Facebook Privacy Settings

I'm a self-proclaimed geek, and even I am confused by parts of Facebook. I do like their privacy settings though. I have both professional and personal contacts on my Facebook account, and it's nice to be able to decide who gets to see what. I found a great article about Facebook privacy settings, and wanted to share. It's definitely worth your time to go through your privacy settings and make sure you're not putting too much out there. [via Consumerist]

Gimme Some Suga, Baby

It sounds like there might be new offerings from Pepsi in the near future. Mountain Dew and Pepsi with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup. Anyone that is familiar with Jones soda knows how damn tasty a carbonated beverage is when it's made with real sugar.
In the middle of April, PBV [Pepsi Bottling Ventures] also will begin distributing Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, which features those brands formulated with sugar.
Officially, I've completely kicked my Mountain Dew habit. But I sense a relapse coming on if the "sugared" version comes out... [via Consumerist]

Google Sync and the iPhone

Let me start by saying that I hate to plug in my phone in order to sync calendars, contacts, etc. When I had my Blackberry, the Mac sync client sucked so badly that I didn't even bother--Google Sync all the way. So when I found out that Google had released the beta sync service for iPhone, I was as happy as a fly on... well, you know. When I got the iPhone, I did the typical sync-via-cable and got my contacts and calendars set up the way I wanted them. Then I gave MobileMe a try. MobileMe worked perfectly, but I can't justify $99 a year just to sync those two things (I don't use any of the other features of MobileMe.) So as a recap, at the time of Google Sync setup, this is my configuration:
  1. 2 Macs and an iPhone synching contacts and calendars with Mobile Me
  2. 2 Calendars in iCal syncing with Google Calendar
  3. My primary apps were iCal and Address Book
  4. My primary Google account is an "Apps for your Domain" account
I did a backup of my iPhone, iCal, and Address book, then exported my main personal calendar. Since I hadn't been using Google calendar for awhile, I uploaded the iCal calendar to my main Google calendar to make sure all my events were current on Google. **Note** If you are going to sync contacts, be sure to follow the instructions for making sure your local contacts are on Google. I knew I didn't want to sync contact with Google calendar yet, because I like having contact photos, and at this time (afaik,) Google Sync doesn't support contact photos. My contacts don't change as often as my calendar, though, so I don't mind plugging in now and then to keep contacts in sync with my desktop Mac. These are the steps that worked for me in getting my calendars setup to sync with Google... Enable Exchange sync in Google Apps for your Domain... [caption id="attachment_193" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Enable sync in Apps settings"]
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  • Login to your Apps dashboard, and go to the Service Settings tab
  • Check the box to enable Google Sync
  • Save settings
Setup your iPhone Select which calendars to sync I had some trouble with the last step--when I went to m.google.com, I couldn't login with my Apps account, and tapping the link that should've taken me to the login page for Apps didn't work. After some clicking around the mobile site, I finally found the link that would let me login to my Apps account. Once there, the Sync icon was visible, and I could select which 5 calendars to sync. It's currently limited to 5 calendars due to a glitch, but Google claims it's working with Apple to remedy the situation. So it's working... It took a few minutes, but the contents of the 5 calendars I selected have been pushed down to my iPhone. The one part I can't stress enough is to BACKUP everything before you start. Make sure your Google calendar and/or contacts are perfect before you set up the sync--it will save you headaches later. If you're using Google Sync with your iPhone, how has your experience with it been? Let me know in the comments.

WordPress for iPhone [review]

Back when I had a Blackberry, I searched for some kind of application that would let me make posts to my blog from the phone. Pulling up the editor in the browser worked, but it was a pain. When I switched to the iPhone, I scoured the App Store looking for the same thing. I kept thinking that somebody must've created a blog client for the iPhone, but found nothing. Until now.

WordPress for the iPhone is the perfect app.


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When you first start it up, it will ask for your blog URL... If you input that correctly, it'll automatically find the xmlrpc file, and ask you for the username and password for your blog. And that's it. You can set up multiple blogs, if you'd like.

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Once logged in, the app will pull down your recent posts. Tap the compose button in the lower right corner of the screen, and start creating a new post.

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Add tags, select from your categories (or create a new one,) select the status of the post, and start typing away. You can save a post as a local draft, so you can work on it off and on till it's done. You can even post it as an "under review" post, so you can tweak it when you get back to a computer before letting the post go live. If you want to add a photo to a post, you can do so--it'll be displayed beneath the text of the post on your blog.

The one thing that wasn't intuitive for me (and maybe it's just me,) was that there's no "Publish" button... You have to set the status to "Published" then click the save button. Honestly though, that was the only problem I had with the app, (and that was mainly my own ignorance.)

If you're an iPhone/iPod touch/WordPress user, you have to have this app.

Best of all--it's free. I love free.

Flickit [review]

The first thing I noticed about Flickit is the simple and clean interface. Tap once to grab a photo (from your library, or the camera,) tap again to set the title, description, tags, sets, etc. and tap one more time to upload. It's simple, elegant, and effective.

I did manage to crash it once while pulling in all my Flickr sets. I generally tend to try to crash an app when I first get it, just to see where the threshold is. In this case, it was tapping and scrolling while the app was trying to download the list of all my sets (there are a LOT of sets.)

One of the cool features is that you can setup several photos to upload at once. They line up in the middle of the screen--tap one to set its details, then just scroll through the rest to set each photos details.

The settings page allows you to choose whether or not to view "usage hints", and what size you'd like to upload. I always upload at the Large setting, but this takes a little longer if you're just on a 3G connection.

Now, the price... Free. Seriously, how can you beat that? Killer app, killer price. But grab it soon, just in case the free pricetag is just an initial offering.

If you've tried this app out, let me know what you think of it in the comments.

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WordPress for iPhone (testing)

I'll do up a proper review soon, but I wanted to test this app. So far it is flawless.

I can even attach photos (this photo is a screenie of Flickit, another app I'll be reviewing soon.

So far I see huge potential for quick mobile blog posts from airports or wherever. More soon.

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Flickit

Flickit from the Apple Store
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I'm a huge Flickr fan, and have been using Mobile Fotos for awhile, and love it, but figured I'd give this app a try. I'll report back on what I think of it. I'm kinda half thinking I might start doing some iPhone app reviews on this blog. It's not like I'm really doing anything else but rambling on it... Hmmm.

AT&T Carrier Update for iPhone

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[/caption] I plugged my iPhone into the computer today, and was presented with the this alert box. It was different from the standard software update alert box, so I was curious as to what exactly was being upated. Turns out it's nothing too exciting. The whole 3G microcell thing is cool, but there's no way I'm paying extra to extend AT&T's service. Sprint had a killer signal in my apartment, so I was pretty pissed to learn that AT&T did not. I drop calls on a regular basis while I'm in my apartment--not good, considering I work from home. If something doesn't improve soon, I won't have a choice but to swallow my pride and go crawling back to Sprint and my Blackberry... Anyone else have any experience dealing with AT&T on coverage issues?