Peak District National Park looking towards Whaley Bridge, originally uploaded by datasmog.

Taken on 21st April 2009 on an iPhone.
Location is Goyt’s Lane close to the Errwood Reservoir.

One of the criticisms of the iPhone mail application is the absence of any mail filtering. If like me you enjoy a relatively spam free existence courtesy of SpamSieve on your main machine, the appearance of spam on the iPhone when out and about is irritating.
There are several workarounds published on the net, many of them require the use of a Google mail account. Google’s spam filtering is exceptionally good, but I’m not a fan of the way it handles IMAP folders. Besides which I have a .Mac, or MobileMe account, and I prefer to use that.

So this is how I manage my email, based on this article published on macmerc.

I set up my old Apple Cube, with Leopard 10.5.6, to be my mail drone. It’s on 24/7 connected to the internet. I cloned all the mail settings from my main MacBookPro to the Cube, installed SpamSieve and copied over the Corpus.
I disabled SpamSieve on the MacBookPro. Set Apple Mail on the Cube to check for new mail every minute, and set the MacBookPro to every 5 minutes.
MobileMe on the Cube is also syncing the Address book and Mail accounts, but nothing else. SpamSieve uses the address book contents as part of it’s spam filtering routine.

Now the Cube manages all my mail rules including the spam filters, and sorts incoming mail into the IMAP folders. Through the magic of IMAP when any other machine checks for mail it’s all sorted, and the spam is already in the spam folder.

Except on the iPhone if you have push enabled, because the mail will arrive on the phone before the Cube’s next scheduled check.
Once the Cube does check, and runs the SpamSieve rules, the spam will be moved to the spam folder on the iPhone as well.

I have also installed a couple of Applescript rules into Mail on the Cube. These scripts were written by Michael Tsai from C-Command, the man behind SpamSieve. You can find these scripts on the macmerc page linked above, which has a much longer and more detailed run through to set this all up.
These scripts enable easy SpamSieve training on any machine including the iPhone.

It’s not a perfect solution, but until, or if, Apple puts rules into mail on the iPhone, it works for me.

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I’ve just installed the Wordpress Application on my iPhone so this is by way of a trial run.
It’s the second time I’ve tried this app. The first time I installed it I could not get it to connect to my blog.
But this time we have success.

It’s easy to use, as easy as the iPhone touch keyboard is to use anyway. It will support multiple Wordpress blogs if like me you have more than one, and you have access to your blog categories as well. So posting this into the Apple Stuff category here is no problem.

You can even include photos either from the iPhone library or the camera roll. But they are only attached to the foot of the post. Example below.

<Edited after posting>

But rather bizarrely it’s inverted the image. I assure you I do not have my monitor upside down.

A nice and possibly useful free app from the app store.If they can solve the image problem.

This will almost certainly apply to any cellphone including Blackberries.
Quite often the default period or number of rings before a call goes to voicemail is too short. You know the scenario, you’re out on a cold winters day and your phone is inside your coat. Too late you hear the muffled ring, and by the time you get the phone out from deep inside the coat it’s stopped ringing. And then you get the voicemail prompt.

Well it’s often easy to change that default period to something a bit more user friendly, but the networks don’t always make it obvious how.
In the UK iPhones are on the o2 network and this is how you change the time period before a call goes to voicemail.
Bring up the keypad and type:

**61*901*11*30# and Call.

Where 901 is the standard voicemailbox number, and 30 is the number of seconds before voicemail kicks in. Change the number of seconds to something that suits you.
You will get a response:
“Setting Registration Succeeded Voice Call Forwarding When Unanswered”.

The keypad sequence may vary on other networks, I can’t confirm that so call your network provider if the above does not work for you.

Mark Davis, Program Director for iPhone at Etisalat, the UAE based telecoms provider, confirmed the iPhone 3g will be launched in the UAE on February 15.
He is also reported to have said a new iPhone is due in June 2009.

News: iPhone 3G in UAE this month, new iPhone in June: “News: iPhone 3G in UAE this month, new iPhone in June”

(Via iLounge.)

Many people in the industry scoffed when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world on June 9th 2007. Particularly at his claim that Apple’s goal was 1% of the global mobile phone market by the end of 2008.
The mobile market place is dominated by established players and for a company not previously known for selling phones to make such a prediction was considered bold and possibly embarrassingly dangerous.
The phenomenal success of the iPhone took all these experts by surprise. Helped by Apple’s unique marketing ability and it has to be said a pretty damn good product, they have apparently exceeded their goal. The iPhone has 1.1% market share.

According to an ABI Research study Apple grew from just 0.3 per cent in 2007 to 1.1 per cent in 2008. In 2008 Apple sold 13.7 million iPhone 3G units, putting it on par with HTC and slightly ahead of Sharp.

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A fascinating potted account of the birth of the Apple Macintosh computer. The Guardian talks with Andy Hertzfeld and Steve Wozniak who recall the development of the Mac, the events leading up to the ground breaking Ridley Scott directed commercial during Superbowl 1984, and the impact it had on the computers we use today.
We have a lot to thank these guys for.

All well and good but I do hope and wish Apple would do something to dramatically improve iPhone battery life and or make the battery easily removable as in other cellphones. If Blackberry can do it why not Apple.

Keep your iPhone powered up for long trips: “up to 24 hours of talk time, 72 hours of audio playback, up to 21 hours of video playback, and up to 30 days of standby time”

(Via MacMegasite.)