Posts Tagged ‘Mobile Me’

Seasons change, people change, domains change.  It’s a fact of life.  When your domain changes, don’t panic, it is an easy process to remove one Personal Domain and add another on your Mobile Me.

The first thing to do is log in to Mobile Me. Once you’ve entered your member name and password, click the Account button in the toolbar at the top of the window.  It’s the last one on the right side and looks like a little person. (Mobile Me will probably ask you to verify your password at this point.)

Now, in the sidebar on the left side of the window, click Personal Domain.  Once that screen loads, click the “remove this domain” button to the right of your custom domain name.  Confirm that you want to remove the domain by clicking Remove Domain again.

Now you’re done here, but you still have to go to your registrar and do a little housekeeping there.  Go to your domain name registrar’s website (Network Solutions, Dotster.com , www.GoDaddy.com etc…) and restore the cname record to its original setting (instead of pointing to “www.me.com”).  You’ll need to check with the registrar to see what the original setting should be as it varies from registrar to registrar

Now, if you want to add a new personal domain, you just start fresh from the beginning!  Its as easy as falling out of a banana tree, which is easier than you think.

iCal is not only a really easy way to keep up with all of your monkey business, but also a great way to make sure everyone in the family knows when and where to be.  Syncing multiple devices, however can be tricky, if not down right impossible.  BusySync is a third party application made by BusyMac that helps with this process and can integrate Mobile Me and Google Calendars to make sure that everyone in the family has up to date calendars on their computers and iPhones.

Here’s an example:  Dr. Zaius keeps a calendar in iCal which is synced to Mobile Me which also syncs to his iPhone.  Zira, Dr. Z’s lab assistant and life partner, also has a Mac and an iPhone and really needs to have access to Dr. Z’s calendar so she’ll know when people are coming over for bananas or when the chimps have soccer practice.

Dr. Z can Publish his calendar through iCal and share it with Zira, but since it’s a ‘subscribed calendar’ on her computer, it will not sync with Mobile Me and she won’t get the information on her iPhone.  Bummer.  They can, however, use Busy Sync to do the syncing for them and give everyone access on all their devices.  Dr. Z just needs to use BusySync to publish the calendar to Zira and when she adds it to her iCal, it will come in as a regular calendar (not under ‘subscriptions’) and can then be synced using Mobile Me to keep her iPhone up to date.  Here’s what it looks like:

This set up could be expanded to include the kid’s computers or other people as needed.  You could also include syncing to Google Calendars if need to, BusySync takes care of all of it, quickly and easily.

BusySync costs $25 per license and there’s a trial version you can download and use for 60 days if you’d like to try it out first.  For the price, there’s no better solution to keeping all your monkeys in a row!

Ever need to send a file to someone but its too big to push through email?  Whether its photos of your darling new monkey in the house or the Keynote presentation for the meeting with the Big Banana, there always seems to be something I want to send that’s just too cumbersome for sending via email.  Fortunately, using your iDisk on Mobile Me, you can share documents of any size with anyone, quickly and easily.

First, put the document you want to share on your iDisk, the easiest way is to connect to your iDisk (if you’re not connected already) by clicking on the Desktop to get the Finder menu bar and then selecting Go>iDisk>My iDisk.  Once connected, your iDisk should show up in the sidebar in a Finder window and you can save files to it as you would any of your local drives. 

Once the file is there, we need to log in to Mobile Me’s web interface.  Go to www.me.com and sign in.  Click on the folder icon  on the top of the screen to access your iDisk.  Now, locate the file you want to share and look for the share button in the viewer pane on the right side and click it.

Now you can add the email addresses of the people you want to share the file with and even add a note.  Using the two links below the message field, you can set an expiration date for the file or add a password.  If you add a password, make sure to mention in your message that the person needs to contact you for it, DO NOT include the password in the message field as it will negate the benefits of having the password to begin with.

Once you click Share, iDisk sends an email to your recipients with a direct link to your file, all they have to do is click the Download button and they can download the file directly from your Mobile Me.

Generally, setting up a personal domain to point to your Mobile Me website is quick and easy.  Recently, however, we discovered that following this process with a domain at Network Solutions requires a few extra steps, but is still as easy as falling out of a banana tree.

The first thing you want to do open iWeb and select File>Set Up Personal Domain on Mobile Me.  This will lead you to the place in your mobile me to enter your domain name, type it in and click Continue.  You’re going to get a screen telling you to go do some stuff at your registrar’s website and this is where Network Solutions gets a little tricky.

First, press COMMAND+T to open a new tab in your browser and use that new tab to log in to Network Solutions, then click ‘Domains’ in the sidebar on the left and choose ‘Manage Domain Names’.  This will give you a list of all the domains you have registered with them, put a check next to the one you want to point at MobileMe and click the ‘Edit DNS’ button below the list.

