Apple has finally done it! They added back the one feature I had been waiting for in iTunes 11— album art in the song view. So I finally took the leap and did the iTunes 11.0.3 update. I’ll say right up front— this update isn’t for everyone. If you’re still waiting on Cover Flow to reappear— you may be waiting a long time! Honestly, I don’t think it’s ever coming back. But hey … if enough people send Apple their feedback/requests on the Apple iTunes Feedback Page … it could certainly happen. It took 3 updates for Apple to come to their senses on album art in song view. Who knows!

The list of what’s been updated is not terribly long, but it got my attention on a few counts. Here’s what appears on the Apple Website: Continue Reading > > >

There are so many companies out there that will offer you SPAM filtering for a price. Some moderate, some not so. But for the everyday guy or gal who has a domain or two and is tired of paying for Internet based, or computer based SPAM filtering— have I got news for you! MX GuardDog: A Dream Come True: No SPAM! Oh and did I mention the service can be free?

I have been using BlueHost.com as my web hosting company for many years. I use them for both my personal domain go2jo.com and my business domain emacconsulting.com. I have been pretty happy with their service, tech support, features, and cost. I refer many of my clients to them. Like any good hosting company, they offer a variety of SPAM filtering options, including SPAM Assassin, and even Google’s Postini. But for as long as I’ve used either I have had issues with both. With SPAM Assassin, though I had extensive white and black lists, plus hundreds of individual filters— SPAM still got through. Sometimes I’d would get literally 40-50 eMails a day that would make it through all that filtering and my blacklist. To top it all off, there was no way to easily add a piece of SPAM to the filtering. Continue Reading > > >

Quite some time ago I wrote “How To: Create A Folder in iPhone Mail“. At the time it was very simple … you couldn’t create a new folder/mailbox in iOS Mail. But with the advent of a few iOS releases since, and the amount of traffic that post gets, I thought it time to put together an update to “How To: Create A Folder in iPhone Mail” … because now you can.

More accurately, the new title should be ‘How to create a mailbox in Mail on iOS 5 or greater.

The old question  …

Q: How do I create a folder in the iPhone Mail app in iOS 1-4?

A: YOU CAN’T!

The new question …

Q: How do I create a folder in the iOS Mail app in iOS 5 & 6?

A: YOU CAN!

And here’s how …
Continue Reading > > >

If you find this helpful, can you help me out and make a donation via my PayPal widget? Or if you’re in the NJ & NY area and you or someone you know needs my consulting services … I need new clients. Hurricane Sandy has seriously effected my business here on the Jersey shore, and my livelihood. One thing I’ve been reminded of recently … there’s no shame in asking for what you need … you just might get it. Thanks … Joe

UPDATE 05.16.2013: Apple updated iTunes 11 to 11.0.3. With this update Album Art was added back to the Songs View. The Mini Player was also updated, as were other features and bug fixes. They also increased the speed of searches in large music libraries. Sorry to say, Cover Flow is still not back. I wrote a new blog article about 11.0.3 because I did do the upgrade & will use it now. But before I went crazy I tested that iTunes 11.0.3 can also be downgraded back to iTunes 10.7 with my How To below. If you still ned to downgrade … read my How To below. Thanks … Joe

Sometimes even I regret blindly upgrading an Apple application without doing any research. This was the case installing the iTunes 11 upgrade. Lots of pretty eye candy … but the loss of many features. Ones that many people use every day.

You may have your own reason for wanting to downgrade, but rest assured, the procedure outlined after the break, worked 100% for me. So it should work for you. The operative word here is … should.

It took much looking to piece this together. I’m posting it here just for reference. Make sure you have a backup of your data before proceeding. Then use the most recent TimeMachine backup BEFORE your iTunes 11 install.

One other thing … if you are downgrading to iTunes 10.7 because Apple removed a feature you used, or for whatever reason you downgraded … let Apple know! Go to the Apple iTunes Feedback Page and leave feedback about why you downgraded. If enough people register their reasons why, and what features they’d like back in future iTunes versions … Apple has been know to bend to the will of the people and return features. So when you’re done … come back here, click on the link, and make your voice heard. And now back to our regularly scheduled downgrade …

The following instructions are for Mac users only.

Continue Reading > > >

Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ!

After a sixteen year run in Seattle, I’ve moved myself and my company to Asbury Park, NJ. I’m still in the process of settling in, but am open for business. Same great personalized service … in a new location.

My new address is:

710 6th Ave Unit 207
Asbury Park NJ 07712

My new phone number is 732-910-5254.

For my current clients, please update your address book and phones. I have ported my old 206-850-5135 phone number to Google Voice. So even if you call the old number you will still reach me. But it is better to just use the new number.

I look forward to meeting and supporting new Mac, iPhone and iPad users and businesses in my new east coast metropolitan location as well as continuing to support my wonderful west coast clients.

In a previous post about How To: Create IMAP Mail Account on iPhone account on the iPhone, I made reference to this ingenious little iPhone app called Pastebot.

Pastebot is a powerful clipboard manager by Tapbots that stores text & images copied from your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (compatible though not universal yet.). You can organize, apply filters to, and copy clippings to be pasted or sent to other apps, or even to your Mac.

Have you ever gone to a website on your iPhone and it was the type of site that would read much better on a full screen? Or maybe the site is Flash based? With Pastebot and a few “touches” you can paste that long ungodly URL directly to your Mac’s browser. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this little utility already.

Pastebot, the “little utility that could”, and does, is only $3.99 on the iTunes App Store. Combine that with the free Pastebot Sync from the Tapbots website and you have a very handy and useful combo.On the iPhone, Pastebot will keep track of every item you cut or copy. It will automatically save 99 items in its “clipboard”. You can name and file any of those items into folders for later use. I have copied all my eMail signatures into a folder in Pastebot, and now I can easily copy any of those back to the iPhone clipboard to paste into eMail I compose on the iPhone. Continue Reading > > >

A few days ago I had the most bizarre thing happen. I was working on my computer, a MacBook Pro 15″ 2.53 HHz Intel Core Duo Uni-body and an attached Apple 24″ LED Cinema Display. I was in the middle of something, when the image on the screen split in half. The left half of the screen was on the right and the right half on the left. For a split second  (no pun intended) I freaked! Then my brain immediately went into troubleshooting mode. After I tried a few things in the Display System Preference, I just decided to restart. That fixed the issue. And I thought nothing more about it.

Now a day later … Thursday June 12th … I was again working on my computer, when the whole 24″ display went black! No warning. No dying wheeze. Nothing. Blackness. Wow … the screen went to sleep? No. The MacBook Pro screen was NOT black. Panic time! Continue Reading > > >

Q: How do I create a folder in the iPhone Mail app in iOS 1-4?

A: YOU CAN’T!

Update: Since writing this post, newer versions of iOS have been released that will allow you to create folders on an iOS device. Here’s a new post on “How To: Create A Folder in iPhone Mail“

It’s another mystery of life. Why in the world can’t you create a folder in the iPhone Mail app!!?? You can move an eMail message, or a group of messages from one folder to another, but you can’t create a Mail folder on the iPhone. It’s just another of the glaring oddities of the iPhone.

I can understand not being able to do this with a POP account, because iPhone Mail doesn’t sync the mail messages themselves via iTunes. So it would follow, you couldn’t sync newly created folders with moved messages from the iPhone.

One would think though, it could be done with an IMAP eMail account. But it’s just not so.

It’s an enigma wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a burrito …

My only suggestion to all offended and incredulous iPhone user, is Continue Reading > > >