MobileMe: Even it gets some updates

By Megan Lavey-Heaton

Coming about six weeks too late for Steve Sande, the new Find my iPhone feature demoed at WWDC will enable you to locate your iPhone on a map by logging into me.com. Sadly, I doubt that feature will help those of us who accidentally knock their phones behind the bed or get stuck between the couch cushions, but at least you'll know if it's in the house. Edit: I forgot, you can hear it beep, even if it's set to silent. However, how loud it beeps remains to be seen ...

You can also use the Find My iPhone feature to do two things: First, you can send a message to your phone that will display on the screen, even when it's locked, alerting to the Good Samaritan who has found it that you'll be on the way to get it. However, if someone with more nefarious intentions in mind gets ahold of it, you can do a remote wipe of the phone, thus returning it to factory settings.

Not mentioned during the keynote are these little gems:

  • The ability to access your iDisk from the iPhone: A feature that should have been on the iPhone for version 2.0, you can upload a file to your iDisk and immediately access it on your phone. The iDisk app will be free through the App Store.
  • File sharing via iPhone: Likewise, that nifty little iDisk app will enable you to share a file with someone else by tapping on the "Share" button in the application, and it'll shoot an e-mail link to your recipients. You can also tweak the settings to set passwords and the number of days a file is available. You can also use it to access other MobileMe's Public folders.
  • Mail search: If you've got a message on MobileMe but not on the iPhone itself, the improved search capabilities of iPhone OS 3.0 will allow you to search MobileMe for messages in addition to the e-mails that are on your iPhone as well.

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