Apple iPhone School » email

SIGnify – Add HTML to Your Email Signature

Douglas — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 21:20:42 +0000

We’ve wrote about tweaking your email signature before but it was a detailed process which involved SSH and other complicated steps. This hack is simple and once installed, just requires you to use HTML to tweak your signature. You can change colors, fonts and size as well as add pictures and other images. To do this you’ll have to know some HTML but there is a nice guide at http://www.mygreatiphone.com/html-signature-tips-for-use-with-signify/ that helps you out with basic changes.

Here’s a text file containing my exact signature. signature

Available In: Cydia

Price: $1.50

ScreenShots

AiS News – Fixed Email Subscription

Brooke — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:01:03 +0000

Yesterday, Doug received a tweet saying that our AppleiPhoneSchool email subscription was not working so he took a look at it and indeed it was not working. However, he fixed it last night and it is now working properly. We apologize to those of you who tried to sign up for our emails and were unable to. You can sign up to receive AppleiPhoneSchool’s emails using the sign-up on the right side bar of the website.

AniGif – Create Animated Images From Photos Send them via Email or Twitter

Brooke — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:55:49 +0000

Available In: App Store

Price: $1.99

Readdle has announces the release of AniGif, an application that allows you to create animated images from your photos and send them via email or post them to Twitter.

The application works by creating an animated gif from a set of photos either from your iPhone library or from photos that you take in the application. The images need to be in a progressive order for the app to work correctly. Once the images have been added to the application, you can rearrange them or delete specific images using the Edit option. When all the images are in the correct order, you can view the animation.

When in “View” mode, you can adjust the frame rate allowing you to speed up or slow down the animation. From here you can also email and tweet the animation. Because it is a .gif file, the animation should easily display in any email provider. When you tweet the animation, it uses TwitPic and displays just like any other image only, it’s animated.

One thing I found annoying about the application is that you can only import one image at a time into the app from your Photo Library. I think this takes way too long especially if you are importing quite a few photos and there are at the bottom of one of your Photo Albums. Other than that, the app does what it says it is going to.

Is it worth $1.99… that is up to you. If done correctly, it could look pretty cool. The app itself is simple to use and makes creating animations quick and easy. It also integrates nicely into Twitter and email. For more info check out their website.

ScreenShots

Press Release

Title
AniGif creates, emails and tweets animated photos on the iPhone

Summary

Today Readdle announces the release of AniGif, iPhone application that lets people create animated images from their photos and send anywhere in the world. AniGif uses photos from the iPhone camera to make fun and inspiring animations to watch on the iPhone, send by email and even post to Twitter. AniGif is available exclusively on the Apple App Store at USD $1.99.

Body
Today Readdle announces the release of AniGif, iPhone application that lets people create animated images from their photos and send anywhere in the world. AniGif uses photos from the iPhone camera to make fun and inspiring animations to watch on the iPhone, send by email and even post to Tweeter. AniGif is available exclusively on the Apple App Store at USD $1.99.

“Working with AniGif is as simple as 1,2,3. Just take a set of pictures with the iPhone camera and instantly get cool animated image. Then show it to your friends, send by email or post to Twitter,” said Alexander Tyagulsky, Readdle CMO. “You can even create short stop motion movies with AniGif and easily share them with the world.”

AniGif sends animations as email messages with animated GIFs attached to the email. Anyone with modern email client could view that message on a phone, laptop or computer. Internet connection is the only requrement for the process, no MMS, SMS or other fee based service is involved.

Pricing and Availability:
AniGif is available for the special price of $1.99 (USD) exclusively on the App Store:

iPhone OS 3.0 or later required to run AniGif.

Email Multiple Images – 3.0 Firmware

Brooke — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:00:40 +0000

One cool new feature of the 3.0 firmware is the ability to send more than one photo or screenshot (or any image that is on your iPhone or iPod Touch) at a time via email. The guide will show you how to quickly use Apple’s built in feature that allows you to email up to five image and how to email more then five images. This is a feature I LOVE and use all the time so, I thought I would make sure everyone knows how to use it! Below are step-by-step instructions.

