"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

If we applied Shakespeare's logic to today's digital age, then it would also mean that watching mis-tagged or untagged videos on your Apple device (be it a Mac, iPhone, iPod or Apple TV) would be just as enjoyable. Okay, you got me, they'd probably be just as good. But this doesn't mean you're excused from tagging your videos appropriately.

First, a bit of background. The vast majority of videos purchased from the iTunes store, as well as "digital copy" (iPod/iPhone pre-formatted videos that are sometimes included on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs), will come pre-tagged. So, the situation for those in this camp (myself included) is peachy, especially when using an Apple TV. Your videos show up on the screen screen with proper titles, season and episode numbers, actors, and descriptions. Just the way Steve likes 'em.

But what if you already own the DVD and want a version for your iTunes library? For those of you with the time and patience to rip an MPEG-4 version (and believe me, this takes some patience, especially if you use H.264 encoding) of your favorite videos, a HandBrake-MetaX martini make tagging your videos a bit more of a pleasurable experience - as if it wasn't fun enough already.

If you read my recent post about taking movies with the iPhone 3GS, you probably noted that I talked about the lack of editing capabilities on the iPhone with the exception of trimming the beginning and ending of your videos. What if you want to edit your movies, add titles or effects, or combine a bunch of short iPhone video clips?

Several of the comments left by TUAW readers asked the same question, and it's so easy to do that I decided to whip up a quick tutorial showing how this works. You probably have a tool on your Mac that can do the job for you with just a few clicks, drags, and menu selections. iMovie is the perfect easy tool for creating full feature films (just kidding) from individual scenes shot with the iPhone 3GS video camera. Here's how to do it.

It seems like everyone who's purchased an iPhone 3GS at this point has had a different reason for buying one. For some people, it was all about getting a faster CPU; for others, it was their first 3G-and-beyond smartphone.

My personal reasons for spending my hard-earned bucks to buy a 3GS were to take advantage of the higher-resolution (3 megapixel) autofocus camera, since I love taking photos with my iPhone, and to shoot video with my phone. Phone video is nothing new; I had it three years ago on a Palm Treo 680. But the ability of the 3GS to not only record video, but also allow limited editing before sharing the video in a number of ways, really made me want to get a 3GS immediately.

In this TUAW First Look, I describe the recording and editing processes in detail, and then give you my impressions of how good or bad the 3GS video capabilities are. I also provide a comparison with video taken by a T-Mobile G1 Android smartphone.

When I heard that OS 3.0 was going to enable syncing of notes between the iPhone and the Mac, I was overjoyed. I use the notes app on my iPhone all the time for everything: reminders, grocery lists, and figuring out the monthly budget while I'm away from home. Having those notes sync back and forth with the Mac was something I very much looked forward to, because it made the notes app far more useful.

The first few times I synced notes between my iPhone and Mac, however, I'd get a message like this one:


Since I don't have many notes on my iPhone to begin with, this alert would come up every time I changed, deleted, or added a note on the iPhone. This would also hold up completing the iPhone's sync with my Mac until I confirmed that syncing notes was okay.

After a few days of this, it was starting to get irritating. I racked my brain trying to figure out how to stop it.

Then I remembered: iSync is still its own program (though one largely restricted to the background these days), so there ought to be a preference in it to stop this behavior.

And there was. In iSync's preferences, you can set the threshold for the alert message that appears on syncing with your iPhone:



You can disable the alert entirely, or you can set it to go off if 50%, 25%, 5%, or any data on your Mac will be modified by syncing with the iPhone.

I'm not sure if this was set to 5% by default, or if years ago I'd set it that low out of paranoia and just forgot about it. Now I have it set at 50%, and the irritating alerts have gone away.

Michael Rose had a double-take today while he was reading an email on his iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 3.0. In the message -- a comment from TUAW reader binklewis -- was the place name 'San Antonio, TX'. As Mike scanned the email, he noticed that those words were highlighted as a link, and tapping the link opened up a map in the iPhone's Map app.

