Apple is known for loading its software with handy shortcuts and tricks to make your life easier. There are some hidden short cuts in iPhone too. You might have noticed some of them accidently, but there are more short cuts then you know. Let’s begin with button shortcuts for the headset. Check them out:

While not in a call, you can press the button once to activate iPod and playback your music.

When a call is ringing:

1. Press once to pick-up the call
2. Press twice to send the call to voicemail.
3. Press and hold center button for about two seconds to decline the call. You’ll also hear two low beeps that confirm you the call is declined.

While in a call, press once to end the call.

While you’re in a call and there is a second incoming call:

1. Press once to switch the calls and hold the previous call.
2. Press and hold the button for two seconds to ignore the new call.

While listening to music in iPod:

1. Press once to pause the song and press again to resume it.
2. Press twice to skip to the next song
3. Press three times to back to the previous song

One more thing: for the iPhone 3GS, the bundled headset also has volume control buttons. You can use the “+” and “-” buttons to adjust the volume, naturally. Plus, you can press and hold the center button to activate voice control, which is a new feature that comes with the iPhone 3GS.

Let’s continue with iPhone controls:

To switch to iPod: If you’re using a different application while you are listening music and you want to pause or skip a track, double tap Home to display iPod controls.

Control iPod when locked: If you need to change the volume, pause or skip tracks, double-tap Home and you can control the iPod app and see what track is playing.

Tap the title bar: Double-tap on the title bar where the time is displayed and you will jump back to the top on Safari. This also works with SMS conversations.

Make calls from Safari If you press and hold on the number on Safari for a couple of seconds, it will display in a pop-up window.

Quick delete button: You can simply delete items by swiping your finger across the right side of iPhone Email, SMS conversations or podcasts when in List view. However, videos are marked and deleted after the next sync.

Force to quit apps: If an app freezes, press and hold the Home button for around six seconds to force quit it.

Fix Caps Lock: With Caps Lock enable on (Settings > General > Keyboard), double-tap Caps Lock to fix it on or off. If it’s off, click and hold Caps Lock then slide over to a letter to capitalize it.

Take screen shots: Press Hold button while pressing Lock button. It will take a screen shot of your current viewpoint. This feature is especially handy when you’re trying to show people how to do something on their iPhone, such as configuring iPhone for your mail2web Mobile Email account.

Related posts:

1. iPhone OS 3.1 includes improved Exchange Calendar Syncing
2. Setting up mail2web.com Microsoft Exchange Account using your Apple iPhone 3G (Activesync)
3. iPod Challenged by the Music Phone

HTC, Blackberry, Apple, Nokia, Samsung, and other smartphone manufacturers have launched many new models recently. Here I have prepared a short guide to help ease the confusion.

First of all, we have to clear up the question, “What is a smartphone?”

Wikipedia explains as follows: A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality (PC-mobile handset convergence). There is no industry standard definition of a smartphone. For some, a smartphone is a phone that runs complete operating system software providing a standardized interface and platform for application developers. For others, a smartphone is simply a phone with advanced features like e-mail, Internet and e-book reader capabilities, and/or a built-in full keyboard or external USB keyboard and VGA connector. In other words, it is a miniature computer that has phone capability.

Growth in demand for advanced mobile devices boasting powerful processors, abundant memory, large screens and open operating systems has outpaced the rest of the mobile phone market for several years.

Well, I guess all of us already know about iPhone and Blackberry. They are popular examples of smart phones. Some of the latest smartphone launches are Apple iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, HTC Snap, Samsung Exclaim, Motorola Rival, HTC Touch Pro2, LG LX370 and the Nokia N97.

Before continuing, you have to answer a question: “Do I really need a smartphone?”

• Do you have to keep in contact with many people?
• Do you have trouble staying organized and need to keep a better schedule?
• Do you want to carry fewer devices in your pocket? A smartphone can be an mp3 player, a gaming console, a calculator and a camera at the same time.
• Do you need access to specific applications? You can create Word documents, e-mails, and access GPS data and do many other cool things.

If you’ve decided that a smarphone is definately for you, here are some tips to help narrow down your choices.