1. Open your stock Photos application.

2. Select your Camera Roll (thought this can be done with any images in your Photo Albums).

3. Select the mail icon in the lower left corner.

4. You will now see the options Share, Copy and Delete on a lower menu bar.

5. Tap on an image you would like to email. This will add a red check mark in the lower right corner of the image.

6. Tap on any additional images you would like to email.

Note: If you use the Share button, you can only choose 5 images however, if you would like to email more than five images, you can select Copy.

7. If you select the Share option, you can then select email and it will open an email with the images in the body of the email.

8. If you select the Copy option, you will then need to close your Pictures application (just tap the Home Button).

9. Open the Mail application and start a new email using the icon in the lower right corner.

10. Tap in the body of the message.

11. Select Paste.

12. All your images will then be pasted into the email.

13. Send email.

Gmail

Douglas — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:55:36 +0000

If you’re like me, you use the iPhone’s Mail app all the time. But if you use Gmail you should take a look at gmail.com using Safari. There’s been a lot of updates recently and Google is using HTML5 which makes the app really sweet. The video below shows you some of the features and how they look while in use.

ScreenShots

Available In: Safari

Price: Free

Birthday Reminder – Receive Email Reminders For Upcoming Birthdays

Brooke — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:34:07 +0000

Available In: App Store

Price: $1.99

I have been looking for a good Birthday reminder application for a while now…before firmware 2.x I had a Birthday reminder application that I used titlediBirthday. However, the app was not updated for the 2.x firmware and I still haven’t found an app that I like. Well today, I received an email about Birthday Reminder. It not only lists all your upcoming Birthdays but, it also allows you to receive an email reminder about them.

When you open the app, you will see a list of all your contact’s Birthdays. For each contact in the list, it displays the person’s name, the month and day of their Birthday, how old they will be and how many months it is until their next Birthday. If you select one of the contacts on the list, not only are you are given a little more information about them but, you can also open the contact in AddressBook and edit contact information right in the Birthday Reminder Application! You can also call or email the them once you select the Open in AddressBook option as well.

In the settings for the application (the setting icon is in the upper left corner of the app), you can enter all your email reminder information including; the email address in which you would like the reminder sent to, how many days before an upcoming Birthday that you would like to received the reminder, what time you would like to received the email and then ability to turn/off the email reminder and sound.

You are also able to quickly search through your Birthday list by using the search icon in the upper right corner of the application.

The only issue I had with the application is that the first time I entered my email address, every time I selected the refresh icon in the upper right corner…the app crashed…even after I synced my iPhone. I’m not really sure why and I’m not exactly sure what that icon was supposed to do. The only suggestion I have for this application is the ability to change the theme of the app. The stock design is not terrible but, I would love to see some customizability!

Overall, this application does what it is supposed to do.

ScreenShots

PushMod – Auto Check Email Every Minute

Brooke — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Available In: Cydia

Price: Free

PushMod is a mod that allows you to change your email settings so that it checks for new email every minute. Once you install the app, you will need to go into your stock Settings application and then the Fetch New Data options…here you can select the Every 1 Minute option. You do not need to turn the Push feature On…it will automatically override that. That’s it, now your iPhone will check for new email every minute (this will update the badge on your email icon every minute as well).

This app seemed to work fine for me. I tested it, sending an email to both of the email accounts I have set up on my iPhone and it worked…it updated my badge (saying I had another new email) within one minute of when I sent the email. It also worked when I deleted emails (it updated my badge saying I had fewer new emails within one minute of when I deleted them). I haven’t tested this app long enough to know it’s affects on battery life but, I’m assuming it will massively drain your battery. Let me know in the comments if you plan on using this mod and if you have noticed any battery drain from it.

You can get PushMod via the modmyi source.

Note: This app does not add an icon to your SpringBoard, it is just a code mod. To remove the app, just uninstall it (or change your email Settings back to your previous settings).