On the next screen, click the button that says ‘Manage Advanced DNS Records.’  Yes, it sounds scary, but its not, trust me.

The first thing we need to change is in the first section called ‘IP Address (A Records), click the Add/Edit button in that section.   On this screen, you should see the first three lines directing your domain to an ‘under construction’ page,   Delete first three items by placing a check mark in the DELETE column and then clicking the CONTINUE button at the bottom of the column.  Save changes when prompted.

Now were back at the Domains page; go down to the section called “Host Aliases(CNAME Records) and click the Add/Edit button on the right.  We’re going to create two aliases.  In the first line, the ALIAS name is * and the OTHER HOST is web.me.com. (please note the . afterwards, it is important and necessary).  In the second line, the ALIAS name is www and the OTHER HOST is web.me.com. (again, don’t forget the period aftwards.  Now, click the radial buttons next to OTHER HOST on both lines so that they are blue.

I know this is complicated to type, so here’s a picture of what it should look like:

Click the continue button in the bottom right corner, save changes if prompted and you’re all done!  The site warns that this process could take 24 hours to take effect.  In my experience, its more like 2 hours.

Now, flip back to Mobile Me (forgot you had it open, didn’t ya?) and click the DONE button.  In a few hours, traffic will be directed to your Mobile Me through your personal domain and you’re ready to go!

iWeb and Mobile Me provide a quick and easy way to make beautiful web pages and host them easily, but the resulting URL can be a little unpleasant.  In this age of web savvy people where everyone and their grandmother (literally) has a personal domain its great to know that you can map your own domain name to your Mobile Me web page.

The first step is to acquire your domain name.  There are about a million places to do this like Network Solutions (Setting up a Personal Domain in iWeb using Network Solutions) and Dotster.com , but our favorite is www.GoDaddy.com the mail is terrible (POP only) but the domains are super cheap.

Once you’ve got the perfect domain name acquired, let’s say “monkeyluv.com,” head over to iWeb.  Click on File in the Menu Bar and select Set Up Personal Domain.  This is going to launch a Safari window and take you to the Account section of your Mobile Me membership.  In the sidebar on the left, you’ll see Personal Domain, down near the bottom of the list, click on it.

The resulting screen is the Add Personal Domain screen, just type in your domain name in both sections here and click continue.  When finished, you’re going to be asked to go back to the site where you bought your domain and update the CNAME. The CNAME for your domain is “web.me.com”.   FYI, in my experience, this process is much clearer and easier using www.GoDaddy.com

Once you’ve got that part done, go back to iWeb and click the Done button on that  screen.  You’ll get a message that says it could take up to 48 hours for changes to occur, but mostly I’ve seen it happen in minutes rather than hours.

Now, when people visit your domain, they will be forwarded to your Mobile Me webpage and there’s no need to remember the web.me.com/somelongname address for your Moblie Me site!

For detailed instructions on setting up Network Solutions for your mobile me web site check out Setting up a Personal Domain in iWeb using Network Solutions.

Time Machine is a great way to make sure you’re computer’s totally backed up, but its not the ‘complete’ solution for backing up important documents.  In the event of fire, flood or other catastrophe where your computer was destroyed, it is likely that the hard drive housing your back up would go along with it.  Time Machine is an excellent first step towards protecting your data, but to be completely safe, you should really have a copy of essential, irreplaceable documents off-site.  Fortunately, you can easily store info in a secure, off-site location by syncing documents to your iDisk.

Syncing your iDisk with your computer will copy your entire iDisk onto your computer, making the contents of the iDisk accessible, whether you are connected to the internet or not.

To start syncing, go to System Preferences and click on the MobileMe icon under ‘Internet and Network’.  At the bottom of the MobileMe screen, you’ll see options for ‘iDisk Sync’.  Click the button that says ‘Start’ and make sure that ‘Update’ is set to ‘Automatic’.

Now when you look at your Desktop or the sidebar in Finder, you’ll see a little pink drive icon with your MobileMe name under it.  This is the contents of your iDisk and anything you save there will be synced to the Cloud.  If you double click that icon, you’ll notice that there is basically the same folder structure there as there is in your Home folder in Finder.  Move existing documents to this location or save new ones here to keep them synced.  The iDisk icon remains on the desktop even when you’re off line.  Now just save crucial documents, photos, etc… to that directory and you’ll always have an off-site back up of them! 

There are two important things to keep in mind when syncing the iDisk:  1) the Sync allots file space on your computer equal to the size of your iDisk, so don’t attempt this is your very low on storage space; and 2) If you decide to turn syncing off or discontinue the use of Mobile Me, don’t forget to move your documents back to your Home folder!

Don’t forget, you can also access the contents of your iDisk can be accessed from anywhere in the world by accessing it via www.me.com.