• If you’re a business person, your primary need may be to stay in touch with your staff. You definitely need quick access to business applications, like MS Word or PowerPoint and your emails, Web access, GPS and Wi-Fi. If that’s the case, be sure that your selection covers all of these applications and support Exchange Email services. HTC and Blackberry will probably satisfy your needs.
• If you need more text messaging having powerful media and graphics I’ll suggest you to look at Nokia N series, HTC Touch and iPhone 3Gs.
• Choose your operating system wisely though, since the OS determines the functionality of your phone. There are several operating systems on the market. Symbian OS (Symbian Ltd.) has the biggest market share; BenQ, LG, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson curently use it. Other operating systems include: Palm OS, found on the Palm Centro and Trēo or Web OS on the Palm Prē, iPhone OS (Apple Inc.) for the iPhone, the RIM BlackBerry operating system and Windows Mobile from Microsoft.
• Windows Mobile smartphones integrate smoothly with most Microsoft business applications like MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint via Microsoft Exchange. And there are a lot of third-party applications available to choose from.
• Consider ergonomics and decide whether you want a phone with a QWERTY keyboard or a number pad for text messaging and other applications or maybe you prefer touch screen?

Some other main features to consider:

• Touch Screen keyboard vs Physical Keyboard
• Amount of built-in storage space for programs and data
• Compability with different media cards
• A well-lit and easy to read display screen
• Speakerphone
• Digital camera
• Multimedia playback
• Internet browser
• Global Positioning System (GPS)
• Car chargers in addition to the standard charger provided by the manufacturer

Hopefully this will help you narrow down your choices. Which smartphone have you chosen and why? We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Poll Results: Best Smartphone
2. Smartphone Poll – Extended Version
3. Microsoft Exchange & the Great Smartphone Boom

With today’s launch of Snow Leopard, the updated version of Mac OS X, Apple has included a number of improvements, including the highly touted out-of-the-box Exchange support. This includes Exchange support within it’s native applications, including Mail, Address Book and iCal.

Previous versions of Mail have included support for Microsoft Exchange, allowing you to connect to your mail2web Mobile Email Pro account or myhosting.com Hosted Exchange Email using WebDAV integration. This release provides improved Exchange support within Mail by using Exchange Web Services (EWS) integration. This allows for full Email, Notes and Task support within Mail, Contact List and Global Address List support within Address Book, and and Calendar synchronization within iCal.

This raises the bar for Mac OS X, matching a number of the improvements recently released with the Entourage Web Services Edition upgrade and taking it one step further. This now gives Hosted Exchange users a choice to use the tools they are most familiar, be it the built in Mac applications, or the Microsoft Office suite which includes Entourage.

And best of all, setup is a breeze. Using AutoDiscover, you can enter your mail2web Mobile Email Pro or myhosting.com Hosted Exchange email address and password…

And AutoDiscover does the rest for you… You can even set up Address Book and iCal at the same time.

Since it uses EWS, you may need to edit your account preferences to set your Address Book or iCal to refresh “Automatically” or at some other interval.

Microsoft Exchange account setup has never been easier.

After setting up your account you can access your email, notes and tasks from Mail, you can view your Contacts Lists and even search the Global Address list, and access your Calendar items, appointments and events from iCal.

How has your Snow Leopard experience been so far? We welcome your feedback on the new Exchange Support in our comments section.

Thanks,

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
mail2web.com

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Exchange support arrives for T-Mobile G1
2. Entourage 2008: Service Pack 2 and Exchange Web Services
3. Configuring Exchange on the Palm Prē

And if you are setting up your account in Entourage 2008 for the first time, you can take advantage of the improved AutoUpdate support, which makes configuring your account even easier! One of the other new features which you can take advantage of is Task and Note synchronization to and from the Exchange Server.

If you haven’t configured your account in Entourage yet, when you start it for the first time you should see the “Account Setup Assistant”. If you don’t see it, choose the “Tools” menu and click “Accounts…”. Then click on the “New” button. Then you can follow these steps below to set up your mail2web Mobile Email account.

