The Gadgets Page

Long ago, Palm devices were able to share data. You could beam over your business card, other contact information, or appointments from one Palm device to another using the IR ports. It’s a feature that Mike and I used quite regularly. I would set an appointment on my Treo and I’d immediately beam it over to Mike’s Treo so we would both remember the event. We also used it for contacts, but not nearly as often as for appointments.

It was something I REALLY missed when we upgraded to the iPhone.

Now, Skorpiostech has brought some of that capability back. With Handshake, I can share a photo or contact information with another iPhone. Here is a video explaining how it works:

You have a choice between the free and premium versions. The free version has an advertisement at the top and the premium version has no advertising for a one-time fee of three bucks. Here are the iTunes links to each of them.

• Handshake: Free Cost is free, but advertising at the top of the screen every time you use it.
• Handshake Premium: Cost is $2.99 with no advertising.

Now all they have to do is add a feature to share appointments and I will have one more feature in my iPhone that I missed when I switched from my Treo.

Via: First Look: Handshake for iPhone – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

With the last iPhone update, a great thing happened. My battery life went WAY up. Instead of having to charge the phone every two days or so, I could go an entire week without a charge. I had heard rumors of increased battery life, but I was REALLY impressed with this update.

There was a side effect, however. My email icon stopped working. When I turned on my phone, it wouldn’t automatically know how many emails I had. The number on the icon was almost always WRONG. It kind of pissed me off, but then my faith in the almighty Apple kicked in and I thought, “They’ll fix it.”

They didn’t. Over the last few weeks, I kept getting angrier and angrier at Apple because my stupid email icon was NEVER right. In order to know how many emails I had, I basically had to load the stupid mail program EVERY time. It was like the program wasn’t checking unless I loaded it.

And then it hit me. Maybe it wasn’t.

When I looked at my settings, the Push feature had been turned on. I don’t know if I did it or if it was reset with the last update, but Push means that my mail server would PUSH the emails to me. Instead of my mail program checking for mail every fifteen minutes like it used to before the update, it was dutifully waiting for my mail server to send the email to it, just like the settings told it.

If you have been frustrated with the mail program on your iPhone, check the settings for Push. Turn Push off and it will FETCH your mail every fifteen minutes (or whatever time frame you choose), just like it used to before the last update.

Now, I’m only embarrassed that I was so angry at the almighty Apple for “breaking” my mail.