Q:

A: YOU CAN’T!

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 to make your voice heard with Apple. Go to the Apple Support Forum and suggest they add folder creation ability there. You can also contact Apple directly and give them iPhone Feedback. Be polite and to the point. Ranting might make you feel good, but anything past “WTF” might be ignored by readers. You can get more folders with honey … if that’s what you’re looking for. Leave a comment here if you care to.

I’ve seen Google send so many people to my blog looking for an answer to this question, I figured I owed it to those folks to give a quick and probably unsatisfying  answer.

Even with its flaws, the iPhone is still my only phone. Don’t think I would want to use another.

“Tweetboard is a fun and engaging micro-forum type application for your website. It pulls your Twitter stream in near real-time (max 1 min delay), reformatting tweets into threaded conversations with unlimited nesting. Conversations that spun off the original conversation are also threaded in-line, giving your site visitors full perspective of what’s being discussed.

Tweetboard is also a powerful viral tool that engages your website visitors. Each time someone posts (or replies) via your board, a link back to the corresponding conversation is appended to their tweet, creating a viral stream of Twitter traffic to your website.”

Written by the folks at 140ware, this little piece of java heaven is a little tab that resides on the left side of your site. When there are new Tweets to be read the tab color becomes red and displays the number of new tweets since your last visit. When first opened you are presented with only the new tweets, with another tab to see all tweets. These tweets will be any that the website owner has entered in you their Twitter account, or those who have visited the Tweetboard and left a message. Forum users must have a Twitter account and be logged in to post to Twitter via Tweetboard. If they don’t at least they can read the threads.

The Alpha version of Tweetboard has only been up and open to public use within the past few days. You must go to the Tweetboard website and ask for an invitation. Once you get a reply tweet, you paste a snippet of java code which can be found on their support page into your website or blog, log into your Twitter account through Tweetboard, and wait for Twitter stream to populate Tweetboard for the first time. That’s it. One piece of advise, you also have to include your Twitter username in the pasted code. Make sure you do not use the @ symbol. Your username should look like yourusername, not @yourusername.

Since it’s Alpha release 140ware has been busy tweaking the java code (that is the heart of this app) continuously. Yesterday, it had “issues” with Microsoft IE7, or more rightly IE7 had issues rendering standards based java and HTML. On Sunday 6.29.09 it was announced that Tweetboard had become IE7 compatible. Pretty amazing to see such fast turn around. I also had asked some questions on the tweetboard.com support page and got prompt answers. Several of them.

One of the current drawbacks of Tweetboard is not being able to see friend’s feeds. But in reply to a question on the Tweetboard website, “You will be able to moderate your friends post early this week, it’s our next update!” So it seems that fixes and feature will be headed our way.

If I had a feature wish list this is what I’d ask TweetaClaus for:

1. URL shortening button.
2. Add image button.
3. An “Expanded” button on the All tab.
4. Seeing my entire Twitter stream, including replies outside of Tweetboard, as an option.
5. A friends tab, so you don’t have to leave Tweetboard.

That’s it for now. If you have any thing you’d like to see in upcoming versions of Tweetboard, leave a message, or use my installed Tweetboard. Either way it would be interesting to hear your views. Happy Tweeting!

It may be strong-arming the situation, but it gives you back use of your blog or website.

In my previous post, I said I sent this to MacFixIt. They never published or followed up on the eMail I sent. But I’ve also formally sent this as an issue via Apple Support. With any luck it will be fixed with the 10.5.7 update when it comes out.

If you have not made a formal report to Apple I strongly suggest you go to the Mac OS X Feedback page & file a detailed report of the issue you are having with IMAP processes & Mail.app. Reporting in the Apple support forums may not be enough to get the full attention of Apple.

This little tutorial will help you change the images used for the RSS icon & the Mail icon and their position on your page. It’s up to you whether you work with the file live. It’s not brain surgery, but as always … back up any files you may alter before you start.

We will be working with these files:

style-one.css (or)
style-two.css
header.php
index.php

To move the RSS & The Mail Icons to the positions I have them in … open either the style-one.css or the style-two.css file depending on which you are using. What you need to change are around lines 79 & 80 in the CSS file.

Find:
img#rss-link{position:absolute;top:172px;left:-105px;}
img#contact-link{position:absolute;top:275px;left:-140px;}

Change to:
img#rss-link{position:absolute;top: 210px;left: 800px;}
img#contact-link{position:absolute;top: 280px;left: 825px;}

This will put the icons in the position I have them. But if you play with the top and left positions you can put them wherever you like.

To change the icons to other images as I did, find icons you like, there are plenty of free ones on the web. Open the header.php file go to this section:

<– RSS Link –>
<a href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>”><img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/rss.png” border=”0″ id=”rss-link” class=”correct-png” alt=”RSS” /></a>
<a href=”mailto:contact@instantshift.com”><img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/contact.jpg” border=”0″ id=”contact-link” alt=”Contact” /></a>

Change:
mailto:contact@instantshift.com
to
mailto:youreMailAddress@YourDomain.com

And as in my case I changed both icons to images that I wanted and they were both .png files. Of course if you name your icon files to something other than rss.png or contact.jpg you will also need to change the corresponding file paths in the RSS Link section (above) … i.e.: /images/contact.jpg  to /images/myfilename.jpg

Also remeber to keep backups of any changed or added files. If InstantShift updates this theme, you will have to make these changes all over again … or just re-upload your changed file after the update.

Hope this helps.

As you may or may not know, Apple has a new cat waiting to pounce on us all. Leopard (a.k.a. Mac OS X 10.5) arrives at your local Apple store on Friday October 26th at 6:00 PM. Apple stores will be open until Midnight that night.

This new cat will be sporting some new spots …. over 300 of them. These new feature will cost you $129.00 US. Or if you bought a new Mac on or After October 1, 2007 you can get a free upgrade disk for $9.95. The cost of shipping.

System requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 are:
Intel Mac, Power PC G5 or a Power PC G4 with an 867MHz processor or higher, 512MB RAM and a DVD drive for installation.

As I tell all my clients when a new Mac OS is ready to be released … wait. If your computer use is mission critical, then don’t be an early adopter. As always, there will be applications that will “blow up” in a new OS … and an update can be weeks to months away. If you must be bleeding edge, load the new OS on a separate HD & ‘play’ with it. Add in a few of the apps you need. See how that goes. But whatever you do … don’t just blithely do an install on top of you older version of OS X. You are just begging for trouble!

You may have heard this a billion times, but here it goes once again. Back up your computer before doing any major install. If you have a second internal drive or an external hard drive use a utility like Carbon Copy Cloner and clone (make a copy) your current HD to an image file on your second drive. Or if the drive is empty just create a “bootable clone.” This way if disaster strikes while upgrading, you can boot from the clone & get back to work restoring the original drive.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more as time goes on. But I’ve already had two clients ask about the new OS. Apple had made the announcement today, but also did a supporting mailing to their mailing list.

So if you plan to be bleeding edge … back up … and be prepared. Oh… and don’t forget the virtual band-aids. Ouch!