Sure enough, these new data detectors in Mail for iPhone OS 3.0 were noted in Apple's preview of the upgrade, but seeing them in action is pretty neat. Further playing about (below) showed that full addresses (in addition to just city names in emails) also work, placing a pin right at the site of an address that had been tapped in a mail message. In earlier versions of iPhone OS, you could tap on a phone number embedded in an email to dial it, but that was about it.
These data detectors are similar to the ones included in Mail.app on Mac OS X. Unlike Mac Mail, however, there's still no way for times and dates (i.e., "june 29 at 3:30 PM") to be detected and added to the iPhone Calendar app. Perhaps that's an upcoming feature for iPhone OS 3.5!

This happened to me last time I upgraded from my original iPhone to the 3G. I went to check messages, and instead of seeing the list of people who called, the phone simply dialed the voicemail number. The solution this time is the same as last time.

Go to the AT&T web site, log in, and under Phone, Device Support you'll see an option to 'Reset Voicemail Password.' Go ahead and do that, and AT&T will send you a text message with a temporary password. Go to your iPhone, set up Visual Voicemail again as if your phone was new, and put your old password back in.

It seems like AT&T could handle all this automatically, and it clearly works for some, but a quick check of friends who upgraded found quite a few with the problem. All this logging in and re-setting passwords is not the most elegant solution, but apparently it is the only solution.

Hope this helps some of you.

One of the highly touted features of the new iPhone is the ability to have the map display your direction of travel. A great idea, long overdue. As people were walking out of the Apple Store today it was one of the first things some people wanted to try. They brought up the Google Map app, and then started spinning around. But these whirling dervishes weren't getting anywhere.

Since I was the real smart TUAW dude, I told them I could get it going. Nope. Nada. Zero.

After a bit of a search at the Apple web site when I returned home, I found it. You have one more tap to do on the map. When you tap the location icon at the lower left of the map screen a second time, it changes to a new, previously unseen icon. It looks like a little wedge in a circle. When you activate it, you're good to go. Or spin.

I think if I were designing this I would have made it an option on the map to default to direction of travel, or North at the top. Oh well, nobody asked me. Not the most obvious GUI design, but I guess once you know it, you know it. Now you know it too.

While I trashed Vodafone NZ's pricing in a previous post, in at least one way it's far ahead of U.S. telco giant AT&T: internet tethering using the iPhone is already possible over Vodafone's network without resorting to lengthy, kludgy, and unsupported hacks. Who knows how long tethering will stay supported here, or how long it will take before Vodafone remembers to charge extra for it, but for now, tethering is go in the Southern Hemisphere.

Tethering works over both USB and Bluetooth. Using USB to tether simply requires enabling internet tethering in the iPhone's settings, then plugging the iPhone into an available USB port on your computer. The Mac will automatically recognize the tethered iPhone, and your connection will be up and running.

Bluetooth tethering obviously requires enabling Bluetooth on both your iPhone and computer, and then selecting "Connect to Network" from the Bluetooth drop-down menu. Once again, the rest of the setup is automatic -- it really doesn't get much simpler than this.

The speed of the internet connection appears to be comparable to the iPhone's standard mobile speed using USB, but Bluetooth was only about half as fast. I didn't remain tethered for long for fear of gulping down my meager monthly data cap, but for the time I used it, tethering worked with no issues whatsoever.

For my money, having tethering available in little ol' New Zealand long before the U.S. will have it puts AT&T in an even less flattering light -- while AT&T has far more users spread over a much larger area than Vodafone NZ, AT&T also has more towers and more money to pour into their infrastructure.

Any other international iPhone users managed to get tethering working on their networks? Sound off in the comments, and be sure to let us know what network you're on.

Read on for a pictorial guide to enabling tethering over Bluetooth.

At first I was going to wait until December when I could upgrade my 3G iPhone to a 3G S for the best price, but the thought of that better camera resolution and video was slowly gnawing away at my resolve. I wanted a new iPhone (damn you Apple!), but I had to do something about my current model. Putting it in the drawer that has become my 'Museum of Obsolete Technology' didn't seem like a great (or cost-effective) solution. Selling it to friends is tough because most already have iPhones and are in the same boat I'm in. We've even offered some good tips in the past here at TUAW.

Then I remembered that when I upgraded to the iPhone 3G I sold my iPhone online. eBay wasn't offering much back then, so after some research I settled on NextWorth. They are one of a number of companies that will give you real cash for gadgets, and they had a good reputation. Prices depend on demand and change daily. With my old first generation iPhone, I sent it in with all my accessories and received a check back in 2-3 weeks. It was all pretty painless.