ScreenShots

SweetMail – View Unread Mail on Your Lockscreen

Brooke — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:33:57 +0000

Available In: Cydia

Price: Free

SweetMail is an application that allows you to display your unread email messages on your lockscreen. This application has been out for a while now however, version 1.0 did not work very well so I wanted to see if it would be updated. It was recently updated and I have had a lot of requests for a review so, here we go.

Once installed, an icon for SweetMail is added to your SpringBoard. When you open the SweetMail app you get some general info about the app and the settings. To get into the settings, select the Update SweetMail option on the lower menu bar. This is where things get tricky! One of the settings is your mail server…normally this is not a problem and mail server info is easy to find….however, the mail server info for this application is different than normal. After trying a million different things, I finally ended up on the developer’s website where it lists the mail server info needed for this application!

So, I entered the mail server info for gmail – imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl – and my user name (my email address) and my password for my email account. With version 1.2 on SweetMail you also have a few more options including the ability to choose the display color of the text on your lock screen (the display color much be an HTML color code), the ability to turn on/off the Unread & Refresh Header and the ability to turn on/off Show ‘No New Mail.’ Once you have selected all your settings, you will need to tap the Save Settings button in the upper right corner. Then just close the application.

Now, you will need to go into WinterBoard and activate the app. Ok, here is where I’m not really sure what happens. I think you honestly just have to wait until it activate on your lockscreen. I tried turning my iPhone on/off, deactivating and reactivating the app in WinterBoard, opening my mail application, sending myself a new email…etc…but, I’m pretty sure I just had to wait until it finally showed up (which took a while!!).

Once it finally begins working, it will display the number of unread email you have and then a list of your unread emails. For each email you will see the subject of the email, who the email is from, the date you received the email and the time you received the email. The emails are just listed in a list…after about six emails…they just run off your screen. You cannot scroll through the entire list. There is however, a refresh button in the upper right corner (a blue arrow icon).

Honestly, the app is nothing to get too excited about. The Setting menu is hard to use (if you bring up the keyboard, you cannot scroll down to turn on/off the bottom two options), the mail server info is abnormal, you cannot scroll on the lock screen and you do not get much info about each email. However, if you are simply looking for a quick way to view your unread email, this might be an app you are interested in.

Remember: Check out the developer’s website for your mail server info.

ScreenShots

iSmart Dialer – Quickly Call, Text or Email Contacts Directly From Your Stock Keypad

Brooke — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:30:42 +0000

Available In: Cydia

Price: $7.99

Ok, I have to admit that I have been procrastinating the review of this application (only because usually these apps aren’t very good) however, about ten seconds into reviewing iSmartDialer I realized I was going to be wrong with this one!

iSmartDialer is an application that allows you to easily search your contacts, send a text and send an email all from your stock dialer. Once you install the app, you will need to activate it. In order to activate it, you have to purchase it which costs $7.99(USD). So, continue reading and you can decide if this is an application you are interested in purchasing.

Once installed, you will see an icon added to your SpringBoard…this is where all of the app’s settings are located (and there are a TON of them!). In the Settings, you are able to turn on/off the application itself, the shake to search feature, the home button double tap, the quick email feature and the quick sms feature. You are also able to change a ton of search options and some keypad options. One cool feature is that you are able to choose a few different languages for the kaypad search (multi-language search). You can also set nine speed dial numbers so that you can quickly call nine contacts directly from your dialer.

Once you have the app turned on in the Settings (which it should automatically do when installed but, you might just want to double check), you can then go into your stock Phone application and then the Keypad option. You will notice a few new features on your Keypad such as; two arrows and an “On” icon on the # button. The “On” icon indicates that the search feature is activated. You can easily toggle, turn the search feature on/off, by shaking your iPhone or touching and holding the # button for 2 seconds (I personally like the shake feature). Now, for the cool part…using the search. To use the search feature, just tap on the numbers that correspond with the letters you are searching for. Note: you do not need to tap the icon three times to get the third letter that corresponds with that number…just tap it once and it will search correctly. So, if I want to search for my husband, I would tap 4,8,7,2….etc. As soon as you begin typing, it will start to bring up the most relevant contacts that match your search. The results are located at the top of the screen. You can search by first name, last name or business name.