1. If you see the “Welcome to Entourage” screen, if you need to import anything you can do it now, and then return to the set up process later. If not, select “Start using Entourage without importing anything” and then click the right arrow.
2. Enter your email address in the field provided, and check the “My account is on an Exchange server” option. Then click on the right arrow.
You will then be prompted for your account information. Leave the Domain field blank and enter your email address in the Account ID field, followed by your password. If you don’t want to be prompted for your password again, select the “Save password in my Mac OS keychain” option. Then click “OK”.
3. Entourage will then connect to the Exchange server to Automatically Discover your settings.
When Entourage connects to the AutoDiscover server, you may receive a prompt asking you Allow the AutoDiscover server to get your settings. Select the “Always use my response for this server” option and then click “Allow”. This will ensure that your settings are always kept up to date in the future too!
4. You should then receive a confirmation message that your settings were “successfully determined”. Click on the right arrow to proceed.
5. You’ll then be asked to Verify and Complete your settings. You can enter your Name as you want it to appear on your email and your full email address. Don’t change the settings in the “Exchange server” field, just leave it as it is. For the “LDAP server” field, remove the contents of the field and leave it blank. Then click the right arrow to proceed.
6. If you want, you can click on the “Verify My Settings” button to make sure your account is configured correctly. You can click on the right-arrow to complete your set up.
7. Now everything is complete! You can specify any account name you like, and even add it to your “Me” contact if you wish. Click “Finish” to exit the wizard and get started using Entourage 2008 EWS!

We recommend that all Entourage users install the update. If you are a Mac user and have a mail2web Mobile Email Pro account, a Business Exchange account, or a myhosting.com Hosted Exchange Email account and haven’t tried Entourage yet, now is the time!

Thanks,

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
mail2web.com

Related posts:

1. Entourage 2008 Now Available for mail2web.com Business Exchange
2. Entourage 2008: Service Pack 2 and Exchange Web Services
3. mail2web LIVE & Personal Exchange on Exchange 2007!

1- Start by touching “Settings” button on home window.

2- On the Settings window touch “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” button.

3- If you have any, then the next window will list all the email accounts you have already configured. Click on “Add Account” in order to continue.

4- From the next window, touch “Microsoft Exchange”

5- On the next window, enter your Exchange Account info. If you don’t know your Exchange Account information, then continue with Step 6.

6- Login to your control panel at: https://support.mail2web.com

7- Once logged in, click on “Business Exchange” link…

8- On the next screen, click on “GO” button (End-User Management) for the user you want to setup the account.

9- Next, click on “View ActiveSync Settings” link for the selected user.

10- This window will give you all the information you need to setup your account. If you will ever have a problem on this step of the process, it will most likely be with your username. There are two ways to enter your username. You can either use good practices and enter it as Exchange and Apple want you to which is: Domain\Username. If your domain says: AD9 and your username is joedoe@domain.com then enter your username as: ad9\joedoe@domain.com. Or you can simply type your username only and ignore the “domain\” part. Both works in mail2web.

11- Once you did enter your info, continue with the setup by touching “NEXT” button.

12- If everything goes well, then you should have your Exchange Account ready to use. You may continue to customize for your own needs like not disabling sync for contacts, calendars etc. Keep in mind that iPhone ActiveSync does not sync Notes which is a bummer.

I hope you found this guide useful. If you already own an iPhone or planning to buy one then visit our Community Portal located at http://portal.myhosting.com and share your experiences or ideas…

Thank you,

Timur Catakli
myhosting.com Community Manager

Related posts:

1. Configuring Exchange on the Palm Prē
2. Apple is Target Practise for mail2web Mobile Email
3. Get FREE push email on your iPhone 2.0 today!

With all the excitement surrounding the release of Apple™s new iPhone 2.0 last week, one big question is where do I get one? Of all the features that it brings to the table, the one sticks out as being the most likely to impact the mobile phone world; support for push email and over the air sync of contacts and calendar items. That is great news for everyone who has an exchange server and wants an iPhone, but what about everyone else?

Apple has created a solution called mobile me, really just the next evolution of the .MAC account. They are calling it Exchange for the rest of us but what does that mean? If you are a mac user, mobile me is a great way to get the most out of your new iPhone. But with a PC running Outlook and a mobile me account what do you get? You can setup Outlook to access your name@me.com email account.  Using the Windows control panel you can also configure your contacts and calendar items from Outlook to sync with your mobile me account. It is fine for email but less than perfect for calendar and contacts.

The answer is to get a fully functioning exchange account from mail2web.com. We offer several solutions from our (updated) mail2web LIVE 60-Day Free Trial up to full business class exchange email. These Exchange accounts include full iPhone/iPod touch support. Recently, the well known tech blogs Gizmodo and engadget showcased our solution to test the function of exchange sync on the new iPhone 2.0.