I checked them again this time, and they were offering US$280.00 for my 16GB iPhone. I've gathered all my accessories and will send it in when I get the new iPhone. That 280 clams makes the whole trade up quite a bit less painful. I also like this method rather than selling to a friend because of the "something is sure to go wrong with the phone the day after I sell it" factor.

Our readers will have their own stories and suggestions. Let's hear them -- and one tip. Before you engage with any company try a site like ReSeller Ratings or do some targeted Google searches to see how other people did with them. I might have gotten more money for the phone using another method, but the route I went has no risk and offered a reasonable trade in value.

Other online companies that buy iPhones include Gazelle, BuyMyTronics and CashforiPhones. That's not an exhaustive list, and be sure to check reputations. Searching on "sell your iPhone" at Google is a good place to start. There's also Craigslist, but you have to be careful. There have been a lot of rip-offs.

One final tip. When you sell the little darling, be sure to do a secure erase first. It takes a while, but protects you from selling your data along with your phone.

I'm looking forward to the new iPhone but hate the thought of buying the next model and the next. What's a geek to do?

I swear, getting old is not a lot of fun.

Last night, I taught a class in data security for home and small business users at our local community college. There were a lot of good questions from the community education program students, so the class ended quite late and I was still answering questions as I walked out the door.

This morning, I went to grab my MacBook Air out of my laptop bag and literally grabbed air instead. In my haste to get out of the classroom and head home, I had packed everything but the laptop. Fortunately, the classroom was locked and few classes are scheduled for early morning, so I called the campus police and had them rescue the MBA for me. Problem solved!

After actually losing an iPhone 3G a few months ago, I wrote a post about what to do to prevent data loss and identity theft when lose your iPhone, and included a few tips on how to hopefully keep yourself from losing the phone in the first place. In this post, I'll talk about the things that I do (or can do) to keep my MacBook Air and my data safe, even when my mind conspires against me to try to lose the computer.

Sometimes you have to use Windows. Supporting clients in multiple-OS environments makes this a necessity for some Mac users, while others want to run applications that are available in Windows only. You can get a preview of the latest flavor of Windows, Windows 7, by running Release Candidate 1 of the new OS either in a virtual environment such as VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox, or in Apple's own Boot Camp. Christina did a thorough rundown of the options for running Win 7 on Mac back in January.

Of course, you may not own Fusion or Parallels, and perhaps you don't want to have to boot into Windows separately. In that case, you can download a copy of Sun's VirtualBox application (it's free) and then download a copy of Windows 7 RC1 from the Microsoft website (it's free, too!). Follow these detailed instructions or watch the video, and you'll have a free way to test Windows 7 until at least June 1, 2010. Windows 7 will shut down after every two hours of use after March 1, 2010, which is Microsoft's subtle way of telling you to buy the OS or update to a later build.

If you're a VMWare Fusion user, the VMWare team has instructions and a video available here. Want to try out Win7 RC1 with Boot Camp? There are instructions here. For Parallels 4 users, I was unable to find a good set of instructions, so if any TUAW readers can provide me with a link, I'll update this post.

How is Windows 7 RC1 as an operating system? It's faster than Windows Vista on my 3 year old iMac, and some features look surprisingly Mac-like. I'll leave it to you as an exercise to see how much you like or dislike it.

In the last iPhone Dev 101 post, I told you a little about creating your first project using Xcode; however, in this post, I want to show you how to create your first application that will run in the iPhone simulator. In honor of staying with the classic way of teaching programming, we'll create a "Hello World!" application as our first one.

Creating the new project
If you have installed the iPhone SDK/Xcode, then you can launch Xcode by navigating to /Developer/Applications. Once there, you can double click on the Xcode application (you may also find it handy to just drag the icon to the dock if you will be using it a lot).

Once Xcode launches, click File > New Project. Under the iPhone OS section on the left side of the resulting window, select "Application." Select "View-based Application" from the templates that show up on the right side, and then click the "Choose" button. You will then be prompted to specify a project save name -- this will also be the name of your resulting application, so choose your project name wisely.

