If you use a Hotmail account, you’ll be happy to hear that you can now use your Hotmail account on your iPhone thanks to Microsoft enabling Exchange ActiveSync support. This allows Hotmail to push and sync email, calendar, and contacts to your iPhone.

Set up Hotmail on the iPhone

Here are the steps to setup Hotmail to sync and push to your iPhone (this works on the iPad too):

• Launch Settings
• Tap on “Mail, Contacts, Calendar”
• Tap onto “Add Account”
• Select “Microsoft Exchange”
• Enter your full Hotmail email address into both the Email and Username fields
• Leave Domain blank
• Enter your password
• Enter “Hotmail” as the Description
• Tap onto “Next”
• Now you must enter the server, use “m.hotmail.com” for the Server name then tap onto “Next”
• The iPhone will now verify that your Hotmail information is entered correctly, the next screen you’ll be able to enable Mail, Contacts, and Calendars

Hotmail is the original web mail, so it’s not surprise there’s still millions of hotmail accounts still in use today despite the competing offers from Google, Yahoo, and others. It’s a bit surprising it took Microsoft this long to get Hotmail working with the iPhone, but better late than never.

Apple and Amazon are rapidly changing the way books are consumed and read thanks to the iPhone & iPad and Kindle. The other effect of this is that it’s actually helping to ease the barriers to entry into the book publishing and sales market.

In the past an author would need to have an agent pitch books to publishers in the hopes it might get picked up, but not anymore. Now if you have a Mac and a word processor and a bit of patience, you can create your own book in the EPUB format and upload it directly to the iTunes iBookstore for sales.

OK well it’s not quite that simple (yet), but it’s not that difficult either. Just jump through a few hoops and you can get your book for sale on Apple’s online bookstore ready to be downloaded by anyone who owns an iPad or iPhone, here’s how:

Write and Publish a Book to the Apple iBook Store

First, some relatively simple requirements: you’ll need an Intel Mac running 10.5 or newer with adequate hard disk space and preferably a high speed internet connection.

1. Write the book (obvious) and get it into the iBooks compatible EPUB format (see below, it is easy to take a file and convert to EPUB format)
2. Get a unique ISBN number for each book title you plan to release. Cost is $25 per ISBN and you can fill out an ISBN application here
3. Get the following ready: a US tax ID (social security number or EIN), valid iTunes account with credit card on file
4. When all of the above is met, you can apply to be part of the iBookstore distribution network at Apple.com

How do I create an ebook in the EPUB format?

Almost any text containing document format can be converted into EPUB ebook format and there are multiple free software options available to do this. If you would like a walkthrough check out our guide on how to convert to EPUB. It covers most major source file types you’d want to convert including PDF, RTF, HTML, DOC, TXT, and more.

Thanks to a recent software update, you can also create an ePub with Pages if you already own the iWork office productivity suite from Apple.

If you’re looking for a free solution that doesn’t involve iWork/Pages and you don’t need help, just go ahead and download Calibre, it is a good choice because it will automatically create book structures like chapters, table of contents, and allow you to insert book metadata. Oh, and it’s free (open source is nice). The interface is a little strange but it gets the job done and for the wonderful price of free, we can’t complain too much.

Can I convert an existing text or word file to EPUB?

Yes, you will need to download a program that handles the ebook conversion for you. There are many free options, see above or refer to our article on how to convert to EPUB.

Can anyone help me sell my book on Apple’s iBookstore?

Yes, there are several companies that will handle many of the complexities of selling on the iBookstore for you, but you’ll still need your book ready in the EPUB format. The best way to do this is to use an Apple approved iBookstore aggregator, Apple conveniently provides a list of approved aggregators for the iBookStore. Most of these charge an upfront fee and then handle all the distribution services for you, in many cases you’ll then receive 100% of the revenue of book sales after Apple takes their iTunes Store cut. Prices vary widely so be sure to get a few quotes before agreeing to a single aggregator.

The iPad is beautiful, no doubt about it, but once you’ve handled it for a while you might notice the screen gets dirty rather quickly. The worst thing about the iPad is that it shows up fingerprints and smudges so easily, this is despite the fact that the screen has an anti-oil coating on it.

Cleaning the iPad screen

The proper way to clean the iPad display is to use nothing but a soft damp cloth:

• Turn off the iPad and disconnect it from any accessories, cables, or docks
• Using a very soft and slightly damp cloth, gently wipe the iPad screen. Be sure to not allow moisture to get into the openings of the iPad
• Repeat until the iPad screen is clean again

Can I clean the iPad screen with Windex?

No, for the love of Apple please do NOT use Windex or window cleaners! This includes rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover, and the like. The chemicals in window cleaners and these products can damage the oleophobic screen coating and actually make the iPad screen less responsive to touch over time. Not worth it, do not use chemical cleaners!

What can prevent the iPad screen from showing fingerprints and getting dirty?

Your best bet to keeping the iPad screen clean is to just wipe it down frequently with a soft cloth. If you get annoyed with the fingerprints though, you can use a screen protector product like the invisibleSHIELD which doubles both as a way to protect the screen from scratches and also reduces the appearance of fingerprints.

There are also anti-glare iPad screen protectors available if both the glare and the fingerprints bother you.