Once a contact is found, you can scroll through the contacts using the arrow buttons or if you tap on the search results, you can scroll through them with your finger. Once you select a contact (the selected contact will be highlighted bright blue), a SMS and Email icon are added to the 1 and * buttons. These icons allow you to quickly send a text message or email to one of your contacts (they open directly in the iSmartDialer application). Another cool feature is that you can tap and hold a contact that is in the search results to edit that contacts information. Honestly, there are a lot of cool little features to this application and I have probably haven’t even touched on them all!

Overall, this application is very well designed, it’s nicely integrated and it has a ton of options. The only thing that didn’t work exactly how I wanted it to was when you send and email, it opens your stock email application in order to send the email…I was hoping it would send directly from the iSmartDialer application. Other than that, this application worked smoothly

If you would like to learn more about the app, you can check out their website!

ScreenShots

Readdledocs – Document and File Management Solution

David — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:14:20 +0000

Available In: App Store

Price: $9.99

Interestingly, after writing a review about iDownload, and reading and responding to a reader’s comment, I began to consider what it would be like to tap into the possibility of using the iPhone as a mobile storage utility. First, I explored Air Sharing, since I downloaded it for free a few months ago, but never actually setup the program. I was impressed with its ease of use, but was disappointed that only WiFi access was available. Upon reading that Readdledocs supported 3G or EDGE connections as well, I became further intrigued.

Overview
Similar to Air Sharing, upon opening Readdledocs, you can view your files and file folders available on your iPhone. When you open a file, the document appears on screen, and the application supports many file formats including the common MS Office file types and PDF files. There is an extensive PDF manual that comes with the program that effectively explains all of the features that come with this program. There are a lot of bells and whistles included (reading ebooks, iDisk access, and exchanging files with other users), but I will stick to the ones that mattered to me the most. In addition to the iPhone’s storage, your purchase of Readdledocs comes with a 512 MB of online storage where you can keep more files of your choosing. A web browser is also included for you to download documents directly into Readdledocs. For an extensive list of features, check out their website.

You’ve got files.
Since I had experience setting up the iPhone as a network drive with Air Sharing, the initial setup with Readdledocs was fairly straightforward. Within minutes, I had access to my iPhone’s storage capacity through my home computer. File transfer was very easy and relatively quick as well. Viewing documents on the iPhone was speedy, though I noticed a bit of lag with larger files and some of my Excel spreadsheet files. As I mentioned above, Readdledocs advertises file access via 3G and EDGE connections. This is true, though the access is to your online storage files, not to your iPhone’s files. To the developer’s defense, Apple probably has something to do with restricting access to WiFi only. Readdledocs gives you 512 MB of online storage with the iPhone application, as well as an option to purchase additional amounts of storage space. Thus, you can store files on your iPhone for WiFi access, or online for both WiFi and 3G/EDGE access.

Close, but I think I still need a flash drive.
If I had steady WiFi access at my workplace, I think that I would eliminate my flash drive and use my iPhone along with Readdledocs as my go-to option for storing documents. Since I don’t, I would need to upload most of my important documents online so I could then access them anywhere including on my iPhone. With only 512 MB of free space, and the potential to lose these documents (what happens if the company goes under or if the server is unavailable?), Readdledocs does not provide the complete solution to the file storage dilemma for me. Furthermore, there is no editing features, emailing files was a bit sluggish, and large files tend to frustrate the app a little bit.

Conclusion
Overall, Readdledocs excels in several areas. It’s user interface is intuitive, clean, and comprehensive. The included manual also helps you with setup and provides details on all of the included features. With this neat program, you can easily store files on your iPhone (downloaded or transferred from your computer), email them (in theory – I had some challenges with this), and view nearly all types of documents. Complaints in iTunes reviews have mostly been about the application’s price, and I agree that it’s a bit steep at $9.99. Air Sharing retails for $4.99 now, but I do prefer Readdledocs, and would be comfortable recommending it at the higher price point. The key is whether you will have WiFi access wherever you plan on using the app or if 512mb of free storage is enough for you. If so, then this app is worth the investment.