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FindMyiPhone posts

Find My iPhone reunites true nerd with lost iPhone

by Paul Miller posted Jun 23rd 2009 at 12:42PM

You know, we might be inclined to disbelieve this exciting tale of derring-do if it weren't for the highly improbably heroics and ingenuity displayed by its three protagonists -- you just can't make this stuff up. Probably. Kevin, Ryan and Mark were in Chicago minding their own nerdness out at Brickworld when Kevin left his iPhone behind at a dive bar. When they went back for it just minutes later the phone was gone, and instead of calling the cops like a bunch of suckers, Kevin and co. did the right thing and pulled out a Sprint 3G dongle and a MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, Find My iPhone couldn't get a lock on his phone at all -- it was either off or out of data range. The next day at lunch he finally got a delivery confirmation message from me.com, which kicked off a wild, dangerous chase into the wilds of Chicago. We won't spoil the ending for you (he finds the iPhone), but Kevin does raise a couple good points about the service functionality: you need to pull up MobileMe on laptop to use the service (instead of perhaps another iPhone), movement updates aren't pushed, ringer volume impacts alert volume whether the phone is on vibrate or not, and there should be an option for controlling the phone in more nefarious ways like taking pictures. We're glad it all ended up well, but those moments of Lego bliss that Kevin and his friends missed out on are gone forever.

[Thanks, Tristan W.]

Find My iPhone is live, totally found our iPhone

by Paul Miller posted Jun 9th 2009 at 7:16PM

We wouldn't really say we "have it together" when it comes to remembering where we put our keys / phone / small children, so Apple's announcement of the Find My iPhone service for MobileMe users came as quite a relief. The service just went live, and with a quick toggle of a preference pane in iPhone OS 3.0 the phone is fully prepared for all sorts of lost and found scenarios -- along with acting as an incredibly intuitive (if pricey) stalking mechanism. Find My iPhone works exactly as advertised, giving us a fairly good location estimate from within our lead-lined underground fortress, and sending annoying messages to the phone complete with sound, even when the handset is switched to silent, though unfortunately the sound is a sort of sonar ping that strikes us as incredibly difficult to locate, unless of course our phone is taken by whale. The only other problem is that both the location function and the message service took a couple minutes to track down our iPhone -- not a deal breaker, but we don't know what the hangup could be. After the device is pinged, a confirmation of the event was sent to our MobileMe email address. A live, enthralling video demonstration is after the break.

Gallery: Find My iPhone is live, totally found our iPhone

Continue reading Find My iPhone is live, totally found our iPhone

USB tethering, Publish Video and Find my iPhone found in OS 3.0

by Ross Miller posted Mar 18th 2009 at 6:04PM

Apple touted quite a few new iPhone features at yesterday's OS 3.0 event, but now that the beta build is trickling out, there's been a bevy of unearthed discoveries to further pique our interests. First up, the gang at Boy Genius Report found an option to enable the "Find My iPhone" service in the MobileMe settings. Unfortunately, that's all we've got, but we wouldn't put it past Cupertino to build some me.com-linked location tracker that'd be the envy of Orwell himself -- hey, that'd be pretty useful if you accidentally left the mobile in a taxi. Also in the MobileMe section, it now says Publish Video when you go to publish an image. It's an odd typo, to be sure, and while video recording has been near the top of our wishlist for some time, we're not about to get our hopes up. Finally, Mac Rumors is reporting that a hacker has dug up and successfully activated the USB tethering capabilities. Apple's Scott Forstall had mentioned the devs were building it in, but were still in talks with the carriers. As to whether any or all of these functions will actually end up in the final OS 3.0 build, your guess is a good as ours. For now, check out more pics of the MobileMe additions after the break.

[Thanks everyone who sent this in!]

Read - Find My iPhone
Read - USB Tethering

Continue reading USB tethering, Publish Video and Find my iPhone found in OS 3.0