You're project has now been created, and the Xcode window that is displayed will contain all of your code, resources, etc. There isn't much there now, but the application is fully functional at this point. You can click the "Build & Go" button in the toolbar, and the application will be compiled and launched in the iPhone Simulator. Again, this is a fully functional application, but it doesn't do anything useful at this point -- the usefulness of the app is up to your coding, but Apple supplies you with the base code and dependencies.

A reader recently contacted us with a question regarding her decision to recycle an older iMac computer. She wanted to know how she could clear/reformat the hard drive, but didn't have the disks that came with the system. So, we thought we would take a minute to tell you how you can cleanse your hard drives before getting rid of your computer. I'm going to show you how to wipe the hard drive using Target Disk Mode, since this will work even if you don't have the install disks.

Step 1: Get a FireWire Cable
Both of the Macs will need to have FireWire, which means everything between the iMac DV and the current lineup (except for the MacBook Air and unibody MacBook) is eligible. You will also need a FireWire 400 cable so you can connect one end to the old Mac, and the other end to another Mac. If you don't have one of these cables, you can easily pick up one online or at a retail store. If both of the Macs support FireWire 800, you can use one of those cables as an alternative to 400; it will be faster. If one has only a 400 port and the other has only an 800 port, a converter cable (available online for less than $10) is what you need. Once you have the FireWire cable, just simply connect the two computers together.

Step 2: Boot into Target Disk Mode on the old Mac
Shut down the old Mac that will be receiving the hard drive cleaning, and reboot it while holding down the "T" key on your keyboard. After a few moments, you should see a FireWire symbol appear on the screen -- when you see this, you are in FireWire Disk Mode (FDM). When in FDM, your old Mac's hard drive should show up on the new Mac as a connected external FireWire drive.

Step 3: Do some Disk Utility magic
Open Disk Utility.app on your new Mac (located in /Applications/Utilities), and click on your old Mac hard drive in the selection area on the left. Note that you should click on the drive, and not the partition (often called "Macintosh HD") to ensure a complete disk wipe. The disk drive will most likely have a FireWire icon to denote that it is connected as an external disk. Once you select the drive, click the Erase tab, and click Security options.

In this section of Disk Utility, you will be able to select a few different erase options that will also add security to the standard disk erase. First, lets specify a name for the drive -- in the name field type what you would like the drive to show up as when it is erased, otherwise it will default to "Untitled."

Continue reading to learn about security options and how to fully erase the hard drive on an old Mac.

If you're looking for a significant performance boost for your middle-aged laptop, replacing your aging hard disk with a solid state disk (SSD) could give your computer a new lease on life.

Solid-state disks (pictured, bottom) differ from traditional hard disks (top) in that they're not constructed with platters and heads. Instead, they're more like giant thumb drives, containing memory chips designed to be written and re-written without wearing out. The upside to this is that SSDs are much, much faster to read and write to, making booting and starting applications lightning-quick.

I recently installed an Intel X25-M SSD, a 160GB drive, as a replacement for a 120GB Toshiba hard disk for my 2006-vintage black MacBook. Spendy, for sure, but for the performance increase and the extra life it adds to my MacBook, well worth it. Plus, I had my state tax refund burning a hole in my pocket.

The performance is phenomenal. The old disk booted in a respectable one minute, 49 seconds. The new disk booted in a blazing 31 seconds. Ridiculous. Windows also boots in less than half the time it took before. Photoshop CS3 launches in five seconds, Illustrator CS3 in nine seconds.

Getting the drive was simple: It's moving the data that takes time. Read on to see how you can migrate your data like I did -- including a Boot Camp partition -- with little fuss.

Have you ever wanted to type something into your Mac and have it record what you typed audibly using any one of the Mac OS X voices? It's easily done with a few Automator actions, and in this Mac Automation post, I'll show you how.

Open Automator and find the following actions, then drag them to the workflow area (in the same order):

• Get Specified Text
• Text to Audio File

Running the workflow
With these two actions in place, you can enter text into the Get Specified Text action, and a file name in the Text to Audio File action, and run it with great results. The text that you enter will be magically encoded into audio using the specified voice in the audio file action.

Read on to learn more about saving the workflow, and adding additional options.