Friday Roundup for April 18th, 2008 - iPhone tips submitted by you

Tax day has finally come to pass and Friday is now upon us. That means we deliver another batch of glorious iPhone tips submitted by you, the totally awesome readers of Touchtip. This week we have some fantastic tips you won’t want to miss. Got an iPod touch you want to turn into and iPhone? We got that (no, seriously). Are you a couch potato looking for a good TV guide that you can read on your iPhone without getting off the Lazyboy? We got that, too. We also have a few clever ways to use your iPhone camera, a creative method to sync notes from your device to your Mac, and how to access iPhone-only web sites from your desktop. And finally, coverflow enthusiasts learn how to find missing album art for your music collection. So don’t wait, read on and impart some iPhone wisdom upon yourselves. Or, if you have a handy tip you think we’d like, please share it with Touchtip. Now, on to the tips.

 
An iPhone TV Guide
Submitted by Wally D.

Get quick TV listings with this web app for iPhone and iPod touch. You can sort by channel and time zone. You can also focus your view to the current day only, or the upcoming four days. TV Guide for iPhone. Check it out.

Great tips using the iPhone camera
Submitted by D. Bergh

I can’t take credit for these tips, but they are so good I thought I’d share them with Touchtip. Jason Snell from Macworld had a video piece about the iPhone that contained some tips so obvious they make you go “doh, why didn’t I think of that?”

• When your parking space is a long way from your destination, take a picture of where you parked. If you’re parked in a lot with location markers, take a picture of the nearest one of those.
• When you take the kids for an outing, take a picture of the kids before you start. That way, if you and the kids become separated, you’ll have a current picture, with the clothes and haircut they were wearing that day, to show the security guards.
• This one hits home to me, personally: I often travel on business and valet-park my car. Often, the attendant asks me what kind of car I’m driving. My usual response: “Uh, I dunno. It’s a rental.” Snell advises, when you rent a car, to take a picture of it, including the license plate.

Cool trick to sync notes to your computer
Submitted by Jennifer Shultz

The iPhone’s Notes app doesn’t sync notes back to your Mac, but this iPhone trick will do just that. Create a fake contact named “Notes”. Type your notes into the notes section of the contact. Those notes will then appear on your Mac when you sync your iPhone or iPod touch.

Turn your iPod touch into an iPhone
Submitted by Jon B.

Here’s a low cost way to turn your iPod touch into an iPhone. It entails three steps which are described very well at this blog called Lifehacker. It requires a jailbroken iPod touch and a little hardware add-on called Touchmod mic that you can buy for under $60. Read the step-by-step guide here.

Filling iTunes coverflow with artwork
Submitted by cowpie

If you are like me and use coverflow to flip through your music collection, then you need to have artwork for each song. This is automatic if you purchase music through iTunes because every download comes with album art. Also, if you download or rip music outside of iTunes you can still get artwork for your songs as long as you have an iTunes account and your songs have correct tags. However, if the tags don’t match the artist, album name, and song names of tracks in the iTunes Store exactly, then you won’t be able to get the artwork through iTunes. One fix for this is to simply correct the tags, then control-click your tracks and select Get Artwork. If this still doesn’t work, or you don’t have an iTunes account, you’ll need to download the artwork from the web. You’ll need artwork at the right size so that you don’t have white borders around it in coverflow. I have found that CDUniverse is an excellent source for album art at the right sizes. I also use a free utility for Mac called Corripio, which automatically checks CDUniverse and many other sources to pull in art work for my music. Corripio will also find music lyrics as well, and help you fix missing or bad tags.

Access iPhone-only web sites from your desktop
Submitted by MacGroover

I use my iPhone to surf the web more than I use it as a phone. There are several sites I use almost daily that aren’t just optimized for the iPhone, they only work on mobile Safari and not the desktop browser. That’s fine when I have my iPhone handy, but sometimes I find myself at my computer and want to access one of these iPhone-only sites. To do this I use iPhoney which is a pseudo emulator that runs on top of Safari 3 to make web sites look like they would on your iPhone. iPhoney will trick the site into thinking you’re actually on mobile Safari. iPhoney is also a great tool for web developers who need to test how their sites will render on the iPhone or iPod touch.