Friday Roundup for January 16th, 2009 – iPhone tips submitted by you
Happy Friday! Welcome to our first weekly roundup of user submitted iPhone tips in 2009.
This week, we learn some great tips about Google’s iPhone apps like how to find latitude and longitude using Google Maps, tips for getting the most from the Google Mobile app, and how to archive Gmail messages instead of deleting them. We also get a bunch of tips to help us get more from iTunes, and some tips for fixing iPod touch apps that don’t seem to be working.
Once again, thanks to you, our wonderful readers of Touchtip, for sharing these invaluable nuggets of iPhone wisdom. Read on to see the entire roundup in its technicolor glory. And if you have a tip you’d like to share, send it over and we may include it in our next weekly roundup. Now, on to the tips…
Find the latitude and longitude of any location using Google Maps on iPhone
Submitted by Terry Summers
This is an awesome tip that will show you how to get the latitude and longitude of any location on the iPhone’s Google Map. You can find the coordinates of your current position, or of any other pin point on the map. There is no obvious way to do this, however, Google’s Mobile Help web site has an explaination of just how to do it, and then somebody put this great tutorial together that is a must-read for everyone.
Archive email on your iPhone
Submitted by DJ Don
If you use Google’s Gmail then you are already familiar with archiving messages instead of deleting them. This week, Google added a great Gmail add-on tool for desktop browsers called “Send and Archive” which makes it so easy to keep your inbox nice and tidy. If you use Gmail on the iPhone or iPod touch, you can’t use the Send and Archive option, but there is another way to archive messages. Google’s official Gmail blog has this video tutorial which will show you how to archive your emails on the iPhone.
Create an iTunes account with no credit card
Submitted by ghackz
Yo, I can’t take credit for this tip, but had to share with you all at Touchtip. I came across this one over at gHacks Blog. This iPhone tip is for anyone who wants an iTunes account without having to enter a credit card number. It was perfect for me because I have an unlocked and jailbroken iPhone and didn’t want to give up my cc number to Apple. The trick is to use an expired coupon code in iTunes, and they have a link to a list of codes you can use. Check it out.
Tips to get more out of iTunes
Submitted by Geoff J.
Any person that has an iPhone or iPod touch will end up having to use iTunes at some point. iTunes is a great application, but it’s not perfect. Here’s a list of tips I pulled together that will help you get more out of iTunes.
- Remove duplicate tracks – iTunes should do a better job of this, but it doesn’t. Good thing there are a couple of great plug-ins for this purpose. I like both iDupe and Dupin.
- Get music off of your iPod – This is the single most annoying thing about iTunes (except for being a resource hog). Why doesn’t Apple just make this easier instead of forcing us to use third-party utilities? I like Podworks for recovering music from my iPod. Wired also has a nice rundown of other tools that do this.
- Prevent iTunes from doing its own organization of your collection – I personally don’t like the way iTunes organizes my music, so I turn it off by going into the advanced preferences and deselecting the “Keep iTunes Music folder Organized” option.
- Better ways to find album art – iTunes will attempt to find album art for your music, unfortunately, it only looks for the art in the iTunes database. There are tools that will look in other databases which will greatly improve your chances of finding the right artwork. I recommend Album Art Thingy or Corripio. Corripio is nice because it will also help you find lyrics as well.
- Listen to your podcasts in a different application – iTunes is fine for subscribing and listening to podcasts, but if you’re like me, you prefer a different app for listening to these. Why? I prefer listening to my podcasts while reading my RSS news feeds and my feed reader, like many others, now supports podcasts. iTunes will now let you export your podcast subscriptions as an OPML file, which you can then import into your RSS app. Sweet!
9 tips for getting the most out of the Google Mobile iPhone app
Submitted by Raj Maria
If you like to follow Google, you can always get some good insight from the blog that Matt Cutts writes. Matt is an engineer at Google and often times will post some terrific info. I found this post from a couple months ago that has invaluable tips for anyone that uses the Google Mobile iPhone app, which should be you. This app is one of my faves and one I cannot live without, and these tips from Matt are really handy. Read them now.
Fix apps that close after three seconds
Submitted by Mattydizzle07 and Jen
Many owners of new iPod touches are having problems with apps closing after a few seconds. Apple hasn’t officially called this a bug yet, but if it’s happening to you, simply restart your iPod after each app you install. If that doesn’t do the trick, uninstall the app and reinstall it. This seems to fix this issue for most users.
If you find these iPhone tips handy, be sure to read more of Touchtip’s Weekly Roundup of iPhone tips to get the most out of your iPhone or iPod touch.
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