Gizmodo: me

.Mac HomePages Will Become Permanent Time Capsules of July 7, 2009

matt buchanan — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:15:42 EDT

Apple is discontinuing .Mac HomePages, but the way they're doing it is neat for its potential historicity: You have until July 7 to edit the homepage, after which will it remain frozen forever, like a time capsule on the internet.

This is an email they're sending out to MobileMe members:

Dear MobileMe member:

On July 7, 2009, the .Mac HomePage web application will be discontinued. As of this date, you will no longer be able to create new pages or edit existing pages using HomePage. Any pages you've already published will remain live at their current web address for as long as you like. If you need to make changes to your existing pages, please do so before July 7.

Instead of HomePage, we recommend the other sharing features of your MobileMe membership. With MobileMe Gallery, you can share photos online directly from iPhoto or the web application atwww.me.com. And using iWeb on your Mac, you can create custom websites and blogs and publish them to MobileMe.

We apologize for any inconvenience this change may cause. For more information, please read this FAQ. And thank you for being a MobileMe member.

Sincerely,

The MobileMe Team

MobileMe Setup in iPhone OS 2.0 Video

Jesus Diaz — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:45:00 EDT

We already knew that MobileMe email services are now fully active and accessible through any desktop mail client. This morning I tried to set up MobileMe on my iPhone with OS 2.0 and I discovered that the calendar, bookmarks and contacts all synchronized fine, even while push synching—the ability of MobileMe to make changes to your iPhone over the air as they happen—is not active yet.

As you can see, MobileMe's setup is quite straightforward. Like with .Mac accounts on the original iPhone, the preference panel only requires you to add your user name and password. After the information is verified, the iPhone takes you to a screen where you can turn on and off the synchronization of calendar, mail, bookmarks, and address book. In its current beta state, the synchronization process completely obliterated my current data, replacing it with Addy's.

Unfortunately, as you can see in the video, she didn't have any data in her .Mac account except for mail messages (she has never synchronized her current Sony Ericsson or MacBook with the .Mac servers, so everything was empty after the first sync). I don't know if completely replacing the existing iPhone contents is the desired behavior or a bug in the iPhone OS 2.0 beta, so we would have to wait for the release of the new operating system this Friday to see how it it really works. There are two possibilities: either the synchronization would mix the existing data and the incoming data in the iPhone, or it would assume that you would like to fully replace your iPhone contents with a fresh copy from MobileMe.

After the first synchronization over the air, however, the push synchronization didn't work. We would have to wait for tomorrow—which apparently could be the date for MobileMe activation—to see how it goes. Stay tuned for our ongoing iPhone 2.0 and MobileMe testing.

How To: Me.com Mail Fully Working, Set It Up Now

Jesus Diaz — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:55:00 EDT

Both sending and receiving of me.com mails is working now. Following a tip by reader Gizmodo reader Tom, we have tested this with our own Mac.com accounts. It works perfectly, both for sending and receiving. Setting it up is very easy:

1. Go to your mail program.

2. Create new account.

3. For the user name, use your current .mac account (in my case: jesusdiaz)

4. For the incoming server select IMAP and enter mail.me.com

5. Use your current .mac password.

6. For the SMTP (outgoing) server enter smtp.me.com

7. Use your current .mac password.

Done.