With an exchange account from mail2web.com all of your emails as well as your contacts and calendar item are always accessible and synced to your device, any device.  You get true real time “push” email and 24/7 live support. Best of all, you can try it free for the first month.

Looking for something to do while you wait for your new iPhone? Get your mail2web.com exchange account now.

Stephen Nichols
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Related posts:

1. Free push email for your iPhone; plus your Outlook Contacts, Calendar and Notes
2. Push email for POP3 and IMAP4 accounts
3. Apple is Target Practise for mail2web Mobile Email

• On-the-road access to your Contacts: Your e-mail address book and information storage for the people and businesses you want to communicate with
• View and add/modify items in your Calendar: The calendar and scheduling component of Outlook that’s fully integrated with e-mail, contacts, and other features
• Real-time, over the air synchronization for your e-mail, contacts, tasks and calendar items via Microsoft ActiveSync
• Protect your business via customizable security policies: Includes the ability to remotely wipe all data from a lost or stolen iPhone, and to require security provisions for e-mail such as a password or PIN access

How does mail2web.com fit into all of this? One of our most popular product offerings is mail2web LIVE, a free personal Microsoft Exchange 2003 account with ActiveSync technology, which keeps your Apple iPhone up to date with e-mail, contacts, private calendar, tasks, and more!

Courtesy of Engadget editor Ryan Block, here’s a sneak peek at the Apple iPhone’s new Microsoft Exchange features:

iPhone firmware 2.0 hands-on from Engadget on Vimeo.

Want a mail2web LIVE account of your own for your Apple iPhone? Sign up for your free account and start getting the most out of your iPhone today.

Sully S.
Software Developer
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Related posts:

1. Get FREE push email on your iPhone 2.0 today!
2. MailBrowserBackup to Backup your Email, Contacts, Calendar and more
3. Push email for POP3 and IMAP4 accounts

The concept of connecting people with similar interests in social networking sites allows friends to connect and interact together with various common web applications, such as photo albums, blogs and forums. The same concept can be extended to employees within a company or organization, allowing them to connect co-workers working on various projects or goals and interact with each other online. But the most popular social networks aren’t necessarily the most appropriate places to share confidential corporate information. Windows SharePoint Hosting has been around for years, and can offer a number of the features you’ll find in these social networking tools as well as offering a more appropriate location to store sensitive company information.

You can create password protected sites with accounts for each employee. The employees can then customize their personal profile, organize themselves into groups, departments, work groups, or project teams and then begin sharing. They can share and contribute using document libraries, blogs, forums, calendars, contact lists and even photo libraries. You can create sub-sites for specialized departments or teams with private versions of each application, customized for that group. There are even applications that allow you to create wikis, surveys and tasks. User and Group level permissions allow you to prevent access on various levels, ensuring that confidential information in one area is visible only to those who “need-to-know”.

And what about extending it further to customizable applications? There are some templates that have been pre-written, such as bug database, event planning, knowledge base, employee activities, new store opening, request for proposal, and even sports league. These are just a few examples, and this can be customized even further by the savvy administrator by creating a custom templates designed for a specific purpose,or even even custom web-parts and workflow elements within the template. You can also use SharePoint Designer to ever greater advantage of this powerful platform.

All of this can be especially useful if you have remote workers who you still want to contribute to or access to any of this information. And with a free 30 trial, why not try it out? All you need to get started are users that are ready to contribute.

Tim Attwood
Product Manager
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Related posts:

1. Top Social Networks
2. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 – The SharePoint WYSIWYG editor
3. SharePoint: one account with unlimited potential

One of the things we do that’s unique is provide unlimited sub-directories with every SharePoint site we provision. What this means in SharePoint speak is that you can have unlimited number of sub-webs, each with it’s own function and potentially its own membership.

For example, say you signup for a SharePoint site under the domain http://team.mycompany.com. At that top level you can add users and assign permissions (Read, Contribute, Design or Full Control ) and provide those users access to documents at that level.

But then you can add a Wiki (as an admin, go to Site Actions > Create > Sites and Workspaces ) as a sub-web. This would now appear as http://team.mycompany.com/wiki . This sub-site can be part of the navigation or not – your choice. And this sub site can inherit the same users and permission – with a single click – or have an entirely unique set of users and permissions.

