it in Preferences or Options. In Contacts on your iPhone, these become active links you can click on and open pages in Safari. Sometimes these are easier to find using Contacts since Contacts are alphabetical.
Naw, don't get too excited yet. It's not what you think. Yes you can call out to any phone in the world on your iPhone through Skype. But you it still counts against your phone minutes. IM+ for Skype Webware does the clever stunt of calling the other party and then conferencing in your iPhone. So the call both counts against your minutes and also counts against your Skypeout minutes. So if you're calling within your own country, this actually will cost you more than using your iPhone.
But if you make a lot of international calls, you can save a lot, since it's technically an in-country call for your iPhone. Normally international calls on your iPhone cost you a lot more. And if you do most of your calls at night and on the weekend, there's no danger of eating into your minutes. Currently you can get a free trial, but the company plans to charge soon. But the $25 lifetime fee could be repaid the first international call you make.
Of course, this costs where Skype-to-Skype on your computer doesn't. But it does give you a mobile version of Skype when away from your desktop. The service also offers Skype messaging, which appears to be free and does not require you to have Skypeout.
