Friend Book App: Shake Two iPhones Together to Share Contact Information
A company called Tapulous is planning on delivering an iPhone app called Friend Book for the Friday launch that promises to turn your boring old address book into a “super address book” with features like a “face dialer” that allows you to place a call through your contact images. But that functionality pales in comparison to their “Handshake” feature that allows two iPhone users running Friend Book to share their personal contact information by shaking their phones in close proximity to one another.
The app works, I’d guess by sending the closely matching accelerometer data back to the Tapulous server, where they’re matched in the cloud and info is swapped. There is no actual device-to-device connection—but that is still ridiculously cool. Tapulous is also planning to release Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle as free downloads at launch.
[Tapulous via Boing Boing Gadgets via Lifehacker]
Popularity: 8% [?]
Mac 101: Back up Address Book, iCal, iPhone before MobileMe
Being the paranoid person that I am, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to back up Address Book and iCal before all of the syncing madness begins between Macs, MobileMe, “the cloud”, and iPhone/iPod touch. Here’s how to do it (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard only):
Backing up Address Book
- Launch Address Book
- Select File > Export > Address Book Archive
- Find a location to save the Address Book archive, then click the Save button.
Backing up iCal
- Launch iCal
- Select File > Backup iCal
- Find a location to save the iCal backup, then click the Save button.
Backing up iPhone / iPod touch
- Just sync it
Ahhh, don’t you feel all safe and happy now? And remember, if you’re running Leopard and Time Machine, your backups are going to be backed up, too!
Popularity: 8% [?]
New screenshots of Snow Leopard appear, show desktop web apps
A German site, Apfeltalk.de has posted screenshots of the forthcoming version of Mac OS X, 10.6 (a.k.a “Snow Leopard”). Most of the screenshots show off the Safari 4 developer preview that will include the “Save as Web Application” option in the File menu.
The website also shows off the next version of Address Book.app that will bring Microsoft Exchange support to the Mac platform. We do however have to speculate about the System Preferences.app screenshot that shows two Time Machine icons with one labled “Dock” and another labeled “Time Machine” — this seems out of place and unlike Apple.
You can see all of the screenshots (before Apple’s legal team gets a hold of them) on the Apfeltalk.de site.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Get Address Book Bluetooth dialing back with Nova Media Phone plugins
One of the the stranger changes in Leopard was the loss of the ability to dial (and send text messages) from the Address Book to a Bluetooth paired cell phone. Fortunately, however, Nova Media has released its Phone plugins to return this functionality to the Leopard Address Book and other applications through a system-wide Service.
When installed it allows you to call a number or send a text message just by right-clicking on the number in the Address Book (or selecting it elsewhere and invoking Phone plugins from the Services menu). It works with a number of phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson; check the compatibility list for details. Annoyingly the iPhone is not compatible.
Nova Media Phone plugins is $9.95 and a demo is available.
[via Hawk Wings]
Popularity: 16% [?]
.Mac and Me rumors: Inside look at Apple’s next-gen service
What’s next for .Mac, Apple’s much-maligned online service offering for OS X users? TUAW has learned that .Mac will no longer be sold by Apple after WWDC, as new users will migrate to the new MobileMe service (not too shocking, given the swirling rumors as of late). Existing users will have their @mac.com e-mail addresses forwarded to their @me.com address in perpetuity, which should provide some relief for nervous .Mac users who depend on that email.
MobileMe is slated to include a host of new features, which we alluded to early in May; in addition, there will be new web interfaces for all aspects of MobileMe — calendars will look just like iCal, Contacts will look just like they do in Address Book, etc. This is similar to the way .Mac Webmail works today, though we’ve heard that the new interfaces will be much snazzier (yes, that’s a technical term). Apple should also be updating the .Mac dependent applications (iChat, iWeb, iPhoto etc.) to work with the new service. The new service will be backwards compatible with .Mac protocols for the time being — so developers will not have to rush out updates as soon as they hear the official word.
MobileMe is scheduled to be available sometime in late June/early July. We have also heard reports that the latest build of the iPhone beta firmware (2.0) has already undergone revisions to handle the new MobileMe service. Some of the features of the service on iPhone will include: over-the-air syncing of contacts, calendars, and photos. Interestingly, there is also a Windows version of MobileMe planned.
Though we’re confident in the source of this information, this is still a rumor until Apple reveals all. We should hear more information about MobileMe at the World Wide Developer’s Conference starting on Monday (June 9th).
Popularity: 13% [?]