Another really cool feature – sub-webs can be created in a different language. Keep in mind not all the languages offer application templates (click here for a list and description of application templates) but all 25+ languages supported include the built in templates like Wiki’s and Blogs.

Maybe you want to run a project that not everyone is involved in, this too could be quickly added and not even included in the navigation if you want to keep it private (eg. http://team.mycompany.com/projectx/ )

There are a couple obvious advantages to using sub-webs as I’ve described. First, it saves you money – you don’t have to buy multiple SharePoint accounts to accomplish what I’ve proposed. Second, it’s more practical. Employees or members of your organization aren’t likely to remember multiple SharePoint domains, but they are more likely to remember and use one SharePoint domain - particularly if it’s loaded with content.

John Carthy
V.P. Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Related posts:

1. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 – Update
2. SharePoint Designer 2007 now FREE for everyone
3. Social Networking with SharePoint

Besides being a slightly useless thing to say, it occurred to me that email never was a killer app. A text message is a message. Rather it’s the tools used to manage messaging in combination with the protocol that makes for the better experience.

Truth is a lot of people I speak to don’t understand the difference between POP3 email, IMAP4 email and MAPI services. As a result, they don’t understand why Microsoft Exchange is so expensive (Microsoft Exchange email is based on MAPI) and so useful.

Let’s start with POP3. That’s the basic email that comes with most website hosting plans or is provided by your ISP or cable company. The most important thing to understand about POP3 is that your messages are stored on the email server until you access them through a common POP3 client like Outlook, Outlook Express or Eudora.

When you connect to your POP3 email account through one of these clients, all your unread email messages are downloaded to your local machine for you to read. They are removed from the server.

The one exception is checking your POP3 accounts through the mail2web.com email retrieval application (mail2web.com). This webmail application allows you to preview your messages, on almost any remote mail server , before they’ve been downloaded.

We get a lot of complaints from mail2web.com users who think we’ve deleted their emails. What actually happened was someone opened Outlook on their desktop and downloaded all their messages off a POP3 server.  Now those messages reside in someone’s office / home PC and can’t be easily accessed.

IMAP4 is different in that email is stored on the server. There is an added bonus of being able to create folders to manage your messages. When you connect to an IMAP4 account, the messages are not downloaded to your local computer but instead are previewed for you, recording what has been read and what hasn’t and allowing you to move messages to folders you created.

This is important as IMAP4 accounts give you the ability to access your email from multiple locations and computers and maintain a synchronized copy.

All the email accounts provided with hosting plans on myhosting.com are both POP3 and IMAP4 compatible. Apple’s iPhone uses the IMAP4 protocol for email syncronization which you can use with our Exchange hosting plans or our myhosting.com email acccounts.

But the killer app is Microsoft Exchange based on the MAPI protocol.  Okay,  I hate the term “killer app”… but it’s the best messaging platform on the market.  MAPI is an “aware” protocol and by that I mean it is constantly listening for changes on the server and then communicates those changes to you, however you are connected (browser, desktop, mobile device). If you are running Outlook with a full Exchange account (our Professional account) you don’t have to constantly click send and receive to see if you have new messages. Changes are pushed as they are recorded on the server.

Like IMAP4, all messages are stored on the server but Exchange also stores your calendar, contact, journal, tasks and much more. All this data is “aware” of changes and communicates those changes immediately. You can also share real-time data with others in your organization and collaborate in a way you could never do with POP3 or IMAP.

Of course all this enhanced functionality requires extensive hardware to support. While diskspace costs have gone down considerable in the past 5 years, even the best SCSI drives have a maximum rate at which they can read or write data.

Exchange hits this maximum quickly with very few active users. And that’s just one of the reasons why Microsoft Exchange is so much more expensive than POP3. Microsoft’s monthly license fees – charged directly to Exchange hosters – also adds to our costs.

But it’s still much less than what your business pays for phone service and in my opinion, just as important and effective for running an efficient business.

John Carthy
V.P. of Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting Inc.

Related posts:

1. Push email for POP3 and IMAP4 accounts
2. Microsoft Exchange: not all offerings are created equal
3. Microsoft Exchange: the power behind Microsoft Outlook