Top iPhone Resource

Shriya and I use Gmail and Google Calendar extensively. iPhone’s native Calendar is nice but Google Calendar lets us access our events from our computers as well. Plus, I have tons of contacts already filled out in my Gmail that would be nice to have them in my iPhone.

With Google Calendar, you can also subscribe to other Calendar (CalDAV) compatible services like Remember the Milk, Anyvite, etc.

How to Sync Google Calendar with iPhone?

With this little tip, you can integrate Google Calendar right into your iPhone Calendar using Google Sync. I am going to assume you have upgraded to OS 3.0 and get to 2.2 later.

iPhone OS Version 3.0

1. Open Settings in iPhone
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3. Tap on Add Account
4. Select Microsoft Exchange

   

5. In the Email field, enter your full Gmail address
6. You can leave the Domain field empty
7. In Username, enter your full email address
8. In Password, enter your Google password
9. Hit Next and enter m.google.com in Server field

   

10. Press Next
11. Select the Google Services you want to Sync - only Calendar & Contacts supported at the moment
12. Choose ‘Keep on my iPhone‘ to keep your existing contacts and events in your iPhone.
13. And you are done!

Gotchas

• Google Calendar and Contacts will automatically sync if you have Push (Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data) enabled. Push settings can also drain your battery faster so play with it and see how your battery holds up with various intervals.
• You can choose which of your Google Calendars to Sync by going to http://m.google.com/sync in Safari
• You can only create 1 Exchange ActiveSync account. So if you already use one for work you are out of luck. Thanks Apple!
• After the Sync is done, you chose to see All Calendars or just specific Calendars in iPhone

  

• With iPhone OS 2.2, you won’t see the screen where you can chose to Keep your existing Contacts in iPhone. You have to heed the warning that you will lose your iPhone data and hit Sync twice.

Hope you were able to set up your Google Calendar and Contacts in your iPhone with these instructions. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Hello there! Hope you found a nice app, or a cool hack or the latest iPhone news. Don't miss future updates, grab our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter and get free updates.

Google’s Mobile Blog is reporting that Google has rolled out an iPhone friendly search results page.

Google Search results are not dumbed down or anything. It’s just better laid out and optimized for viewing in iPhone or iPod Touch. This will help us from having to scroll side to side to see the whole result.

One of the best examples of this optimization would be the Local Search results in Google. It neatly lays out the phone number for the business and a link to get directions prominently. (see pic)

The phone number is a click to call link. The map is shown by default if it’s a single result that’s returned or there is a Show map link for multiple listings.

The new iPhone friendly results page are available to those in US only at the moment. Plus you need the iPhone & iPod Touch firmware 2.x.

We welcome the love Google is showing iPhone in spite of Android’s release!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Mybefia is a web application that fills the niche where you want to get trend information for iPhone Applications that are available in AppStore.

You can see the Daily top 100 free apps, paid apps, etc. But, this doesn’t actually show how a particular App behaved over a time frame. It doesn’t show a App’s marketshare.

Yaniv Solnik of bee.tv saw this need and filled it with his own app that is Mybefia.com.

Mybefia Features

• Lets you compare Apps ‘Alexa style’ - compare upto 3 apps and check its trend, rank, reviews, popularity as well as marketshare.
  
• Leaderboard page shows
  • Top 100 Free Apps
  • Top 100 Paid Apps
  • Top 250 Apps by Popularity
  • Top 250 Apps by Reviews
• Leadeboard apps also show a red or green arrow indicating a Apps day to day popularity
• Leaderboard compare feature requires you to paste iTunes links to compare
• The Alex style compare feature however, autofills App names as you type.

MyBefia is a pretty cool tool for those looking for more insightful data on App in the AppStore.

You could even win $50 if you guess what Mybefia is.

My guess: Mybefia is to address my beef with the AppStore that doesn’t give me useful data.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Flickr has to be one of the most used web services for a iPhone user. We all take pictures with our iPhones and upload them using various apps like Pixup to Flickr. But, browsing Flickr itself with our iPhone wasn’t that great.

Now, Flickr has unveiled its iPhone-optimized mobile site - m.flickr.com. It’s fabulous. Most used links are at the top.You can see Activity, your sets, contacts, photostream, etc. You can view a picture and leave comments.

But, you don’t get the Uploadr, Organizr and Map that you get in the Flickr website. But, that’s probably ok as long as you can browser your sets & collections. But, sadly the slideshow feature is also missing. You can even add the Flickr web app to your Home with a nice icon set. if you’d like to see the screenshots instead, click over to the link below where Josh Bancroft has tons of them!

Popularity: 1% [?]

I certainly hope so! And that’s what the director of Skype, Josh Silverman hinted at, in his GigaOM’s 19min interview .

When asked ‘Where is Skype for the iPhone’, he replied “Stay tuned. We need to be on all devices.. Skype needs to be everywhere”.

Skype is already available for Pocket PC based devices and is actually a big hit. When Skype hits iPhone, it will certainly be one of the popular app downloads for sure. Click over to GigaOM to watch the full video.

Skype for iPhone or iPod Touch Right Now?

For those who are impatient and can’t wait for Skype to release a native iPhone, you are in luck.

Shape Services is offering an iPhone & iPod Touch optimized web service that lets you use Skype from iPhone. The web page itself is iPhone app like icons. You can call any of the Skype users all over the world with it. Make cost effective calls to any phone number at SkypeOut rates. Chat with your online friends in Skype.

You have to pay a nominal fee for this service:

Monthly $5.95
Lifetime License $29.95

To get this simply type s4iphone.com in your iPhone and purchase a subscription. You get 10 days of fully functional trial period if you’d like to try it first.

I signed up for the free trial and tried calling this Skype account on iPhone from another Skype account. The webapp showed the incoming call and then it switched over like it was a normal call on the iPhone. The call quality was pretty good too but I was on my home Wi-Fi at the moment. I will report back when I get a chance to test this on 3G/Edge in the next 10 days.

I would love to hear your thoughts on it too.

We just got back from our vacation and hence the few silent days. Look out for a new post with pictures on How to jailbreak iPhone 2.1 firmware with Quickpwn for Windows. if you don’t want to miss such feeds, you can subscribe to our RSS feed.

Popularity: 1% [?]

DropBox is an innovative file synchronization service that seamlessly keeps the assigned folder between computers in sync. You can even get to your files from anywhere via a browser interface. You can read our DropBox Review here.

Dropbox has also got an improved iPhone optimized interface to get to your files/pictures on your Windows,Mac or Linux desktops right from your iPhone.

Dropbox was on closed beta so far and they have just launched publicly! You can go ahead and sign for a free account (2GB space). There will be premium accounts with more space availabel shortly at the price of 50GB Dropbox for $9.99/month or $99.99/year.

Enjoy this excellent service now right from your iPhone!

If you are a Dropbox fan, you have to check out this excellent collection of Dropbox hacks and Portable Dropbox hack.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Now, you can stay connected with your GTalk buddies on the go with your iPhone with the Special GTalk version for iPhone.

Just head over to www.google.com/talk in your iPhone browser. Sign in with your Google account and you can start chatting, set your status message, etc. Since, this runs in your Safari browser, the application has to stay open to receive chat messages. But, as long as you stay in the chat window, you can search for contacts and manage multiple conversations.

Even though the functionality is limited, but it could be very powerful to have this on your iPhone especially if you are on a limited SMS plan or no SMS plan.

What other instant messaging option are you fond of in your iPhone?

Popularity: 1% [?]