Line numbers are so useful to have in a good text editor that I’m surprised they aren’t enabled by default in TextWrangler. Regardless, they’re easy to display so here are two different ways to show line numbers in a text file. The first is through the View menu:

• In TextWrangler, open the View Menu
• Navigate to the “Text Display” submenu
• Select “Show Line Numbers

Change take effect immediately and you can hide the line numbers by just selecting the option again. You can also set the line numbers within the TextWrangler preferences:
Read more »

EPUB stands for ‘electronic publication’ and it’s the accepted standard format for digital book publishing. If you want to make an ebook that can be read on a digital device, you’ll need it in this EPUB format.

You can convert virtually any text containing document to EPUB format, which is the preferred format for reading on many ebook readers, including the Barnes & Noble Nook, Android, and the Apple iOS iBooks platform that runs on iPhone and iPad (note that the Amazon Kindle currently favors .mobi format which Calibre can also publish to). Here are the exact steps to convert a file to EPUB.
Read more »

You can quickly remove any third party System Preference pane from the Other section of “System Preferences” by control-clicking or right-clicking on the icon, and selecting “Remove Preference Pane”, it will immediately disappear.

If you need to convert FLAC to MP3 in Mac OS X for free, the best way to do this is using a utility called All2MP3.

Convert FLAC to MP3

Here are the steps to convert FLAC audio to MP3 format within Mac OS X.

• Locate the FLAC audio files you want converted
• Download All2MP3, it’s a free utility that will handle the conversion
• Launch All3MP3
• Drag the FLAC audio files into the All2MP3 GUI
• If you wish to adjust quality options, use the sliding bitrate scale. The default is set to 320kbps.
• Click on “Convert”

All3MP3 goes to work and handles all the conversion. The time it takes depends on the processor speed of your Mac, but it’s generally really fast for audio conversion standards. The FLAC files will be converted to MP3 within their original directory, so look for the new converted files in the same place.

What is FLAC anyway? Can iTunes play FLAC?

FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, and every once in a while you’ll come across audio files that are in this format. FLAC files are great because they’re usually of very high quality,but they’re annoying because iTunes can’t open a FLAC file by default. The solution is to convert the FLAC to MP3 format, and then iTunes can read it as usual.

Using the same app you can also convert wma to mp3 amongst other supported audio formats, including MPC, APE, WV, FLAC, OGG, WMA, AIFF, WAV, and others.

Call me old school or retro, but SNES was truly one of the greatest consoles ever made. OK, so really it wasn’t just the console, it was the games that made SNES so great, and now you can play all those awesome SNES games directly on your iPad.

Play SNES on iPad: Method 1

There’s actually two ways to play SNES on the iPad. The first is by using a program called SNES HD, which is an iPad port of the popular SNES emulator for Mac called SNES9x. This app is really cool because for one it’s totally free, and it lets you use the iPhone as a remote control!

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Jailbroken iPad
• iPhone for remote control
• SNES HD package (free download)

You can get SNES HD here, it’s a free download. You’ll want to checkout that page as well for instructions on installation, which uses Cydia to install the package.

Play SNES on iPad: Method 2

The second method isn’t free, but as shown in the picture above it lets you play SNES using a Wiimote as the controller. This is covered in more detail on LifeHacker, and will require the following:

• A Jailbroken iPad
• SNES4iPhone from the Cydia store for $6
• Wiimote (this is going to be your SNES controller, sweet!)
• iPad sync cable (USB cord that comes with your iPad)
• A Mac/Windows/Linux PC (to run the jailbreak software)

You’ll use an app from the Cydia store called SNES4iPhone, and then sync the Wiimote up to be your remote. If you’re a super geek you can probably figure out the whole process on your own, otherwise check out LifeHacker: Play SNES in four easy steps to get it all working on your iPad.

Remember that in either situation you will need to jailbreak your iPad before you’ll be able to play any SNES games on your iPad. It’s my opinion that Nintendo and the classic game makers should join together and release an official SNES player for iPad, then charge for the individual games. I think this would be a big hit and would be a great way to revive some classic games that many people have long forgotten and no longer have an ability to play.

Oh and one more thing, SNES4iPhone will work to play SNES on the iPhone and iPod touch too!

Thanks to the new iPhone OS update, you can easily disable iPhone data usage when on a cellular network (this is separate from the ability to disable data roaming).

• Tap on “Settings”
• Tap on “General”
• Select and tap “Network”
• Tap the On/Off switch next to “Cellular Data” to disable cell data use
• Close Settings

Now your iPhone will no longer use cellular data. You can enable use just by tapping the on/off switch again.

Combining this with a periodic check of iPhone data use is a great way to avoid overage charges.

This is really important when trying to stay within the data usage constraints of the revised AT&T data plans, which you can read more about on our iPhone 4 price guide.

Note that this ability was included with the new iOS 4 update, so prior versions of the iPhone OS do not have the same functionality.

By default your iPhone will automatically sync and create a backup each time your iPhone is connected to your computer. If you want to manually create an iPhone backup though, it is very easy.

How to start an iPhone backup:

• Plug your iPhone into your computer
• Launch iTunes
• Select your iPhone in the ‘DEVICES’ list
• Right-Click on your iPhone
• Select “Back Up”
• Wait for iPhone backup to complete

This will create a backup of your iPhone that you will be able to restore from later, and the procedure is the same in Mac OS or Windows. It is a good idea to create a current backup before you download and install iPhone OS 4.

Does this work to backup my iPod touch or iPad?

Yes, backing up an iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, or iPad, is all the same process and handled through iTunes in the exact same manner.

Additional iPhone Backup Resources

* How to speed up slow iPhone backups
* Find the location of iPhone backups and access the files directly